Badge #6 & #7: Spinel Town & Tanzan

Remember the little rascals? They got captured by Team Estado Novo? We should probably go rescue them. Now that you have Strength, you can get back into the Underground Railnet. There's only one way to go here, so go up the stairs to the bit of Obsidia Ward blocked off at both ends and into the Yureyu HQ.

The route here is extremely linear; just follow the stairs up to the third floor where you'll get a cutscene with Shelly being held hostage. Nothing you can do right now, so go upstairs to find Charlotte instead. After beating the grunts, they reveal their true plan: Team Meteor will make a new world, and they're part of a fucked up pyramid scheme to make it to the top of said world. Go back downstairs to rescue Shelly for real, then back upstairs to find Noel. Another double battle, and then up to the fourth floor.

Once you go upstairs, you'll have a small cutscene, and then a 2v1 against Edgy Boy Sirius. His team feels almost perfectly designed to beat Cain's team, so keep that in mind.

Everyone will retreat to the Underground Railnet, and Charlotte will unlock the door to the previously blocked off area. Make your way through the "maze" to find the other orphans down at a blocked off exit. You could climb over it... but some of the kids are too sick to do so. Instead, talk to Shelly who will propose crashing a train through it. (Sadly, you won't get to see this actually happen.) If you already found the train and went inside it, you'll get teleported over; otherwise, you'll need to find it to the very left of the map. You can also find the other switch for the gate blocking the route between the Railnet and the Slums.

As they explain, the goal is the connect the switches to the exit. This puzzle is so trivial I'm not going to bother explaining it. Once you've connected everything up, you can talk to Noel who will verify your solution (this is clearly NP-hard) and you can enter the train to proceed. Talk to Shelly to either validate her or bully her, then talk to Charlotte to drive the train outside.

What's this? Blue sky? Green grass? The outside world! No longer are you trapped in Reborn City's shithole-ness! There's a forest to the right, but there's not much point going there just yet... instead, proceed upwards to go through the Tanzan Mountain.

All of the other routes are blocked off by Team Estado Novo gates, so talk to Charlotte and continue upwards into Tanzan Cove; a relaxing, flower-filled getaway. Go upwards into the house (and, on your way, feel scammed if you got a Ducklett from the Slums egg) for some more cutscenes. Your next goal is Spinel Town, which is through the Chrysolia Forest.

If you figure out how to get down there, you can find a Grookey egg inside a second train to the south of the forest. Otherwise, make your way to the northeast of the forest to find Spinel Town.

First, walk up to the tree immediately in front of the first house to have it disappear. Go inside the house to find the Good Rod! If you wish, you can go back into the Cove, or Reborn City, and use it to catch things. Enter the Pokémart so that you can buy some herbal extract to help cure Anna. Or, at least, that's what you should do.. but the Pokémart vanishes before you can enter it. Further up, near the Pokécentre, there is a woman talking on the bench; who will be teleported away. Oops. (You should talk to her so you can get a sticker later.)

If you then go into the gym building at the west of the town, you'll find... that the Pokémart has been teleported up onto its balcony. Oops! Before talking to anyone, go upstairs and go into the left room to find TM85 Dream Eater, then the right room to find TM109 Screech. Talk to Serra for some cutscenery (including introducing the absolutely bizarre and weird Luna relationship nonsense) before going into the gym.

The Gym puzzle here is... not actually a puzzle. Brute force your way through by smashing all of the mirrors until you find the right one. There are three intermediate rooms here; the third one will have Bennett in it who will challenge you to a battle immediately. The broken mirrors do damage you a little bit, so make sure to heal up fully before you challenge him.

Now you can move onto Serra to fight her. Quite bluntly: this is the least fair gym in the game by far. The field effect is heavily based around evasion (yikes!) so it's basically RNG for if either your moves hit or her moves hit and fuck you or not, so don't feel ashamed to reset and grind it out. Fixing this would require some script fixes, which I would prefer to avoid; I've tried to remove as much evasion bullshit as possible without that. As usual, some tips:

• This is a gym based entirely around hax. If it's going to be unfair, switch off of Set mode. There's no shame in doing so.
• Boomburst instantly destroys the field; from there, it's a regular battle against ice types, which isn't known as a good defensive type for a reason.
• Corey's Revavroom once again comes in handy. Shift Gear + Iron Head dismantles her.
• Mirror Shot hits everything she has super-effectively, and due to the field effect it'll do extra damage as well. It's available via level up on Vanilluxe and Klinklang. (You can get another Vanillite by buying Vanilla Ice Cream in Spinel Town.)
• If her Ninetales gets Aurora Veil up, it's game over. It's 4x weak to Steel and physically not very bulky, so a good STAB Heavy Slam will one-shot it. Alternatively, you can use Smart Strike for a never-misses alternative, if you get screwed by RNG too many times. Aggron learns Smart Strike via level-up, as an easily obtainable example - but it is pretty weak on the special side.
• Her Beam moves can muscle straight through even neutral mons easily due to the damage boost. Your defence stats won't save you here.

After beating her, you'll get a small cutscene with El and Bennett before you can leave. The Pokémart will also teleport away into the ether. If you wish, you can go into the museum for some cool lore, as well as the ability to revive fossils upstairs. If you touch the house below the Pokécentre, it'll teleport away into Chrysolia Forest. Finally, there will be a Sprigatito walking about; talk to it and it'll teleport away. If you find the house inside the forest then go inside and talk to the Hiker, he'll offer to trade you a Mothim for a Bruxish.

You can find the teleported Pokémart outside the forest, just before the Tanzan Cave. The lower NPC is selling Herbal Extracts; you will want to buy three of them rather than just one. The regular shop NPC is also finally selling Great Balls! After buying the medicine, go back into the forest and go straight upwards to find the lady who got teleported off of her bench earlier. If you give her the Herbal Extract, she'll thank you by giving you the Chansey sticker for the Obsidia Department Store. Five down, five to go!

If you find this little cove next to the exit from Spinel Town, you can use your second herbal extract that you bought to heal the Sprigatito from before, and have it join you. Finally, at the very bottom right of the forest is a disappearing tree that will vanish when you walk into it; if you keep on walking you will find the Lost Railcave. This is a cute little puzzle; walk into the door that the rails are not facing. If you keep doing this, you will find a Eevee! One of the only two(/three, if you took the password) naturally available within the game! You can also catch a Swinub here early via wild encounters; it isn't available until after the eighth badge otherwise.

Return to the Belrose Mansion and go upstairs to give Anna the medicine. After a small cute cutscene, she says that you should try and get the next badge now. Go outside and talk to Noel to start his Gym Battle. He's a Normal type trainer; somebody else interrupts you to tell you that the fucking psykkkiatrist is on his way to abduct you again. There's another very important choice here; but first, you need to battle Dr Connal.

After beating him down, you must choose to stop the Doctor. Failing to do this will stop you from being able to get on the good ending route eventually. After some more cutscenery, Saphira (the dragonite lady) will be abducted; its your job to go and rescue her! You can find the gate inside Tanzan Mountain with Laura in front of it; talk to her to open the gate. The guards will be asleep at their posts, so sneak into the Tanzan Base.

Yeah, this chapter has a really bad track record with puzzles. Walking straight on the twisty thing will make you go in the directions the arrows are; then going into the door on the left will take you to a coloured tile "puzzle". Walking on a coloured tile will teleport you to the other side with a computer on the opposite side. Bruteforce your way to the top to interact with both computers, then exit the room when the computer is on the right to continue. (If you're on the wrong side, move to the other white tile.)

The next room is more straightforward; go straight left and talk to Laura to see that Saphira broke her way out of the cave. Follow the upper stairs and the twisty things down to a teleporting tile, then do another loop to find yourself at a split with two teleporting colour tiles (cyan to the left, and pink to the right). Take the pink tile to make it to the right side of the room; going further right will let you talk to Saphira who will disable the gate after a double battle with some grunts.

Finally, the very upper room has three computers guarded by grunts and scientists in it. I think you only need to activate the ones guarded by scientists, not the open one. Go upwards for a small cutscene... and you get teleported away! To the Tanzan Depths! Find Laura and talk to her again for some lore, and TM111 Scary Face. Keep going until you find Laura and then Saphira (who is in a cavern); then walk back downwards. Hold on a second...

If you go back, the path has suddenly changed! Go down the new path to find Laura for a fifth time... then go back again and down at the first exit to find yet another new path. After the next cutscene, go up and to the first right instead. Find Laura knocked out on the floor... and then a massive fucking Mega Steelix appears to fight you. Fuck! Beat it down, then re-enter the Meteor base to fight the PULSE Abra. It constantly uses Hyper Beam, so you can easily kill it on its recharge turns. After some more cutscenery, you can finally leave the base (by walking through all of the puzzles again... sigh...) and return to Tanzan Cove.

Once you go inside the house, you have to speak to Anna (not anyone else, annoyingly) to trigger the cutscene here. Rest in the bed upstairs and then go outside to battle Noel, the Normal-type gym leader (autism, represent!) Some more tips:

• Lilligant-H absolutely shits on this team like nothing else. Victory Dance to +4, Drain Punch your way through his team.
• I don't really have any other tips because that strategy is so hilariously effective there's not much point doing anything else. He had a fucking Girafarig in the unpatched game! He was fucking throwing!

After beating him up, go back inside the house and talk to Noel in the side room. He tells you to go find the very-likely-dead Saphira... and then Tanzan Mountain explodes. Go back into the mountain, but this time take the left lower path instead, where the gate before has been slashed wide open. As you pass upwards, Saphira will burst out of the wall and give you the Ruby Ring as well as the Amethyst Pendant, then tell you to make your way to Calcenon City. Finally, you can proceed upwards out of the cave to finally enter South Aventurine Woods. The path from here is pretty obvious as everywhere else is blocked off, so walk straight upwards through the grasses to exit out onto... ROUTE ONE.