Badge #10: Agate Circus

Danger! Danger!

If you've missed any events you would like to pick up before, now is the time to do so! Whilst the area past the checkpoint does have a lot of Pokémon selection, there is still a significant amount of useful Pokémon that are only available in Reborn City and its surroundings.

Here's a small list of things you might want to do before leaving:

• Stock up on EXP Candy Ls from the pinata at the Grand Hall. You can get a full stack of these in about 5 minutes if you hold down text skip and run in full speed.
• Buy every single TM you can. There's some in Vanhanen Castle, there's some in 7th Street, there's even some in The Spyce (a place in North Obsidia ward).
• Catch a Fletchling from Beryl Cemetery. Gale Wings Talonflame can act as an emergency check to some of the upcoming gyms.
• Catch a Sandile from Tanzman Mountain. As said before, Moxie Krookodile is one of the best Pokémon in the game with an excellent typing and an easy way to snowball.
• Teach any tutor moves you need onto your Pokémon from the school and 7th Street tutors.
• Pick up anything you might need from the Obsidia Department Store.

Once you're ready, talk to Cain at the Agate Checkpoint. As soon as you pass through the back door, you're locked out of Reborn City until you get Fly again, so be absolutely sure you want to do this!

Agate Circus

After a brief-ish cutscene, you'll be teleported into Agate Circus. If you try to go back to Agate City, you'll find the path blocked by guards. (If you try and deliberately wipe out to get teleported back to a Pokémon Centre, you'll respawn here instead. Nice try.)

In the true spirit of Pokémon Reborn, there's a few clowns who are willing to battle you here (thanks?) so clear them out before doing anything else (lest you get surprised after returning from Route 2 and get wiped). Near the PC/healing machine is a vendor that sells EXP Candies, in case you somehow run out, and at the very bottom right is the bootleg Move Relearner (ah, who needs Reborn City anyway). Above him is a vendor that finally sells Ultra Balls.

There isn't much else to do here; the Circus is blocked off by the crowd and the path to Route 2 is blocked off by a line. At the top left of the circus you'll find a small crowd gathered around the Ringmaster. Talk to her, and then talk to the conspiciously coloured man next to the High Striker. You can also use the High Striker to randomly win a Clefairy if you hit POWERFUL or TM87 Swagger if you hit "OVER 9000!".

Talk to Samson again to get access to the Circus, and then go into the back room of the circus to find Aya sleeping. Interact with her for a long cutscene, including how the sleeping spell over Agate is Team Meteor's fault (wow, really?). Your next destination is all Route 2. (You can interact with Cain/Aya again quickly for a bonus relationship point.)

Route 2

The path to Route 2 is now cleared, so make your way to the building at the bottom left of the outside of the Circus. You can get another sticker here by talking to the kid (known in the code as "bitch kid") and conceding to all of their demands. In the lower room, you can talk to the NPCs for information on how the Route 2 puzzle works...

Welcome to Route 2! This is one of the four numbered routes in the game and the second hardest to navigate (after Route 4). Whilst the gimmick of Route 1 was ledges, the gimmick of Route 2 is a movable jumping puzzle! The Route 2 puzzle is one of the infamous trio of puzzles that this game is known for (after Route 1, and the Victory Road minecarts).

The goal here is to make it to the Fiore Mansion on the other side of Route 2, but you're going to need to build a path all the way over there first. It's a more intimidating puzzle than it looks.

Route 2 Puzzle Solution - Upper Half

You can skip this half and instead do the lower half first; you don't need access to Ametrine Mountain until after the 10th Badge. It's right there, though.

This puzzle looks a lot scarier than it actually is. First, we'll do the top half of the puzzle that leads to Ametrine Mountain. Jump across the rocks here to make it to the upper half of the route.

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Activate this tree to get the Sleep Powder. A little bit further above is a Crustle nest; activate it to spawn one and use the Sleep Powder to make it go to sleep.

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Push the Crustle into the hole on the right side of the route. Make sure not to accidentally push it into a corner; if you do, find the orange tree to collect some Rage Powder and use it on the Crustle to wake it up. Defeat it, and you can spawn another one. Then, go back to the green tree and collect some more Sleep Powder.

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To make it onto the upper area, solve the jumping puzzle like so. Do not jump onto the wobbly rock (the one with a thinner base), as it'll ruin your Sleep Powder and you'll have to go back and get some more.

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Push the Crustle down into this hole. The top-down view makes it a bit difficult to see if you have the right clearance, so be careful not to get yourself stuck again. I suggest you turn off speedup for this. Return back to the tree to get some more Sleep Powder.

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This one feels specifically designed to screw you. Follow the red arrow to make it to the next nest, and activate the Crustle. In order to get it down the cliff, push it back towards the jumping blocks until it blocks your path back, then follow the green line to push it downwards one square. Follow the green line in the opposite direction to push it across and down the cliff. Finally, follow the pink line to push the Crustle into the hole.

Now, you can jump across the Crustle to make it to Ametrine Mountain 2F, picking up TM58 Sky Drop on the way. Sadly, you can't actually do anything here without Surf, so let's head back to the start and do the lower half puzzle.

Route 2 Puzzle Solution - Lower Half

First, we need to actually get to the lower part of Route 2. Follow the jumping puzzle up here (see previous solution for details) and go up then down the stairs here. Activate the green pylon on the side of the gate to open a shortcut between the upper and lower half. To the immediate left is TM160 Agility, and the path to the right has TM119 Sand Tomb.

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Let's start by opening up the path to the right. There's currently an empty Crustle hole that you need to fill up to continue. Go down the left path and solve the jumping puzzle to get access to the floor (most of the rocks here are dedicated to trolling you.)

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Get Sleep Powder from the tree nearby, and then activate the Crustle directly above. This one requires a bit of manuevering to get it into the hole.

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If you loop back and lump over the newly placed Crustle, you'll find that you need to place down three more Crustles to fully unblock the path. Instead of staying here, walk all the way back up to the path on the left and walk down both stairs to get access to the lower floor. Activate the Crustle and move it down to the cliff as shown in the image (leave it there for now).

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Follow the red line to find the right-most Crustle. Activate it and push it down the cliff to fill in the right-most hole. Follow the blue line to find the left-most Crustle; activate it and push it along the pink line to fill the left-most hole.

Don't worry about the doorway you just blocked off. It's exclusively a postgame area, and you can kill the Shuckle using Rage Powder when you come back in twenty hours.

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Finally, loop all the way around the right side of Route 2 again to find the middle Crustle that you abandoned on the cliffside. Push it into the hole to finally clear the way to Celestine Cascade.

The rest of the path through the Celestine Cascade is blocked off by a body of water which you can't get through without Surf. Rats! Travel upwards to the Fiore Mansion where you will find Amaria (remember? The loveable gym leader from all the way back in Blacksteam Factory? Do you remember her?). Talk to her, go upstairs, etc, for a bunch of cutscenes.

You get the battle pass required to fight Samson from Titania (why do gym leaders have it?), so let's go back to the circus and fight him.

Fightin Time

There's two fights here between you and your tenth badge, and they're both in the Big Top. Walk through the front door to get forced into a fight with the Ringmaster.

This fight and the next fight take place on the Big Top field, the second stupidest field in the game. Amongst other effects, this converts certain types of moves into striker moves, which get random additional damage. Great!

After beating her and her cheesy Pokémon into a pulp, go into the side room to progress. Talk to everyone but Samson for some free relationship points, then talk to Samson to start the gym battle. As usual, some tips, again:

• This battle can come down to pure chance. Find a game plan, stick to it, reset until your moves don't randomly do 1/4th damage.
• Did you catch a Talonflame ? With Gale Wings + Brave Bird, it acts as an emergency check against some of his stronger or faster Pokémon like Hawlucha.
• This battle begins Reborn's hyper-offensive fetish in earnest, with every Pokémon here having one-hit kill power levels. Don't even think about trying to use resists.
• Last Respects Houndstone acts as an emergency check later on in the battle.
• Hopefully you picked up some Clear Amulets to stop the stat drop from his leading Tauros.
• I don't know, man. Use a psychic type or a fairy type. Or both. You'll get through this.

You now get the badge to use Surf, but you don't have surf. Back to the Fiore Mansion to get it.