Badge #12, Pt 1: Ametrine City

You should consider picking up some strong fighting or fire types before you return to Ametrine Mountain. Once you're ready, exit out to Route 3 from Calcenon and go back into the mountain; there's a surf spot to the immediate north of the ice you find across the river. Go into it, then press A in the dark patch to dive. Take a minute to appreciate the best music in the game, then go to the left and press A in the light patch to surface. (Congrats, you now how to dive.)

Keep going down to the south and dive again to find a small cave entry. Surface in the next room to find PULSE Avalugg, which is the cause of the massive ice wall.

Activate the PULSE machine and select the option to fight it. This is actually a much harder fight than it seems on the surface as the field effect heavily nullifies fire type attacks and PULSE Avalugg has 105/255/255 bulk. (I think that one is more important.) Try melting the field with Heat Wave (or similar moves) to nullify Earthquake.

As soon as you beat it, you'll get a small cutscene with Shelly. Use the light shard above to heal your team, and then go straight up to get to Ametrine Mountain 3F. Go to the left, and then up the stairs to find an ice puzzle.

This one looks worse than it is. Go up the ladder to find another ice puzzle.

Exit out to the right to enter Ametrine City. There's a bit of path there before you enter the city proper, but once you do you can talk to Shelly for a brief cutscene, where she tells you to ask around for Heather. Before doing that, there's a few things you can find here; one of the houses to the far west of the town has TM140 Hex in it. The open apartment building at the northwest has a kid in it that asks you for a Pidove in exchange for an Old Amber. Finally, if you go down to the lower part of town and find the Pokécentre, next to it is a house with a single NPC. Talk to them and battle all of the Pokémon in the PC to get another Department Store sticker (and the most important one, allowing you access to the evolution stones!)

In addition, if you caught a Rotom before, directly below the two left-most apartment buildings is a house with a PC where you can change Rotom forms.

To advance the plot some more, find the creepy house in the main area of town. (One of the child NPCs will tell you where it is.) When you walk in, you'll be treated to a long cutscene with some backstory for a major story character (no props for figuring out who it is). Go outside and talk to the kid Shelly is interrogating to find out the blue-haired soy guy you saw is called Blake, and he's probably evil. Go up to the now freshly-opened apartment building and talk to Shelly to get a long cutscene.

Ametrine Fight

This puzzle is really, really stupid. It's very tedious and there's lots of little interlocking steps that you need to follow. First, go back outside to trigger a cutscene, then go back up to the apartment and talk to Shelly again.

FULL Apartment Puzzle Walkthrough

Activate the console to get the Program Disc.

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Activate the rubbish bin to get the head of a key.

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Activate the drawers to get the shaft of a key. This gets you the full key. (You can do these steps in either order.)

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Activate the cupboard to unlock it and get the Power Cable.

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Activate the computer twice to power it on, and insert the Program Disc. Finally, you can enter the code 5083164 when activating the monitor to open the secret door.

After solving the puzzle, this spits you out in Ametrine Mountain again. Follow the (linear) path and talk to Shelly for a long cutscene. There's a Flying Gem in the conspicious rock to the north east. Now, you need to walk all the way back down and to the far west of the city into the area previously blocked off by an NPC. There's a few double battles up on this path (six, I think) with Cal for the first half and Shelly for the latter half.

After fighting your way back into the mountain, you will be greeted by Aster. (Well, this is only true if you did NOT give Blake the ring. If you did, he won't be there.)

Proceed up the mountain to find Blake at the top. If you walk into the tile next to Shelly, it'll trigger a battle with him, and a hard one too. Some tips:

• Use a move such as Heat Wave to remove the advantageous field effect. This makes the fight a lot easier.
• Get a strong electric type to counter his Gyrados and Walrein, who are otherwise neutral or resist both Ice counters.
• Otherwise, just throw strong fighting/fire types at him until you win. This is a double battle, so be prepared.

After a small cutscene, you find out that Terra is the inside agent all along (oh no!). Accept Cal's offer to take you down as there's really nothing here to see. And that was Ametrine City! There's sweet fuck-all here for the rest of the game! Next step: Back to the Circus. Climb you way back down through the mountains of doom and back to Route 2.