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 entirely linear; 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 Shinrikyo 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 Medium Sephiroth. This is an easy fight as it's 12v6.

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, you'll be 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. This opens up a "shortcut" between South Obsidia and the outside world, if -- for some reason -- you really need this.

As they explain, the goal is the connect the switches to the exit. This puzzle is so trivial I'm not even going to bother putting screenshots; you can solve this in under a minute, maximum. 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 the urban jungle of Reborn City! 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.

The exit to Spinel Town is at the north-east; there are a few other exits, but you'll want to wait until you beat the PULSE to get through any of them. At the very bottom is a train that contains either an Maractus or Cacnea egg.

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. (Or better yet, don't do that yet.) 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; talk to her once and then walk into her and she will be teleported away. Oops. (She has your next department store sticker.)

At the top-west of the town is a mansion that will also serve as your next gym. It's also the location of the teleportied Pokémart. Before talking to anyone, you can go upstairs and into the left room to find TM85 Dream Eater. Talk to Serra for some very silly cutscenes, and then you can enter the gym itself.

The gym "puzzle" here is to smash the mirror wall at the back to open a hole through to the next room. Only one spot will actually work and the rest will mildly injure you. The game thinks that it is really funny too, by putting Bennett as an ambush in the third battle so that you'll have to fight him whilst having taken damage from the mirrors. To avoid this, the correct tiles are:

• The right-most tile in the first room
• The second accessible tile (or third absolute) from the left in the second room
• The second accessible tile (or third absolute) from the right in the third room

Anyway, here's Bennett. He's not especially hard, given that he's a mono-Bug lepidopterist (and since I removed his fucking bright powder), so just kill him with Flying or Fire types.

OH WAIT I FORGOT TO MENTION THE FIELD EFFECT. This field is primarily based around evasion! That's right, everyone's favourite mechanic in the game! Screens give evasion, Synthetic Seeds give evasion, Bright Powder gives evasion. I don't know what the fuck the devs were thinking when they made this field, but it exists! The easiest way around it is to use Boomburst or Bulldoze to destroy the field and then the battle proceeds mostly as normal. I've tried my hardest to NERF this shit into the ground, removing most of the hax but it's impossible without, like, straight up removing the entire field.

With him down, you can move onto Serra to fight her. This isn't even a hard gym -- I mean, defensive Ice types after all -- but it's definitely very unfair. Here's your tips:

• This is a gym based entirely around hax. If there's any gym that's worth using Shift mode to get an advantage, this is the one. It's up to you how much you consider that to be cheating.
• As I said before, 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.
• You can also try using Bulldoze, Earthquake, or if you're really stuck, Explosion and co to destroy the field. You'd have to be braver than me to bring a Ground type to an Ice gym, so try putting Bulldoze on something else like Emboar or Wyrdeer.
• Klinklang comes in very handy. Shift Gear + Gear Grind can break her team open easily.
• 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. If you find the house inside the forest then go inside and talk to the Hiker, he'll offer to trade you a Bruxish in exchange for you Mothim.

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!

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 in a bag! 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 psychiatrist is on his way to abduct you again. There's another very important choice here; but first, you need to battle Dr Connal. This is a very easy fight if you have a fast Ghost type or anything that can dispatch his Psychic types well.

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! Try going upstairs to have Laura interrupt you and leave; you need to go to the gate inside Tanzan Mountain on the right side to advance the plot. The guards will be... "asleep" at their posts, so walk past them and into the base.

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 same tile in a different room where the computer is on the opposite side. Bruteforce your way to the top to interact with both computers to open the main path, 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.)

There are two light shards available; one in this room, and one in the room furthest to the left. I recommend you save them for when you need them, as this is relatively easy to backtrack through.

The next room is more straightforward; go straight left and talk to Laura to see that Saphira broke her way out of the cage. Walk back out of that room and go down the stairs in the main hall to fight a grunt, then walk into the twisty thing to go downwards. Keep going until you reach a room with a single teleporting tile which will send you to the room immediately below the main hallway. Walk back down the stairs and through the twisty thing to find a fork with two teleporting tiles on each side; walk to the right to take the pink square and teleport back. The blue square simply resets you and makes you walk all through the puzzle again. Exit out to the south to gain access to the right side of the main hallway; you can walk to the right to find Saphira. Talk to her to start a double battle, and then she heals your team for you.

The upper chamber has three computers guarded by scientists; the top-left and bottom-right ones open the gate at the back, whereas the bottom left opens a shortcut back to the lower area, where you can use the light shard (if need be). Once you defeat everyone and open the back gate, you can enter the back room for a small cutscene before you get teleported away to the Tanzan Depths! Find Laura and talk to her again for some lore; then keep going until you find Laura again 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! Keep walking into the new paths and going through the cutscenes until eventually you find Laura again knocked out. You'll need to fight a Level 75 gargantuan Steelix; despite that, this fight is very very easy as it is slow, doesn't hit very hard, and only has physical bulk.

After beating it, you can enjoy the ear-destroying clipping sound effects before you're placed directly outside the Tanzan base again. Walk all the way back through the base to find PULSE Abra; obviously, you have to fight it. It uses Hyper Beam a lot so it is fairly trivial to kill on its cooldown turn, even with its obscene power levels. After the cutscene you can finally leave the base (by walking back through all the puzzles... sigh...) and return to Tanzan Cove for the gym battle that was so rudely interrupted.

Gym #7

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:

• This is the easiest gym in the entire game. There is no real challenge here.
• Like. He's a Normal type trainer in a game that gives you a ton of offensive tools. Use a Fighting type. Or any type you want!
• He was using a fucking Girafarig in the base game! The thing that needed a suspect test to be banned from Little Cup! He was fucking throwing!
• His only truly dangerous Pokémon is his Cinccino, with Skill Link King's Rock letting it flinch you to death -- and it is really fucking fast. If you have something that knows Vacuum Wave, like Toxicroak you can get out in front of it.
• Beyond that, if you have something with a move that can boost its own speed and attack, like Klinklang, you can easily set up on him and then set off +6 attacks to wipe his entire team.

After beating him, your level cap increases all the way to level 60 and you get the TM for Hidden Power. Go back inside the house and talk to Noel again in the side room; he'll tell you to go find Saphira if she's not already dead. Return to the mountain, but this time take the left lower path instead; there was a gate here, but it's been slashed open. Saphira will burst out of the wall and give you the Ruby Ring and the Amethyst Pendant, then tell you to make your way to Calcenon City. You can't make it past the newly opened cave yet without a certain key item, so instead 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.