Table of contents
BLACKSTEEPLE
Man, it sucks being locked up in a big ol’ castle, huh? This next section is incredibly story rich and straightforward, so I’ll just be giving directions of where to go outside the rare battle or wild encounter and will try to be as vague as possible for plot points since I don’t want to spoil any story moments before they happen. Freedom is on the horizon, trainer! Just as long as you fight for it.
Go to sleep, we’ll figure a way out of here in the morning.
Day One
Friendship Value Choices
- How did you? (Neutral)
- You know, the usual. (Saki +1)
Follow Saki to the left and up the stairs. Go to the courtyard then head left toward the quarry to meet up with Saki and her friend. Accept the fast travel, we’ll be able to explore later. Go up the stairs and to the right.
Back to the mines, talk to everyone in here then go back to the place that was blocked off by a blond guy. Win the battle then go to the floating sigil at the top of the mine.
Friendship Value Choices
- Where’s Aelita (Neutral)
- Are we done here? (Aelita -1)
Go down two flights of stairs and through the ornate door at the top. After the cutscene you can go down and to the right and past the battle room to find some tall grass with some Pokémon.
Blacksteeple Castle Grass
| LAND | % | LAND | % | LAND | % |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tangela | 45% | Teddiursa | 27% | Cramorant | 15% |
| Abomasnow | 5% | **Ursaring | 4% | Delibird | 4% |
Go back to your cell and sleep.
Day Two
Exit your cell and go upstairs, then head down and through the red doors into the shop.
Blacksteeple Left Vendor
| ITEM | PRICE |
|---|---|
| Poké Ball | $200 |
| Great Ball | $600 |
| Ultra Ball | $1200 |
| Super Potion | $700 |
| Gourmet Treat | $1500 |
| Repel | $350 |
| Super Repel | $500 |
| Escape Rope | $550 |
We can finally get Ultra Balls here. The guy on the right tells us there’s no more mining kits though, so exit the store and go outside to the courtyard. Go up the stairs and talk to the School Boy and battle him for his Mining Kit.
Go to the quarry and talk to Adam, he’s gonna teach you about mining.
Friendship Value Choices
- I won it. (Neutral)
- I stole it. (Adam -1)
You can mine rocks now! Here are the probabilities for each thing to appear in a mining rock.
Mining Probability
You can soft reset in front of mining rocks to try for different items.
Mine the three rocks nearby and talk to Adam, then use the Blast Powder he gave you to mine the rock below him again. Go left and talk to Adam again.
Friendship Value Choices
- Calm down. (Adam +1)
- You’re useless! (Adam -2)
Beat the trainer and go to the battle room after the cutscene.
Night Two
You’re Emma now! You can check through her team for some fun info. Go all the way right and interact with the weird button on the wall.
You’re gonna have to fight the three little robots and push them onto their respective colored tiles. For the green one stand on the tile with a line in the bottom right on it to get an option to fly over there with Togekiss.
Go through the door, interact with the computer, then go left.
Day Three
Exit your cell then go upstairs and talk to Val. Talk to the guard to get the tournament started. You’ll battle 2 people and then Emma.
EmmaBattle
Once you know that the Meganium she throws out first is actually a Zoroark, this battle is fairly straightforward since there’s no field to make anything complicated.
Go up the stairs and into the library and interact with the purple books. You can interact with the book in the center too if you want. Go back out to the courtyard and go left to the garden. Go up and then through the tree at the top.
Friendship Value Choices
- It was barely a riddle. (Neutral)
- I was stumped. (Saki +1)
Go up and enter the house. After the cutscene exit the house, though you can read the book on the table beforehand, go back to the garden, then go up on the wall and talk to Braixen. Keep going right to enter the castle, go up the stairs then go up to the dining hall to talk to Valarie.
Night Three
Interact with the candelabra, then the bookshelf.
As Emma, go down to the ship. When you’re back at the castle do not let yourself be seen, meaning don’t walk into the flashlights of the guards. You’ll be sent back to the beginning if you’re spotted.
Go inside the castle and make your way up the stairs to Neved’s room.Enter the room on the right.
When you’re back outside, go to the library and interact with the teal books on the left side, then the bookshelf in the very center. Win the battle against the trainer.
Day Four
Go to Braixen’s house.
Night Five
Go to the area where Braixen’s house is and go down the stairs at the top. Push into the wall, then go right and push up into another wall.
Friendship Value Choices
- We’re getting out. (Piano Lady +2)
- I’m here to help. (Piano Lady +1)
- Yep, we’re screwed. (Piano Lady -1)
Grab that Focus Sash, we’re gonna need it. Follow the path down and to the right. Get ready for a battle.
MadelisBattle
Good news, the Cinccino doesn’t have Skill Link! Bad news, Rock Blast is boosted on this field and still hits hard along with her other Pokémon. Thankfully none of them are overwhelmingly fast except for Sharpedo who wants to live through a hit, raise its speed and sweep. You can take advantage of the many boosts that Cave Field gives you, or you can just overwhelm Madelis’ team with your own power. Either way victory should be within your grasp. Just don’t forget to heal beforehand!
After the cutscene you’ll be teaming up with Nancy! Fight your way through the guards to enter the courtyard. After the cutscene go up to Neved’s room.
Friendship Value Choices
- Are you okay? (Aelita +3)
- I looked for you… (Aelita +2)
- We gotta get to the top! (Aelita +1)
- No time to catch up! (Aelita -1)
Go all the way up the stairs and save. When you get to the PC Star, grab yourself that ghost Pokémon that knows Curse and put a Focus Sash on it. We’re in for some tough fights.
NevedBattle
While this may seem hard at first because Neved’s Pokémon are above your level cap, you are still 12v6ing him with Aelita by your side. The unfortunate part is is that Neved LOVES to rip Aelita’s team to shreds, but at least that means that he’s not focusing on your so you can actually use that to your advantage! There’s no field so it’s just a question of who’s stronger, and aside from Manectric you shouldn’t have to worry about speed. Let Aelita do all the damage she wants and pick off the remaining team members.
Oh, and make sure that you don’t use up that Focus Sash, because the fight we need it for is the next one.
YveltalBoss
Did you know that in v13 you used to be able to cheese this fight with Quick Guard? Decimation is a priority move with 20 pp, and since it was the only move that Yveltal had in this fight, if you brought two Pokémon with Quick Guard you could PP stall this bird and watch it struggle to death. Now it’s not nearly as simple with Hurricane and Focus Blast joining the party, making Quick Guard worthless here.
The good news is that Yveltal has no shields, so there’s still quite a few strats that are viable that don’t require either a full team or heal spamming. My preferred one is slapping a Focus Sash on Shuppet/Banette and using Curse. It’ll take 5 turns for Curse to knock out Yveltal, which actually made it harder in v13 because you had to revive one of your Pokémon or use Protect if you didn’t lead with Shuppet and I didn’t because of the Neved fight. Now you can Curse and bait a Hurricane or Focus Blast, both moves with high miss rates, so you don’t have to use any healing items at all.
That’s just one of the many ways of winning this fight also! I know some people do similar things with Toxic, or I’m sure that there’s some way to use F.E.A.R here, as well as Destiny Bond. There’s some people out there too that are much smarter than I am that have other strategies so they don’t have to use up the Focus Sash or heal at all. Focus Sash+Curse has always been my preferred way of beating this fight though, but it’s important to remember that you don’t have to. You get a lot of different dialogue throughout the story depending on if you beat Madame X or not, though it should be noted that if you win you also get (+1 Karma).
Friendship Value Choices
- You came to save me? (Neutral)
- Thank you… (Neutral)
- I could’ve done it myself. (Aelita -1)
Watch the following cutscenes and celebrate that if nothing else we managed to escape this castle
THE AFTERMATH
How are you doing?
Friendship Value Choices
- … (Neutral)
- Don’t feel guilty. (Adam +1)
- Maybe so. (Adam +2)
Use the recovery star nearby to heal your Pokémon since there’s been no healing since Madame X’s battle, then interact with the Pokéball next to you to obtain a Mawile from Nancy.
You can fight the Audino Breeder here to get 5 Exp. Candy M.
Exit the barracks and head downstairs to grab a Dull Key. There’s also a clerk here!
Xen Battleship Clerk
| ITEM | PRICE |
|---|---|
| Poké Ball | $200 |
| Great Ball | $600 |
| Potion | $300 |
| Super Potion | $700 |
| Antidote | $100 |
| Ice Heal | $250 |
| Gourmet Treat | $1500 |
| Super Repel | $500 |
| Reverse Candy | $50 |
Go back upstairs, down, and to the right.
Friendship Value Choices
- It’s okay. (Melia +2)
- I don’t know… (Melia -1)
- … (Melia -1)
Hey, at least Saki fixed your Snag Machine! Go back inside the ship and head up the ladders for a battle.
MeliaBattle
The first Pokémon she throws out is Fortitude, not Hapi. With that knowledge you should do fine here, especially since she doesn’t make good use of the factory field and you can use it against her. Just watch out for Hapi’s flamethrower if you’re relying on steel type Pokémon, and Melia’s signature move since you might not realize it’s super effective right off the bat.
Win you win you’ll wake up at the barracks again. Remember to heal since the game doesn’t heal you (again), and head out to the main deck on the left and watch a cutscene.
Landing on Terajuma
You’ll be pulled into a battle with a couple of rangers, but you’ll have Melia by your side for it! Winning grants you (Melia +3) and losing grants you (Melia -3).
We technically can explore a little bit of the island now, but instead we’re just going to go straight to Kakori Village to keep everything organized, so follow the group into the jungle and watch a cutscene!
Friendship Value Choices
- Everything okay? (Melia +1, Aelita +1)
- Huh? (Neutral)
- Where do we go? (Neutral)
- I can handle myself. (Melia -1, Aelita -2)
Do not be tempted by exploration! I promise we’ll get there after a few cutscenes. Go straight up, the game will force it to be nighttime once you enter the village.
Friendship Value Choices
- You’re our friend. (Nim +6)
- About that house… (Neutral)
- She’s right, we don’t. (Nim -4, Adam -4, Aelita -4, Melia -4, Valarie -4, Braixen -4)
Before we do anything we’re going to go to the house that Crawli gifted us and interact with the Noctowl statue. These are gonna serve as fast travel points around Terajuma Island, but you have to make sure you activate them unlike Truck Guy. Go inside and talk to Melia.
If you fought the vengeful Rift Gyarados you and Melia get invited to eat at Dartreaux’s Izakaya! If not, you’ll just hang out with the gang and can skip until it’s morning. Head to the gym building and enter the restaurant on the left.
Friendship Value Choices if you defeated Rift Gyarados
- Don’t know him. (Neutral)
- Agent C…? (Crawli +2)
Friendship Value Choices if you defeated Rift Gyarados
- Cheers! (Crawli +3, Melia +3)
- I’m not doing that. (Crawli-3, Melia -3)
Go back home and watch a cutscene until it’s morning.
Friendship Value Choices
- Are you really okay? (Neutral)
- I do. (Nim +1)
- Not really. (Neutral)
- You seem worse. (Neutral)
- Move, please. (Nim -2)
Exit the house and you’ll be challenged to a gym battle by Valarie. Technically we can explore a few places, but I’m going to hold them off for the next chapter which is when we’ll get Surf. If you need help with Valarie and want to try catching more Pokémon for your team, jump ahead to chapter 6 and look at the Kakori Village, Terajuma Jungle, Deep Terajuma Jungle, and Terajuma Shore sections and grab what you can without Surf and come back here. You can also go to East Gearen if you really need to by talking to the yacht guy in Kakori Village.
Once you’re ready to challenge Valarie go north from Kakori.