The Sinnoh Underground

Our first fully fledge article! Please do take a read.

The Sinnoh Underground

The Sinnoh Underground is, as the name implies, underground Sinnoh. By using the key item Explorer's Kit, one can go into the underground anywhere at anytime, with the exception of in buildings or tunnels. The Explorer's Kit is obtained by talking to the Underground Man in Eterna City, whose house is locate to the direct right of the Pokemon Center. When you first enter the underground, Roark greets you, wherever you might of entered the underground from.

The Sinnoh Underground is a place filled with many marvels. It uses the bottom touch screen of the DS for various tasks such as digging for "Spheres", the currency in the underground. Touching the touch screen as you are roaming in the underground allows you to see traps, and places with cracks in the wall for you to dig. Digging is done by either a hammer, or a pick. A pick only clears one square on the "grid", whereas the hammer a larger area. Larger items can be found more easily as they cover a larger area, but require more hits and time to dig these things up. The crack in the wall indicates approximately the number of times one may continue hitting the ground. There are 3 levels of soil to dig through: one level can be hit once to clear it, another twice, and another 3 times. The number of "pings" indicate how many treasures there is to find - as few as 2 to as many as 4.

The most common thing to find in the underground are spheres, which range in size. The larger the sphere is, the more its worth. Another thing commonly found is not for your taking pleasure. They are dark rocks which only serve to take up space. However, if one is lucky enough, they may stumble upon rarer items, such as Fossils, Revives, Plates, Heart Scales, Shards, held items, and Evolutionary Stones. It should be noted that before one has obtained the National Dex, the above treasures are significantly harder to find, and the only fossils that can be found are the Skull fossil (exclusive to Diamond) and the Armor fossil (exclusive to Pearl), as opposed to Helix, Dome, Root, Claw Fossils and Old ambers.

There are also secret bases in the underground. Unlike in RSE, one can make a secret base anywhere in the underground. Secret bases can be made by using a digger drill that the underground man gives you, however one can buy more from various hikers selling them for different amounts of spheres. If a player visits a secret base of another player, they can "steal" the player's flag. After successfully returning the stolen flag to one's own secret base, the player's own record of captured flag is updated. Depending on the number of flags captured, you can receive upgrades to remove the troublesome rocks in the player's secret base.

# of flags	Reward
1	Bronze flag: Can remove 3 boulders, star on the Trainer Card.
3	Silver flag: Can remove 5 boulders in total.
10	Gold flag: Can remove 10 boulders total, a radar that shows the locations of treasure, spheres and traps in the underground
50	Platinum flag: the ability to remove all boulders

Traps are everywhere in the underground. They can be purchased from hikers with spheres, or found in the path in the same way one can find weak wall spots.Sparkles on the ground if a trap is there. They can also be claimed by pressing the A button when next to one, facing it. If a player steps on a trap, there are many consequences. For example, they may be sent flying, have their controls messed up so they walk in a confused manner, or they may have to use the stylus or microphone to clear the trap. For example, one may need to pop bubbles or clear smoke (the game will explain how to escape from a trap). The least "dangerous" of a trap is the one with a message broadcast to all players in the Underground, if there are any.

Players can connect in the underground with each other in the underground by using DS wireless connection. They can talk to each other and can exchange Goods to decorate a Secret Base, communicate by asking a basic question and answer in a limited selection menu. Each time a player talks to someone else, the number on their card increases. This counter reaching 32 is one of the requirements for meeting Spiritomb. The other requirement is obtaining an Odd Keystone and sticking it into the well above ground in the route leading to the south of Solaceon City.

(last updated on July 9 2008)