So, we now have six of the seventeen kingdoms, huh? Well, after conquering Chrysalia and skipping to the next month – for me, December of Year 2 – a messenger will come up, claiming that an elderly man is requesting an audience with you. The Professor soon comes and decides to share some of his wisdom with you.

If you ask about “Stats”, he’ll tell of the three stats. (Not nearly as many as in the mainstream games.) Attack determines the power of all attacks you do, Defense determines how much damage you’ll take from any attack, and Speed will raise accuracy and evasion.

As a for “Move Ranks”, it works kind of like in Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. Each move starts out as just the move name, as with “Thunderbolt”. As your Link with the Pokémon becomes better, you’ll eventually get “Thunderbolt +1”, “Thunderbolt +2”, and so on. This increases the move’s power, and also will add in some special effects.

It seems you can get some recruits in the Sky Garden of Violight, so head there with some Pokémon.

Battle: Wild/Warriors Pokémon (Turns: 10)¶

Ekans is weak to Ground and Psychic. It uses the move Poison Sting, which will deal extra damage to Grass types. Its ability, Intimidate, will reduce the Attack of nearby enemies.

Ralts is weak to Dark, Ghost, and Bug. It uses the move Confusion, which deals damage on a tile three tiles away, and also deals extra damage to Fighting and Poison. Its ability is Instinct, which raises its evasion.

Mareep is weak to Ground. Its move is ThunderShock, which can attack up to two tiles away, and will deal extra damage to Flying and Water, and may paralyze the target. Its ability is Calming, which may put enemies to sleep.

First things first. That Ralts has a Warrior/trainer, and we have a Fighting kingdom up next. Gang up on it and beat it in four turns or less! Ekans have been plentiful, so you can pretty much ignore that. And Mareep is, well, Mareep. It may make a nice Link.

Battle: Wild/Warriors Pokémon (Turns: 10)¶

Ekans is weak to Ground and Psychic. It uses the move Poison Sting, which will deal extra damage to Grass types. Its ability, Intimidate, will reduce the Attack of nearby enemies.

Ralts is weak to Dark, Ghost, and Bug. It uses the move Confusion, which deals damage on a tile three tiles away, and also deals extra damage to Fighting and Poison. Its ability is Instinct, which raises its evasion.

Shinx is weak to Ground. Its move is Spark, which hits an adjacent tile, and deals extra damage to Flying and Water. It has the Sequence ability, which will raise its Attack when several Electric Pokémon are together.

Joltik is weak to Ground. Its move is Electro Ball, which hits a tile two tiles away, deals more damage to faster targets, Water, and Flying. Its ability is also Sequence.

First and foremost, if you failed to get Ralts from before, get it. Also try to get Shinx. It is not the best Pokémon, and we do not know the recruitment conditions, but, if anything, consider it a chance to try and figure it out.

Battle: Wild/Warriors Pokémon (Turns: 10)¶

Pansear is weak to Ground, Water, and Rock. Its move is Flame Burst. This will hit one tile two tiles away, then all diagonally-adjacent tiles. It can burn you, and will do extra damage to Steel, Ice, Grass, and Bug. Its ability is Melee, which will let it hit adjacent enemies during battle.

Pineco is weak to Fire, Flying, and Rock. Its move, Bug Bite, will attack an adjacent enemy, possibly use their item, and will do extra damage to Grass, Dark, and Psychic. Its ability, Jagged Edge, means that a contact attack on Pineco will induce physical damage upon the attacker.

The Venipede is weak to Fire, Flying, Rock, and Psychic. Its move is Poison Sting, which can attack up to two tiles away, may induce poisoning, and will do extra damage to Grass. Its ability is Jagged Edge.

Spheal is weak to Grass, Electric, Fighting, and Rock. Its move is Powder Snow, which may attack up to two tiles away, and does extra damage to Grass, Flying, and Dragon. Its ability, Deep Sleep, will let it heal HP whilst sleeping.

Given our circumstances, and how Pineco is unrecruitable by our knowledge, we would go, first, for Spheal or Pansear. You have an abundance of them, but Pansear and Spheal are actually quite good. Plus, Spheal’s attack is Ice, not Water. Gang up on Spheal with Electric/Grass types, and Pansear with Water.

Okay, that is enough recruiting for now. Gather some Pokémon in Chrysalia for your invasion of Pugilis, the Fighting kingdom.

Battle: Yoshihiros Army (Turns: 30)¶

Gurdurr is weak to Flying and Psychic. Its move is Wake-Up Slap, which hits an adjacent enemy, and does greater damage to Sleeping targets, Rock, Ice, Steel, and Normal. Its ability is Thrust, letting it push back enemies with attacks.

Timburr are weak to Flying and Psychic. Both use Low Kick, which hits an adjacent enemy and deals more damage to Rock, Steel, Ice, and Normal. Both have the Thrust ability, which lets them push targets away.

Pansear is weak to Fire, Ice, Flying, Poison, and Bug. It uses Vine Whip, which attacks the three tiles it is facing, and does extra damage to Ground, Rock, and Water. Its ability is Melee, allowing it to randomly hit adjacent enemies during battle.

Machop is weak to Flying and Psychic. Its move is Karate Chop, which hits an adjacent enemy, has a raised critical-hit rate, and deals extra damage to Rock, Ice, Steel, and Normal. Its ability is Guts, which raises its attack when under a status effect.

Like with the fight versus Greenleaf, you’ll find some banners. They function like before: stand under one to hold it, and you’ll gain HP while under it. You must be under all banners for five turns to win; you’ll lose if the enemy does the same. Additionally, when attacked at the edge of the banners’ ring, you’ll fall to the ground below.

First and foremost, get Eevee underneath the southwestern banner via Top Speed. Move everyone except Ralts towards the ring. Why not Ralts? Well, its Confusion will attack only three tiles away. From the edge of the ring, you can attack ring-edge enemies. Of course, this also limits its versatility for the other three sides, so it is your choice.

So, obviously, you have a choice. You can either pick off the enemies as they come and wait until they’re gone for you to go for all of the remaining banners, or try and get lucky. Personally, we’d pick off as many as we could to recruit them and make this fight a lot easier.

If you do opt to just defeat your opponents first, we would suggest, before heading to the banners, to pick up all of the item boxes left behind. It should not take much more than ten turns to defeat them all, after all.

As you and your partner celebrate having claimed another kingdom, Mitsunari comes in to rain on your parade. Apparently, more is happening up north… Nobunaga has already claimed eight of the kingdoms up there, leaving only TWO under control of someone other than Nobunaga or yourself: Terrera, headed by Shingen, and Illusio, headed by Kenshin. Both of them are some of the strongest Warlords in Ransei; Nobunaga is said to actually fear them. But will that stop him?

Imagine what would happen if Nobunaga took those kingdoms. A ten-on-seven match, which would easily occur, would be suicide. We must get Illusio and Terrera on our side to even the odds!! So, save your progress.

Both of the areas actually seem quite easily, personally. Illusio uses Psychic Pokémon, which have no advantage over some of our Pokémon, and Terrera obviously uses the Ground type, and we have many Grass and Water types. But we must try a bit of recruitment regardless.

Skip along to the next month (April of Year 3 for us). You can go ahead and battle some guy in the Park at Pugilis, alongside two wild Pokémon. Your team from our previous battle should be fine.

Battle: Wild/Warriors Pokémon (Turns: 10)¶

Onix is weak to Water (4x), Grass (4x), Steel, Ice, and Ground. It is also immune to Electric. Its move is Rock Tomb, which hits an enemy two tiles away. Its ability is Jagged Edge: physical contact results in damage.

Machop is weak to Flying and Psychic. Its move is Karate Chop, which hits an adjacent enemy, has a raised critical-hit rate, and deals extra damage to Rock, Ice, Steel, and Normal. Its ability is Thrust, which lets it push targets away.

Timburr is weak to Flying and Psychic. It move is Low Kick, which hits an adjacent enemy and deals more damage to Rock, Steel, Ice, and Normal. Its ability is Guts, which raises its attack when under a status effect.

We’re mostly here for the Onix, unless you want to Link for Fighters. (Of course, most of Fighting’s advantages are covered by other types.) Gang up some Grass/Water on the Onix at the start.

The next month yielded a Venipede Warrior at the same park; that’s not really worth it, so ignore it. In fact, pretty much every other fight out there is worthless. At least to me. We won’t waste time covering them, but now, during May of Year 3, you can find these Warriors:

• Machop at Chrysalia Ravine

• Tepig at Ignis Cave

• Ekans at Violight Sky Garde

• Venipede at Pugilis Park

So, fight them if you want, but we wouldn’t really bother unless you were just doing that for the Link boosting.