This is a part of series about my current/recent playthrough of Pokémon Pearl. While some Fan terminology and some more advanced techniques will be mentioned, this post or a previous post will provide a summary of said topic.
Day 6
The next Gym is in Eterna City. From Jubilife City, the route there is to go north to Floaroma Town, then to though Eterna Forest, before arriving in Eterna City.
The Route North is blocked by boulder that could be removed with Rock Smash. I actually was given it earlier by that Hiker that I talked about earlier, I just didn’t properly note it.
After the boulder removed, the route to Floaroma Town went up a hill, in to a sea of Flowers.
As I look around, the see of flowers, I see the town, and it’s flower shop. Outside I find a few patches of Ripe berries, and the girl who works at the store tell me I could take them, and that I should plant more. Inside the Shop, the one of the girls even gives me watering can..
Mike’s Thoughts
The Bolder that needs Rock Smash is one of the many ways to prevent players going too far from the place they should be able to go. The as you need to be able to own and have the ability to use the HM Rock Smash, this prevents players from going to Floaroma Town before getting their first badge in Orebourgh City. The other exit in Jubilife requires the Use of Surf. As noted on Day 4 Orebourgh north exit required a bike.
This reliance on HMs is somewhat double edge sword. This required that up to 8 of your 24 (or a third) total Move slots be taken up with HMs that may be useless in battle. Rock Smash is one of those weaker moves.
In later games, with the goal to use less HMs, Black & White only requires use 1 HM as part of the main storyline, and strongly recommends using Fly. (I did a “no-fly” run a few years ago.) However to prevent players going too far ahead, they had series of a certain NPC, who purpose was to block your way to another route early.
There are term for players who take route through a game which was not intended by players usually by Bugs or Glitches, known as Sequence breaking. For playthrough, no Sequence breaking will be happen. However: I’ll note where I can take an alternate route.
Floaroma Town is the first place where player can encounter Berries, baring the random chance of a Wild Pokémon holding one. This also first time in the game where one can plant and grow berries making in to a near infinite resource. Berries once consumed provide a useful effect, depending on the berry time used.
One of the first berries is the Oran berry which restores 10HP, which is alot of HP at this stage of the game. Other berries cure statuses. Plus there are many stronger effect later on in the game.
Also, if you make hold a Pokémon a berry, it can eat it upon the right conditions.
One final thing about planting berries. The Growth is in real time: the growth is based on your DS’s own clock and berries are reset back to seedlings if you change DS system or the DS clock. At the moment time, the berries only take a few hours to grow and be ready to havest, but there are several 4 day berries.
While Berries are present in Sword and Shield, the method to get them has changed. The last time that Berries growing was present was in Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire which are remakes of the game that introduced the current selection of berries.