Why Pokemon Players Can’t Complete the Regional Pokedex
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are faithful remakes of the 2006 games Pokémon Diamond and Pearl. Other than an updated leveling system and a few tweaks to make the game feel more modern, the games have very similar mechanics and design including an annoying mechanic from the originals that has prevented players from accessing the post-game content.
To unlock all of the post-game content, players must first beat the Elite 4 and champion and complete the regional pokédex. The first step is self-explanatory, but the second part is where trainers found some difficulty. Players need to encounter every single Pokémon in the Sinnoh region to complete the dex. Players can achieve this by catching, evolving or battling different Pokémon.
By the time the player beats the Elite 4, they most likely have over 80% of the dex completed anyways. The remaining Pokémon shouldn’t be too difficult to find, but here is where the problem lies. The ghost and flying type Pokemon Drifloon has proven to be very elusive to many players.
There are only 2 ways to naturally encounter Drifloon. The first way is to go to the Valley Windworks on a Friday after defeating team Galactic there. If you defeat team Galactic on Friday, then you will have to wait until the following Friday to encounter Drifloon. It’s worth noting that the game released on a Friday, so unless you set your Switch clock back ahead of time, you will have to wait an entire week before you can encounter the Pokémon.
The second way is to battle some of the trainers in the fifth gym. The trainers in this gym specialize in ghost-type Pokemon, and in order to encounter the Pokémon in question, you have to do some of the optional battles throughout it. This gym’s puzzle involves very simple math problems that the player must solve to progress.
Any player with a basic grasp of mathematics could breeze through this puzzle and skip right to the leader, Fantina. Fantina doesn’t have a Drifloon on her team though, only its evolved form Drifblimb. The problem here is once the player defeats Fantina, all of the trainers in the gym can no longer be battled. Unless you made a point to do the optional battles, you will be unable to encounter Drifloon here.
Thankfully, you can do a few things to avoid this problem. You can reset your clock back before Friday, however, there is a 24-hour penalty when doing this. This means you will have to set your clock back to Thursday and wait 24 hours before you can encounter Drifloon at the Valley Windworks.
You can also trade for a Drifloon online or locally. There are already numerous posts on Reddit dedicated to breeding and trading Driftloons to players who missed out on encountering the Pokémon.
For more Pokémon content, check out our review of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl here!