Underground
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The Underground (Japanese: ちかつうろ Underground Passage) is an area in Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum found beneath the entire Sinnoh region. Players can travel underground at any time using an Explorer Kit, which they can receive in Eterna City. The Underground features multiple uses of the DS's touch-screen, as the main view is on the lower touch-sensitive screen while the upper screen shows a radar map of the entire underground. It also utilizes DS Wireless Communication to allow multiple players, each with their own DS and copy of the game, to interact.
The Underground has a different menu than the one in the overworld. Mostly, it shows the different items used; with the exception of treasures, which can be transferred to the player's bag, these are all exclusive to the area.
Spheres are the currency of the underground. The player can bury their spheres to make them more valuable, either by leaving a sphere buried for a long time to make it grow, or by burying spheres of the same color in the same spot to merge them into a larger sphere. When spheres are buried in the same spot, their size is quartered. If the size is not evenly divisible by four, the resulting value is rounded down except in the case of burying a size one sphere. When a size one sphere is buried on top of a larger sphere, it is counted as a size four sphere. However, if a sphere is buried on top of another sphere that has grown, the full size of both spheres are added together. Burying spheres can increase the number and density of mining sparkles in the same vicinity.
Features
Exploring
As in the regular world, using the D-pad lets the player walk in any direction and holding "B" allows running. As the regular bag is not able to be used in the Underground, the Bike is not available to increase speed further. Steps taken in the Underground do not count towards hatching eggs, but time spent counts towards the overall game timer. The game cannot be paused (by closing the DS lid or otherwise) while in the Underground. Additionally, since the wireless features consume more power than usual operation, the player should be careful not to drain the battery completely while in the Underground.
There are six independent sections of the labyrinth, each accessible from different places in Sinnoh. In terms of vendors and mining treasures, the areas are equivalent. When participating in multiplayer action in the Underground, players should make sure they are all in the same set of caverns.
The vast majority of the tunnels are 5 squares wide, with some single-square-width passageways between parallel tunnels. The player can see roughly 12x15 squares on the screen at any given time (not accounting for side effects of the top-down perspective). By touching any area of the lower touch screen, a radar pulse indicates interactive objects within a 4-5 square radius, indicated by yellow sparkles. There appears to be a maximum of 8-10 sparkles that will display if a particular ping returns too many objects.
If a sparkle revealed by a ping is located on the floor of the tunnel, it is either a trap or a sphere. A difference in whether a sphere or trap is hidden in the sparkle is in the fact that a trap has a white sparkle while a sphere has a golden one. If both are hidden in one spot, a trap is found first, then a sphere. If the sparkle is in the wall, it is a bulging section that can be mined.
Mining
One of the main attractions of the Underground is the mining minigame. To mine, the player must find a spot where the wall 'pings' by touching the screen and looking for sparkles. These spots will appear randomly in the Underground (although more will tend to appear near buried spheres), usually in clusters, and can be located by looking for sparkles marked on the radar screen. They appear more frequently near buried spheres, and so one way players can ensure they always have a lot of mining spots available to them is to make a "sphere garden" by burying many spheres in the same area.
The game itself is similar to Battleship or Minesweeper. At the start, the cave wall is shown, represented by a grid full of squares. There are three depths of wall: the tan soil, which can be broken through in one hit, the darker soil, which needs two hits to be broken through, and the large rocks, which each need three hits to be broken through. The player digs into the wall with a pick, which chips away small areas of rock, and a hammer, which breaks a larger area of the rock. Each spot will hide one to four items, including spheres, fossils, Revives, Heart Scales, shards, evolutionary stones, plates, and a few held items. Dark stone pieces are also in the wall, which cannot be dug out and prevent further mining upon discovery (that is, when they are uncovered on a direct hit, no other spaces are revealed until the next hit). Each hit will bring the wall closer to collapsing; if the wall collapses before everything is dug up, the game ends and the player is rewarded with what they dug up before the wall collapsed.
In addition, if anyone else is mining nearby, a pickaxe will appear on the player's screen wherever the other player hits on their screen. This helps clear the wall without contributing to the wall's collapse.
At first, only Skull or Armor Fossils can be found depending on the game version. After obtaining the National Dex, however, the game will also yield Helix Fossils, Dome Fossils, Old Ambers, Root Fossils, and Claw Fossils.
Item shapes
Items have unique shapes in the mining minigame. Larger items cover a greater area and can thus be found more easily, but take more digging to unearth.
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Secret Bases
The Underground is also where secret bases are created in the Generation IV games. The spheres dug up in the mining minigame can be traded to explorers found throughout the caves for objects to furnish secret bases. Secret bases can be created in any part of the wall using a Digger Drill. These bases can be decorated with ten items each.
If a player visits a secret base of another player, they can get that player's flag. After successfully returning the other player's flag to one's own base, the player's record is updated. The number of flags captured (either from the same "opponent" or several ones) upgrades the player's secret base computer. Each upgrade changes the graphic slightly (the icons resemble the evolution of personal computer technology) and also allows the player to remove additional boulders from their base using the "Store" option of the "Decorate" menu. This allows more room for decorations to be placed.
| No. of flags | Reward |
| 1 | Bronze flag with the ability to remove 3 boulders. |
| 3 | Silver flag with the ability to remove two more boulders. |
| 10 | Gold flag with the ability to remove five more boulders, and a radar that shows the locations
of treasure, buried spheres and traps for the whole underground map. |
| 50 | Platinum flag, the ability to remove all boulders, and a star on the Trainer card. |
Traps
Another feature of the underground are traps. These can also be purchased from explorers with spheres or found in the path in the same manner that the player can find mining spots: by touching the screen and watching for sparkles on the ground. They may also be dug up, like the Spheres, by pressing the A button when next to one, facing it. If a player steps on a trap, they may be sent flying in a specific direction, have their controls altered so they walk the wrong way, or they may have to use the stylus or microphone to clear a hazard, such as by popping bubbles or clearing smoke, or a message will be broadcast to all players in the Underground. The game will explain how to escape from a trap, however if the trap was placed by an opponent, he or she will be alerted that someone has landed in it. If one player is caught in a trap, another can face them and press A to immediately get them out of it.
Multiplayer
When entering the Underground, the DS Wireless Communication is activated. Other players within range choosing to enter the Underground will be able to interact in the same set of tunnels. As described above, players can enter one another's Secret Bases and set traps. Additionally, digging in the walls next to each other allows players to collaborate on the excavation.
Players can talk to each other just like NPCs in the above world. In doing so, they can exchange Goods used to decorate a Secret Base, and they can communicate using a basic question and answer selection menu. Each time a player talks to someone else, the counter on their card is incremented. This counter reaching 32 is one of the prerequisites for encountering Spiritomb.
Trivia
