Underground
The Underground (Japanese: ちかつうろ Underground Passage) is an area in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl 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.
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.
Features
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, usually in clusters, and can be located by looking for sparkles marked on the radar screen.
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 two to four items, including spheres, fossils, Revives, Heart Scales, shards, evolutionary stones, plates, and a few held items. Dark stones are also in the wall, which cannot be dug out and hinder mining. 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.
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.
Some of these items will be rotated from how they appear here.
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Small Sphere |
Large Sphere |
Heart Scale |
Skull Fossil |
Armor Fossil | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Dome Fossil |
Helix Fossil |
Old Amber |
Claw Fossil |
Root Fossil | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Red Shard |
Yellow Shard |
Green Shard |
Blue Shard |
Plate | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hard Stone |
Heat Rock |
Damp Rock |
Smooth Rock |
Icy Rock | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Fire Stone |
Water Stone |
Thunderstone |
Leaf Stone |
Moon Stone | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Sun Stone |
Shiny Stone |
Dawn Stone |
Dusk Stone |
Everstone | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Odd Keystone |
Iron Ball |
Light Clay |
Revive |
Max Revive | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Star Piece |
Rare Bone |
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.
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. 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. 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.
