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Like animals in real life, wild Pokemon can be found in a variety of different habitats. If you’re planning to catch them all, you must be able to distinguish between these habitats. Below, we’ve listed all the important ones you’ll find in Unova.

Tall Grass

Left: Normal grass. Right: Dark grass.

Since the days of Pokemon Red/Blue, the first place you’ll encounter wild Pokemon is in the tall grass. Simply run through the tall grass and a wild Pokemon may appear to attack you. Black and White have added a few complications to the mix though.

Firstly, many areas now feature “ dark grass “ or “double grass”, which can be identified by being a slightly darker shade than normal tall grass. Pokemon found in dark grass are usually higher Level than their regular counterparts and often appear in pairs, sparking a double battle.

Keep an eye out (and ears out) for the shaking grass: a rare Pokemon could be hiding!

Secondly, on occasions, a particular tile of tall grass may shake violently and you can even listen out for the sound of its shaking. Running into this shaking grass will automatically trigger an encounter with a rare Pokemon–one usually not found in the grass normally.

Beware that encountering a wild Pokemon before reaching the shaking grass will stop the grass from shaking. A good tip, if you’re desperate to avoid interruption, is to use a Repel–doing so will stop random Pokemon encounters, but not shaking grass encounters.

Caves

Unlike shaking grass, you don’t always find Pokemon in dust clouds.

Inside caves, every floor tile behaves like tall grass, so no place is safe from wild Pokemon. In addition, sometimes dust clouds will appear on the floor and these act like shaking grass, except you may obtain an item instead of a wild Pokemon.

Water

Surf straight into the rippling water for a chance to encounter more beastly mons!

As soon as you obtain HM03 Surf (which is not very soon, since you need to beat the 6th Gym first), you can encounter wild Pokemon just by skating around on the surface of water.

By now, it’s probably no surprise that there’s a water variant of shaking grass: rippling water . Rippling water behaves exactly like shaking grass, granting you rarer Pokemon than usual.

It may not be obvious, but you can use the Super Rod where there’s rippling water.

Finally, after you’ve beaten the game, you’ll receive the Super Rod , allowing you to fish for Pokemon in any body of water. Simply wait for an exclamation mark to appear above your character’s head, then quickly press the A button to reel in your catch before it’s too late.

The surprise here is that you can fish straight into rippling water too, to ensnare Pokemon of a more elusive calibre.

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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Pokemon Company International
  • Platforms,
    DS
  • Genre
    RPG
  • Guide Release
    30 May 2011
  • Last Updated
    21 February 2021
  • Guide Author
    Daniel Chaviers

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How to become the greatest trainer Unova has ever known with our highly-detailed walkthrough of the main story and beyond. Pokemon trainers and collectors alike will appreciate our extensive lists of Pokemon and item location, ensuring nothing important goes under the Poke Radar!

Version 1.3

  • Concise & easy to understand explanations of advanced stat building systems - learn to raise a prize Pokémon.
  • Added TM names - find the items you want to find.
  • Expert strategies for defeating every single gym leader.
  • How to collect the various new Pokémon (including Legendary Pokémon)!
  • Thorough Route and Town guides detailing every collectable Pokemon and item.
  • Hidden secrets explained
  • How to raise a super squad of undefeatable Pokémon.
  • Encounter rates for every area of the game.
  • Hundreds of illustrative, high-quality screenshots.
  • Postgame areas explainned.
  • Expanded Training and Battling segments.

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