Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum Super Contest FAQ 1.0/May 12, 2010 Author: saintly@innocent.com The FAQ is copyright 2010, but 'Pokemon', 'Game Freak' and all other trademarkeable names & copyrights are probably trademarked by their holders. This FAQ is not officially endorsed or authorized by anyone. Wanted: your contest strategies, recommended Pokemon Email these to the author. It helps to include a subject line like 'Re: Super Contest 1.0' so I know you're not some spammer... QFX Contents: Quick-Find tags have been added to help you find the section of the faq you want without having to page through it. They're three letters long and start with 'QF'. To jump back to the table of contents hit CTRL+F in your browser and search for 'QFX'. It should jump right back here. The tags you can search for are given in parentheses. SYNOPSIS New in this FAQ FAQ (QFF) What's the point of this game? Can I replace the picture of the winning Pokemon? Can I trade accessories to another player? So I'm the only one that gets to see the picture of my winning Pokemon? SUPER CONTEST OVERVIEW (QFO) THE VISUAL COMPETITION (QFV) Boosting your score Themes THE DANCE COMPETITION (QFD) Boosting your score THE ACTING COMPETITION (QFA) The Voltage Meter Boosting your score CONTEST MOVE ANALYSIS (QFM) POFFINS (QFP) WALKTHROUGH (QFW) Preparation Challenging the Competitions REWARDS (QFR) MOVE COMBOS COMPETING AGAINST OTHER PLAYERS CREDITS (QFX) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SYNOPSIS/FAQ META-INFO The 3rd generation of Pokemon games (Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald) introduced an alternative to normal battling: the Pokemon Contest. In addition to the normal fighting stats (Attack, Defense, etc..), they introduced 5 new contest-specific stats; Beauty, Cool, Cute, Tough and Smart. Additionally, every move in the game has an alternative, contest-specific effect. A good battling Pokemon is rarely a good Contestant Pokemon; you can find great contestants among the Pokemon that are normally never used. In Pokemon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, the contest format has changed somewhat, and they are now called Super Contests. In the anime and manga, trainers who specialize in Pokemon contests are called "Contest Coordinators". Most other aspects of the game tie into contests as well; there are items Pokemon can hold to boost contest stats, and there are daily events and mini-games that give you items to help you do better in contests. If you like farming berries, there are also berries intended for use as food to permanently boost a Pokemon's contest stats. Beating the highest rank of all 5 contests is a requirement for obtaining the coveted Black trainer card. You can also earn trophies to display in your underground base, ribbons for your Pokemon and more accessories to help you do better in future Super Contests. You'll also get pictures of your Pokemon posted on the wall in the contest hall. Like the Pokemon League, you can consider beating all 5 contests to be a good preparation for battling other players. The latest version of this FAQ can be found at GameFAQs: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ If you found it somewhere else, make sure to get the latest version before sending me any questions or comments. Other sites are free to post it without asking me so long as: 1) It's posted in it's entirety 2) You don't charge people to see it New in this FAQ 1.0 This is the first version of the FAQ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFF- Frequently asked Questions Q. What's the point of this game? A. It's supposed to be fun. If you've got good timing and you like the idea of dressing up and using your Pokemon in a different way, you may enjoy these. A lot of people will play it only to get the star for their trainer card. Q. Can I replace the picture of the winning Pokemon? A. Yes, just win that same Master rank contest again and the Pokemon that won will replace the old one. Q. Can I trade accessories to another player? A. No Q. So I'm the only one that gets to see the picture of my winning Pokemon? A. Yes. Though if you want to decorate your Pokemon and show it off, you can do that at the Jubilife TV building, then Mix Records with somebody. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFO- Super Contest Overview There are five different contests; Smart, Cute, Cool, Tough and Beauty And each one has four ranks, named after the different Pokeballs: Normal, Great, Ultra and Master Your Pokemon advance through the ranks in order, starting with Normal. In order to challenge a higher rank, you must enter the Pokemon that won the previous rank. You must have beaten the previous rank of the same type of contest; a Pokemon that beat the Ultra rank Smart contest can challenge the Master rank Smart contest, but NOT the Master rank Beauty contest. The first three ranks are fairly easy, a Pokemon with good stats should be able to breeze through them even with weak moves and poor coordination. In the Master rank, some tough competitors will emerge to challenge you. Each contest consists of three parts. Part 1: Visual You have 60 seconds to decorate your Pokemon with the accessories you have found. There is a random theme (eg. "The Shapely") that decides whether a particular accessory is worth any points. Part 2: Dance The other Pokemon will choose 3 to 4 random dance moves (jump, forward, left and right), and you'll have to match the move and timing as closely as possible. This is similar to other rhythm games like Parappa, DDR, Simon, etc... In the final round, you'll be the one choosing the moves and timing. Part 3: Acting You will use the Pokemon's moves to earn 'Appeal points'. Some moves have special effects on the contest. You choose one of three judges to use the move on, and you get bonus points if you manage to pick a judge that few other contestants have picked. Each part adds points to your cumulative score. At the end of all three parts, the Pokemon with the highest total score wins. Each round is described in more detail in its own section below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFV- The Visual Competition The contest gives you 60 seconds and allows you to put a limited number of accessories on your Pokemon's picture. Normal rank: 5 accessories Great rank: 10 accessories Ultra rank: 15 accessories Master rank: 20 accessories A random theme will be chosen. Matching accessories will be worth bonus points, and irrelevant accessories will add nothing. At the end, your Pokemon will receive a score for the round based on several factors; - Its condition in the contest type This is where most of your points come from. A higher Beauty score in a Beauty competition will give you the most points. You can boost the score by wearing the appropriate scarf. - Your stats in the two nearest contest types Your Cute and Cool scores in a Beauty competition are also added to your score, though they don't count as much as the Beauty score. If you don't have a scarf for the main stat, but you have one for the secondary stat, you can still boost your score by wearing it. The secondary stats are the ones next to the main stat in the contest stat display of any Pokemon; Contest Related Stats ------------------------- Beauty Cool, Cute Cool Beauty, Tough Tough Cool, Smart Smart Tough, Cute Cute Smart, Beauty - The accessories you chose that matched the theme Although you may not get many points per accessory, you can boost your score a lot in later ranks by getting a lot of accessories right. The placement of accessories doesn't seem to matter. On the master rank, you have to drag 20 accessories in 60 seconds, which doesn't give much time to decide where you want them to go. The backdrop has no effect on the score. You won't even see the backdrop again after the time is up. As each contestant reveals their Pokemon, you'll see a number of hearts pop up from the audience. Each heart is 1 point. The color of the heart doesn't matter. If you get at least 8 hearts, you're doing great. I'd only reset if you got way less than everyone else (say, you got 3-4 and they got 10). It's hard to recover from a huge loss at the beginning, but if you did only a little worse than others, that's fixable. Boosting your score: The easiest way to boost your score is to wear the right scarf. There is a "scarf guy" in the house nearest to Route 213 in Pastoria City. His house is east of the Great Marsh and the Pokemon center. If you bring him a Pokemon close to the max in a contest stat, he'll reward you with a scarf that boosts that stat. The Pokemon should be at the front of the party. You can only get 1 of each scarf, even if you have multiple Pokemon with maxed stats. If you're using Veilstone department store poffins, he'll reward you after you've used 7 (out of 8) poffins to boost a condition. Feeding poffins to your Pokemon to permanently boost their condition will also pay off with lots of points. See the Poffins section for more details. This used to be a huge chore in Diamond and Pearl, but now you can just buy them from the Veilstone department store. With a high-condition pokemon, you can expect to dominate the Normal through Ultra ranks so badly that your performance in the other two parts won't make a difference. Themes: Matching the right accessories to the theme is trickier. You've seen other FAQs where there's a huge list of accessories for each theme, listed in alphabetical order. Unless you have a great memory, here's some simple ways to remember what to use: - The Bright: Anything white, yellow, glittering or glowing - The Colorful: Anything with a color in it's name EXCEPT white - The Created: Anything artificial will score big points. Masks, stages, balloons, glitter, etc.. The only things that don't work are flowers, fluff and natural elements. - The Festive: This one is kinda random. Winning stuff is multi-colored, glittering or glowing. I don't blame you for resetting if you get this one. - The Flexible: Another random one. Balloons, fluff, beards & moustaches, anything that looks bendable or small. Fires, sparks and glitter also work. - The Gaudy: Glitter, balloons, stages, any scale or feather, moustaches and beards and any worn item, like ribbons, masks and hats. - The Intangible: The lighter the thing looks, the more points it gives. Glitter, flames, Determination, balloons score most. Pebbles, boulders, stages and other heavy-looking things score least. - The Natural: Almost the opposite of the Created. If it looks artificial, it scores low. Scales, flowers, leaves, flames, and similar things score high. Fluff and round pebbles score medium points. - The Relaxed: Just reset. This one makes no sense. - The Shapely: Masks, stages, hats, and most other things that have a simple shape. Only glitter and things that look like blobs score low. - The Sharp: Anything with a point on it, plus flowers, specs, hats, masks and things you wear. Balloons score the lowest. - The Solid: This one's a little random. Stages and heavy-looking things count most. Fires and sparks the least. Your competitors will always decorate their Pokemon the exact same way each time you see them. This probably explains why each rank has their own set of contestants. "The Shapely" and "The Created" are the easiest places to pick up points on your competition. You can pause the countdown by closing the lid of the DS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFD- The Dance Competition This is basically a game of Parappa the Rapper. There are four types of moves; Jump, Left, Right and Front. When the music plays, another contestant will randomly pick 4 moves (3 on Normal rank), then you and the other two contestants will try to imitate them. In the last round, you'll get to be the one picking moves, and the others will try to imitate you. The person choosing the moves is judged based on how their move matches the timing of the music (I think), the others are judged based on how well they matched the timing of the lead Pokemon. There's not much you can do to make them screw up. Screw-ups seem to be pretty random, happening a lot on Normal and rarely on Master. If you are having trouble with the timing, I find it helps to turn the volume off so you are focused only on the timing indicator. I'm not sure how to get a good score as the lead Pokemon. Even if I try to match the music, it still says 'Miss', and 'Poor' sometimes, so instead I don't worry about it and just hit 4 random buttons. At the end of this round you'll be told which Pokemon has the most total points from the Visual and Dance parts. Boosting your score It's pretty simple. Just match the timing of the moves closely, as close to the exact moment the sweeping line gets to the move indicator. If the music is distracting you, turn the volume off. On Master rank, you can safely miss 2-3 moves. 3 is pushing it, and any more means the other contestants will gain a bunch of points on you. There's a lot of tricks that screw up other human players, but very little that seems to work on the computer. It seems to have a set chance to miss with each move. If you bunch a few moves together, you can hope that it will be too late on one, forcing it to miss 2 moves. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFA- The Acting Competition At the beginning of this round, you'll start in order of who has the most points, from highest to lowest. If you're at the bottom, it's not a good sign. If you didn't miss too many moves, and you did average in the visual competition, you can probably recover from last place here. Otherwise, you may just want to reset. The Acting competition takes the longest to complete. There are three judges, from left to right: Keira, Dexter and Jordan. Over their heads is a "Voltage Meter". You can mostly ignore it (it's described in its own section). There are four rounds to this part. In each round, you pick a judge and pick a move. You can't choose the same move twice in a row (there are some exceptions). The move will give you certain number of Appeal points. At the end of the round, you get bonus points the fewer other Pokemon performed to your judge. If you were the only one, you get 3 points, if every Pokemon picked the same judge, everyone gets 0. The next round, you go in order of who got the lowest score last round. If you tied with someone else's score, you usually go ahead of them. There are moves that mess with this system (such as ensuring the performing Pokemon goes first, last, or in random order), but for the most part it'll be predictable. If you consistently get the highest score, you'll usually be going last. The Voltage Meter If a Pokemon maxes out the meter, they get 5 bonus points (and the meter resets to 0). You get an extra 3 points for maxing out Dexter's meter (total: 8) because he's a guy and guys are harder to impress or something. What increases voltage? Any move that matches the contest type will boost the voltage, eg: a Beauty move in a Beauty contest. The two related types of moves won't affect the Voltage, and the two opposing types will actually lower it by 1. Here's a quick reference: Contest Related Types Opposing Types ------------------------------------------- Beauty Cool, Cute Smart, Tough Cool Beauty, Tough Smart, Cute Tough Cool, Smart Beauty, Cute Smart Tough, Cute Beauty, Cool Cute Smart, Beauty Cool, Tough There are also moves that specifically lower voltage or have other effects on it. There are no moves that raise the meter more than 1, or raise it even though the move is the wrong type. It takes 5 moves to max out the meter. That said, you usually don't have to worry about it. It's rare to see anyone max out the voltage meter, thanks to the other contestants just randomly picking moves and lowering it as often as they raise it. Boosting your score In a battle against the computer, you'll rarely see anyone max out the voltage meter. It looks like the computer just picks a random move and a random judge every turn. The one exception to this is the Pokemon who goes first, and a judge with 4 out of 5 voltage points. The computer does seem smart enough to use the correct move on the judge. In the Master rank, your opponents always have the same moves. They will rarely be raising the voltage. Some of them have terrible movesets, like Fantina, who will get a miserable score for this part. This part is your best chance to gain a lead on the other contestants. You want your Pokemon to be able to reliably get 4 points per turn, or at worst, 3. Since you can't do the same move twice in a row, you want at least 2 moves that can bring in 4 points. Here's the best ones: Raises the score if the Voltage is low Earn a higher score the later the Pokemon performs. Earn +2 if the Pokemon performs last in the turn. There's lots of moves that have these effects. You can take a heart scale to the move relearner in Pastoria to see if your Pokemon can learn two of these moves. Ideally, you can just alternate between two of the 4-point moves and bring in a consistent score. The other contestants will sometimes score big, but you'll usually come out ahead. There's no way to guess what judge the other contestants will choose. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFM- Contest Move Analysis There are 22 types of contest moves, most of them useless. When I list them below, I list them as: appeal points/Effect so, 3/A basic performance using a move known by the Pokemon means that the move will give you 3 appeal points, and has no special effect. Moves based on unlikely circumstances: 1/Earn +3 if two Pokemon raise the Voltage in a row. 0/Steals the Voltage of the Pokemon that just went. 2/Earn +3 if the Pokemon that just went hit max Voltage. 1/Earn +3 if the Pokemon gets the lowest score. 0/Earn +15 if all the Pokemon choose the same Judge. 1/Earn +3 if no other Pokemon has chosen the same Judge. It's rare to see anyone on Master rank raise the voltage, let alone max it. You don't want to base a strategy around hoping you get a poor score. Your odds of having the other pokemon pick the same judge as you are only 1 in 27 (3%). The odds that they DON'T pick your judge are about 30%, but both those moves don't pay off nearly enough to make up for it. On average, the +15 move gives you about 0.56 appeal points, and the 'no other pokemon' move gives you about 1.9. Stay away from all of these. Moves that mess with the program: 2/Enables the user to perform first in the next turn. 2/Enables the user to perform last in the next turn. 2/Makes the order of contestants random in the next turn. 2/Prevents the Voltage from going down in the same turn. 2/Prevents the Voltage from going up in the same turn. 2/Lowers the Voltage of all Judges by one each. 2/Allows performance of the same move twice in a row. If you notice, all these moves give you only 2 points. You'll usually be going last, so the Prevents... moves won't have any effect. At best these moves are situational, you may want to have one to prevent somebody from maxing the voltage. Most of the time these moves just ding your score and don't provide much benefit to compensate. If you want some situational moves, consider the ones in the next section. Marginally useful moves: 0/Increased Voltage is added to the performance score. 0/Earn double the score in the next turn. 2/Earn +2 if the Pokemon performs first in the turn. You'll rarely use these, since the voltage is usually low and you're always going last. However, if some other contestant gets lucky or manages to push up the meter, you may want to have one or two of these handy. You would probably follow 'Earn double the score' with 'Points for low voltage' since it would make you go early next round. Workhorse moves: 2/Earn +2 if the Judge's Voltage goes up. 3/A basic performance using a move known by the Pokemon. 0/Earn a higher score the later the Pokemon performs. 0/Raises the score if the Voltage is low. 2/Earns double the score on the final performance. 2/Earn +2 if the Pokemon performs last in the turn. The first one is only good if the move matches the contest type. The basic performance is a decent move to have, but you'll hopefully not need it. You'll usually go last, so going later should give you 4 points, or at worst 3. You can also usually find at least one judge with 0 voltage to give you 4 voltage. It's possible for another contestant to go before you and raise the voltage, but you'll rarely get less than 3 points from that kind of move. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFP- Poffins Making poffins used to be annoying. You had to get the right berries, water, mulch and grow them, then go through a poffin-making game (ideally with 3 friends, each with the right berries) and spend a bunch of time making a single poffin. Thankfully, Pokemon Platinum has added a basement to the Veilstone city Department Store. Here you can just buy fantastic poffins for cash. Most people have lots of cash, but not everyone wants to farm berries. Each Veilstone poffin boosts two contest stats, and has 20 smoothness. The more smoothness, the less poffins your Pokemon can eat. You can feed 13 Veilstone poffins to any Pokemon. It takes 8 poffins to completely max a stat, and 7 poffins to be high enough to get a scarf from the scarf guy. The poffins come in flavors. Each flavor is tied to a stat: Stat Flavor ----------------- Beauty Dry Cool Spicy Tough Sour Smart Bitter Cute Sweet So the "Spicy-Dry Poffin" will boost the Beauty and Cool conditions. It seems to boost both stats equally. Each poffin costs $6,400. The whole set of 13 will cost you $83,200. To make a Pokemon capable of beating all contests, you'd want to evenly level up all their conditions, rather than maxing any of them out. Here's a sample poffin build for a Feebas; Spicy-Dry x3 Spicy-Sour x2 Bitter-Sour x3 Bitter-Sweet x2 Dry-Sweet x3 If it eats all these, it should get 6 poffins to the beauty stat (enough to level up to Milotic), and 5 to each other stat. If you want to get all the scarves, you'll need to build at least two Pokemon. You could probably do something like this; Pokemon 1 Pokemon 2 -------------------------------------- Spicy-Dry x4 Bitter-Sweet x7 Spicy-Sour x3 (Dry-Sour x6) Dry-Sour x3 Sour-Bitter x1 (Bitter-Sweet x2) The poffins in parentheses aren't necessary, but that's how I'd finish off the Pokemon. Pokemon 1 would also be a strong competitor in the Cool contest, and should do fairly well in Cute and Tough as well. Each Pokemon also has a Nature. Most natures make them like one flavor and hate another flavor. The flavor they like will grow slightly more, and the flavor they hate supposedly grows less. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference. When I fed my sample Feebas build to a Feebas that liked Dry, it seemed Dry was a little higher, but nothing seemed to be lower. I don't think the bonus would help enough to get a beauty scarf with only 6 poffins, but it looks like enough to completely max a stat with 7 instead of 8. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFW- Walkthrough Here's what I consider to be the fastest and least painful way to win all the contests and get your trainer card star. Preparation: You need a lot of cash; about $200,000 Catch/collect 1 Feebas Get 2 other Pokemon (doesn't matter what kind) Set up your Feebas with the sample build in the poffin section. Set up the other two Pokemon with the Pokemon 1/Pokemon 2 setups (don't buy the poffins in parentheses). Now visit the scarf guy in Pastoria city. Show him the Pokemon 1 and 2, and collect all 5 scarves. These help a lot. Put away those two Pokemon if you like, you won't need them anymore. Collect all these easy accessories; Big Tree - person in Eterna Forest All three masks: - one on 2nd floor of Jubilife TV - one on 1st floor of Veilstone Dept. Store - one in Pastoria city Flag - Route 206 If you have FireRed and LeafGreen, you can get a couple more accessories by putting them in, then talking to a lady in the Pal Park. Fly to Veilstone and get a massage for any pokemon for an extra accessory. If you spread out your contests over more than 1 day, be sure to go back and get more accessories from massages. You'll get more accessories as you do the contests. If you want to prepare even more, take a Pokemon into Amity Square. Every 200 steps (you can use the step counter to time this) they'll find another accessory for you. You have to turn around and talk to them to get it. I'd skip this step unless you are having a lot of trouble in the Master ranks. Slap an Exp Share on the Feebas, and kill a few monsters until it gets to at least level 6 (it should also turn into Milotic). Now talk to the Move Relearner in Pastoria city. You want to make sure it knows Splash and Wrap. Both of those are great contest moves. Challenging the contests: At first you have few accessories. Take on the Beauty contest. It should be your best stat. Wear the Blue scarf and go. You should have no trouble with the Normal, Great and Ultra ranks. Don't try the Master rank yet... Now do the Normal, Great and Ultra ranks of all the other contests. Remember to switch the scarf you're wearing before each new contest type. Winning all of these will give you a bunch of accessories. Now head back to the Master rank of the Beauty contest. It may be tough, but keep retrying and you'll get it. Fantina makes an appearance sometimes. She'll do way better than you in the visual competition, probably do really well in dance, and then go down in flames in the acting part. Alternate between Splash and Wrap if you can. Splash gives you 4 points if the judge has 0 voltage, and Wrap gives you 4 points if you go last. Once you've won, I'd suggest taking on the Cute contest next. You probably have a lot of Cute moves, and you might get lucky and max out the voltage. Don't forget to change to the Pink scarf. It doesn't make much difference after that. Wrap is a tough move, so I'd suggest doing the Tough contest next, though you probably won't see it pay off. Finish your last two in any order. If you're having trouble with a particular part, read about it and see if there's an easy way to do better. It's normal to do slightly worse than the others on the Visual competition. I also tend to do about as well as they do on the dance part. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFR- Rewards You don't get much useful stuff from the contests. When a Pokemon first beats each rank of a contest, they get a ribbon. You can get 20 ribbons this way. You can easily rack up the 10 ribbons you need to get into the Ribbon Syndicate in the resort area. You can get the same ribbon (eg. Normal rank Smart contest ribbon) more than once, but only on a different Pokemon. There's no way to lose ribbons, even if you challenge a contest again and lose. The ribbons will all end up in a particular order. Even if you beat the Master rank beauty contest after the normal rank cute contest, the Master ribbon will go with all the other beauty ribbons. The first time any of your Pokemon beats a given contest rank, you get an accessory. You can't get another one even if a different Pokemon beats that contest rank later. Normal Rank: colored bows Great Rank: colored balloons Ultra Rank: hats Master Rank: stages There's 20 total accessories to collect. Once you beat the Master rank of a contest, you can talk to Mr. Goods, a guy wandering a bit southwest of the Contest center. He'll give you a trophy to display in your underground base. You can only get 1 trophy of each type. Any time a Pokemon beats a master rank, their picture will be placed in the hall of pictures inside the Contest center. If you had a previous winner of that contest, their picture will be replaced. Once you beat all 5 master competitions, you'll get a star on your trainer card, and it will change color. There are 5 possible stars; - beat the pokemon league and enter the hall of fame - capture 50 flags in the underground - beat all 5 master ranks of super contests - complete the national dex (482 pokemon) - win 100 consecutive battles in the battle tower ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Move Combos I didn't know about these when I was doing the contests, but supposedly you can get bonus points for performing certain sequences of moves in a row. I haven't tested these yet. Charge -> Thunder Fang Defense Curl -> Rollout Focus Energy -> Night Slash Growth -> Magical Leaf Meditate -> Hi Jump Kick Psych Up -> Hydro Pump ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Competing against other players I've never done this. If you have some strategies, please send them in. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- QFX CREDITS I visited Bulbapedia a lot to research moves. http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Main_Page Your name could be here if you contribute to this FAQ!