This is part 15 of our official Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl complete guide and walkthrough, which picks up in Snowpoint City after approximately 100 hours of trekking through Hail and snow deeper than a 15-year-old MCR fan. While the reason you came here was to help your rival at Lake Acuity, you won't be able to access the lake until you beat Candice in Snowpoint Gym.
Now that you’ve got your bearings in Snowpoint City, it’s important that you absolutely under no circumstances visit the house in the northwestern corner of the town. This, reader, is where Mindy lives - if you want to know why Mindy sucks, I wrote about how awful she is before Brilliant Diamond & Pearl even came out.
Anyway, what you should be doing next is making your way to Snowpoint Gym. The puzzle here is a bit annoying, so here’s a quick rundown of what you should do to finish it quickly. It’s worth noting that you slide along ice tiles until you reach an obstruction, while snow tiles stop you in your tracks.
- From the starting point, move to the top of the snow section and go left.
- When you hit a snowball, go up three snow tiles.
- At the third tile, go right and you will go the whole way to the opposite side of the room, at which point you will land on the top of two connected snow tiles.
- Use the D-pad to walk to the lower tile and go left to take out one of the snowballs obstructing the path to Candice.
- Go back to the starting area and go left again.
- This time, instead of turning right at the third tile, go up until you reach a snowball to stop you.
- Go right to take out another main snowball.
- Head back to the start again - this time, we’ll be going right instead of left.
- When you hit the snowball, go up until you bump into a trainer.
- Go right and then up to three snow tiles shaped like a tetromino.
- From the bottom left of the three tiles, go left and you will skate the whole way to the opposite side of the room.
- From here, go up until you hit the back wall, then turn left into the back left corner of the room.
- Go down to the snow tile, down again to the snowball below, and turn right to take out the third and final obstructive snowball.
- The only snowballs left are the ones in the pit in the centre of the room, which you’ll destroy naturally as you skate around or by skating down from the remaining unused tiles on the top two tiers of the rink.
Phew! Now that’s out of the way, we’ve finally got our path to Candice. From the beginning of the puzzle, head straight through all the stairs along the middle of the room until you reach the gym leader’s platform. Candice is one of the easiest gym leaders in the game if you’ve built your team right - if you have Infernape and Staraptor, she probably won’t even manage to land a single hit on you. The key thing to remember is that Fighting is king in Sinnoh, so provided you have a Pokemon with Close Combat and potentiall a backup 'mon with access to STAB Fire moves, this fight should be over before it even begins.
Once you obtain the Icicle Badge, head to the Pokemon Centre and heal up if you need to. Now that you’ve beaten Candice, the grunts blocking the way to Lake Acuity will have moved to each side of the entrance, meaning you’re actually able to access it now. Unfortunately, the first thing you’ll see is your rival getting thrashed by Jupiter’s Skuntank. Uxie, the Lake Guardian who resides in Lake Acuity, has been abducted alongside Mesprit from Verity and Azelf from Valor. All three Legendary Pokemon are apparently being held in the massive Team Galactic HQ in the northeast corner of Veilstone City.
This brings us to part 16 of our complete Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl walkthrough: Veilstone City Team Galactic HQ.