Every Pokemon generation has that one gym puzzle that is incredibly difficult to solve. In Red & Blue, it was the teleporters in the Saffron City gym, while the tile puzzle found in Ruby & Sapphire's Mossdeep City gym also left plenty of players perplexed. Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl continues this rich tradition, with Snowpoint City's ice-themed gym undoubtedly the toughest of the games' eight to navigate.

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In order to clear a path to the gym leader, Candice, Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl players will need to destroy a number of large snowballs by crashing into them at high speeds. This may sound simple enough, but they'll only be able to approach the snowballs from certain directions and will also need to have built up enough momentum to actually destroy them when they make contact. Worse still, if players happen to leave the gym before actually beating Candice, all of the snowballs will respawn, forcing players to start all over again.

Updated July 28, 2023, by Tom Bowen: Sometimes, it's much easier to show somebody how to do something than it is to explain it. Case in point, solving the Snowpoint City gym puzzle in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl. It's possible to reach the gym leader Candice in around ninety seconds, but attempting to do so by following step-by-step instructions will almost certainly prolong the process by quite a bit. To combat this, this guide has been updated to include a short video clip showing players how to solve the Snowpoint Gym puzzle both quickly and easily. With the help of this video, what was once a fairly frustrating experience becomes little more than a minor annoyance.

How to Solve the Snowpoint City Gym Puzzle in Pokemon BDSP (Video Guide)

How to Solve the Snowpoint City Gym Puzzle

Upon entering the gym, players should slide to the left from the fourth row of tiles so that they crash into a large unbreakable snowball against the gym's left wall. Next, they should head north to the third of three white tiles. Once they land on it, they'll want to slide to the right, which will take them to two connected white tiles on the opposite side of the gym. By moving to the tile below the one they first land on and then sliding left, they can destroy the giant snowball blocking the first ladder.

From where they end up, players should head up the stairs to their left and then down and to the right so that they land on the white tile closest to the gym's entrance. They'll then need to head north, slide into and defeat the Ace Trainer to their right and then slide back down in the direction of the gym's entrance. This will cause players to land on another white tile (next to another Ace Trainer), from which they'll be able to slide to the right to destroy three of the snowballs in the central area.

After defeating the trainer next to the white tile they end up on, players should go right and then north before climbing the stairs to their right. At the top, they should again slide right and then north so that they can take the next set of stairs up to the highest level. From there, they can slide north to the gym's back wall and then head left to the two white tiles. They'll want to slide south from the tile on the left, and then take a left from the white tile that they land on to destroy three more snowballs. If they then walk one space north and slide to the right from the spot where they end up, they can take out the final two snowballs in the central area.

At this point, players should make their way back towards the entrance by sliding left and down until they reach the stairs near the unbreakable snowball in the gym's southwest corner. After climbing them, they'll want to head north (via a second white tile) to another unbreakable snowball and then slide to the right to take out the snowball that's blocking the penultimate ladder.

To break the final snowball, players should again return to the spot next to the unbreakable snowball in the gym's southwest corner, head north one tile, and then right to the white tile near the gym's entrance from earlier on. From this spot, they should slide north, left, and then down. This will take them to another unbreakable snowball, from which they can slide to the right and take out the final snowball that's blocking their way.

With all of the snowballs now broken, players can return to the entrance and head straight through the center of the gym, using the newly accessible stairways to reach Candice. If they happen to have chosen Chimchar as their starter Pokemon, beating her will probably end up being easier than solving the gym's puzzle, as three of her four Pokemon are weak against fire-type attacks. Players should be careful though, as leaving the gym at any time will completely reset the puzzle.

Snowpoint City Gym Trainers

As well as Candice, there are six other trainers scattered around the Snowpoint City Gym. Like the gym's leader herself, they all tend to favor Ice-types, so players should bring along a strong Fire-type Pokemon to take care of them. A few of these trainers can be skipped with some careful planning, but players may want to deal with them all straight away just so that they can freely navigate the gym. In fact, given how simple they all are to beat, it would arguably be foolish for players to pass up the easy money and XP gains that are on offer.

Previous Methods for Reaching Candice at the Snowpoint City Gym

Due to Pokemon Diamond & Pearl originally being released for the Nintendo DS, the games were designed with the handheld console's D-Pad in mind. As a result, players were only able to travel in four directions. For Pokemon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, however, the developers reworked the games' control scheme to better suit the Nintendo Switch and its drift-prone Joy-Cons.

While this updated control scheme undoubtedly made the games better, it did bring with it one or two unforeseen consequences. Perhaps the most notable of these was that it allowed players to easily skip the entirety of the Snowpoint City Gym and go straight to Candice simply by exploiting the player's newfound ability to move in eight directions.

For those wondering, the Snowpoint City Gym skip has now been patched, meaning that most players will need to complete the puzzle the intended way in order to get their Icicle Badge. That said, anyone who is playing on an unpatched version of the games and has no intention of connecting to the internet can still use it.

To perform the Snowpoint City Gym skip, players should slide forward from the Gym's entrance to reach the tile to the left of the ladder that leads to Candice. Once there, they'll need to angle the analog stick diagonally up and to the right and then quickly go straight up. If done correctly, they'll now find themselves standing next to Candice and will be able to trigger a battle simply by speaking with her.

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