If you’ve been playing Pokémon Pokopia regularly since launch, by now you’ve probably at least seen Rocky Ridges, the game’s second or third area (depending on the order you choose to visit them in). The region is themed around mountains, mines, and an active volcano, and if you’ve been to Rocky Ridges, you’ve almost certainly been faced with the deep, nigh-unbearable urge to clear up every single block of Volcanic Ash on the map.
Well, it’s okay. Don’t bother. Other people have already taken care of it for us.
Rocky Ridges is a mountainous area that, unlike the other zones you visit, has very little clear room to build when you first arrive. That’s because it’s largely taken up by enormous mountains, and those mountains are covered in Volcanic Ash lingering from past volcanic eruptions. The ash is super easy to clear out, vanishing at a single punch from Ditto’s Rock Smash move. But there’s just so much of it that clearing all of it is a multi-hour endeavor.
Why would you want to? Well, because there are surprises hidden beneath! In several spots, you can find hidden items, buried homes, or other furniture under the ash. Also, it’s just useful for making more space available to actually build an interesting environment in Rocky Ridges; otherwise you’re just stuck with a narrow canyon and a rundown kitchen. But the work is so time-consuming and mundane that it’s not likely you’ll ever get around to eliminating all of it, especially since so much of the ash is on mountain tops and sides and otherwise not directly in the way.
But at least two Pokopia players have fallen on the sword of cleaning up every. last. block. of Volcanic Ash. So, we now know what’s down there underneath it all. And the answer is, according to one of them…nothing. There’s nothing. Some weirdly-placed blocks, but really nothing.
u/cupcakesandyoshi on Reddit posted what’s seen above yesterday showing off the Rocky Ridges map, ash-less. The most interesting thing about it is that removing the ash reveals a ton of Glowing Stones, those blocks that look like cool rainbow space rocks, so if you were looking to do something with a ton of those, I guess this is a good way to get them.
But apart from the hidden items that you’ll likely find naturally just clearing ash out of pathways in the canyon itself, there’s nothing else remarkable. Here’s what cupcakesandyoshi explained to me:
I originally wanted to clear the ash when I realized that it was causing the area map to be essentially useless since you couldn’t differentiate anything and I kept getting lost. I was honestly convinced that there must be something buried in the ash! There was absolutely nothing of note that I found. There’s some questionable floating blocks/block structures that don’t make sense to me, and along the outskirts of the map there are areas that you can dig down super far, but again, it doesn’t make sense for them to be there.
I kept all of the floating mysterious blocks because they looked cool in the air when I first unearthed them, but I never expected there to be so many of them. It was an absolute pain to deal with clearing around them and I’m not sure I’d do that again, but my goal was really just to get rid of the ash.
However, cupcakesandyoshi isn’t the only one to have done this. u/RubySlippers87 posted their own rendition of an ash-less ridge today, though this one has a bit of a spoiler in it, so only check this one out if you’ve really thoroughly explored Rocky Ridges:
Ah, lovely! That’s much better, even if it is sinking into a crater!
For me, I haven’t been dissuaded one bit from my eventual ambition of clearing every last block of ash. It’s not about finding treasure, it’s the principle of the thing: Rocky Ridges is a mess and I want to clean it up, dang it.
Of course, other fans have found better ways to make things look nice in the mountains. For instance, this person decided to just remove the entire dang mountain that was in the way:
And this person took all that Volcanic Ash with them to Palette Town and tried to make something nicer with it:
What you choose to do with this information is up to you. If you, like me, still want to vaccuum up all this dust like it’s the sand room in Luigi’s Mansion 3, be my guest.
Not that the 2.2 million of us who bought the game already are lacking for things to do in Pokopia. Maybe you’re like me and are thinking way, way, way too deeply about the game’s lore. Perhaps you’re enjoying the Hoppip event, which is still going on. You might be trying to water every single square of grass (please stop). Or you might just need a little help to move forward, which we can provide with our extensive Wiki guides right here.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
