Pokémon Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl guide: Ramanas Park, Slates, Mysterious Shards, and Legendary Pokémon

After you get the National Pokédex in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, you’ll unlock Ramanas Park, allowing you to catch Legendary Pokémon that normally wouldn’t be able to be found in the Sinnoh region. Our Ramanas Park guide details how to get Mysterious Shards and slates and battle Legendary Pokémon.

How to unlock Ramanas Park

To unlock Ramanas Park, which is south of Sandgem Town, you need to beat the Pokémon League and complete your Sinnoh Pokédex. (To complete the Sinnoh Pokédex, you don’t need to catch them all. You just need to see them all.) Once you do this, go back to Sandgem Town, and talk to Professor Rowan to get a special surprise visit from Professor Oak. Oak will talk about Ramanas Park, noting that you should go visit.

How Ramanas Park works

There are several caves in Ramanas Park, each for a different Legendary Pokémon (or set of Legendary Pokémon). You’ll need to obtain specific slates to summon these Legendary Pokémon. Once you summon them, you’ll be transported to an area to fight and catch a level 70 version of the Pokémon.

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Slates, Mysterious Shards, and Legendary Pokémon

To get slates, you’ll have to trade Mysterious Shards to a shop in Ramanas Park. You can trade three small Mysterious Shards or one large Mysterious Shard for one slate.

The slates are as follows:

• Discovery Slate: Regice, Regirock, Registeel
• Kanto Slate: Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres (Shining Pearl only)
• Johto Slate: Raikou, Entei, Suicune (Brilliant Diamond only)
• Soul Slate: Latios, Latias
• Rainbow Slate: Ho-oh (Brilliant Diamond only)
• Squall Slate: Lugia (Shining Pearl only)
• Oceanic Slate: Kyogre
• Tectonic Slate: Groudon
• Stratospheric Slate: Rayquaza
• Genome Slate: Mewtwo

At first, the Discovery Slate will be the only one available for purchase. As you catch the Legendary Pokémon, more slates will become available for purchase. If you’re missing a slate, just keep buying and catching the ones available to you.

There is also the Distortion State, which gives access to Origin Forme Giratina. The plate will only appear after you catch Giratina in Turnback Cave. Using the plate will make Origin Forme Giratina appear, though it will be level 100 and uncatchable. Once you defeat it in battle, you will get a Griseous Orb, which allows Giratina to change forms.

How to get Mysterious Shards

You can dig up Mysterious Shards in the Grand Underground from walls, as you dig up other rocks and jewels. They appear fairly rarely and come in two sizes: small and large.

Image: The Pokémon Company/ILCA inc. via Polygon

How to catch Legendary Pokémon

Once you find the Legendary Pokémon, the best thing to do is to lower its health as much as possible and to put it to sleep. This is the best method for catching Pokémon in general.

To prepare to catch Legendary Pokémon, you should have a Pokémon with a sleep-inducing move, like Sleep Powder or Hypnosis. (We used Gardevoir with Hypnosis.) You should also stock up on Quick Balls, Ultra Balls, and Timer Balls, as you’ll likely go through a lot of the latter two. You can teach an eligible Pokémon TM54, False Swipe.

To catch Legendary Pokémon successfully, follow these steps:

1. Save before you encounter the Pokémon, just in case.
2. Engage the Pokémon in battle.
3. Throw a Quick Ball right away.
4. If that fails, put the Pokémon to sleep.
5. Lower the Pokémon’s health as low as possible. You can use the move False Swipe to leave it at 1 HP.
6. Keep putting it back to sleep if it wakes up.
7. Chuck Ultra Balls at it until you catch it. If the battle goes on for longer than 10 turns, use Timer Balls instead.

Update (Nov. 29): We’ve added more information about Giratina and the Distortion Slate.