Headscratchers / Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers

• When you are first told of the Time Gears, the partner mentions one in an altar in a volcano. A picture of one on a volcano is shown. But then we see that there are only five, and none of them in a volcano. What was the point of that? Was it cut content?
  • I think there was one gear location we didn't see. We saw four: Treeshroud forest, Fogbound lake, Quicksand Cave, and Crystal Crossing. We simply never saw the volcano one.
    • Fifth one is at the Limestone Cavern (special episode 4). The volcano is probably Dark Crater; either Darkrai moved it back and forth (for whatever reason) or the game developers simply didn't bother to change the Time Gear montage from Time/Darkness to Sky. Grovyle does say all the necessary Time Gears when he meets you at Brine Cave, so perhaps there's an "extra" Time Gear if something goes very wrong...?
    • Something did go very wrong. Twice.
  • Who ever said that there were only 5 time gears? Grovyle may have only needed 5, but there certainly could have been more. We just never get to see them.
  • And, if I recall correctly, the partner says "I've heard that there's even one in a volcano," meaning that it could just be town gossip or such.
  • There are probably five "main" ones that cover more area. The others are weaker and only cover little areas?
    • This seems likely, given how the five "main" ones still only seem to cover the nearby area... Perhaps one of the "little" ones was in a volcano somewhere and that's the one the partner is talking about.
  • There were only five slots to place Time Gears at the top of Temporal Tower, and they were probably just dug out of the slots. How can there be any other time gears, unless some were created or it's not the only Temporal Tower?
    • See the guess below, why would the time gears weren't in the Temporal Tower in the first place? In that case, it is possible there are more than five gears. If the time gears controlled the flow of time, it is actually weirder that there are only five places that have time gears within close distance (within one island). What about the rest of the world?
  • The way the time gear slots are arranged, you could fit one more at the top. Perhaps there were originally gonna be six time gears, with the one at the volcano being the sixth one, but it was scrapped for whatever reason.
• You can be given eggs as rewards for missions. Does this strike anyone else as like selling an unborn child into slavery? Don't the eggs' parents care at all?
  • You forget that these eggs come from he dungeon you just explored, so where do you leave the egg? In a cave with crazed Pokemon, or with the nice exploration team that helped you?
  • Sorry, unless the parents actually turn up I'm under no obligation to care.
  • And you forgot a very important fact: as soon as the egg hatches, the newborn is willing to join your team. It's more the case of someone giving an egg they found around for you to care, not selling at all.
    • This seems most likely, since you can get eggs for species that absolutely cannot be bred from whichever Pokemon is giving it to you.
    • Refusing the newborn as a team member gives you a message something like "it went along on its way happily". Yup.
  • Am I the only one who never uses the Pokémon hatched from these eggs? I mean, they're at level ONE. Where do the Pokémon GO anyway?
    • THEY WERE JUST BORN! Of course they're level one. Train them in the Dragon Maze at the Dojo; three go throughs at most and they're in their twenties, problem solved.
• What was a human doing in the End of Days scenario? Humans do not seem to exist at any other point in that world, so what was he/she doing there?
  • Simple: Grovyle had one cloned somehow (maybe Mewtwo was involved) so the resistance would have access to the Dimensional Scream. Apparently, just like Pikachu have the Static Ability, humans have Dimensional Scream.
    • Where would they have gotten human DNA or fossils from? Yeah, cloning seems to be fairly easy in the Pokémon world otherwise, but we're not shown anything on that in the PMD-verse...
  • I've always figured it was something like this: When you look at your wonder map, you will notice that the land in which the story plays is probably a simple island. Maybe a rather large island, but definitely not continent-sized, seeing as their expedition to Fogbound Lake can't have taken more than two or three days. So maybe there simply aren't any humans on that particular island, but instead on larger continents. There might have been some contact, enough to know that humans exist, but not much else about them. So after this 'End of Days scenario', as you call it, humans tried to find out the cause and some traveled to the island...plus "[...]the world inhabited only by Pokemon" from the introduction probably just sounded more impressive.
  • There is a growing theory that since the world was essentially dying the "stuff" that makes reality work was beginning to fall into entropy and, as a result, a regular human "fell" through reality into the world of Pokemon.
• Why is there no evolution until the very end? Isn't evolution part of a Pokémon's life? After all, there's a Marill whose younger brother is an Azurill, it seems just logical. Also, beating Dialga as a damned Turtwig just seems way too off in terms of scale...
  • They normally can evolve, it's just that because time is screwed up, the place where Pokémon go to evolve isn't working. The first mission after clearing the story is to go fix it, though it remains... complicated for the hero and his/her partner. It's not until after Manaphy is recruited and the Marine Resort is unlocked will you be able to get the evolution thing done by defeating and recruiting Palkia.
  • Possibly, beating the game proves that the hero and partner have grown up and that's why they're allowed to evolve. Though as the above troper stated, there is a story reason for it.
• Okay, so the whole plot centers on getting the Time Gears to Temporal Tower before it collapses. What I want to know is why the silly things weren't at Temporal Tower to begin with.
  • Well, if the gears are taken from their respective places, time stops there... except that it goes back to normal as soon as they're placed at Temporal Tower, so... um... it makes even less sense than expected! It especially doesn't help that Temporal Tower's the place with all the massive defenses and secrecy when only protagonists have any reason to go there.
    • If time stops in a place when a gear is removed, then wouldn't it make sense that the gears are supposed to be in those places?
  • On that same subject, there are five gears. And the three lake spirits are positioned to guard them. Someone didn't plan things out very well, did they?
    • Well, in one of Sky's special episodes, we learn that a Ditto is guarding one of the gears. Though I still have no idea why the one at Treeshroud Forest doesn't have a guardian...
  • So basically you didn't go through the post-credits storyline.
    • If you're saying Darkrai moved them, it could work, but it brings up another problem: The normal Pokemon - even the three fairies! - clearly think the Gears need to be in their current locations for time to work properly. They've been there for, it's implied, generations, and not even the most hardened criminal will touch them for fear of bringing about the apocalypse. I can buy Dialga not noticing they were gone as their absence caused him to steadily go crazy, and his perception of time has got to be a lot different from a mortal's, but if it took that long to reach critical, that just raises more questions.
  • This troper's theory is that the Time Gears were split up to make it harder to find them, so as to protect them from the possibility of someone trying to destroy them and stop time everywhere or something to that effect. It seems like Temporal Tower is the place you would take the Time Gears to as a last resort, because simply putting the Time Gears back where they are meant to go isn't going to make time start up again (as evidenced by the fact that time didn't start up again after the lake spirits returned the Time Gears to their proper places during the game's plot). Putting the Time Gears into the wall at Temporal Pinnacle works most of the time, though. And it's no stretch to imagine that a powerful being like Dialga would be able to retrieve the Time Gears from the rest of world should he need to do such a thing, even if he's physically nowhere near the Time Gears at the time. He just was going crazy during the plot and didn't think to do so.
  • This troper has seen a theory that says that originally Darkrai found out a way to freeze time in some areas, and to stop the spread of frozen time Dialga had to place the Time Gears there. His sanity was eroded as the Time Gears sat there for generations, and eventually time collapsed and Darkrai reigned supreme, at least until Grovyle stepped in.
  • Maybe they never were "supposed" to be at Temporal Tower in the first place? As mentioned, even the lake guardians think that the Time Gears can't be moved, and, as shown in the games themselves, the Time Gears need to be in their current places to keep time in check in those places.
  • This troper's theory was that they were supposed to be a back-up. Why did Grovle have to get the time gears in the first place? To stop Temporal Tower from collapsing. That was probably the reason they were made. Just in case the Tower was falling apart. If they were there to begin with they probably would have been destroyed along with the tower. The time stopping thing was probably just a side effect.
  • It's only ever said that Darkrai "sabotaged" Temporal Tower, with no details given beyond that. Quite possibly the Time Gears were in their rightful places to begin with, and Grovyle was simply using them to repair the Tower.
• Why did Chatot ban the player Pokemon and partner from dinner when you failed to get some perfect apples in the explorers of time generation? There was no way that they could have known the tree would be bare, so he had no reason, plus, do you think Wigglytuff (the guildmaster) wold be okay with that?
  • Chatot doesn't seem to have the best common sense in general and part of his personality is just overall being a Horrible Judge of Character and too arrogant to ever admit he's wrong. Examples: He's certain that Wigglytuff is the type of hold a grudge despite Wigglytuff's entire personality and attitude proving otherwise, genuinely believed Team Skull to be good guys despite their Obviously Evil traits, hazy track record, and suspicions from literally the rest of the apprentices, immediately puts you (a couple of children with not much knowledge or experience) on sentry duty when Diglett is not available and punishes you when you unsurprisingly flop at it, and initially refuses to believe Dusknoir is evil despite being there to literally witness Dusknoir pulling you and your partner into the time portal.
• When Mesprit says "Run for your lives!" the company slowly escapes. Considering the consequences are being frozen in a time-wave...
  • Could be a side-effect of the wave; I saw it as the escape feeling agonizingly slow instead of actually being agonizingly slow.
  • You also must realize that they did just get finished beating the crap out of each other.
• Why was Luxray replaced with Manectric in Sky?
  • Probably because Shinx was made into a starter.
• Why did Grovyle set off to defeat Dialga in the special episode of Sky? It wouldn't have actually helped the player, would it?
  • Time hadn't changed when he returned to the future. While we know it was due to very slow history-changing mechanics, he couldn't be certain of that. For all he knew, you and your partner might have failed. The next step? Survive and plan a new course of action. In this case, stopping Primal Dialga from sending anyone else back to ruin everything sounds good.
  • He probably just wanted to ensure Dialga couldn't send anyone back before the hero completes the mission.
    • Correct, when he woke up, a Sableye saw him and ran off. He presumed it would alert Dialga to Dusknoir's failure and would send another guy into the past.
• In Sky, Grovyle, Dusknoir and the other future characters are seen still in the Bad Future. But back in the past, the heroes had saved the planet's paralysis. If Grovyle and Dusknoir traveled to the future, shouldn't the planet already be saved?
  • This game's Timey-Wimey Ball dictates that things occur co-temporally. If it takes, say, two hours for the heroes to fix Temporal Tower in the past after Grovyle goes back, it will take two hours in Grovyle's time for the changes to occur. Though that brings up the question of how Grovyle and Dusknoir can get up after being unconscious, scale Temporal Tower, go to Blizzard Island and complete numerous dungeons in between during the time it takes our heroes to climb present-day Temporal Tower.
    • If I'm remembering correctly, Temporal Tower is specifically said to collapse in the future. So... maybe part of the main/middle levels have gone away; whereas in the past it's super-tall, in the future it's very short, and takes less time to climb up. As for why they're the same number of floors when you play them, er, Gameplay and Story Segregation, I guess. Alternatively, Grovyle is just walking really, really fast because he's awesome?
    • Temporal Tower is actually shorter in the Special Episode, but not by much. It has 21 floors (including Temporal Pinnacle) instead of 24.
    • Well, there's always the fact that the hero and partner had to get the gears up on that altar thing, hung around and talked to Dialga, and then walked all the way back down the tower before history fully changed. And it's possible that Dusknoir was teleporting him and Grovyle around between dungeons. Though I admit that only accounts for a bit of the time it would take...
    • This is a little bit of WMG, but when Dusknoir captures you at Rainbow Stoneship, doesn't he say they have been waiting a few days for you to show up? And they already have portal to the future waiting for you. Now if Timey-Wimey Ball mentioned up above is in effect, what if the portal that Grovyle pushed them into took them back to the moment in the future from when Dusknoir originally left it. AKA a few days before the party arrived at Hidden Land in the present and before the Delayed Ripple Effect kicked in. If that is the case, that would give them plenty of time during Episode 5. Grovyle, Celebi and Dusknoir where probably climbing Vast Ice Mountain at the same time the Player Character and your Partner where climbing Temporal Tower.
• When at Mt. Bristle to rescue poor Azurill. Instead of having another go at the mountain, your partner decides to call it a day. Two things. A) Your partner is leaving poor innocent Azurill at the mercy of the creepy Drowzee. There you are stuffing your face at HQ and only god knows what Drowzee does to poor Azurill in the night... B) If we're clearly not strong enough to take on Mt. Bristle at our level, why don't we, I don't know, get the rest of the guild to help us?! Drowzee is on the wanted poster, right? Why couldn't the partner and hero tell the guild about what was happening?
  • The other guild members probably have more important matters to attend to than teaming up against a Rank E-D criminal. Plus, a lot of the earlier missions are supposed to be chances for the player character and partner to prove themselves as strong expedition members, so they'd try to do everything by themselves.
    • Wait a minute. You and your partner don't get any points for capturing Drowzee, do you? This could be an excellent demonstration of why you should choose a mission from the board and activate it before running off.
  • That sort of happens again with the Perfect Apples incident. Despite Chatot pretty much stating that Perfect Apples must be brought ASAP to the HQ before Wigglytuff starts crying that he cannot eat one, you can spend as much time as you want farming with other missions (Hence, several days) before going to the Apple Forest. And all you get is Chatot calling you out of not going there. But what about Wigglytuff - did he eat anything in the meanwhile? Was he starving? One would think that he could have noticed - even if Chatot and co. tried to hide the fact there were no Perfect Apples, Wigglytuff loves to think outside of the box...
• When Dusknoir first appears in Explorers, everyone starts talking about how great of an explorer he is, how he's so knowledgeable, and just how famous he is in general. Problem is, he only recently just arrived in this world, being sent from the future. They never did make it clear exactly how long he's been hanging around looking for Grovyle, but I don't really think it was long enough for him to become so renowned. So what's the beef?
  • Dusknoir went back further than Grovyle did, so he could build up a reputation as a benevolent master explorer, in order to easily convince everybody to help him catch Grovyle. That's what I figured.
  • Plus, as strong as Dusknoir was, he could easily take out a bunch of mid-to-high level missions and make a name for himself pretty fast. Doesn't the game mention he just sort of appeared out of nowhere one day?
    • Sunflora does say that he basically got famous "overnight," so this seems likely. It's probably a combination of doing a couple high-ranked jobs in just a couple days along with all of the information he knows.
• The beginning of Sky's fourth special episode is just odd when I think about it. Did Team Charm disguise themselves as statues for no other reason than to ruin the day of the next explorer who managed to make it to the end of the dungeon?
  • Yes, yes they did.
• So in Explorers, you end up having to visit a cave hidden behind the waterfall. Obviously, you jump through the fall to access the cave. At the end of the cave, your partner activates a trap that floods the cave and launches you into a hot spring. Naturally, you and your partners survive the whole ordeal. Especially if you have a ^{CHARMANDER on your team} The flame on Charmander's tail is its life force. So if that goes, the mon DIES.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation, calm down.
  • Actually... "Charmanders die when their flames go out" is just a weird (but common) fan assumption. The flame REPRESENTS the Charmander's life-force. As in, when the Charmander is weak, the tail flame weakens; when a Charmander is healthy, it burns brightly; when a Charmander dies, the flame goes out. The Charmander's condition causes the flame's condition to change—*not* the other way around! Come on, if you're going to take the Pokédex entries as absolute truth (rather than mostly exaggeration, folktales, and rumors), at least read all of them—one (I think it was the very first one, even) actually says that Charmanders can safely be out in the rain and that all that water falling down just makes a bunch of steam come off of their tails (instead of the usual fire) rather than putting the flame out and causing them to randomly drop dead.
  • It's actually the other way around. It's not "Charmander dies when the flame goes out" but "The flame goes out when Charmander dies".
• Why does Dusknoir pull the player character and his partner to the future with him? I mean, it was pretty obvious the player character had no idea what's going on, he could have presumably succeeded by not doing that.
  • Dialga gave him orders to kill the player and Grovyle.
• When Dusknoir takes Grovyle to the future, he also takes you and your partner, which brings me to my question. Why does he take the partner who had nothing to do with the bad future?
  • I kinda thought it might be just in case the player had remembered enough for the partner to piece the rest together. Of course, they didn't, but Dusknoir couldn't be sure, and he doesn't seem the kind of guy to take risks when he can just kill them both and be done with it.
• How does time stopping exactly affect living beings? Mesprit and the anime special imply that time coming to a stop also causes living beings in the area to become trapped in time. But how come there are Pokemon alive in the future? Shouldn't the world be filled with basically statues?
  • Presumably, you're fine if you can get out in time, so you can probably go back into the area without getting frozen in time. And since the paralysis seemed to happen one area at a time, I always assumed that everyone had at least somewhere to escape to.