Ribbon Syndicate

As you will no doubt have noticed if you are playing Diamond, Pearl or Platinum and have gotten to Resort Area, it contains a fancy house with a pool, but if you try to enter it, a woman will immediately show you out again with a speech about how you aren't good enough to be there. This is the Ribbon Syndicate, where all the stuck-up high-class Pokémon world people go! And you want to get in there, because otherwise you haven't finished the game properly, right? Well, either that or you're after the second-floor spa treatment to raise your Pokémon's happiness. Or you want some of the ELUSIVE AWESOME RIBBONS that they give you which do nothing at all.

Getting In

In order to get into the Ribbon Syndicate, you need to have ten different ribbons spread across the Pokémon in your party. Yup, that's it.

Ribbons

So how do you get yourself ten different ribbons? Well, there are a few sources for ribbons in the game. A number of ribbons can only be obtained through special events so I won't bother to include them.

• When a Pokémon has 510 Effort Points in all, you can put it first in your party, take it to the Sunyshore Market (the house with the Pokéball Seals) and talk to the woman by the counter on the left. She will give it an Effort Ribbon.
• When your Pokémon are registered in the Hall of Fame after beating the Elite Four and Cynthia, they will all get a Sinnoh Champ ribbon. (Obviously, however, it only counts for one, since the ribbons need to be different.)
• By winning a Contest of any particular category in any particular rank, you will gain a ribbon. Since there are five categories and four ranks for each, this means there are twenty ribbons available this way - but of course, winning contests takes time and effort and you might just be lazy, so this might not be the best method of getting ribbons.
• There are six ribbons you can get for the Battle Tower in D/P: two for 21 and 49 consecutive wins in Single Battle mode, one for 50 wins in Double Battle mode, one for 50 wins in Multi Battles against NPCs, one for 50 wins in Multi Battles with friends and one for reaching rank five in Wi-Fi mode.
• A woman in Sunyshore City named Julia will give the Pokémon at the front of your party one ribbon on every day of the week if you tell her a word (which she wants to be relevant to something she tells you about, but doesn't have to be): Alert Ribbon for Mondays, Shock Ribbon for Tuesdays, Downcast Ribbon for Wednesdays, Careless Ribbon for Thursdays, Relax Ribbon for Fridays, Snooze Ribbon for Saturdays and Smile Ribbon for Sundays. She is located in the northeasternmost house in town.
• The footprint guy in the house on the beach near Pastoria City will give your Pokémon a Footprint Ribbon if it's extremely happy. Even if it's a Pokémon that has no footprint. Don't even attempt to explain this with logic.
• You can migrate a Pokémon with any of the ribbons that existed in the third generation and it will keep them all. This includes the third generation's twenty Contest ribbons, the Artist ribbon that you get when the painter in the Lilycove Art Gallery agrees to paint your Pokémon after a spectacular Contest performance, the Champion ribbon that you get for being entered into the Hall of Fame there, the Effort Ribbon that you get for maxing out your Effort Points and the two ribbons you get for clearing the level 50 and 100 Battle Tower challenges. Additionally, any Pokémon that was purified from a Shadow state in either Colosseum or XD will have a National Ribbon and any Pokémon that have taken part in beating the Mt. Battle Challenge in Colosseum or XD's Story Mode in one go from 1 to 100. These Pokémon can of course win more ribbons in D/P/Pt once they're there.

The Easy Way

So if you just want to get into the Ribbon Syndicate, what's the quickest and easiest way to get ten different ribbons? Well, if you're in Resort Area you've clearly already beaten the Elite Four, so you have at least one Pokémon with at least one ribbon (the Sinnoh Champ Ribbon). Most of the time in-game teams love you by the time you've beaten the game, too, so getting the Footprint Ribbon should not be a problem either. Julia's Ribbons are by far the easiest ribbons to get, but they're obviously very time-consuming to obtain since it will inescapably take you a week to get them all; nonetheless, I think they're the best way to work your way towards ten ribbons because all it takes is playing the game for a couple of minutes a day for a week. You can also have some of your Pokémon complete a Normal Rank contest of your choice (a very easy feat) or get one an Effort Ribbon if it's effort trained, and ta-da, you have ten ribbons and can go enter the Ribbon Syndicate. Easy enough.

And once you're in...

The Rewards

What, you want rewards?

Okay, okay, fine. The rewards are the following:

• You can now buy three ridiculously expensive ribbons (the Gorgeous Ribbon, the Royal Ribbon and the Gorgeous Royal Ribbon - gee, these people are sure original, aren't they?) to put on your Pokémon from the receptionist on the first floor of the building. These have absolutely no purpose, seeing as the only point of getting ribbons in the game in the first place is being able to get into the Ribbon Syndicate and if you're buying these ribbons you must obviously have gotten into it already. But hey, bragging rights.
• You can now snicker at the elevator woman who apparently has a full-time job asking people in a two-storey building which floor they want to go to.
• You can now get creepy spa treatment on the second floor from four very suspicious-looking women. This makes the first Pokémon in your party love you for some reason. Unfortunately I can't seem to find out anywhere on the Internet just how much they raise your happiness and how exactly it compares to using that also-creepy woman in Veilstone City who gives your Pokémon massages, but supposedly the spa treatment is better. The spa treatment women claim that they prevent their customers from seeing others, but I could use the Veilstone woman and them on the same day just fine, so they're just bluffing.

And that's it. Aren't you glad you got in?

Page last modified August 13 2016 at 02:34 UTC

Comments

No comments on this page as of yet.

Post comment

Name

E-mail

Website address

Website name

Comments

Please type the name of the above Pokémon into this box: Fun fact: The above sprite has a 1/8192 chance of being shiny. Feel free to brag if you get one.