Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: 9 hints to help your rescue team reach gold rank

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX
(Image credit: Nintendo)

These Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips will be useful for you, whether you're a Mystery Dungeon series veteran who remembers the originals fondly, or a newcomer to the series who has only experienced the core titles so far. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Rescue Team DX has seen an enormous facelift and some brand new features on Nintendo Switch and we've completed the game already, so there's some great tips in here to get you off to a flying start in your dungeon crawling escapades. Here's all of our Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips to help you on your way.

1. Set auto mode to exploration

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Auto mode

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One rather interesting feature Mystery Dungeon DX has is the ability to enable autopilot. Hold the left shoulder button and auto mode will be activated, taking you on the optimal route through dungeons to find items, Pokemon to rescue, and the exit stairs. Head into the options and there's two settings for auto mode; Exploring or Finding the Stairs. Finding the stairs is useful when you just want to beeline through a dungeon or you're struggling to stay alive, but early on when you want to find items and gain XP by defeating Pokemon, make sure you set it to Exploring.

2. Use Y to point you in the direction of the nearest enemy

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Hold Y

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One useful control that isn't explained early on is what the Y button does. If there's any enemies in a straight or diagonal line from your position, you'll be pointed in their direction. It sounds simple, but it's easy with the Joy-Con analog stick to get the angle slightly wrong and move in the wrong direction. Hold Y down and you can spin around on the spot too, so you don't move when all you want to do is turn.

3. Use the Persian bank every day to get a free item

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Persian Bank

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Whenever you use the Persian bank in the town square – even if you're only depositing a single coin – Persian will give you a free item of the day. Usually these are simple but useful items like Oran Berries and Max Ethers, but you won't get it if you don't deposit or withdraw anything.

4. Register Gravelrock as your quick access item for ranged damage

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Gravelrock

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You'll quickly accumulate a lot of Gravelrock while exploring dungeons. This is an item you can use whenever and it'll hit any enemy in the same room as you for a fixed amount of damage. If you register it to L+R, you can use them quickly without having to open up your toolbox, and it also means your AI teammates can throw them willy-nilly. You'll often find your team has taken down an enemy with Gravelrock before you've even seen them.

5. Try to complete as many jobs in one dungeon at a time

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Jobs

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As your rescue team rank increases, you'll be able to take on more jobs at a time. Start clearing out the early, single jobs in dungeons like Thunderwave Cave and Tiny Woods, then eventually you'll accumulate six, seven, eight jobs all in the same dungeons. If you can enter and complete all of these simultaneously, you'll save yourself a lot of time and be a much more efficient rescue team.

6. Keep an eye on the map for item and enemy locations

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Map

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Unless you're in combat, you want to have an eye on the minimap in the top-left corner at all times. During the main story, the minimap will show the locations of any items, enemies, and rescue objectives – the only things that aren't shown are the layout of the rooms and the exit stairs. When you reach the postgame, this will be less applicable as not everything is visible from the start, but until that point, the map is a huge help.

7. Stay fed or swap Pokemon

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Stay fed

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Make sure you bring a good few apples with you on each journey, because if you're solely using one Pokemon in your current party, your hunger will deplete fairly quickly. The positive side to this is that whoever you're not in control of will maintain the same level of hunger, so you can simply switch Pokemon if you do run out of food.

8. Use the dojo if you're under leveled

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Use the dojo

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The Makuhita Dojo in the town square is an efficient – albeit very boring – way of quickly leveling up specific Pokemon. As long as you've got some Dojo Tickets (commonly given out as a job rewards), you can take one of your Pokemon and defeat wild Pokemon in a dungeon for boosted XP. Don't worry, you can't die in here and you can't lose any items.

9. Carry a Wigglytuff Orb at all times

Pokemon Mystery Dungeon DX tips: Wigglytuff Orb

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There's no worse feeling than having a Pokemon join your party in a dungeon, only to find out you haven't bought the requisite camp for it. There's no way of knowing which Pokemon and which camps are needed until you come across the respective wild Pokemon, so make sure you're carrying a Wigglytuff Orb with you on every dungeon run. This allows you to access Wigglytuff's camp store while you're on a run so you can buy any camps you need. Provided you have the coin, of course.

Ford James

Give me a game and I will write every "how to" I possibly can or die trying. When I'm not knee-deep in a game to write guides on, you'll find me hurtling round the track in F1, flinging balls on my phone in Pokemon Go, pretending to know what I'm doing in Football Manager, or clicking on heads in Valorant.