Pokémon Pokopia Bubbly Basin DLC Guide: Dive, Area Gate, Sharpedo Habitat Construction, Key Quests, New Pokémon and ect

The Bubbly Basin DLC drops you into a half-sunken town with a broken Pokémon Center, a Popplio begging for help, and a gate that flat-out refuses to open until your Trainer Rank catches up. This guide covers the whole run: getting Surf-ready and meeting Manaphy, learning Dive, cracking open the underwater gate, rebuilding the town to environment level 3, and clearing the side quests that bring in new Pokémon neighbors like Sharpedo and Carvanha.

 

Bubbly Basin DLC Overview & Starting Requirements

You can’t just wander into Bubbly Basin. The DLC gates its opening behind two things: a certain amount of main story progress and the Surf ability. Without Surf, the entry point is physically unreachable.

Once both boxes are checked, head to Bleak Beach and find Professor Tangrove. He’ll flag a small island that wasn’t there before, sitting out past the normal swimming range. Surf across to it — that island is the actual front door to the whole DLC.

 

How to Obtain Dive (HM/TM)

Dive doesn’t come from a shop or a hidden chest. It comes from Manaphy, who’s parked on that small island near Bleak Beach and, annoyingly, hungry.

Manaphy wants five bunches of seaweed before it’ll teach you anything. The seaweed isn’t hidden — it’s scattered across the island itself and the beach area right next to it. Grab five bunches and hand them over.

Manaphy teaches Dive on the spot as thanks. Here’s the control scheme once you have it:

The spin-to-sink trick matters more than it looks. Bubbly Basin has vertical layouts where floating down manually wastes time — spinning drops you fast when you just need to hit the floor.

 

Reaching Bubbly Basin & Unlocking the Area Gate

With Dive in hand, the next target is an underwater door near the island. It’s not marked with a giant arrow — you have to dive down and physically search the seafloor around the island to spot it.

Swim through the door and you’ll run into Popplio almost immediately, asking for help. That’s the story hook pulling you toward the town, but there’s a hard wall in the way: a gate that requires Trainer Rank Master to scan and open.

If your rank isn’t there yet, Popplio’s town stays locked. There’s no seaweed-style shortcut here — you grind Trainer Rank the normal way until the scan succeeds.

 

Rebuilding the Underwater Town & Pokémon Center

The town on the other side of the gate is a wreck. Two goals define this whole phase: push the environment level to 3, and physically rebuild the Pokémon Center.

Check your current environment level at the Pokémon Center PC — it climbs as you find new Pokémon and raise their comfort levels, not just by placing furniture. Rebuilding the Center itself is a joint effort with the Pokémon already living underwater.

Recipes you’ll run into along the way:

• Marine Chair — requires Sandy Basin and Tool Grass
• Dangling Street Light — a lighting recipe picked up during rebuild progress

As the town improves, Corphish, Mareanie, and Corsola start moving in on their own. Their arrival is tied directly to your environment level climbing, so if new Pokémon stop appearing, that’s your cue to keep raising comfort levels rather than chase something else.

 

Sharpedo Habitat Construction Guide

Sharpedo’s habitat is a four-item build at the Chimney Rocks dig site: Excavation Tools, Wheelbarrow, Chimney Rocks, and a Traffic Cone.

Excavation Tools and the Wheelbarrow both sit near the center of the dig site — clear space there first. Then work through this order:

1. Pick up the Wheelbarrow and place it per the diagram
2. Retrieve the Traffic Cone from farther out and set it down
3. Pick up the Excavation Tools and drop them in the marked spot

Once all four pieces are placed correctly, the habitat forms and Sharpedo shows up. From there, Sharpedo becomes a “trusty underling” — useful because it opens up building a Sharpedo-shaped house using a Submarine Kit later on.

 

Key Quests & Activities in Bubbly Basin

Corsola runs the main quest chain here. First request: find a Pokémon that spits bubbles — that’s Mudkip — to help grow underwater plants. Once watermelons grow out of that, Corsola circles back needing a Pokémon that can chop through tough rinds, which is Carvanha.

Carvanha’s habitat isn’t free — you need to craft Netting first, which takes Vine Rope and Twine.

Outside the Corsola chain, two other systems are worth tracking:

• Submarine Kit: lets you build structures on or under the water. Kit builds eat Iron Ore and Sea Glass Fragments, so stockpile both before starting a build.
• Treasure Map: found while exploring, but it’s useless without a Pokémon that has the Search specialty — Pidgey or Zubat both work — to actually locate the marked spot.

The area is also stuffed with journals, newspapers, and lore items that don’t affect progression directly but fill in the DLC’s backstory if you’re the type who reads everything.

 

Every New Pokémon in Bubbly Basin

The DLC adds a batch of water-themed Pokémon, each tied to a specific habitat and specialty. Knowing the habitat saves a lot of blind wandering.

This list is still being updated as more Pokémon get confirmed in the Basin, so expect additions in later patches.

 

Common Mistakes

Bubbly Basin rewards patience more than speed. The seaweed run and the Trainer Rank wall are the two spots where players usually stall, so knock those out early and the rest of the rebuild — habitats, quests, and the Pokémon Center — flows in a fairly straight line.