1 dungeons that have 2 Legendaries to recruit at the bottom - they are obviously very tough, especially Purity Forest, where you have to go alone and without items. Do note that along the way, you’ll gain access to to Lv. This path is the easiest in terms of gameplay difficulty and enemy levels, fittingly as it’s the one with actual character story content. Once the quest is done, more character-based content will unlock in a fixed order without you having to do anything - just be vigilant and check around all the NPCs in town every day, and you won’t miss it. Once those two criteria are met, the next morning, some new cutscenes will trigger that will unlock Northern Range, and beating that Pitfall Valley. You need two things here: purchase the Friend Area Southern Island from Wigglytuff, and on F20 of Solar Cave (automatically unlocked after beating the main story) pick up the HM for Surf (you will need a Pokemon that can walk across water for this). Path 2: This is the only path with actual character story content, and not just “recruiting Legendaries and unlocking dungeons”. This is the easiest 99F dungeon, and has four Legendaries the first three can’t be recruited first time but drop items you need for the 4th, which is encountered like a normal Pokemon on the remaining floors rarely (keep an eye on your Message Log!). Path 1: If you’ve beaten Stormy Sea, you should have this already - check you mailbox for mail talking about Buried Relic, then talking to Lombre and Shiftry in town does the rest. Faraway behind a Key door, unlocked in a later path - best get into the habit of saving any Keys you find).

60+ to recruit them without the Friend Bow, which gives a 10% increase chance if held (this is found on F30 of Mt. Note that both have -10% recruitment rates, so you’ll need to be Lv. Path 0: you can go back to Magma Cavern and Sky Tower to recruit Groudon and Rayquaza (Sky Tower requires the HM Fly, found in Wyvern Hill on F30 behind a Key door - you unlock this dungeon from a random mission on the board that gifts you a Friend area, though you can also use Wonder Mail codes to generate that mission). When a HM is required to enter a dungeon, I seriously recommend doing so by bringing a Pokemon that knows it, not the item itself. Each of them unlock through certain criteria, and completing the first dungeon or objective there unlocks the next one - each path is totally independent of the other. You can basically split the rest of the postgame into multiple separate paths at this point.

Red rescue team friend areas