Join Avenue & Magnemite Coil [GP 2/2] COMPLETE
 

How to Make a Successful Join Avenue

Introduction

In Pokemon Black 2 and White 2, between the sandy Route 4 and Nimbasa City, you might have noticed a peculiar building known as the Join Avenue. When you entered, you saw flashing lights and a few people milling around before the owner sent you on your way. Unless you were expecting this originally or had already played through the game, there's a good chance that you didn't know what to make of this. You completed the required task of setting up a store and went on your way. Don't worry; most people trying to get through the game were probably like that.

But what have you missed out on? Join Avenue provides a wonderful opportunity not only for training Pokemon, but also for earning money and gathering rare items! This guide will help you learn the basics of Join Avenue so you can build your own little empire.

Getting Started

In order to maximize what you gain from Join Avenue, you'll need to learn the basics.

Simply enough, you have access to eight different stores in your Join Avenue, which is helpful since you have eight different slots; but what should you make of this? How can you even build shops?

You may have noticed that people run through your Avenue, and that you're able to talk to them. These people can be either in-game characters or other players that you've communicated with. The game actually spawns a certain amount of random people every day, who you can either send to a shop to help it rank up or recruit to build a shop in your Avenue. At this point, you're probably thinking. Just four people every day? How do I build a good Join Avenue off of that?

Well, here's your answer: get out there! There are many different options to pick from. Some simple options include battling with strangers online, communicating with your friends daily, visiting people in the Dream World, and trading with people online. Speaking of trading though...

The Magnemite Coil

When you first logged onto the GTS portion of the Global Link, you probably noticed that Magnemite of all Pokemon is the most traded, most deposited, and most requested Pokemon, beating out fan favorites such as Ditto, Eevee, and the starter Pokemon. Why is this?

It started with a group of Trainers in Japan, who decided to rack up some trades online to help their Join Avenue. They picked a basic Pokemon to start their trading frenzy—Magnemite. This is due to its early access in Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 at the Virbank Complex, its reasonably low level, and two helpful abilities for catching multiple of it—Sturdy makes Magnemite easy to weaken safely, while Magnet Pull allows your Magnemite to attract even more Magnemite! They traded Magnemite like mad, and when the games were released worldwide, this trend continued. Other groups have tried to make alternatives to the Magnemite Coil, due to the GTS often not updating with new Magnemite for a while. Some Germans actually attempted to trade Koffing, which turned out to be...less successful, seeing as Koffing are rarer and harder to catch (still, a potential bustling Smogon trade was pretty cool).

Now, in order to trade Magnemite, you first have to log onto the GTS. Place a Magnemite in your trade deposit, and check back periodically, once every fifteen minutes or so. You'll probably have a new Magnemite. Another thing to keep in mind is that many Trainers are also requesting Magnemite; I personally keep another on hand at all times to trade with people who are requesting Magnemite, either on the GTS or on GTS Negotiations. In order to find Magnemite, you need to narrow your search to more specific than just "Magnemite". You have to pick a country such as the United States, United Kingdom, or Japan. For even further specification, pick a level (10 and under and 11-20 are the best options). This will help cut down on messages like "this Pokemon has already been traded to another Trainer." Another great way to trade Magnemite is through GTS Negotiations. Keep flashing your Magnemite, and the other Trainer will probably understand what you mean!

The Trainers that you trade with will start appearing in your Join Avenue. This is where things really start to get fun!

Leveling Up

Now that you know how to recruit Trainers, you need to know what to do with them! You should start by talking to them as they run by. You may need to chase them down and block them off sometimes. When you talk to them, you'll be presented with two options: allowing them to open a shop, or allowing them to shop. After doing either, they'll go on their merry way. A more in-depth description of what each shop does will be can be found later in the "Shops" section.

When you talk to Trainers who come and send them to the correct shop they want to visit, you'll notice that your shop and Join Avenue will gain popularity points! After you beat the Pokemon League, Gym Leaders from the Unova region may visit. They provide massive amounts of popularity points—1,000 per visit! Every four levels, a shop will upgrade and "evolve" into a new shop with the same basic function. Additionally, at each level the shop will increase its inventory and you'll even earn discounts on items! Now, a special event occurs when all of your shops reach their max level, 10—you get a 50% discount at each store! The correct locations for sending these Trainers can be found in the chart below.

Additionally, people running through your Join Avenue will occasionally give you a souvenir. At first, the souvenirs are a bit small, like Potions, but as your Join Avenue levels up, better items such as Full Restores and Max Revives can be obtained. Information on the available items can be found in the chart below.

While your shops level up, so does the Avenue itself. From levels 1-10, an event occurs every two levels in your Join Avenue. At levels 2 and 4, you get a new secretary. At level 6, you get to change the color of the roof of your Join Avenue; at level 8 you can assign fans to become your secretaries; and at level 10 you can change the name of your Avenue! At level 15, people can start opening the Nursery; and at Level 20, parades will start to occur in your Avenue. From then on, you'll start receiving special items as you level up.

The Shops

Remember, you only have enough slots for eight shops! You can replace shops, though. If you seem to be using a specific service much more than another service, I recommend adding a second shop of that service over the lesser-used one. In addition, the game from which the shop-owner comes from actually affects the items they sell, so choose wisely based on your needs! Many websites have full compilations of the items that these stores sell and how they vary based on level and game.

The Beauty Salon
Prices: Low (early products), High (later products)
Usefulness: Competitive

This shop allows you to give your Pokemon haircuts, baths, and other fun beauty-related treatments. Unlike in GSC and HGSS, however, the haircuts given in the shop don't just make your Pokemon friendlier—you can also change their EVs, which is very helpful for competitive battling. Certain Make-Ups strip your Pokemon of their EVs, a trait which is listed on the Make-Ups themselves. Overall, this is a very helpful shop. I recommend leveling it up quickly if you like competitive battling.

The Cafe
Prices: Very High
Usefulness: Competitive

As opposed to the Beauty Salon stripping your EVs, the Cafe actually boosts them. Specific drinks give specific EVs, similar to the power drinks we've all come to love. This is another shop that you should level up quickly if you want to train Pokemon competitively, and goes along great with the Beauty Salon.

The Dojo
Prices: Very High
Usefulness: Competitive

The Dojo functions very similarly to the Cafe, making a great companion store. If you want a certain boost that one doesn't have in stock, simply head over to the other! This shop also goes pairs well the Beauty Salon.

The Florist
Prices: Low
Usefulness: Competitive/Moneymaking

Unless you are a hardcore Dream World fan, this shop might be your only source of berries in the game! Certain berries are helpful for competitive movesets, such at the Liechi and Salac berries that are once again available after their dryspell in Black and White. Additionally, the Florist is a very good shop for making money; you can buy Mulch here, which can be sold for a high price to the Maniac in Milstraton City.

The Market
Prices: High, but lower than other sources
Usefulness: Shopping

Whew, the Market! Remember the old Department Stores that sold almost everything? The Market is a bit like that! While some of the items are unable to be found elsewhere, such as the Old Gateau or the Ragecandybar, most of the items here are actually available elsewhere. Because of this, you're probably wondering why you even need this place. Well, here's your answer—the Market is like Costco, as you can buy things in bulk for cheap here! Having trouble with getting EV boosters? Go here! You can buy items such as the HP Set and Attack Set to get your fix of HP Ups and Proteins for cheap. But don't worry, you can buy the rest of the EV boosting drinks too!

The Antique Shop
Prices: Low
Usefulness: Moneymaking/Evolving

Speaking of making money, here is probably the most time efficient money-maker in the game, outside of grinding against the Elite Four with an Amulet Coin. You can buy different kinds of Stones, Rocks, and Boxes from the Antique Shop, which are appraised and opened by the clerk. Within the item you purchase is another item, which may or may not be worth more than the amount you bought the Stone, Rock, or Box for. At higher levels, you can buy better Stones, Rocks, and Boxes and get really good items from them! You can find Evolution-inducing items, Hard Stones, Heart Scales, and Fossils, but most importantly, you can find expensive items like Big Pearls, Rare Bones, and Big Mushrooms! You can sell these to Pok&eacute Marts or collectors, which makes you more money and allows you to buy even more surprises from the Antique Shop!

The Raffle Shop
Prices: Free
Usefulness: Rare Items

The Raffle Shop is just like it sounds—the clerk draws a random ticket, and gives you a free prize! At the beginning, you'll notice that you'll usually just get Berry Juices and Full Heals from this shop, but don't be discouraged! The Raffle Shop is actually quite helpful in its own accord. As the shop ranks up, so do your chances of getting better draws! Some valuable items from here include Master Balls, PP Ups, and PP Maxes, which are hard or impossible to obtain elsewhere.

The Nursery
Prices: Low
Usefulness: Breeding

Ah yes, the Nursery... You wait fifteen levels to unlock it, so it must be good, right? Well, it is good—but only to an extent. Unless you are hardcore breeding for a specific Pokemon, which is much easier in Pokemon Black 2 and White 2, there isn't much purpose to the Nursery besides being a time saver. Sure, it's helpful for burning through as many Eggs as possible in one day, but otherwise, there's nothing here than can't be accomplished with a little time and a Pokemon with Magma Armor or Flame Body. Additionally, wild Pokemon in Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 are much easier to RNG abuse than eggs unlike previous games, adding to the issue that this shop is not very necessary for competitive Trainers.

<h3>Nursery Items</h3>

Now What?

Get out there! Now that you've seen the benefits of Join Avenue and how easy it can be to level up your shops, why not work on your competitive Pokemon? Why not make a little dough? Good luck to those readers who wish to create the best possible Join Avenue they can. Now get out there, and trade, trade, trade!

This is ready for GP and QC, bee-tee-dubs.

This has been sitting around for way too long. Nice job; just remember to use em dashes (&mdash; is the HTML entity) instead of hyphens and that Smogon uses Pokemon without the accented e. This was very informative.

OK the problem that the C&C staff has with this article is that you're linking to Serebii.

We'd want you to link to articles on our site alone. This means that we need to get the information that Serebii has on our own site before you can link to them.

So I don't feel like fully amchecking this right now, and anyways it doesn't need much. But I would like to post my comments.

So wow, that was a lot of comments. A little sorry about that, but these things kind of need addressing. I may or may not post an actual amcheck later to go along with this.

Alright, I'll get to work on these suggestions. What should I do about the information links? It'd take a lot of time to compile that much information.

You might want to just find out who the creators are, shoot them an email, explain what you're doing and ask them if they'd let you host the data on smogon. Chances are they won't mind it too much (Hopefully?). If not... see if anyone else has the data, maybe ask around here. There are plenty of avid players who might be able to help you out.

Alright, I've made the corrections that you guys requested.

Instead of linking to another site, I've simply hinted that many websites have full lists of the items that you can get from the shops and what the people say. That way, if they want the list, they can quickly Google it for themselves, but if you guys think it's important to have the data connected directly to the article I can go out and find someone who can provide the data.

I think it'd actually be fairly simple for another person on Smogon to compile the data and later we can change the article to reflect the work of an actual Smogonite. I think I'll start asking around Smogon for help on that.

Hi I'm working on this atm.

Before this is GPed, has this gone through QC checks? Or is the process for letters a bit different? It just doesn't look like it has QC approval yet.

[10:45] <+pokemon0078> hm
[10:45] <+pokemon0078> what isn't and isn't acceptable when taking information from another site and putting it on smogon?
[10:45] <+pokemon0078> i'm ripping this information http://serebii.net/black2white2/joinavenue.shtml
[10:45] <@Patamon> depends
[10:45] <+pokemon0078> the info in the tables
[10:45] <+pokemon0078> for someone's letter
[10:45] <+pokemon0078> and wasn't sure
[10:46] <@Patamon> I don't think that's allowed

So basically, someone's going to have to collect that information themselves if we want it on the site. That means I can't help you, sorry.

Oye vey. I'll leave it vague, and keep it implying that the information is a quick Google search away. And about the QC checks, I think they're supposed to go first. My bad. I'll put that in the original post.

you do not have to re-research all the info. You can take it from other sites.

I'm talking to some people about looking over the guide.

This is a plain html version of the tables for the information that will go on-site. Feel free to upload it however you'd like.