The Safari Zone (Japanese: サファリゾーンSafari Zone) is a special Pokémon preserve where Trainers can capture certain types of Pokémon. The Johto Safari Zone made its debut appearance in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, where it was shown to be located northwest of Cianwood. It is owned by Baoba, who built it because of his love of the Kanto Safari Zone, which was by then made into a Pal Park.
For $500, the player will receive 30 Safari Balls. Akin to previous Safari Zones, there is a large area to cover, but the six areas of the Zone can uniquely be rearranged to suit the player.
When a wild Pokémon appears, no Pokémon may be sent out to battle it: catching Pokémon here, as in all Safari Zones, requires sheer luck. There are four options in the battle screen: Throw a Safari Ball, throw bait, run away, and throw mud. Throwing bait makes a Pokémon less likely to run, but makes it harder to catch; throwing mud does the reverse, making it easier to catch but more likely to run.
Access to the Safari Zone is not automatic. Before players can traverse Routes 47 and 48 to get to the area, they must heal Glitter Lighthouse's sick Ampharos, Amphy. Only then will Baoba phone the player and announce that the Safari Zone is open for business.
Like the Safari Zone in Hoenn and Great Marsh in Sinnoh, the Johto Safari Zone has six areas, which are inhabited by different Pokémon. A feature unique to this Safari Zone, however, is the customization of these areas. Each of the six areas may be placed in any arrangement the player desires. This is a useful function, as it means the player does not have to traverse to the furthest area from the entrance to get the Pokémon living in it and can save limited amount of steps allocated at the beginning of the Safari game for locating the Pokémon. This is taken even further due to the fact that there are 12 unique defaults from the moment the Safari Zone is unlocked.
Customization happens on the Nintendo DS's touch screen. By dragging and sliding the tiles with the stylus, the player can move them with ease. The exits to each area are arranged so that every combination of areas is possible: up to 720. In each specific area, the player can choose from several different objects and put up to 30 into the area, which can potentially draw out rarer Pokémon, Pokémon not found in the area, or Pokémon not found in the zone any other way. The specific layout of the Safari Zone may be shared by multiple players at one time, like other events in Generation IV, through mixing records.
Default area layouts
There are ten possible layouts that the areas could be arranged in by default when the player first reaches the Safari Zone. More areas can be added once Baoba's second challenge is assigned to the player.
Layout
Area Setup
1
Grassland
Waterside Forest
Flower Garden
Wetland
Rocky
Forest
2
Flower Garden
Marshland
Wetland
Forest
Rocky
Waterside Forest
3
Wetland
Wasteland
Forest
Waterside Forest
Rocky
Marshland
4
Forest
Mountain
Waterside Forest
Marshland
Rocky
Wasteland
5
Waterside Forest
Savannah
Marshland
Wasteland
Rocky
Mountain
6
Marshland
Grassland
Wasteland
Mountain
Rocky
Savannah
7
Wasteland
Flower Garden
Mountain
Savannah
Rocky
Grassland
8
Mountain
Wetland
Savannah
Grassland
Rocky
Flower Garden
9
Savannah
Forest
Grassland
Flower Garden
Rocky
Wetland
10
Grassland
Savannah
Wetland
Waterside Forest
Rocky
Wasteland
Challenges
First Challenge
When the player first visits the Safari Zone, its owner, Baoba, will give the player their first challenge of finding and catching a Geodude inside of the Safari Zone. No matter which of the 10 possible default Safari Zone area set-ups, the Cliff Area that Geodude can be found in is always the first area that the player enters.
Second Challenge
Three game-play hours after completion of the first challenge, Baoba will call the player and give them their second challenge. The point of this challenge is to get the player to use the Area Customize; a machine that allows the player to move around and order the different areas of the Safari Zone. Using the Area Customize to add the Desert Area, the player must catch a Sandshrew.
Blocks
After the player has both received the National Pokédex from Professor Oak and completed Baoba's second challenge, Baoba will eventually call the player to tell them that he has come up with a new idea for the Safari Zone. After receiving this call, the player will then be able to place any of 6 types of blocks inside of the Safari Zone up to 30 blocks in one area at a time. Baoba will continue to call the player another three times after this giving the player 6 new blocks each time. There are 24 blocks in total, three of which are favored by Pokémon that live in grasslands, three which are favored by Pokémon that live in forests, three which are favored by Pokémon that live in rocky areas, three which are favored by Pokémon that live by the water and twelve others. Blocks that are favored by certain Pokémon can be used to draw out Pokémon that are not normally found in each area.
Type
Name
Grassland
Shrub
Red Flower
White Flower
Forest
Tree
Stump
Sticks
Rocky
Small Rock
Big Rock
Mossy Rock
Waterside
Puddle
Fountain
Drinking Fountain
Other
Guidepost Right
Guidepost Left
Trash Can
Long Fence 1
Long Fence 2
Self Statue
Bench
Self Flag
Streetlamp
Short Fence 1
Short Fence 2
Signboard
Block Upgrades
Each area of the Safari Zone keeps a hidden count of how many days it has been used. Every ten days of that count a block type will be upgraded in that area. Once a block for a certain area is upgraded, the upgrade will not disappear if the player moves the area or takes away the blocks. When blocks are upgraded, they increase effectiveness. For example, a grassland block with no upgrades would count as one grassland block, but a grassland block with one upgrade would count as two grassland blocks.
Johto did not have a Safari Zone in Generation II. However, an unused Safari Zone map still exists in the coding of the Generation II games, accessible through the use of cheating devices. However, it was in fact simply intended to be the Kanto Safari Zone three years later.
The addition of this Safari Zone means that every region in the main series games has had one.
The number of Pokémon species that can be acquired in this Safari Zone is by far the largest quantity in the main series to date.
This Safari Zone also features several Pokémon that were previously either only obtainable as eggs or never before available in the wild, most notably Shelgon, Metang, Breloom, Vigoroth and Riolu.
This Safari Zone is the first to feature the ability to customize the whereabouts of the six terrains.
