I succeeded in getting an Amber Tear on my first run through Zero Island West. I used Drifblim, Froslass, and Salamence to get through. Not the ideal team for the job, but it got it done. Only 3 more parts of Zero Island left to conquer now. Drifblim's Unburden ability makes it very deadly, so I will likely try to use it for the other parts of Zero Island. The ability to raise Drifblim's evasiveness by 2 levels in one turn allows it to get out of some very dangerous confrontations.
I recruited Ho-oh, Entei, Raikou, Regirock, and Regigigas. Moltres and Jirachi continue to elude me in Final Maze, so I will definitely want to get the Fast Friend IQ skill. I understand people are having a very hard time with Jirachi, so that will probably take a while to get. Final Maze runs have been very rewarding, though. I picked up a couple of Flash Cannon TMs, a Dragon Pulse TM, and an HM Fly. I have no clue where the other TMs are at, particularly Energy Ball, Pluck, Shadow Ball, Rock Polish, Focus Blast, Explosion, and many others. I would assume many of them are either in Final Maze, the Zero Island dungeons, Buried Items (only been finding Poké as Buried Items so far), or from Kecleon.
Speaking of Buried Items, a while ago, I discovered a limited technique for discovering them. If you are running in a long corridor, and your team stops when there is no message that is displayed or no corner nearby, that means that one of the walls diagonally ahead of your leader contains a buried item. This works in all of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games.
Something that I noticed that I never paid attention to in the instruction manual is the ability to cancel turns by holding down B and hitting A. This makes it easier to recover HP, force Pokémon to spawn, and force first strikes against advancing Pokémon that don't have attacks that strike at a distance. Did any of you pay attention to this at all?
One team that I have been particularly fond of using is Froslass, Mamoswine, Sealeo (eventually Walrein), and Snover (eventually Abomasnow). Snow warning gives my team benefits from Snow Cloak, Ice Body, and 100% accuracy on Blizzard. Since Froslass is Group A, it gets Coin Watcher, Haggler, and Collector, boosting treasure hunting capabilities. The only problem is that it is not the best rescue team in the world, since the auto-hail makes escort missions impossible, and rescue missions very difficult. Nevertheless, runs through Northern Desert + Quicksand Cave + Quicksand Cave Pit have resulted in a lot of Poké and as many as 11 item boxes.
