In the Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl as well as the original Diamond and Pearl, Maylene is the third Gym you have to fight to progress through the game. Located in Veilstone City, she specialized in Fighting-type Pokemon and always bring along a tough Lucario as her party member. Here’s how to deal with both Gym Leader Maylene and her tricky puzzle to get the Cobble Badge in Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.

How to Do the Veilstone Gym Puzzle

Before you reach her though, there is a puzzle that you must complete. GosuNoob has made a video to easily solve the Gym puzzle. You can also read our text guide just below the video.

  • Push the lower-middle square pit wall to the right.
  • Push the first wall in the top right pit to the right.
  • Push the wall just above the first pit to the right.
  • Then push the wall just above it/second wall in the top-right pit to the right.
  • Push the wall between the first and second pit to the left.
  • Walk to the top-right part of the Gym, push the wall near the tires to the left.
  • Go through the right side pits to the top of the Gym.
  • Push the first wall to Maylene’s platform to the left.
  • Go back to the Gym entrance, then push the wall in the bottom-middle pit to the left.
  • Push the wall above it to the left.
  • Return the wall in the bottom-middle pit to the right then walk through the left side of the Gym until you reach a dead end.
  • Push the wall near the tire to the right, go back to the entrance, push the bottom-middle pit wall again to the right.
  • Push the wall between the two middle pits to the right.
  • Push the wall in the top-left pit to the left.
  • Go to the left side of the Gym, push the wall in the bottom-left pit to the right.
  • Walk past the two left-side pits, push the second wall to Maylene’s platform to the right.
  • Go speak with Maylene by cutting through the middle part of the Gym.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl: First Maylene Fight Strategy

If you want to get the best team to fight Maylene in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl, then you had best get some Pokemon that can exploit her weaknesses and do it quickly. To start, let’s look at her initial line-up. Maylene uses three Pokemon:

Starting out with Piplup/Prinplup or Turtwig/Grotle might give you a harder time fighting against Maylene’s team because you don’t have any hard counter against them. However, if you start with Chimchar/Monferno, you should already have options of Fire and Fighting moves to easily exploit Lucario’s Steel-type weakness. Maylene also brings two Hyper Potions to use on her Pokemon when they are below 33% health. With that in mind, always bring Flying, Ghost, or Psychic-type Pokemon.

If it’s possible, get a Magikarp and quickly turn it into Gyarados at level 20 or get a Starly/Staravia. Both have the Intimidate Ability, reducing the opponent’s Attack stats. For Psychic Pokemon, you can trade a Machop for an Abra at Oreburgh City, inside the building to the left of the Poke Mart. Golbat/Crobat is extremely effective against Maylene’s lineup because of their Poison/Flying-type giving 4x resistance against Fighting moves. Lastly, a Ghastly/Haunter is also an excellent choice as well because Ghost is immune to Fighting-type attacks. Luxio can also be used to paralyze her team with Charge and Spark. Although at this point of the game, just bringing one Flying-type to deal with Meditite and Machoke and one Fire Pokemon for Lucario should be enough especially if you over-level them to level 30.

Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl: Maylene Rematch Strategy

In Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, once you obtain the National Pokedex, you can challenge each Sinnoh Gym Leader again once per day. This time around, Maylene will have a full six Pokemon team to fight you with:

Having Infernape is no longer a sure-fire way to beat Lucario, no thanks to its Water Pulse. The same goes with most Flying Pokemon since she now has Medichamp with Thunder Punch, Breloom with Rock Tomb, and Heracross with Stone Edge. Nevertheless, with the National Pokedex unlocked, you also have more options to build a proper counter team.

To counter her first Pokemon, Hitmontop’s, Intimidate, try putting a Special Attack-dependant Pokemon as your first instead. One of the best options is Togekiss. Then set up a Reflect to protect your party against most Physical attacks. As with the previous version, bringing a Flying-type Pokemon can still help against this fight. Especially at this point, your Staravia should already evolve into Staraptor. Along with a wide variety of Flying-type attacks, Staraptor could also learn Close Combat, a versatile Fighting move that can deal good damage against Lucario. Torterra or Garchomp with strong Ground moves like Earthquake could also deal devastating damage to her Lucario and Infernape.

Maylene Battle Tower Team

You are only allowed to bring three Pokemon during Single Battles and some Pokemon, including Legendaries and event Pokemon, are not allowed to be used in Battle Tower. As a result, it’s critical to pick your party members carefully. Although that means you can only adjust your team once for the entirety of the Battle Tower fight, it’s still important to take notes which Pokemon Maylene could have in her “three-mon” team:

Both Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl are available now on the Nintendo Switch.