The goal of Pokémon Legends: Arceus is to “seek out all Pokémon.” Seeing as Pokémon are pretty much collectibles in their own right, it’s funny that one of the obstacles that are preventing you from catching them all is another mission involving collectibles. If you played the game, or…read the title of this article…you know what I’m talking about: the wisps.
Around the beginning of the game, you’ll be met by a rather strange girl named Vessa. She desperately seeks your help in preventing an undisclosed tragic event from occurring in the Hisui Region. To do this, you have to find all 107 ghostly wisps that will be scattered in every corner of the game, from the very Jubilife Village you reside in to the Alabaster Icelands. The Odd Keystone that she gives you to store the wisps in is a dead giveaway to the Pokémon this gives you access to, but if you somehow don’t know, I won’t spoil it for you.
Now if you’re a maniac, like I am, you’d want to find all the wisps yourself without using a guide to tell you where they are. But even for 107 things, that can be daunting when Hisui is so vast. However, if I can succeed in doing this arbitrary and pointless challenge, so can you. Here’s some tips and tricks that should aid you well in finding all of the wisps on your own.
Before I start, I would like to make two things clear going forward. First, this isn’t a guide outlining the locations of the wisps. In fact, I’m going to make an effort to refrain from giving any of that information away, so anyone reading this can truly figure it out for themselves. This will just be a list of things you can do or keep in mind if you’d like to hunt them for yourself (besides, I’m sure there’s plenty of great location guides out there already).
Second, I’m going to be using the words “area” and “location” a lot, sometimes right next to each other. To avoid any confusion on what I’m trying to tell you, “area” is referring to the larger general places you can go to, such as Obsidian Fieldlands or Crimson Mirelands. “Location” refers to the places within those large areas that you’ll see underlined on your map, such as Aspiration Hill or Golden Lowlands. Now, let’s get into it.
Keep Track of Your Progress With Vessa
As someone that spent hours looking for wisps in an area where I had already collected them all, I can tell you this is one hundred percent the most important tip to keep in mind. After your first conversation with Vessa, she’ll always be where you pick up the first wisp: under a tree on the other side of the river in Jubilife Village (hopefully this doesn’t count as giving away a wisp location).
Whenever you talk to her, you have the option of asking how much wisps you have left to find. When you ask her this, she’ll proceed to tell you how much wisps have yet to be found in each area, letting you know if you collected all the wisps in those areas as well. Always remember to check in with her each time you can to prevent uncertainty of how much you have left in a specific area. Even if you have complete faith in your memory, she rewards you with valuable items for every wisp milestone you hit, so it’ll be best to do it either way.
Make Every Location Visible On Your Map
It’s fair to think this goes without saying, and you’re probably right. However, the truth of the matter is specific locations in some areas will be hard (if not impossible) to get to upon first entering them, due to not having access to some of the required mounts. There’s also the fact that if you’re exclusively going where you’re supposed to go when playing through the main storyline of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, you won’t even come across some of the areas that you can easily get to.
Also, the game can be really wonky when it comes to parts in areas where you “can’t go any further”; some parts will look accessible or be surrounded by accessible areas, only for you to suddenly be surrounded by fog and unable to move. That’s why it’s important to look on the map and see if any spots are blurred out with a dotted line as a border. If there are, go to those spots and make the locations show up clearly on the map. This helps you get a bit of a better idea on areas you can’t go farther in as well as gives you more ideas for areas you can check in when looking for wisps.
Don’t Be Afraid of Backtracking
Despite needing to prevent a tragic event from occurring, you’re not on a time limit of any kind to gather all these wisps (imagine if you were though). So on top of taking your time to search through every possible location, don’t be afraid of going back to locations you already looked through to check them out some more. After searching for about 15 minutes, I found my last wisp in an area that I swore up and down I already checked in. This is even more important for a reason that I’ll explain in the next tip. But the point here is, unless it’s in a spot where you’ve already found one (or in an area where you found them all), you can never be too sure of where a wisp isn’t.
Search On Foot A Lot
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t take to the air with Braviary in your pursuit of wisps. It could actually be a big help to locate wisps in hard to reach spots, as well as distant spots where wisps will be. However, there’s something very annoying about wisps that will make finding them much harder if you’re exclusively searching in the air.
The render distances for the wisps aren’t all the same. They actually vary quite a lot; while you can see some wisps from half the map’s length away, some wisps will only be visible when you’re within less than dodging distance. This makes it crucial to try exploring on foot as much as you can and look around at every opportunity. This also makes the last tip, backtracking, even more important to do, since wisps with very short render distances are easy to miss in locations you’ve searched.
Use Mounts When On Foot (Preferably Sneasler)
I’m sure people probably do this when playing regularly (and why wouldn’t they), but I still think it’s worth saying. When you’re searching for wisps on land, make sure you’re on the back of one of the mounts when doing so. The area of vision you have is noticeably wider, and makes it easier to spot wisps that could be just out of view in certain situations where you wouldn’t be on them.
Personally, I went with using Sneasler most of the time while searching on foot. You sacrifice speed if you use her over Wyrdeer (and even your own character is faster), but taking it slow and looking around at every point, on top of being able to do so while climbing, will do much more good than zooming by. Of course, it’s ultimately up to you since they all provide that wider-camera view. Speaking of cameras…
Look Around While In Battles
Honestly, the ability to mess with the camera and move around while battling is one of the greatest additions and changes to Pokémon. There’s just something wonderful about being able to run up to the other Pokémon or trainers’ faces and getting knocked over by attacks. However, this actually has a use when looking for wisps.
Some wisps with a far enough render distance will still appear during battles. There were even wisps I found while fighting battles in the main story. This isn’t that important to do because if you do the other tips, you’ll end up finding those same wisps eventually. Think of it as a quick way to do a bit of wisp hunting while getting other work done.
And that’s it. Hopefully, I’ve made the journey to maintaining your insanity a bit easier for you. Let me know if this was any help. Also comment any other tips that you think would be of assistance in hunting for wisps without a guide. I’d love to hear your thoughts.