Emerald Legacy Battle Frontier: Facilities, Symbols and the EV Shortcut

The Battle Frontier is Emerald Legacy's post-game destination, reached by SS Tidal, and it's the hardest content in the ROM -- but it's also where the best resources sit. Two things make the trip worth making even if competitive battling isn't your thing: the EV-training trainers stationed around the facilities, and Artisan Cave.

The five facilities and their Brains

The ROM's trainer data has the five Frontier Brains: the Dome Ace, the Palace Maven, the Arena Tycoon, the Factory Head and the Pike Queen. What it does not have is their real teams -- every Brain's team in the extraction is a single level 5 Beldum placeholder, so the data confirms the characters exist and nothing usable about how they fight.

That's an honest gap rather than an oversight: Emerald Legacy didn't change the Frontier's structure, so the standard Emerald facility rules (Battle Tower, Dome, Palace, Arena, Factory and Pike) apply as they always have.

The Eevee-line EV trainers

This is the reason to walk around the Frontier with an empty party slot. Five trainers, each with a full team of six low-level Eevee evolutions, one stationed outside each facility -- and each of their Pokemon gives 2 EVs in a single stat, which with the Macho Brace doubles to 4 per KO.

• Flareon outside the Battle Arena -- Attack
• Vaporeon in the main entrance square -- Defense
• Umbreon outside the Battle Dome -- Special Defense
• Espeon outside the Battle Pyramid -- Special Attack
• Jolteon outside the Battle Tower -- Speed

They're all around level 5, so a single strong Pokemon clears the team in a few turns. It's the fastest EV training in the ROM by a wide margin, and it beats farming wild routes for everything except HP.

Artisan Cave, Sudowoodo and the rest

• Artisan Cave is the Battle Frontier's own dungeon and the second place Smeargle turns up (the other is Altering Cave on Route 103). Smeargle is the Sketch Pokemon, so it's a dex slot worth the detour.
• Sudowoodo (Lv40) is a static encounter just outside the Frontier's east side, and it wants the Wailmer Pail to start the fight.
• The Frontier's in-game trade swaps your Skitty for a Meowth -- one of the 19 in-game trades.
• Scott's house hands you a level 5 Beldum once you're there, alongside the Steven's-house copy in Mossdeep.
• The Frontier Mart sells TMs -- a big chunk of the 50 TM list is purchasable there, and the exchange service corner takes BP for items like King's Rock and Metal Coat (every TM location).

What the silver symbols unlock

The Frontier's symbol system is unchanged from Emerald, and the run guides are consistent on the payoff: earning a silver symbol in every facility is what opens the last stretch of the ROM's post-game -- Scott hands over a reward, and a level 50 Mewtwo becomes available in Altering Cave on Route 103, with Lugia and Ho-Oh in the same post-game tier.

Craft a team per facility rather than bringing one team everywhere -- the battle styles differ enough that a Tower team loses in the Factory. That's the one part of this page that comes from playing the game rather than reading its data, so treat the symbol rewards as the community consensus and the rest as verified.

Where these numbers come from: Emerald Legacy's extracted trainer data for the five Frontier Brains and the Frontier EV trainers; TM and item locations from the item and TM data; the symbol rewards and SS Tidal access are credited to Mewlax's Professor Oak Challenge run.