How To Get Wide Lenses in Pokémon Platinum

by Chris Haygood

Wide Lens Acquisition Methods
1	Veilstone City—Purchased for 1000 Coins at the Veilstone Game Corner Prize Building	Yes
2	Held item (5% chance) found on the following Pokémon: Yanma (Great Marsh)	Yes

Wide Lens Acquisition Methods

Location

Repeatable?

Veilstone City—Purchased for 1000 Coins at the Veilstone Game Corner Prize Building

Yes

Held item (5% chance) found on the following Pokémon:

Yanma (Great Marsh)

Yes

There are only two ways to obtain Wide Lenses in Platinum, and both methods can be tedious. But purchasing a Wide Lens from the Veilstone Game Corner is arguably the easier method.

It’s also the first available way to get a Wide Lens in the game, assuming you can save up enough coins to afford one.

Getting Wide Lenses

Method 1: Veilstone Game Corner (Repeatable)

The easiest way to get a Wide Lens is to buy it at the Veilstone Game Corner’s Prize Exchange.

The Wide Lens costs 1,000 Coins, which are obtained by playing the slot machines or buying them with regular Poké Dollars. You’ll need a Coin Case in order to carry them.

If you have 1,000 Coins saved up, then you can find the Prize Exchange by heading to Veilstone City and heading south from the Pokémon Center.

Heading southward from the Veilstone City Pokémon Center.

Climb the next staircase you see, and the blue-roofed Prize Exchange building will be right in front of you.

Entering the Prize Exchange building.

Speak to the clerk at the counter and select the Wide Lens to purchase it.

The Wide Lens’s listing at the Veilstone Prize Exchange.

Method 2: Wild Yanma (Repeatable)

Wide Lenses can also be found on wild Yanma in Pastoria City’s Great Marsh.

No items or Hidden Moves are required to find this area, but you will need to pay 500 Poké Dollars to be admitted in.

Yanma’s only habitat, as shown in the Pokédex.

To reach the Great Marsh, Fly to Pastoria City and head northeast from the Pokémon Center.

Heading east from Pastoria City’s Pokémon Center.

Turning northward and entering the Great Marsh.

The Great Marsh is Sinnoh’s Safari Zone. It’s a designated park for finding rare Pokémon that aren’t located anywhere else.

A few Pokémon in here are randomized and can’t be found in the Great Marsh every day, and Yanma is one of those Pokémon. Luckily there’s a way to find out which Pokémon are present in the Great Marsh on a given day.

To do this, head upstairs to the second floor of the Great Marsh building.

Climbing the staircase in the Great Marsh’s reception building.

Up here are three pairs of binoculars.

Interact with any of the three, as they all serve the same purpose.

The three pairs of binoculars overlooking the Great Marsh.

If you insert 100 Poké Dollars into a pair of binoculars, you’ll get a bird’s-eye view of random sections of the Marsh and some of the Pokémon that can be found in each.

Putting 100 Poké Dollars into a pair of binoculars.

It won’t show every Pokémon, so if you don’t see a Yanma immediately then you could repeat the process a few times just to make sure there aren’t any in the Great Marsh that day.

If you do see one, quickly pay attention to the area it’s in; the game doesn’t specifically tell you which Area you’re seeing, and much of the Marsh looks the same. But you can compare the images against a map online to try to pinpoint the exact location.

A Yanma spotted in Area 6 of the Great Marsh via the binoculars.

Head downstairs once you’ve determined Yanma are in the Marsh.

Then speak to the clerk at the counter, and she will ask if you want to play the Great Marsh’s Safari Game for 500 Poké Dollars. Agree to pay the fee, get your 30 Safari Balls, and head into the Marsh.

Paying 500 Poké Dollars to enter the Great Marsh.

The Great Marsh is divided into six Areas, with Areas 5 and 6 being the closest to the entrance.

Seek out the Area where you spotted Yanma through the binoculars and start walking around in the grass.

Searching for wild Yanma in Area 6.

Yanma’s appearance rate will fluctuate depending on the Area.

Generally though, you’ll find the most Yanma in areas 5 and 6.

Finding a wild Yanma in the Great Marsh.

There are two reasons why obtaining Wide Lenses from wild Yanma can be frustrating.

1: Since you don’t send any of your Pokémon out during an encounter in the Great Marsh, the typical item farming Abilities are of no use here. In particular, the inability to use Frisk—which identifies an opponent’s held item and relays the information back to you—means you’ll need to catch every Yanma you come across just to find out if any are carrying an item.

2: Another problem is Yanma’s item rate. Each Yanma you encounter has only a 5% chance of holding a Wide Lens. If you’re very unlucky, you might end up with twenty Yanmas in your PC boxes and still not find a single Wide Lens among them.

But hopefully you won’t suffer this kind of losing streak before you find a Yanma holding a Wide Lens.

Catching a wild Yanma in the Great Marsh.

A Yanma with a Wide Lens in its held item slot.

Wide Lens Details and Uses

The in-game description of the Metronome.

The Wide Lens is a held item that increases a move’s accuracy by 10%. Unfortunately, as much of a time sink as acquiring a Wide Lens can be, it’s fairly useless in battle.

It’s true that certain moves with low accuracy—like Hypnosis and Thunder—would be much more viable if they didn’t have such a large chance of missing the target.

But the increase is very slight.

For instance:

Thunder’s accuracy only increases from 70% to 77%. Such a negligible boost would hardly be worth taking up a held item slot.

If considered in terms of damage amount, it’s almost always more effective to give your Pokémon a Life Orb or the Choice Band/Specs, if the Pokémon can handle the drawbacks both items have.

Or a Zoom Lens can be used on slower Pokémon to boost accuracy by 20%, which at least offers a slightly better payoff.

Note: Certain status and weather-based moves can also boost accuracy to a far greater degree than either the Zoom or Wide Lens. Two examples would be Pokémon using Rain Dance or Hail to raise Thunder’s or Blizzard’s accuracy to 100%, respectively.

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Chris Haygood

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Chris is an American freelance writer and lifelong gamer. RPGs have been his genre of choice ever since he got Pokémon Blue in 1867, but if he finds a good rhythm game, he will prioritize playing it over both eating and breathing.

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