Pokemon Pokopia: How to Change Habitat Humidity – Yawn Up a Storm Guide

Why Humidity Matters (and Why Yawn Up a Storm Feels So Awkward)

After spending a good three hours stuck on Yawn Up a Storm in Pokemon Pokopia, I finally realised humidity isn’t just a one-off quest gimmick – it’s the backbone of long-term habitat happiness. The game doesn’t explain it well, so I kept spamming Water Gun everywhere and wondering why the humidity bar barely moved… or even went the wrong way in other habitats.

This guide walks you through, step by step, how I now reliably make areas both wetter and drier – enough to finish Yawn Up a Storm and then fine‑tune humidity for your Pokémon’s favourite climates. If you follow these steps, you won’t have to brute‑force it like I did.

Step 1 – Unlocking Slowpoke and Rock Smash (Humidity Essentials)

Before you can properly work with humidity, you need two key things:

• Slowpoke – to measure humidity with Yawn
• Rock Smash – to unblock underground springs

How to get Slowpoke for the Yawn ability

You can technically start poking at humidity earlier, but life gets way easier once you have Slowpoke. That’s because you can ask it to Yawn and get a clear read of how damp or dry an area is.

Here’s how I unlocked Slowpoke:

• Go to the ocean coast and open Menu → Build → Habitats.
• Place four Tall Grass tiles right next to the shoreline to create a Seaside Tall Grass habitat.
• Wait for Slowpoke to appear there, then befriend it as usual.
• Once befriended, you can set Slowpoke to follow you.

With Slowpoke following, walk to any spot, interact with it, and choose the option to make it Yawn. It’ll tell you the local humidity level in a simple text readout. During Yawn Up a Storm, I checked this after basically every change; it saves tons of guessing.

How to get Rock Smash in Withered Wasteland

Humidity really opens up once you can free hidden springs. That’s where Rock Smash comes in.

Progress the main story until you reach the Withered Wasteland. There you’ll eventually unlock Rock Smash (I won’t spoil the exact quest chain, but it’s main‑path). Once you have it, any rock that has bubbles rising from it can be broken to release a water spring, which gives a big, free humidity boost to the area.

Don’t make my mistake of ignoring bubbly rocks. I spent ages watering dead ground for tiny gains when I could have just smashed two rocks and jumped several humidity tiers at once.

Step 2 – How Humidity Actually Works

Before we go into “wetter vs drier”, here’s how the system behaved in my runs:

• Water sources (ponds, fountains, springs, Rain Dance habitats) give a strong, constant humidity boost nearby.
• Trees provide a slow, wide-area baseline humidity once they’re grown and watered.
• Grass and flowers give more precise, local boosts but only if they’re properly watered. Dry plants basically count as zero.
• Some furniture and habitats (fountains, sprinklers, Field of Flowers, Rain Dance) stack with natural terrain for big spikes.
• Humidity applies to an area, not just a single tile, so moving a habitat even a few steps can change its reading.

The other catch: anything that needs watering will slowly “turn off” if you forget it. During Yawn Up a Storm, I had a perfect setup, left to do another quest, and came back to everything reading drier because my flowers and grass weren’t watered anymore.

Step 3 – Making Habitats Wetter (General Rules + Yawn Up a Storm)

Making an area humid is much easier than drying it out. The challenge is doing it efficiently so you don’t waste stamina and time.

1. Unblock every spring with Rock Smash

This was the biggest “aha” moment for me. In any region tied to Yawn Up a Storm (or later humidity quests), scan around for rocks that have bubbles drifting up.

• Walk up to a bubbly rock.
• Use Rock Smash (context prompt appears when close).
• Watch as a spring bursts out and instantly raises the humidity in a big radius.

Springs are amazing because they cost no stamina and no upkeep. Always unlock them before you start spamming Water Gun.

2. Expand water flow and place the Horsea Fountain (Yawn Up a Storm)

For the Yawn Up a Storm quest specifically, you’ll be asked to:

• Expand the local water flow by clearing paths and possibly placing water tiles so pools connect.
• Place a Horsea Fountain in the quest area.

What finally worked for me was setting the Horsea Fountain where it “touches” existing water – that way the fountain’s humidity stacks with the pond or spring nearby. Check with Slowpoke after placing it; you should see a noticeable jump.

3. Plant trees, grass, and flowers – and keep them watered

Plants are your fine‑tuning tools. Here’s how I use them now:

• Trees – I drop a few trees around the edge of the area to push up the overall baseline humidity slowly. They don’t need as much babysitting once grown.
• Flowers and Tall Grass – I cluster these nearer the habitat I’m adjusting. They’re perfect for nudging humidity that last 5–10% you need for picky Pokémon.

Critical detail the game never bluntly tells you: dry plants do nothing. You need to regularly hit them with a Water-type move (usually Water Gun) or another water source to keep them “active”.

During Yawn Up a Storm, I set a loop:

• Water every new flower / grass patch once planted.
• Ask Slowpoke to Yawn.
• If humidity is still short, add another ring of plants.
• Water again, then recheck.

It is stamina‑intensive, so I recommend bringing a decent stash of recovery food before committing to a big watering session.

4. Use humidity-friendly habitats and furniture

Later on, you unlock more advanced pieces that passively boost humidity:

• Sprinklers and fountains – Place these near your densest plant clusters. They effectively keep a small area “wet” without you constantly watering.
• Field of Flowers habitat – If you house Pokémon here, the surrounding area gets a nice passive humidity bonus on top of the plants themselves.
• Moving habitats near natural water – Simply picking up a Pokémon’s home and dropping it closer to a pond, river, or spring can jump its humidity rating without any extra building.

I usually start by moving the habitat as close to water as I can, then fill the in‑between space with plants and a fountain for efficient stacking.

5. Trigger a Rain Dance habitat (biggest single boost)

The culmination of Yawn Up a Storm is basically teaching you that Rain Dance is king. Once you obtain the Castform weather slab, you can build a Rain Dance habitat.

• Place the Rain Dance habitat in or near the target area.
• Invite Water‑type Pokémon to live there.
• Trigger a Rain Dance party when prompted.

When I finally did this, my humidity shot up to around the quest target (roughly the 80% mark) almost instantly. After that, maintaining high humidity for that zone was trivial compared to juggling individual plants.

Step 4 – Making Habitats Drier (When You’ve Overdone It)

Drying areas out is trickier because it usually means undoing stuff you spent time building. I hit this wall when I tried to make a desert-loving Pokémon happy right next to my over‑watered flower utopia.

1. Move habitats away from water and wet plants

The fastest, low‑effort move is to just relocate the habitat:

• Pick up the habitat via Menu → Build → Habitats.
• Drop it closer to dry terrain – sand, bare dirt, or rocky ground.
• Avoid overlap with ponds, springs, fountains, or Rain Dance zones.

Often, that alone will drop humidity enough for Pokémon that like arid areas without you demolishing your pretty wet garden.

2. Lean into dry terrain and remove excess vegetation

If moving the habitat isn’t enough, start stripping humidity sources:

• Remove or relocate nearby fountains and sprinklers.
• Dig up some flowers and Tall Grass, especially the ones closest to the habitat.
• Let any plants you don’t care about dry out by not watering them.

I try not to destroy trees unless I really have to, since they’re more of a slow, background humidity bonus and take longer to re‑establish elsewhere.

3. Add campfires for extra dryness

Campfires are one of the few explicit “drying” tools you get. Building one near a habitat nudges the humidity down in that area.

When I overdid my watering, I’d:

• Shift the habitat a bit toward dry ground.
• Add a campfire or two nearby.
• Ask Slowpoke to Yawn and see if the reading hit the Pokémon’s preference range.

It’s a nice way to counterbalance a generally wet biome without completely re‑terraforming it.

4. Use Smooth Rock for reliable low humidity (and how to duplicate it)

Smooth Rock is your best friend if you want a permanent, passive humidity reduction in a specific area.

• There’s one natural Smooth Rock you find during the story, and you have to use it to rebuild Onix’s home.
• Once you complete the Rebuild the Pokémon Center quest, you unlock the 3D printer inside.
• Use the 3D printer to duplicate the Smooth Rock so you can place more around your base.

Dropping a Smooth Rock near a habitat noticeably lowers its humidity, even if there’s some water around. I like to combine one Smooth Rock with a bit of dry terrain and a campfire to carve a “dry pocket” right next to a wetter main settlement.

Step 5 – Checking Humidity the Smart Way (Slowpoke Workflow)

This is the loop I settled into for both Yawn Up a Storm and later tuning:

• Bring Slowpoke as your follower.
• Stand right where the habitat is (or where you plan to put it).
• Ask Slowpoke to Yawn and note the humidity description.
• Make one or two changes (add plants, move water, place a fire or Smooth Rock).
• Yawn again and see how much that specific change moved the needle.

Don’t make my mistake of editing a dozen things and only then checking – it’s much harder to learn what actually helps if you change too much at once.

Putting It All Together (Yawn Up a Storm and Beyond)

For Yawn Up a Storm, the flow that finally got me over the line was:

• Unlock and bring Slowpoke + Rock Smash.
• Break every bubbly rock to free springs.
• Place and link the Horsea Fountain to existing water.
• Ring the area with trees, then fill gaps with flowers and Tall Grass.
• Keep everything watered with Water Gun while watching stamina.
• Build and trigger a Rain Dance habitat using Castform’s slab for the big final boost.
• Yawn with Slowpoke until the quest target humidity is reached.

Once you’ve cleared that hurdle, the same principles carry you through the rest of the game: stack water, vegetation, and Rain Dance for wet biomes; lean on dry terrain, campfires, and Smooth Rock for arid ones. If I could drag myself from clueless watering spam to comfortably tuning habitats for picky Pokémon, you absolutely can too.