Pokémon Pokopia: How to Complete Yawn Up a Storm (A Yawn for Rain) – Full Quest Guide

“A Yawn for Rain” — the request is called Yawn Up a Storm in the English release — takes place in the Withered Wasteland, the starting area, and it is handed to you by Professor Tangrowth. The full chain is: find the trapped Onix, report back, spawn Slowpoke in a Seaside Tall Grass habitat, raise the area’s humidity to a 100-point yawn, build a Rain Dance Site with two Castform Weather Charms, have Squirtle perform the dance, then free Onix with Rock Smash. Repairing the dock afterwards is what gets you Kyogre.

If you have read a guide that puts this quest in Terrassec, ignore it. It is Withered Wasteland, the dried-out zone Tangrowth sends you to restore at the start of the game. Budget 45–60 minutes if you follow the order below; the humidity phase is where people lose entire evenings watering random tiles.

Table of Contents (21)

Quest overview

Phase	What you actually do
1. Find Onix	Cave north-west of the starting town, blocked by rock. Talk to it, report to Tangrowth
2. Recruit Slowpoke	Build Seaside Tall Grass near the ocean behind the starting area
3. Raise humidity	Springs, Horsea fountain, Hydrated Tall Grass, Field of Flowers, watering
4. Rain Dance Site	Two Castform Weather Charms + wooden plate + any food
5. Squirtle dances	Rain arrives, rock softens
6. Free Onix	Rock Smash, then build its habitat
7. Kyogre	Repair the dock with bridge planks, walk up and talk to it

Step 1 – Find the trapped Onix

Head north-west from the starting town, following the dried riverbed. You are looking for a cave mouth sealed by cracked rock, with a speech bubble coming from inside. Interact with the wall — you will not break through, you will just open a gap and get the dialogue.

Go back to Professor Tangrowth at the Pokémon Center. He explains the problem: the rock is too dry and hard to shatter, you need heavy rain to soften it, and rain comes from a Slowpoke yawn — but only if the area is humid enough to power a full 100-point yawn. The request now appears formally in your log.

Step 2 – Recruit Slowpoke (Seaside Tall Grass, not hydrated grass)

This is the single most common misdirection in guides for this quest, including an earlier version of this one. Slowpoke does not spawn from hydrated grass. It spawns from Seaside Tall Grass: tall grass planted near the ocean behind the starting area.

• Bring a Pokémon with the Grow specialty (Bulbasaur is the obvious early pick) so you can use Leafage
• Walk behind the starting area to the shoreline
• Plant roughly four patches of tall grass near the ocean — close enough that the habitat registers as seaside
• Wait for the habitat to take, then Slowpoke appears

Talk to it and ask it to come and see the professor about making it rain. Hydrated Tall Grass is a different habitat entirely, and you will build it later in this same quest for a different reason — do not confuse the two.

Escorting Slowpoke without losing your mind

Slowpoke is exactly as slow as you expect and tires on bare, cracked ground. Two things fix this: build a handful of Wooden Path tiles at your bench and lay them along the route, and where possible route it over moist ground rather than dry dirt. Lay 10–15 tiles ahead, walk it forward, then pick up the tiles behind you and reuse them. Building a full highway before you start is a waste of materials.

Once Slowpoke reaches Tangrowth, he explains the 100-point yawn requirement. From here on, Slowpoke is also your humidity gauge — talk to it any time to check how strong its yawn currently is.

Step 3 – Raise humidity to 100

Humidity is not a hidden random number. Almost every restoration action you take in Withered Wasteland nudges it up, and there is a rough efficiency order.

3.1 Unblock the springs with Rock Smash

Around the dried river and the canyon walls there are rocks with a damp texture or a faint droplet cue. Rock Smash them and water starts flowing from the cave walls into the area, feeding toward the fountain site behind the Pokémon Center. These are the biggest single jumps in the whole phase — do them first.

3.2 Buy and place the Horsea fountain

The Horsea fountain is available from the PC shop for a modest price (commonly listed at 50 coins). Buy it, craft it, and place it in a water source so the water can actually flow through it. Then talk to Slowpoke about getting water moving through the fountain — this is a scripted check, not just decoration.

3.3 Build Hydrated Tall Grass with Squirtle

Now the other grass habitat. Talk to Squirtle to get the Hydrated Tall Grass habitat request, plant tall grass on soil next to water and water it with Water Gun until it shines, then have Squirtle follow you and move in.

3.4 Build a Field of Flowers with Bulbasaur

Talk to Bulbasaur to create the Field of Flowers habitat. Once it is up, Bulbasaur gives you a follow-up request to water some trees — take it. Flower fields and revived trees are both chunky humidity contributions, and the tree request is the one people skip.

3.5 Water everything dead

Sweep the area with a Water specialty Pokémon and hit every pale cracked soil patch and every dead tree. Dry tiles darken and sometimes sprout grass; dead trees revive after repeated watering, often opening small side requests that push humidity further. This is the grind portion, but it is bounded — you are not watering forever, you are clearing a finite list of dead spots.

Watch Slowpoke for the tell: as humidity climbs it starts showing a “feeling drowsy” speech bubble. That is your signal to go talk to it and check the yawn value.

Step 4 – Build the Rain Dance Site

Humidity alone does not summon rain. Squirtle will request a Rain Dance party, and Tangrowth will tell you he has Castform Weather Charms stored back in the cave where you started the game. Go get them — there are two.

The habitat itself is small and fiddly:

• Mount the two Castform Weather Charms flat on a wall, leaving a gap between them
• Place a wooden plate in that gap (buy one from the PC shop if you do not have one)
• Put any food or berry on the plate

That registers as the Rain Dance Site. Both charms need to be showing their rain face — interact to flip them if they are not, because a sun-facing charm will not trigger the right weather.

Step 5 – Squirtle dances, rain arrives

Talk to Squirtle again; it acknowledges the site exists. Lead it there and it performs the Rain Dance. A cutscene plays and rain starts falling on the Withered Wasteland. Some guides send you to the beach at this point to talk to the Pokémon gathered there before returning — do it, it costs a minute and keeps the sequence clean.

Step 6 – Free Onix

Go straight back to the cave in the north-west while it is raining. The rock is now soaked and soft. Use Rock Smash and the wall crumbles properly this time. Talk to Onix to rescue it.

To actually close out the request, build Onix somewhere to live. It wants dry, hard ground despite everything you just did to the region: place a Smooth Rock (there is usually one in a Poké Ball near the cleared cave) and surround it with Dry Tall Grass — Leafage on ground away from water, and then do not water it. Call Onix over, confirm the habitat takes, and report back to Tangrowth for your rewards.

Step 7 – Kyogre and the dock

The rain the region needs permanently comes from Kyogre, and Kyogre is at the broken end of the fishing pier on the Withered Wasteland shoreline. Craft bridge planks at the nearby workbench, repair the dock, and walk to the end. Talking to Kyogre registers it automatically — no habitat, no battle, no RNG. It is the least fussy legendary in the game and it is sitting behind a plank recipe most people never craft.

Troubleshooting

• Slowpoke will not spawn: you built hydrated grass instead of seaside grass. Plant tall grass near the ocean behind the starting area
• Humidity stuck in the 80s or 90s: a spring is still blocked, the Horsea fountain is not actually in flowing water, or Bulbasaur’s tree-watering follow-up is untouched
• Rain Dance does nothing: the charms are on their sun face, or there is no food on the plate
• Rocks still solid: you tried Rock Smash before the rain landed. It has to be actively raining
• Kyogre not appearing: the dock is unrepaired. Craft bridge planks at the beach workbench

FAQ

Is the quest called “A Yawn for Rain” or “Yawn Up a Storm”?

The English release uses Yawn Up a Storm. “A Yawn for Rain” is a translation that circulated in early coverage. Same quest.

Has any patch changed these steps?

No. Pokopia has shipped through Ver. 1.1.1 (18 June 2026) and the post-launch patches targeted quest softlocks, Pokédex registration, item placement limits and QoL — not the structure of this quest. The steps above match the current build.

Can I skip the side habitats and just water everything?

You can, and it takes far longer. The habitat completions and Bulbasaur’s tree request give larger humidity jumps than raw tile watering. Do the structured steps first, then mop up with watering if you are short.

What does finishing it unlock?

The Withered Wasteland becomes genuinely habitable, which opens new spawns and requests across the area, and you get Kyogre for free. More importantly it teaches the loop the rest of the game runs on: fix the environment, chain Pokémon specialties, let the habitat do the work.

Where to go next

With rain restored, the Wasteland’s environment level starts climbing, which is what gates most of the interesting habitats later on — the beginner island guide covers how to push that efficiently. The next big story beat is Grisemer, and once you are through the main story the legendary unlock routes open up. Everything else lives on the Pokémon Pokopia hub.