If you’ve been spending any amount of time exploring and smashing rocks in Pokémon Pokopia, your storage is probably getting cluttered with a weird item: the Mysterious Slate. The game doesn’t explicitly tell you what these are for, but as an experienced player who just went through this exact grind, let me save you hours of head-scratching.
These slates aren’t just vendor trash or base decorations. They are the puzzle pieces to unlocking a massive secret hidden beneath the map: Mew. You need to find all 28 slates (representing the Unown alphabet plus the ‘!’ and ‘?’ symbols) and slot them into a hidden mural to summon the mythical Pokémon to your island.
Here is the bottom line on how to solve the mysterious slate puzzle, right up front.
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The Mysterious Slate Puzzle Overview
| What You Need to Know | The Quick Solution |
| The Ultimate Reward | Mew (Massive Environment Level booster) |
| Mural Location | Withered Wasteland (Northeast of the Pokémon Center, behind breakable walls) |
| How to Get Slates | Use Rock Smash on glowing golden spots in the ground |
| Total Slates Needed | 28 (Unown A-Z, !, ?) |
| How to Solve | Check the back of the slate to match the Unown letter to the mural slot |
| Best Farming Strategy | Search on Sundays, use a Dowsing Machine with a Flying/Floating Pokémon, feed Mosslax Bitter Food |
Where to Find the Mysterious Mural
Before you start aggressively farming slates, you need to know where to put them. The shrine housing the Unown mural is hidden in the Withered Wasteland.
- Head to the Pokémon Center in the Withered Wasteland.
- Go northeast to the back of the building and look for the different-colored sandstone walls.
- Use Rock Smash to punch your way through these blocks to reveal an expanded, abandoned part of the town.
- Look to your left for a set of jagged, chiseled rocks. Smash those, and you’ll reveal a clean staircase leading underground into the ruins.
- Inside, you’ll find a massive wall carved with the Unown alphabet. This is where your slates go.
How to Farm Mysterious Slates (Without Losing Your Mind)
Slates are RNG drops found by using Rock Smash on the glowing golden spots on the ground. The loot pool for these spots is heavily diluted with fossils, CDs, and relics, so finding all 28 can be a serious grind. Luckily, the game protects you from bad RNG: you will not get duplicate slates until you have found one of each.
If you want to speedrun this, you need to manipulate your drop rates:
- Use the Dowsing Machine: Equip the Dowsing Machine and have a Pokémon with the Search Specialty follow you. Pro-tip: Use a Flying or Floating Pokémon like Pidgey, Zubat, or Dreepy. Landlocked Pokémon get stuck constantly if you try to fly or swim while searching.
- Feed Mosslax: Give Mosslax Bitter Food (like a Salad made with a Leaf and Seaweed). This temporarily buffs your odds of digging up rare items.
- Farm on Sundays: Sundays in Pokémon Pokopia are “Lucky Days,” meaning glowing spots spawn far more frequently. (If you aren’t opposed to time-traveling, just keep shifting your console’s clock to Sunday).
Solving the Unown Puzzle
Once you have a stack of slates, head down to the mural. The puzzle itself isn’t difficult once you know the trick: every slate has a specific Unown letter carved into the back of it.
To see the back, you have a few options:
- The fast way: Hold ZL and press left or right on the D-pad to rotate the block in your hands.
- The visual way: Drop the block on the ground and move your camera around to look at the back.
- The lazy gamer way: If you have all of them in your inventory, simply hit the auto-sort button. The game will automatically organize them in alphabetical order.
When you slot a slate into the correct Unown groove on the wall, it will play a short sparkle animation and a sound cue.
The Reward: Welcoming Mew to Your Island
Once you snap the 28th slate into place, the mural will complete, and a pink portal will rip open in the room. Interact with it, and you’ll officially befriend Mew!
Mew isn’t just a flex; it’s an absolute powerhouse for your island’s progression. Legendary Pokémon provide massive multipliers to your Environment Level. In my playthrough, moving Mew into a furnished house spiked my Environment Level from 60% at Level 9 straight to Level 10.
(Note: Even after completing the mural, glowing spots will continue to spawn Mysterious Slates. Since you can’t 3D print them, they actually make fantastic barter fodder for multiplayer trades later on!)
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FAQs
Q: I’m missing just one slate and I keep getting CDs. Did my game glitch?
No, you’re just at the mercy of RNG. Because the game prevents duplicate slates from dropping until you finish the set, the loot pool narrows as you get closer to 28, making the final slate feel like it takes forever to drop. Buff your luck with Mosslax and stick to it.
Q: Do I need to insert the slates in alphabetical order?
Not at all. You can plug them into the mural in any order as you find them. I highly recommend doing this just to clear up your storage boxes, as holding onto 20+ slates while waiting for the last few is a nightmare for inventory management.
Q: Can I just take a photo of a friend’s slate and 3D print the ones I’m missing?
Nice try, but no. The game specifically restricts 3D printing for quest-critical items like the Mysterious Slates. You have to dig them up yourself.
