The basement is accessed via Acqua Mines. The player must enter the mines from Phlox Town and descend the ladders. HM04 (Strength) is required to reach the basement entrance, and guarding it is a lvl50 shiny Rhydon which must be defeated or caught.
Once inside the player must solve the push tile puzzle and then battle Officer Dean to receive the Lab Card, granting them access to the main building.
Tile Puzzle Solution[]
The arrow tiles in the basement will push the player when stepped on, in a certain direction for a certain number of tiles as indicated by the arrow and the number. For example, a tile with an arrow pointing left and the number "2" will push the player two tiles to the left.
There are also several warp tiles: stepping on a gray warp tile will teleport the player to a red one. They are labeled on the image below as A warping to A and B warping to B.
In the image below, the yellow/white arrows show one possible way to reach Officer Dean (with yellow indicating that the player is being pushed by the arrow tiles). Similarly, the red/pink arrows show one way to reach the item balls.
Image of possible solution
Items[]
Item
Location
Image
Max Revive
Reached by using the warp pad in the lower-left of the basement puzzle.
2 x Rare Candy
In the middle of the basement puzzle, reached by backtracking before stepping on the final push tile
Once the player has the Lab Card, they will be able to unlock the door to the main building in the north-east of the town. Inside, there are three floors, with the first and second floors both having a puzzle that must be solved before reaching the next floor. There are also scientists throughout the building who must be defeated in order to progress.
1F[]
The first floor puzzle consists of pairs of colored warp tiles. One red warp tile transports the player to the second red tile, the blue tile to the other blue tile, etc. However, the tiles will not be active until the corresponding colored switch is pressed. These switches are scattered throughout the floor, and the warp tiles must be used to reach them all.
When the red, blue and green switches are active, a barrier of that color appears somewhere on the floor, preventing the player's progress. Therefore it is necessary to deactivate some of the switches before continuing, done by interacting with them again. Otherwise, the switches remain active once pressed even when the player leaves the floor or the building.
To solve the puzzle, the player must press switches and use warp tiles in a certain order, battling all 4 Scientists and Palette Yellow along the way. The order in which the switches and tiles are used is listed below.
1F puzzle solution (text only)
1 - Turn the red switch on.
2 - Step on the red warp tile to be taken to the second red tile.
Defeat scientist No. 09. 3 - Turn the blue switch on. 4 - Step on the red warp tile to return to the first red tile. 5 - Step on the blue warp tile to be taken to the second blue tile. 6 - Turn the green switch on. 7 - Step on the blue warp tile to return to the first blue tile. 8 - Turn the red switch off. 9 - Step on the green warp tile to be taken to the second green tile.
Defeat scientist No. 10. 10 - Turn the yellow switch on. 11 - Step on the green warp tile to return to the first green tile. 12 - Step on the blue warp tile to be taken to the second blue tile. 13 - Turn the green switch off. 14 - Step on the yellow warp tile to be taken to the second yellow tile. 15 - Turn the blue switch off. 16 - Step on the yellow warp tile to return to the first yellow tile.
Continue down the corridor, and defeat scientists No. 07 and No. 08.
Defeat Palette Yellow.
Collect TM61 and take the stairs to 2F.
1F puzzle solution (image)
Activate the brown switch to enable the brown warp tiles, making it easy to travel between the laboratories' entrance and the stairs to 2F.
2F[]
The second floor consists of obstacles such as doors which cannot be switched off. To get past them, the player must release the Pokémon in the six cages at the north side of the floor. Each cage is numbered 1-6 from left to right, and interacting with the door will display its number. The Cage Cards required to open the doors are also numbered, and each found card is specific to a certain door. These Pokémon cannot be battled or captured: once released, they will walk off-screen and remove an obstacle in the player's way.
Unlocking the cages and freeing the Pokémon in the order encountered will allow the player to progress to 3F. Surf is required to reach the stairs up.
2F puzzle solution (text only)
Walk down and then left
Defeat Scientist No. 06
Pick up Cage Card 4 from the table in the room above
Unlock Cage 4 (containing Magmortar)
Walk to the lower left corner
Pick up Cage Card 2
Unlock Cage 4 (containing Glaceon)
Walk to the lower end of the floor
Defeat Scientist No. 05
Pick up Cage Card 5
Unlock Cage 4 (containing Ampharos)
Walk down and then right
Defeat Palette Green
Pick up Cage Card 1
Unlock Cage 1 (containing Hitmonchan)
Walk to just before Palette Green and then down
Pick up Cage Card 6
Unlock Cage 5 (containing Milotic)
Pick up Cage Card 3 from the cage
Unlock Cage 3 (containing Blastoise)
Walk to Palette Green and then up
Surf over the water to reach the stairs to 3F
2F puzzle solution (image)
The letters assigned to each Pokémon show which obstacle they will remove. Cages are numbered 1-6, left to right and the numbers match the Cage Cards.
3F[]
There is no puzzle on 3F, but there are four scientists to battle. Scientist No. 1 is the final trainer, with particularly strong Pokémon, and can be found sitting at a desk in the main room.
After defeating Scientist No. 1, Leader Bruce arrives and commends the player for apprehending the culprit behind the inhumane genetic enhancement experiments. He then heads back to Spurge City after telling the player that he's ready to take on challengers at his gym.
Enough of you! Tell me. What is your goal in life, huh? My goal in life is to be financially stable, for once. And here's you, trying to take all of that away. Do you think I care that it's unethical, huh? People around the world do unethical things to survive. Once those greedy people think they need our product to compete in Pokémon battles... I will have all the money I need to get everything I ever wanted. You are not going to go any further.
Post-Defeat
Persistent child! You always want to do the right thing, don't you. But guess what? The rest of the world won't care about your needs. Giving gets you nowhere in life. Taking is the only way to survive in this world today.
Post-Battle
Go on. Think about who you're hurting.
Layout[]
Algernon Laboratories layout
1F
2F
3F
Trivia[]
Algernon Laboratories is a reference to the 1966 sci-fi novel Flowers for Algernon, featuring a lab mouse named Algernon who is given surgery to enhance his intelligence.