Pokémon Sword and Shield Spikemuth - how to get past the invisible walls and beat Dark Gym Leader Piers

Spikemuth and its invisible walls en route to your battle with Gym Leader Piers are your next challenges, and follow on from Route 9 and Circhester Bay in your quest through Pokémon Sword and Shield's main story.

On each page of our walkthrough like this, we'll cover any and all of the obtainable Pokémon, item locations, trainers and their teams that you might come across here, as well as walking you through any key steps of the story, puzzles or challenges along the way.

Where applicable, note that our walkthrough pages will be down into separate sections referring to each of your visits to a given location, seeing as you often backtrack or revisit various places in your quest to become Galar League Champion. And of course if there are any, we'll clearly mark any spoilers, too!

For more explainers, meanwhile, or walkthrough pages on more locations in Sword and Shield, head back to our main Pokémon Sword and Shield walkthrough and guide hub.

On this page:

Pokémon Sword and Shield: Spikemuth - how to get past the invisible walls

Spikemuth is a literal straight line, left to right, with a single enterable building: the Pokémon Center.

There are two items to collect here, as you walk from left to right towards your Gym battle with Piers - and there's one thing that'll get in your way: the gym mission itself.

Every few steps you'll encounter an invisible wall, that's actually been put there by a Mr. Mime. To get past them, just double back a few steps, and some Team Yell Grunts will turn up and give you a battle. Defeat them and they'll drop the wall, and you can press on!

Note that in the small alcove near the end of the street there's an item that you can't really see - just mash the A button as you walk around in there and you'll find it!

Otherwise, that's it. Keep going through Spikemuth's only street until you meet Piers!

Available Pokémon

Available Items

Trainers and Battles

With it finally in the wild, here's how to start the Crown Tundra DLC and our full Pokémon Crown Tundra walkthrough. Plus, here's how to catch Calyrex, Glastrier and Spectrier, the Regieleki and Regidrago puzzle solution and Regirock, Regice, Registeel locations, details on how to catch Legendary Birds Articuno, Zapdos and Moltres in the Crown Tundra, the Ultra Beasts and Necrozma adventure, Dynamax Adventures, including the legendries you can catch on these adventures, and the new Crown Tundra Pokédex and returning Pokémon explained. For Isle of Armor players, here's how to find the Slowpoke, where to find Max Mushroom locations, and how to get Kubfu, become best friends and evolve it, plus all Diglett locations too! For the base game, here's info on the ability to transfer Pokémon to Pokémon Home, the Wild Area, lists of all TM locations and TRs, all Galarian forms and finally our main Pokémon Sword and Shield walkthrough for the whole game.

Pokémon Sword and Shield: how to beat Piers, Spikemuth's Dark Gym Leader

Piers is the only Gym Leader in Galar who doesn't Dynamax or Gigantamax his Pokémon - in fact he refuses to do so out of protest against the damage done to small towns like Spikemuth by Chairman Rose's mega corporation. Fair play to him!

Anyway, he's a Dark-type user, so Fighting and Fairy are go-to types. One issue could be Skuntank, which only has one weakness, Ground. Fairy is 4x effective against Scrafty, Bug is 4x effective against Malamar, and Fighting is 4x effective against Obstagoon. Go in with a combination of those and you'll be fine!

Beat Piers and ou'll get the Dark Uniform and TM85 Snarl, and that's everything here in Spikemuth all done.

Available Pokémon

Available Items

Trainers and Battles

That's everything here for now, so continue on to Route 7 via Route 9 Tunnel, left from Outer Spikemuth, for the next steps in your quest - it sounds like something big is going down! Otherwise, cycle back to our main Pokémon Sword and Shield walkthrough and guide hub for all the other pages we have like this.