How to “spread my voice” and catch Spiritomb in Pokémon Sword and Shield’s The Crown Tundra expansion

Riddles are everywhere in Pokémon Sword and Shield’s The Crown Tundra expansion—and they don’t just apply to legendary Pokémon. 

Spiritomb is another tricky Pokémon that you’ll need to perform a task for to get it to spawn. And this one actually requires you to play online while running around the tundra. 

On the outskirts of Ballimere Lake, you can find a single tombstone under a tree that will simply tell you to “spread my voice.” This is the voice of the Forbidden Pokémon making a request of you. 

After talking to the ancient tombstone, you’ll need to interact with 32 different people online. This is a throwback to how many players you needed to interact with in the underground to unlock Spiritomb in Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum.

This basically just means you have to find 32 players who have spawned into your online session and are running around, though there’s no way to keep count of how many you’ve talked with. You’ll need to connect to the internet using the Y-comm to get other players’ avatars to spawn in.

As a bonus, each trainer you chat with will give you various items, which usually ends up being an ingredient for curry cooking. 

You’ll know when you’ve talked to 32 different people when you head back to the tombstone and interact with it. If it says “My voice has been heard,” you just need to leave the area and come back, which should spawn the ghastly form of Spiritomb sitting in front of it.

From there, all you need to do is walk up and challenge it. But be careful. If you accidentally knock it out, you’ll have to do the entire quest again. 

You can save before you actually walk up to Spirtomb and soft reset for a shiny if you want to go that route, too.