Yoshi's Woolly World

There are a total of 14 Power Badges you unlock as you progress through the game. For a certain amount of beads, you can equip a Power Badge before entering a course to help you throughout that course. You can also go to the pause menu and swap out badges even in the middle of a course--but note that you can't equip two badges at the same time, so whichever badge you switch to will replace the previous badge. The following list will give you the names of each Power Badge, how many beads each costs per use, and after which course you unlock the badge for use. I'll also give a brief description of what the various Power Badges do and tell you how useful (or not) each is for completing the game.

Clear the course!

• Beads: 2000
• Clear: World 1-1

This is the only Power Badge that is exclusive to Mellow Mode. When you activate it, the course you're at on the world map will clear itself without you even playing it, and a path will open to the next course. The purpose of this guide is full completion, so suffice it to say, I don't recommend using this badge ever. This game is easy enough to finish as it is, so there's no real reason you should need this.

Play alongside Poochy!

• Beads: 500
• Clear: World 2-5

Poochy can be pretty helpful in this game. Yoshi's canine pal can give you a ride as he will move in whichever direction you're facing while riding him. He destroys all enemies in his path and can give you a boost when he jumps after running into a wall. This Power Badge is heavily limited, however, by the fact that many courses won't be Poochy friendly--courses with vertical segments or doors, for instance. You probably won't be using this one to gather up collectibles, but it might be amusing to try it out just for fun.

Make all yarn balls big!

• Beads: 1000
• Clear: World 1-2

This is the earliest Power Badge of any usefulness you'll obtain. With it equipped, every possible yarn ball that you collect--whether from eating an enemy, Yarn Baskets, or Yarn-Plants--will be the large variety. What's the difference between a big yarn ball and the regular yarn ball? In addition to increasing your likelihood of striking a target, big yarn balls will go through an object or enemy up to three times before dissipating, unlike a regular yarn ball, which is spent after one hit. One minor drawback is it does make it harder to throw yarn balls through particularly narrow passages.

Higher defense!

• Beads: 3000
• Clear: World 2-8

This Power Badge will reduce the number of hearts lost while taking damage, from 5 down to 2. Yoshi will still start each course with 10 hearts and will still need the requisite additional 10 hearts to reach full health. If you're going for completion and trying to complete each course with 20 hearts, this badge will prove rather useless. If you're struggling to complete a course at full health, Mellow Mode would be a better option--Yoshi will have all 20 hearts to start a course and will even have 20 if you lose a life and have to restart from a checkpoint. Give this badge a pass meanwhile.

Grab items with Yoshi's tongue!

• Beads: 3000
• Clear: World 3-8

Just like it says, this Power Badge will allow Yoshi to collect any item--beads, Stamp Patches, Smiley Flowers, and even Wonder Wools--simply by flicking his tongue at them. While Yoshi's tongue does have a fair bit of range, it has nothing on yarn balls, and since you can collect all of the above except for Wonder Wools by throwing yarn, that limits the usefulness of this badge. That being said, it can be situationally useful in certain instances where an item like a Wonder Wool lies just beyond reach.

Improve your speed!

• Beads: 3000
• Clear: World 4-4

This Power Badge will make Yoshi run, jump, and climb faster than normal. This is a great badge to use when returning to a course just to pick up collectibles you've missed and already know where they are--you can simply speed your way through a stage to get what you need and then move on to the Goal Ring. It can also come in handy if you're struggling to keep up in auto-scrolling courses.

All-you-can-eat watermelon!

• Beads: 5000
• Clear: World 1-8

Eating a watermelon normally will enable Yoshi to shoot up to fifty seeds from his mouth before running out. With this Power Badge equipped, as soon as Yoshi runs out, a new watermelon will spawn immediately nearby. This will be useful for clearing out enemies and shooting your way through courses with a lot of spongy earth. However it's not as useful as it may seem since the watermelon will greatly hamper Yoshi's ability to eat enemies (and thus make yarn balls). It's pretty inefficient having to spit out dozens of seeds to just free up Yoshi's mouth to eat something else, especially if you're on a time crunch. I would only advise using this badge in specific situations where you need to break through a lot of spongy material.

All-you-can-eat fire watermelon!

• Beads: 5000
• Clear: World 5-4

A fire watermelon will allow Yoshi to breathe fire up to three times, but this Power Badge will cause a new fire watermelon to spawn as soon as Yoshi is out. This is ideal in World 5 where you encounter a lot of ice that you can melt. But it suffers the same drawback as the other watermelon badge in that Yoshi's mouth is better suited to eating enemies rather than breathing fire at them. The best place to equip this badge would be World 5-7, for its section of ice blocks holding beads and Stamp Patches.

All-you-can-eat ice watermelon!

• Beads: 5000
• Clear: World 5-8

The counterpart to the fire watermelon is the ice watermelon, giving Yoshi three bursts of icy breath that he can use to freeze enemies, then push them to their doom. Unlike the previous two watermelon-themed Power Badges, this one won't be