There are countless more practical methods for a trainer or other traveler to avoid getting lost than by bringing a Probopass with them. Probopass are powerful with the proper comrades, but few trainers wish to build a team around a pokemon included primarily to point north. Nor can they be used as a general-purpose travel aid like Bibarel or Tropius; apart from finding one's way, they are useful only for moving large obstacles such as boulders. Before the invention of pokeballs, this obstacle was even more formidable; Probopass can propel themselves somewhat with magnetism, but they move so slowly that typically a strong pokemon or a vehicle must carry them.
Yet for much of history, merchants and sailors had no better option. Probopass are perfect, natural compasses, far more reliable for navigation than the sun or stars. With one end pointed to Mount Coronet, they do not quite reach the north pole, but mathematics has adjusted for the difference and Sinnoh-bound travelers rarely even needed to use that math. Their water weakness is of little consequence, for an unconscious Probopass is as magnetic as a conscious one, but if they are ever knocked overboard they will sink like most other rocks to the bottom of the sea.
Probopass accompanied sailors on ships for centuries, but at the dawn of the scientific age, men discovered how these pokemon worked and figured out how to replicate the important parts into a much smaller device, which they named a "compass" - a contraction of the phrase "compact Probopass." Being far cheaper to maintain and lighter to transport, the compasses quickly replaced their pokemon inspiration on sea and soon spread to journeys taken on land.
The Probopass, for their part, are content to find themselves new paths, paths which do not require humanity.
