Nuzlocke Challenge

elekid

Time for an update.

The first thing I did after the electric gym was go back to Nacrene to get Crust the Tirtouga (that's legal right?). I recruited Cream the Minccino and Wings the Ducklett on the way to Driftveil City, without any trouble. The first Pokémon I encountered at the Cold Storage was a Vanillite but I made it faint, so I went to route 6 and came across another one, who I caught and named Swirl.

I went back to Cold Storage for some more training and had a couple of unfortunate training accidents. I had only just started training Cream when a Vanillite killed her with a strangely powerful Uproar. The second accident came as a much bigger shock though. I switched Pasta, my full health Lv. 31 Conkeldurr, in on a Lv. 21 Timburr, who took him down in one hit with a critical Low Kick Pasta was my strongest and oldest surviving team member (and apparently the heaviest), which just goes to show that no one is safe in a Nuzlocke.

After that terrible loss I evolved Onion into a Lilligant and trained her, Crust and Wings up for the Ground gym leader, who I just defeated without incident. Onwards to Mistralton Cave and the flying gym, I hope I pick up a good electric type on the way!

TheChrisD

elekid wrote: »

I hope I pick up a good electric type on the way!

inb4Klink

Angron

If only Tynamo wasn't Rare

Banjo

Tynamo is a bitch to train up to the Evolution point though, so you're better off. No really you are. You can't afford to carry anyone on a Nuzlocke...
Remember, if you don't burn your cartridge at the end of the run, Pasta and Jelly and the rest can't go to Pokemon Valhalla...

elekid

Heh, I was expecting a Klink too but actually came across a Joltik, who I promptly criticalled. Gah!

I think putting the cartridge out to sea on a burning boat will be the way to go.

elekid

I had a surprisingly easy time getting through Chargestone Cave, picked up Champ the Foongus on Route 7 and Candy the Litwick in Celestial Tower. I focused exclusively on levelling Crust the Tirtouga during this section, since he is my only decent anti-flying Pokémon, and he ended up as a level 44 Carracosta by the time I got to the gym. Getting the Lucky Egg from Professor Juniper makes such a big difference. Skyla didn't stand a chance against him and it only took 3 Smack Downs to end my easiest gym battle to date.

Nuz update!

Ok so I've done quite a lot so hopefully I can remember everything. After losing Tortuga and Slimey in Eterna I had to train up Petal the Budew and Silver the Ponyta into my team. After a wee bit of grind we were ready to take on the Eterna gym, and with a fire and 2 flying types in my team it proved no bother and we coasted through. Similarly the Team Galactic business following was standard fare. Equipped with a new bike I made my way down the cycling road to Hearthome. Some grinding in between resulted in Gary evolving into a Golbat and transforming from the most useless member of my team to one of the best. I guess Nuzlocke really does get you to appreciate pokemon you'd never normally consider.
With Hearthome's gym leader away and me not really interested in contests I decided to continue on to Veilstone. On the way I incurred a few more painful losses, losing Jayne to a critical hit from a Gyardos and Voltette to a freak double critical hit from a wild Ponyta. My team once again in need of new team members I attempted to train my recent catch Mage the Abra and Florence the Happiny (soon Chansey) which I got from an egg. Unfortunately both pokes have defences made of paper, and some unlucky hits in training took both out before they could really become integrated into the team. I picked up GirAAAffe the Girafarig outside Veilstone instead and trained it up to take on Mylene, and so far it's been faring well. Gary evolved again into a Crobat, and is now super cool. I never thought I would have this much affection for what used to be a Zubat. Petal also evolved into a Roselia after finally maxing out its happiness, and is now a much stronger player.
On the way to Pastoria I very excitedly ran into another Shellos, this time a blue one. Eager to have another after Slimey's demise I caught it and named it Snaily (yeah, I'm original). I trained her up to match the levels of the rest of my team and she evolved into a kick ass Gastrodon. I'm very excited to see what she can do.

So that's where I'm at, hoping to take on Fantina next. My team is currently:
Gary the Crobat (lv 33)
Chirpette the Staravia (lv 33)
Petal the Roselia (lv 34)
Silver the Ponyta (lv 33)
GirAAAffe the Girafarig (lv 33)
Snaily the Gastrodon (lv 33)

and I have said goodbye to:
Lumpy the Bidoof
Sgt. Rocks the Geodude
Sgt. Gravel the Geodude
Tortuga the Turtwig
Slimey the Shellos
Jayne the Machop
Voltette the Luxio
Mage the Abra
Florence the Chansey

reallyrose

I've started doing this. The things I do to procrasinate!

I'm playing a variation of the basic rules on Diamond:

- If a pokemon faints, it's dead. I'm keeping the dead ones in a box called "Valhalla" so I can go gaze at the falled heroes and feel guilty.
- Because I have a very small brain, and end up running everywhere and not noticing new areas, I'm changing the second condition to "I can only catch one of each pokemon." So if I catch something awesome and rare, and kill it, then it sucks to be me!
I know it's an easier condition than the original, but I'm not very good at pokemons.

So off I went, all bright eyed and bushy tailed on my adventures. I took EMILY the Piplup as my starter and off we went!
We spent a looong time grinding around Sandgem and Twinleaf to get EMILY's level up a little, and then collected a few pokeballs and went looking for friends!

Right off the bat, I got BIEBER the Bidoof, who promptly got killed by a wild Bidoof. So off to Valhalla with BIEBER! No more Bidoofs for me. Oh noes! :rolleyes:

After some adventuring (grinding) around Jublife city, my team contained
- EMILY the lvl 19 Prinplup
- COOLIO the lvl 13 Kricketune
- SYLVESTER the lvl 15 Starly
- LOGAN the lvl 14 Shinx
- TARBOC the lvl 5 Zubat
- RAMBO the lvl 5 Machop

Sadly, an earlier addition, ROBBIE the Budew heroically gave his life while his trainer was distracted by the tv and not paying attention to his drastically low health in a trainer battle just outside Jubilife city.
Poor ROBBIE, I failed him He was so young, had so much promise.

elekid

I lost my Scraggy, Stoutland and Krokorok in a series of training accidents on the way to the Icirrus City so haven't played in a while

Fluorescence

After 2 years of not touching my HeartGold game, I decided to nuke the save file and do a new run on it, Nuzlocke style. I've lost an annoying amount of pokémon already, and I'm only at Azelea town :pac:. No particularly great ones yet either...

Pokémon gained:
Kvothe the Cyndaquil
Icarus the Hoothoot (Route 29, added to party)
Elly the Geodude (Route 46, added to party)
Ceryni the Rattata (Route 31, added to party)
Faren the Spinarak (route 30, boxed)
Faust the Dunsparce (Dark cave, boxed)
Elodin the Gastly (Sprout tower, added to party)
Olly the Unown (Ruins of Alph, boxed)
Puffy the Hoppip (Route 32, added to party)
Odysseus the Togepi (Hatched in Violet City, boxed)
Akkarin the Zubat (Union Cave, boxed)
Fenchurch the Spearow (Route 33, boxed)
Sarabande the Slowpoke (Slowpoke well, added to party)
Saoirse the Caterpie (Ilex forest, added to party)


Pokémon slain:
Icarus the Hoothoot - lvl 3 to 4 - can't remember how it died :pac:
Elly the Geodude - lvl 3 to 8 - critical hit from a Pidgey
Ceryni - lvl 5 to 15 - slain by the Rival by the entrance to the Ilex forest
Puffy the Hoppip - lvl 6 to 14 - poisoned.


Hmmm, we'll see how this one pans out...

Edit:

My current team looks like this
Lvl 9 metapod Saoirse
lvl 6 slowpoke Sarabande
lvl 16 Gastly Elodin
lvl 16 Quilava Kvothe

Think I need to grind before meeting Bugsy :P

Fluorescence

Uh oh, I think it's game over already...

I was grinding my metapod and slowpoke up to level 15 before going to the Gym. When I got there, my (now) Butterfree, Saoirse, was killed by a critical hit tackle + poison from one of the bug trainers. Tearfully putting her in the Dead-box, we continued and finally got to see Bugsy. With my quilava heading the team, he sent out a Scyther first, and before I could even use ember once he OHKO-ed me. Bastard. Anyway, gastly sweeped the rest of his team and we got our badge, at a price. Problem now is I have no living pokemon who can learn cut, and no way to catch one. Unless I use one of the corpses :pac:.


*sigh* and I had such high hopes for this game too...

Banjo

Standard rules allow you to catch a mon or use a dead mon if you require a T/HM to proceed and don't have one you can teach it to. However they can ONLY be used for the HM and cannot take part in battles and have to be retired if you catch a mon that can learn the move. That way you never get stuck.

By rights you should only use a dead/illegal Mon to cut/push/rockclimb/surf your way past obstacles you HAVE to get past to proceed, rather than to take short cuts or get access to items. So, for example, if you don't have a flier then you better get used to walking. On the other hand, if you DO have a flier but no cutter and there's a Cut-able tree blocking the route between 2 towns you've already visited you have no valid reason for using an illegal cutter to backtrack, just fly there.

Nuzlocke runs can be cruel, but they're never unfair

At the end of the day though, it's your run - you can do what you like, no one's going to judge you.
And fair play for only losing 1 mon to Bugsy - that Scyther crucified me on my HG run.

Raze_them_all

Banjo wrote: »

Standard rules allow you to catch a mon or use a dead mon if you require a T/HM to proceed and don't have one you can teach it to. However they can ONLY be used for the HM and cannot take part in battles and have to be retired if you catch a mon that can learn the move. That way you never get stuck.

By rights you should only use a dead/illegal Mon to cut/push/rockclimb/surf your way past obstacles you HAVE to get past to proceed, rather than to take short cuts or get access to items. So, for example, if you don't have a flier then you better get used to walking. On the other hand, if you DO have a flier but no cutter and there's a Cut-able tree blocking the route between 2 towns you've already visited you have no valid reason for using an illegal cutter to backtrack, just fly there.

Nuzlocke runs can be cruel, but they're never unfair

At the end of the day though, it's your run - you can do what you like, no one's going to judge you.
And fair play for only losing 1 mon to Bugsy - that Scyther crucified me on my HG run.

*judges her*

Will be wiping my HG soon myself to do the run

Fluorescence

Banjo wrote: »

Standard rules allow you to catch a mon or use a dead mon if you require a T/HM to proceed and don't have one you can teach it to. However they can ONLY be used for the HM and cannot take part in battles and have to be retired if you catch a mon that can learn the move. That way you never get stuck.

By rights you should only use a dead/illegal Mon to cut/push/rockclimb/surf your way past obstacles you HAVE to get past to proceed, rather than to take short cuts or get access to items. So, for example, if you don't have a flier then you better get used to walking. On the other hand, if you DO have a flier but no cutter and there's a Cut-able tree blocking the route between 2 towns you've already visited you have no valid reason for using an illegal cutter to backtrack, just fly there.

Nuzlocke runs can be cruel, but they're never unfair

At the end of the day though, it's your run - you can do what you like, no one's going to judge you.
And fair play for only losing 1 mon to Bugsy - that Scyther crucified me on my HG run.

I could have sworn original rules said you're supposed to release dead 'mon, not just put them in a graveyard box like I did, and if you've no way of advancing through the story with your living pokémon then it's Game Over. Sure, everyone makes their own rules for their own runs (I mean, it's a self imposed hard mode so nothing's set in stone) but it'd feel like cheating if I continued :pac:. Especially since I rage-quit after I saw I'd no-one to learn Cut so I could get through Ilex forest. My last save was before I even entered the gym for the first time, so I have living pokémon that I shouldn't.

Scyther was grand once I sent Gastly out. Ghost pokémon are the best :cool:. After electric types, obviously :P

TheChrisD

fluorescence wrote: »

I could have sworn original rules said you're supposed to release dead 'mon, not just put them in a graveyard box like I did, and if you've no way of advancing through the story with your living pokémon then it's Game Over.

Yea, but as you say, the rules are open to interpretation, so if you want to stick with a graveyard box, so be it.

Fluorescence

TheChrisD wrote: »

Yea, but as you say, the rules are open to interpretation, so if you want to stick with a graveyard box, so be it.

That's not the problem I have though. It just seems using the corpse of a fallen comrade to mow down trees in the forest is very very wrong :P. Plus, since I "should" have released them upon death, I wouldn't have the bodies to hand anyway.


I could rationalise it however I wanted, but continuing this run would feel like cheating to me, based on the rules on which I began my game. Though the thought of having to go through all the tedious beginning of a pokémon game again so soon is off-putting, so I probably won't start a new run for a while.

TheChrisD

fluorescence wrote: »

That's not the problem I have though. It just seems using the corpse of a fallen comrade to mow down trees in the forest is very very wrong :P.

Yea, but is it really much different to normal gameplay where you can still utilise HMs on fainted Pokémon, ignoring the obvious difference...?

elekid

If I didn't have a Cut Pokémon for the Dreamyard in my White run I was planning to catch a Patrat which was to be released as soon as I got past that bit and never used in battle.

elekid

So I've gotten back into this recently.

At last post I had lost several party members on the way through Twist Mountain but I also picked up Cube the Cubchoo along the way. I easily blasted through the ice gym using Rice, my newly captured Mienfoo, but unfortunately lost Wings the Swanna shortly afterwards to an explicable OHKO from a wild Druddigon. The curse of playing in Japanese is I have no idea what attack a Druddigon could possibly have used to take down a Swanna that was 10 levels higher than it and on full HP. Tragic because she was one of my strongest and prettiest members who also knew Surf and Fly.

I had no further losses on the way to Opelucid city, though I did make a wild Garbodor faint along the way. On the plus side, Punch the Golett and Pear the Palpitoad joined the party.

Once I reached Opelucid the Vanillite and Cubchoo I'd been holding in reserve finally came into play in preparation for the battle with Iris. Beartic is now level 53 and one of my top team members, but sadly Swirl the Vanillish got taken out by an Audino during training. I knew she was too fragile to last At least Beartic was able to storm the dragon gym and easily took home the Legend Badge.

So now I'm on to Victory Road and the Elite Four with a pool of 10 Pokemon to choose a team from thanks to the addition of KYLE the Rufflet. There are also several areas where I can still catch new (mostly watery) team members, though my no duplicates rule means I can only have 1 each of Basculin, Frillish and Alomomola.

The last thing I did was defeat Cheren on route 10, which was a piece of cake. I'm kinda terrified of what's coming next though..

Current team:
Berry the Scolipede lv.45
Candy the Lampent lv.47
Crust the Carracosta lv.51
Onion the Lilligant lv.48
Cube the Beartic lv.53
Rice the Mienshao lv.51
Champ the Foongus lv.29
Punch the Golett lv.32
Pear the Palpitoad lv.30
KYLE the Rufflet lv.34

elekid

I'll be taking on the Elite Four later on today. Even though I have more than 12 available Pokémon, I've decided I'm only going to allow myself one shot at the Elite Four, to make it more exciting. Once I've defeated/lost to them, I'll consider my Nuzlocke challenge over.

My final, all Lv.55, team is:
KYLE the Braviary
Onion the Lilligant
Punch the Golurk
Candy the Chandelure
Rice the Mienshao
Crust the Carracosta

I don't fancy my chances, even after all the grinding I've done, but I'll report back later

elekid

It's all over!

First came Grimsley, whose Dark Pokémon barely left a scratch on Rice the Mienshao. Next came Shauntal who was easily taken down by some tag-teaming from Golurk (Punch) and Chandelure (Candy). After that came Caitlin, and that's where things started to go wrong..

All of her Psychic types seem to know Shadow Ball so Reuniclus and Musharna weakened Golurk and Chandelure in the process of being taken down. So her 3rd Pokémon out was Sigilyph, which I decided to take down using Crust the Carracosta's Rock Slide. Except it went first and got a critical hit with Psychic, killing Crust. Noooooo! The bloody thing also knew Ice Beam, nearly taking down KYLE the Braviary, but I managed to keep everyone else alive during the battle.

Shaken, I continued on to Marshal, with KYLE as my key player in this battle. It seems all of the Gen V Fighting types know Rock moves, but a bit of creative switching and healing got us through the battle, paving the way to Ns castle.

Once in N's castle I realised I had a chance to use a PC, so I took a few moments to say goodbye to Crust, then added Cube the Lv. 53 Beartic to my team. I used Punch to catch Zekrom wth very little difficulty and then it was on to battle N.

I started off with Punch vs Reshiram, who survived my first Earthquake with a couple of HP, just enough to do a lot of damage to Punch before going down. Things picked up after that, he stupidly used Klinklang, Vanilluxe and Zoroark all against Rice, so they were all one hit KOs. Then he brought out his Archeops...

"Grand" I thought to myself, "Carracosta will be resistant to it's attacks and Aqua Tail will be super effective so I'll bring out Crust oh wait". No Crust. So I looked at my roster and realised I had a:

Golurk which could resist it's attacks but was weakened
Braviary which was weak to Rock
Mienshao which was weak to Flying
Beartic which was weak to Rock
Lilligant which was weak to Flying
Chandelure which was weak to Rock

So one by one they fell. I used their sacrifices to heal Golurk, but it could only get one hit at a time making it a slow and tragic battle. I finally took it down with only 50hp worth of Golurk left and out came his final Pokémon, ironically enough, a Carracosta. "Hmm", I thought, "there's no way he's faster so I should be able to finish him off with Earthquake, plus Golurk has super effective moves against most of Ghetsis's team, so I'm in with a chance yet"

He used Aqua Jet.

*fade to black*

Rendeva

I did a nuzlocke run of crystal a while back. Didn't lose a single pokemon, but decided to take on the league with just Arcanine, Miltank and Vaporeon, all level 40. Kicked their asses in quick order

Pretty sure it could be done in HG/SS nowadays too.

Nickel - Arcanine - Flame Wheel, Iron Tail, Bite, Dig.
Calcium - Miltank - Ice Punch, Thunder Punch, Strength, Earthquake.
Hydrogen - Vaporeon - Surf, Aurora Beam, Shadow Ball, Quick Attack.

wobbles

fairplay elekid, you got to the final battle and nearly won. You got a lot further in the run than i ever would (further than most id say)

Urizen

Elekid, I tip my hat to you. Great effort.

elekid

Thanks, it was fun and I was amazed I got as far as I did. Audino makes it so much easier to level up in this generation. I didn't really mind losing in the end because I still got a Zekrom and Thundurus out of it it trade over to my copy of Black.

Is anyone else out there still doing their Nuzlockes?

Banjo

Bravo! That's up there with the end of the original Nuzlocke!

Almost makes me want to go back to my run. But damnitt, I barely have the time to look at my proper White game