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Pokémon Nuzlocke


Overdriven
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So I heard about the Pokemon Nuzlocke challenge and I'm giving it a go on my Pokemon Ruby Version. Wondering if anyone has tried it before and has any tips or anything for it.

But he had grown tired of his old Pokemon games; they had become repetitive and unchallenging after many play throughs. Deciding to make the experience more interesting, he set two rules for himself:

1. He could only capture the first Pokemon he encountered in each new area.

2. If a Pokemon fainted he would consider it dead and release it.

The results were unexpected; rather than simply increasing the difficulty, these rules caused him to care for his monster companions more than ever before. He found new appreciation for Pokemon he would have previously never bothered to capture, and worried deeply for his team, knowing any knockout would mean goodbye.

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Might want to make the title of the thread a bit more descriptive...

But yeah, this is the first I've heard of this, and I'm eager to try it out. Might tweak the rules a bit in my own case to give it some leeway in areas while ramping up the difficulty in others to preserve the original intent of making the game harder and having each Pokemon you encounter matter.

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I have one right now and personally I love it. Two Rare Candies, an Ultra Ball, and a PP Up and I havent even beat Roxanne yet.

Still find it insane that I actually have a Ralts though.

I blame my friend. He jinxed it.

Oof. That's some serious luck.

Pity it's so fragile until it hits it's final form. You'd better be careful with that, dude.

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I actually did a Nuzlocke on my Ruby cart before christmas last year.

I did not survive the seventh gym.

Pyroraptor the Combusken was wiped out by several good hits, and the rest of the team fell after that.

Nuzlockes can be downright hard, depending upon your luck. Even if you don't go with a "only use items you find" rule and spend money on lots of Potions, you're still going to lose lots of pokémon along the way.

My advice is to level up in areas with much lower-level pokémon in them. It will take far longer to level up more, but you also severely reduce the chances of critical hits and not being to get out of a losing battle.

I did do another later, with an emulated copy of Crystal. I added the rule of "no recatching", where if I had already caught and lost a pokémon, I can't get another of that line (ie: you catch a Pidgey and it dies, you can't catch and use another one or its evolutions). That made using a Flyer really risky, as I ended up losing every Flying-type line but one, and at that point, I said "fuck this" and NEVER USED IT IN BATTLE, EVER.

Sometimes the best challenges are the user-imposed ones.

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Reminds me of when my brother and I would play x-com and save the game after every single turn/every passing day, no matter what happened. Similar concept - you get very attached to units because they could die the next mission, and such, and really changes the way you see a game like that.

Too bad I don't play Pokemon - I might enjoy trying something like that.

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Sounds a bit crazy, but fun. I don't really play pokemon since I first played red in elementary school, but I could see doing something similar with a different game (hmmm, Disgaea might be good).

Actually, that does sound good, especially since I picked up the PSP version recently. Maybe only one character per monster type, reincarnations to higher levels allowed.... Too bad I'm busy with other games right now (Fortune Summoners :-P).

As gamers, we seem to have an affinity to challenge/punish ourselves.... Anyways, good luck gaming. :smile:

Oh yeah, I ran into this in chat when I was playing Kingdom of Loathing for some reason. It's an entertaining read: http://s7.zetaboards.com/Nuzlocke_Forum/topic/8552228/1/. :lol:

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Keep logs of your adventures. It's always fun to go back and read them or share them with people. And get emotionally attached. Where's the fun without some heartbreak?!

Sounds like an idea. I'll start doing that.

Oof. That's some serious luck.

Pity it's so fragile until it hits it's final form. You'd better be careful with that, dude.

It's already level 9 and started kicking ass, but yeah, I am NOT losing that one. Too useful later on.

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Did this once with Pokemon Red, with the added rule that if the first Pokemon I encountered in an area was the same as the first in a previous area, I was allowed to catch the first Pokemon I encountered in that area that WASN'T the first from a previous area.

It actually forced me to use some Pokemon that I normally wouldn't have - the Abra, Rattatta, Oddish, and Doduo lines, to be specific - which made the game a lot more interesting. Did flawlessly until the Elite Four battle against Gary, where my Raticate, Vileplume, and Kadabra fell at last.

Actually, thinking about it, I also did have one other difference; I made Box 6 my "cemetery" box, and so when those three Pokemon fell, I put them in there instead of releasing them.

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Although you could take it to mean the same thing ;)

This looks interesting but I already have a difficult time playing the Pokemon games, adding in that much more of a grind factor would probably just put me off indefinitely. Best of luck to those who do try it :)

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I've done Nuzlocke mode on all gen 1-3 games. I've found the original gen 1 being the easiest by far and the gen 1 remakes being the most difficult.

That's interesting. Why is the original gen the easiest?

I would assume it would be the hardest, given the strength of Psychic types. Sabrina's gym, I would imagine to be a huge roadblock.

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