Official TVTropes Nuzlocke Thread

No internet meant no updates for the last couple days, but now we're back, and the team's changed quite a bit.

We were trying to make our way up to Lavaridge, but some obnoxious guys in red outfits were blocking the way to the cable car. So we didn't have a choice but to wander around the north a bit. Encountered a Torkoal on the Fiery Path, but the refused to be caught until I lamented that I was down to my last Great Ball, after which she gave a crooked smile and finally let herself be captured. Almost as if she was just playing hard-to-get. I called her Mia.

Joel managed to get a lot of training in Fallarbor while we ran through the grass collecting soot to make glass flutes with. I got the status curing ones, but decided to pass on the encounter-altering ones for now. Might come back for them later, but we'll see.

I had Mia train quite a bit on Route 114 with all the Lotads, Lobmres and Swablus. (Swablues? Swablu? Swabuffet?) I've started paying more attention to EV's, and I wanted to toughen up Mia's relatively low special defense. Having Iron Defense and Amnesia among her learnable skills makes her an excellent defensive option.

We'd heard about some hoodlums looking for a meteorite, so we made our way to Meteor Falls. Caught a Zubat named Roy that we're going to raise into a Crobat. I notice that Crobat has better stats than Swellow and can also learn Fly, so we're going to be retiring Robin. Roy having access to Confuse Ray just sweetened the deal.

Managed to chase off Team Magma, but not before they made off with a meteorite. Team Aqua was hot on their tails, but their leader seemed a bit confused when he noticed us fighting Team Magma. Since they were apparently also trying to stop Team Magma, the blue guys left us alone and gave chase to the guys in red.

Something big was clearly going down, so we followed them back up toward Lavaridge to see what was going on. Team Magma tried to activate the dormant volcano, using a strange meteorite-powered machine. But their pokemon were no match for ours, and we managed to stop them and get the meteorite back.

Finally, after all the ruckus, we managed to reach Lavaridge Town. We got an egg from some old person at the hot springs, which eventurally hatched into a Wynaut. But since it's got no offensive options that don't involve it getting hurt, it has to stay in the reserve box.

Joel swept the gym full of fire pokemon at level 40. The gym was full of bubbles by the time we were through with Flannery.

May showed up when we left the gym, and gave us her spare set of goggles so we could navigate the desert on Route 111 before riding off to do her own thing. That was nice of her. Anyway, we did some exploring there and managed to catch Sam the Baltoy, a Ground/Psychic pokemon that is also a good defensive option with the move Cosmic Power. It also knew Selfdestruct though, which is of course a very very very bad thing to have, so we replaced that ASAP with Ancient Power.

Throughout all this, we've been growing a lot of berries. Now we won't need to buy status-curing items from the shops anymore, so we can save our money for soda and potions.

Current Team:
Joel, lv41 Azumarill, timid
Trix, lv34 Mightyena, modest
Mia, lv32 Torkoal, naughty
Roy, lv30 ZubatGolbat, rash
Sam, lv28 Baltoy, naive

Retired:
Robin, lv28 Swellow, calm

As far as I know, any plural Pokemon are still that Pokemon, not even an S added to the end of it.

Well, that would certainly simplify things.

Okay, so far we have 1 vote for robopon. I think.

I just read about Shingo.

Silly Shingo, thinking you're playing the games, where stats and strategy actually matter, rather than the anime, where a Pikachu can defeat a Rhydon just by trying hard enough. Not that Ash has ever actually made any progress.

Strawman Has a Point, I guess.

edited 30th Apr '14 7:55:01 PM by storyyeller

Alright, after talking to my new IRL friends last night I've decided to retry Crystal. I don't think I'll do the "gift Pokemon only" rule this time though.

Right now I'm attempting a Nuzlocke run of an Emerald hack that lets you catch all 38-something Gen III Pokemon.

It's... not going too hot. Abigail the Cyndaquil and Owloysius the Hoothoot both fainted to poison from some Bug Catcher's Spinarak and had to be permaboxed. This leaves me with Caterpizza the Metapod, FLOWRpowr the Sunkern, and That's not the Ledyba.

Not the best type diversity. Anyone hits me with a Fire-type, and I'm dead. On the plus side, Rustboro Gym should be a snap.

(Owloysius's death was kind of embarrassing. I was running to the Petalburg Mart to buy some Antidotes so I could heal my mons before they dropped dead, when one step before the counter I got the "Abigail fainted..." message. Then I forgot about Owloysius's poison, went to go deposit Abigail in my "heaven" box, and got "Owloysius fainted..." a couple of steps later. Ugh.)

edited 1st May '14 2:41:24 PM by Midna

Ug, anyone know how to get table formatting on the forums?

Anyway, I wrote a program to calculate the odds of beating Misty with different stats and levels. This assumes use of either Dig or Slash depending on level, and infinite Super Potions available for healing.

For each level, I calculated the odds of winning assuming min, average, and max I Vs. It turns out my estimate of level 30 was too optimistic. You need high I Vs to win reliably at 30. Another notable feature is the large boost in odds from level 29 to 30 due to the addition of Slash.

But the real takeaway is that basically it's just a matter of whether you can outspeed Starmie or not. For max I Vs this happens at level 30, for average, at 33, and for minimum, at level 37.

level 25: —- 0.000521377219119 —- 0.00474888409256 —- 0.0484531474512
level 26: —- 0.00151246812329 —- 0.0167458752981 —- 0.170649819246
level 27: —- 0.00315701857812 —- 0.0474122862492 —- 0.197855977229
level 28: —- 0.00936713670724 —- 0.139664722901 —- 0.317455017019
level 29: —- 0.0459858209912 —- 0.230921092193 —- 0.52143808727
level 30: —- 0.642177751133 —- 0.656157529307 —- 0.978594120765
level 31: —- 0.64928575068 —- 0.697368432807 —- 0.996226736944
level 32: —- 0.653331735621 —- 0.772469713597 —- 0.996584823234
level 33: —- 0.656700618142 —- 0.971782506188 —- 0.997768994091
level 34: —- 0.681385777863 —- 0.995825332922 —- 0.998313522223
level 35: —- 0.777590587966 —- 0.996794717798 —- 0.99958379744
level 36: —- 0.873360991652 —- 0.997194904243 —- 0.99991040981
level 37: —- 0.992986364656 —- 0.998413576901 —- 0.999959809763

edited 1st May '14 8:24:34 PM by storyyeller

Wait, are we talking about 87% and such odds, or 0.87% and such odds, because that decimal place can make all the difference.

It's from 0 to 1. So 0.87 means 87% chance of winning.

I assume the former, since the rest of the post doesn't sound like "give up and go home, she's unbeatable".

'd

edited 1st May '14 8:26:53 PM by KylerThatch

I'm getting really tempted to savescum for a max IV in speed on my next playthrough. It's hard to argue with numbers like those.

Edit: Just for kicks, I decided to calculate the odds with max IV in speed and minimum I Vs in everything else. Odds at level 30? 89.66%. Yep, it pretty much is just a matter of speed.

Edit2: I just noticed that there's an X Special available on the ground. I wonder how much that would help. Taking 33% less damage would be really helpful, but crits ignore stat changes, and it's the crits that are probably the biggest danger. There's also an HP Up available, but it's out of the way, and a minor increase in HP probably isn't that important.

edited 1st May '14 8:43:12 PM by storyyeller

You're one of those people who takes Pokemon way too seriously, aren't you.

And here I've never even played competitively. I just do Nuzlockes because a normal run isn't a challenge anymore.

Naw, he's always been the kind to whip up a program for everything. That's just how he rolls.

Also, technically, anyone doing a Nuzlocke run at all can be called "taking Pokemon way too seriously" by someone else.

edited 1st May '14 9:11:45 PM by KylerThatch

Why not use an X speed while fighting Staryu? Or is it something you can't acquire until Misty's beaten?

Eh, you have a point there.

Why not use an X speed while fighting Staryu? Or is it something you can't acquire until Misty's beaten?

The only place you can buy X Items is Celedon City. The only reason an X Special is available is because one is lying on the floor of the underground path.

As far as taking things too seriously, the thing is that I'm trying to beat the game with an unevolved Charmander. But since that's such a huge challenge, it requires extensive planning and calculation. I guess you can think of it as a Nuzlocke++ except without so much randomness.

And then there were two.

I've reached Rustboro City minus one more team member; Caterpizza sadly fainted to an unlucky critical from Gina and Mia's Bellsprout. Suffice to say, I'm in trouble.

Current team:

• FLOWRpower, Sunkern M, level 11, Careful, Absorb/Growth/Bullet Seed
• That's not, Ledyba M, level 8, Sassy, Tackle/Supersonic

Deceased:

• Abigal, Cyndaquil F, level 9, Rash, Tackle/Leer/SmokeScreen (died from Bug Catcher Lyle's Spinarak's poison, day 1, Petalburg City Poke Mart)
• Owloysius, Hoothoot M, level 8, Timid, Tackle/Growl/Foresight (died from a wild Wurmple's poison, day 1, Petalburg City)
• Caterpizza, Metapod F, level (killed by Twins Mia and Gina's Bellsprout's Vine Whip, day 1, Route 104)

edited 1st May '14 9:32:49 PM by Midna

Grind. Then grind more. Grind until Sunkern learns a decent grass attack and synthesis.

edited 1st May '14 9:48:51 PM by IkeAndMike

That's not is the weirdest name ever.

If memory serves, Sunkern has the lowest base stat total out of all Pokemon ever.

So, yeah. You're in a bit of a bind.

Bulbapedia confirms this.

Worse than Magikarp? Really?

Wow, I never realized that.

Even though I have the right type for the Rustboro Gym, FLOWRpowr's piddly stats didn't exactly fill me with confidence, so I went to Route 116 beforehand and caught a Whismur. Not superb per se, but at least now I have a counter for grass and flying types.

Current team:

• FLOWRpowr, Sunkern M, level 13, Careful, Absorb/Growth/Bullet Seed/Mega Drain
• That's not, Ledyba M, level 11, Sassy, Tackle/Supersonic
• LoudMouth, Whismur M, level 7, Adamant, Pound/Uproar

Deceased:

• Abigal, Cyndaquil F, level 9, Rash, Tackle/Leer/SmokeScreen (died from Bug Catcher Lyle's Spinarak's poison, day 1, Petalburg City Poke Mart)
• Owloysius, Hoothoot M, level 8, Timid, Tackle/Growl/Foresight (died from a wild Wurmple's poison, day 1, Petalburg City)
• Caterpizza, Metapod F, level 8, Adamant, Tackle/String Shot/Harden (killed by Twins Mia and Gina's Bellsprout's Vine Whip, day 1, Route 104)

edited 1st May '14 10:30:16 PM by Midna

Keep grinding. You're not ready. I'd say give Flowr three more levels.