I decided to start a nuzlocke on Emerald; the rules that I set for myself are the following:
- I have to permanently box any Pokémon that faint.
- Only the first Pokémon in a route or area can be caught; if it faints or flees then I have to move on.
- If I encounter a Pokémon that I already own: I can continue battling until I find one that I do not own.
- Shiny Pokémon do not count as encounters and can be caught freely.
- Stationary Pokémon (i.e. Pokémon that can be fought by interacting with them) can be caught freely.
- Gift Pokémon and Eggs can be accepted freely.
- Traded Pokémon can be accepted freely.
- Style must be on "Set" at all times.
- My Pokémon cannot exceed the highest level of the next Gym Leader's Pokémon MINUS ONE, and cannot exceed Level 45 until I initially fight the Elite Four.
- Any Pokémon that I obtain have to be nicknamed after members of the Kiwi Farms (I am feeling overly sentimental given recent events).
Overall the rules are pretty lenient; this is my first nuzlocke and the first time that I have played Pokémon in ages, so I wanted to start small.
I picked Treecko as my starter and named it Riku, defeated May without any issues, and got started on my journey. On Route 101 I encountered a Wurmple, but Riku decided to land a Critical Hit and kill it; I ended up going to Route 103 for an encounter and got a Poochyena (who I named SIGSEGV). After that I headed west on Route 102, where my first battle was with a Zigzagoon (nicknamed Sundae). Another Wurmple appeared on Route 104 and this time I caught it; I named it AnOminous because the thought of that is funny to me. AnOminous ended up evolving into a Dustox quickly. Petalburg Woods was a breeze, and I caught a Shroomish there; it was named rotollo. I geared up for the battle with Roxanne in Rustboro, and happened upon a Skitty on Route 116 who I named KariKamiya (there is no space because of the character-limit).
The battle with Roxanne made me a little nervous because I always had trouble with the Nosepass. My strategy ended up being to equip a Quick Claw to rotollo, sweep the Geodudes, and then paralyze the Nosepass with Stun Spore and use Leech Seed to whittle it down while keeping my health up; after that I spammed Absorb to get the win. Originally I was going to have KariKamiya use Attract, but she and the Nosepass are females; SIGSEGV was going to come in with Sand Attack if I had trouble which never ended up happening.
I also caught a Whismur in Rusturf Tunnel and named it "Ron Toye", because
@Ron Toye is always on the verge of
explouding. An Ultra Ball that Sundae picked up was used to contain Ron's overwhelming masculinity. Whether or not Ron will join the party remains to be seen. I might replace SIGSEGV with Ron because the former has a Modest Nature (Poochyenas are physical, not special) and almost died while I was trying to catch the latter.
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The time is high because I had the emulator sped up.
So far no one has died so that is great, but I expect that there will be some losses from here on out. This has been an interesting experience so far, and I hope to see it through to the end.