The results of my Pokemon SoulSilver Nuzlocke

Yes, this attempt was inspired by JaidenAnimation's badass Nuzlocke video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plSyrHqUh78

So please watch that thing, it is awesome. So awesome I finally went through with my own Nuzlocke, and I decided to use SoulSilver. I don't have the ability to record DS games, sadly, so all I have are written records, but this was the final result of said attempt. Perhaps I'll try another soon in video this time, because this was so much fun.

Pokemon SoulSilver Nuzlocke

It’s time for my first Nuzlocke! Yes, I will fully admit that this was inspired by JaidenAnimation’s fantastic animated video of her own Nuzlocke. It’s something I’ve considered a few times over the years, but never had the energy to try until now! So I’m going to do it with my never-before-played copy of Pokemon SoulSilver. I did play Pokemon Silver on the GameBoy Color, but I never played the remake to any great extent, so this should be an interesting sort of half-blind playthrough in addition to a low-level Nuzlocke.

Here are my rules:
1: Can only catch the first Pokemon encountered on each Route and Dungeon
2: If a Pokemon faints, I delete it permanently.
3: No Duplicates Rule (If the first Pokemon encountered is the same as one I’ve caught previously, it doesn’t count).
4: No purposeful grinding. This is a person rule I’m adding where I cannot go out of my way intentionally to fight more battles solely for experience gain. Going after items in tall grass is fine, fighting trainers for money is fine, fighting anything that happens to get in my way is fine, but walking in circles and going out of my way to hit every trainer for EXP is not. After all, what’s the point of a challenge run if you can powerlevel and lay waste to everything anyway? The sole exception is in the event that I need to level a low-level replacement following a death in the team.

So in the words of Mario, Heeere we go!

Skipping over the blissfully brief opening (Seriously Sword/Shield, chill out with the pointless cutscenes), I choose my first Pokemon, Gummy the Totodile! We’re going to be BFF’s I can already tell.

After a ridiculously long trek through two routes to finally obtain the Pokedex and obtain my first Pokeballs (Seriously WTF Silver? You make me make this long-ass trek with one Pokemon in my party? Really?), it’s finally time to start building my team! On Route 29 Gummy OHKO’s HootHoot with a terribly-timed crit. No, I’m not making that up because it was funny when it happened to Jaiden, that literally happened. I was less than pleased, but we can keep on moving on!

I caught a HootHoot in Route 30, named Owlowicios, which is horrendously misspelled, but the game actually doesn’t allow enough letters for Owlowiscious

First Pokemon on Route 31 is a HootHoot, but because I’m following the No Duplicate Rule, I continue on foraging through soon-to-be-deceased HootHoot bodies until a Bellsprout leaps into my Pokeball. Audrey 2 has joined the team!

Random dude in Violet City wants to trade my Audrey 2 for his Onix. How can I possibly say no? That’s like a 100,000 percent size increase! Welcome to the team Rocky the Foreign Onix who doesn’t speak English. And fuck off Audrey 2 you man-gluttonous bastards. Part of the rationale for this trade is that the traded Rocky will gain EXP far faster and become way stronger than a native Bellsprout. The rule is that I don’t want to GRIND, not that I don’t want to get a lot of EXP without grinding.

To my surprise, I run most of the way up the Sprout Tower taking out trainers, only to run into a wild Gastly on the way back down. I didn’t even realize there were wild Pokemon in this tower! Considering a dungeon a separate route, I name my new companion Vampball and we move on!

Naturally, Owlowicios obliterates the Sprout Tower while showering Rocky and Vampball with his switch-out EXP love. At the top of the tower a random trainer puts Vampball to sleep, and he proceeds to sleep through three more battles and several whacks from the main boss of the tower. The narcoleptic Gastly doesn’t matter too much however, as Owloicios and Rocky made short work of his Bellsprouts and HootHoots… well quick might be an exaggeration, as HootHoot is good at promoting narcolepsy. But they did indeed make eventual work of them!

It’s time to go after the Flying gym! While none of my Pokemon are particularly WEAK to flying, the only one with a strength or resistance to it is Rocky, who is bulky and takes little damage from anything, but… well, without any actual Rock-Type moves, all he can do is Bind and Tackle everything for low damage, turning the first trainer into a lengthy endurance round. Thankfully after this Rocky masters Rock Throw (I guess he throws himself) and proceeds to bury the next trainer.

Now it’s time for Falkner! The master of bird Pokemon! Who is going up against the foreign giant rock snake golem who just mastered the art of throwing rocks! Yeah, it ends about as predictably as you would expect. Surprisingly, his Pidgeotto manages to put up a Hell of a fight with a 3 level advantage and access to the healing move Roost. He managed to stall the fight for a disgustingly long time by Roosting all of the little damage Rocky could do to him. Rocky almost ran out of Rock Throws, but eventually it switched to Tackling until Pidgeotto simply ran out of Roosts, then finished it off with a Bind Rock Throw combo! It took most of my Potions, but in the end, nobody out-turtles the rocksnake!

After Falkner, we head down south and meet our newest companion, Spike the Ekans. With the egg Professor Elm sent us, that gives us six Pokemon total, and I’ve decided that new Pokemon will not be added to the party until one dies, though more will be caught on each route. Oh yeah, we have an egg now. Let’s hope a certain egg-eating snake doesn’t smell it in the bag. I managed to run out of Potions on this route, but thankfully most of the Pokemon are Ekans and Zubat, and Vampball is immune to or strong against everything they do, so it floats us to safety.

Our new Pokemon for the Union Cave, rather than being a mighty towering stone golem, is a Rattata, who miraculously we haven’t caught before now. So welcome to the team, Splinter! The rest of the cave is a breeze. No matter how hard all of the rock Pokemon get, Gummy can just rub ‘em out with ease. The only problem is a trainer with the World’s Worst Slowpoke, who does nothing but Yawn and Growl, which serve no purpose but to make the battle longer. Wonderful.

On Route 33 we encounter a Zubat! Unusual to see them outside, but that’s what we’ve got, so I’ll take it! Welcome to the team, Batman!

This challenge run, so far, has really reinvigorated my energy for the franchise as a whole. I haven’t felt this invested in a Pokemon game in so long, and the no-grinding rule has really sped up the pace of the experience. 3 hours in and I’ve reached the second gym town, but only time will tell whether such a rule is viable for the long run. Still, for now, I’m having a great time!

That’s it… for now. The current team status:

Casualties:
None

Team:
Spike
Species: Ekans
Level: 9

Rocky
Species: Onix
Level: 12

Gummy
Species: Totodile
Level: 12

Vampball
Species: Gastly
Level: 11

Owlowicios
Species: HootHoot
Level: 11

Egg
Species: Egg
Level: Egg

We’re back! Now it’s time to save some Slowpokes from having their tails cut off, which is… weirdly dark for Pokemon. Down in the well it’s mostly Spike who takes on the Team Rocket grunts, surprisingly. The resistance to Poison is pretty efficient against them, though Vampball completely shuts down the leader’s Koffing.

Next up is the second gym! Bugsy is a bug-type gym leader. While type advantage isn’t really on my side aside from Owlowicios, it doesn’t really matter much because most bugs at this early level are going to be so weak and feeble. Plus many rely on poison, and I have three party members resistant against that specifically.

At the end of it all, we come face to face with Bugsy, the bug-type Gym Leader… who leads with a Level 17 Scyther! Holy fuck! It looks at first like Vampball is going to be able to dodge all of its Normal type moves, but then it throws out a U-Turn and obliterates Vampball in one shot! Now Rocky comes out swinging against a Kakuna looking for revenge, confident in its poison resistance! But here’s the thing about Rock VS Poison type. Rock takes almost no damage against Poison attacks, but unlike Poison types, it can still BE poisoned. And guess what the Kakuna’s very first poison sting does? After throwing out Poison Stings like candy with Spike and poisoning nothing, this one attack poisons Rocky.

The good news is, despite being poisoned, Rocky manages to get in a few Hardens while Kakuna is out, so that when Scyther reemerges its attacks do next to no damage. Eating through a few Potions to keep its strength up, Rocky tanks a few more hits and smashes Scyther with Rock Throw. Once Scyther goes down, Spike takes up the charge against the remaining Metapod and we win! Unfortunately, I didn’t buy any Antidotes and Rocky is still poisoned, so it’s a race back to the Pokemon Center before he eats it too! Thankfully he makes it after all… but poor Vampball does not.

He may have already been dead, but his death is still a cause for mourning. He was probably one of my best Pokemon, taken out by a cruel U-Turn of fate. Yes I’m picking favorites, you can’t stop me. We opt not to take either of our current box Pokemon with us, we have those types covered, so whatever we meet next will be our new companion.

I haven’t been past this point in some time, so to my surprise our rival Ginger challenges us to a battle! With only four Pokemon! Ouch! Thankfully, his first Pokemon is Gastly, which gets manhandled by Owlowicios. You may ask “why?” Because there’s a weird quirk in the Normal VS Ghost matchup. They’re each immune to the other’s moves. I always tend to forget this, so while Owlowicios can Peck Gastly to death, there’s nothing he can do to hurt my Pokemon.

Up next is a Level 17 Zubat, who overpowers Spike, but can’t do too much to Rocky, who switches in to take it on with its superior Level and type advantages! Then… then comes Bayleef, who has a straight-up type advantage against half of my team, a huge Level 18 advantage against all of them, a healing move in Synthesis, and Defense up capabilities with Reflect! After fighting to a total stalemate with Owlowicios for a while, it dawns on me that Grass is weak against Poison, so after Growling Bayleef’s Attack down as low as it can go, he tags out to Spike, who sets about trying to Poison the thing. After a few tries, the Poison Sting takes hold, and Bayleef runs out of PP for Synthesis, leading to my absolute, untarnished victory!

While trying to hunt Farfetch’d in Ilex Forest, we run into a Weedle! Hello Bee Where! It’s nice to have a new type to play with!

During the course of the first trainer battle outside of the forest, Gummy gets poisoned by a Sandshrew of all things, and we’re forced to beeline it towards the next Pokemon Center (note to self, buy Antidotes). As we make our mad dash through the area, fighting mostly trainers, we detour into the grass to get around the last trainer and meet a wild Drowzee, our first wild Pokemon here! Me being the genius I am forgets that Poison is weak to Psychic moves, and lets poor Bee Where get mindblown in the route right after we recruited it. He didn’t even get to become a Beedrill and make his name mean something. On the upside, I suppose, welcome Sir Sleepy to the team.

We make it to the Pokemon Center in Goldenrod just in time to save Gummy, and have our sixth addition to the team hatch, Diaper Boy the Togepi! I’m lucky it was a boy because Diaper Girl wouldn’t have fit, and that would be a tragedy indeed… or at least it would matter if a Likitung in the underground didn’t get a Crit and kill him in less than an hour. I was feeling really positive about him too! I’m losing so many Pokemon already! In fact this fucking Likitung manages to Confuse every Pokemon that comes out and nearly kill ‘em all. It’s not even a high level Likitung, it’s Level 12. Screw you too, RNGesus.

Down to 4 Pokemon, we’re moving onto the Normal Type Gym! The gym is fairly awkward, as I don’t have a single Pokemon that’s particularly strong against Normal Types besides Rocky’s resistance to it. Even the normal trainers can give me a fair bit of trouble if I use anyone besides him, but we’re doing this anyway! Onto Whitney, the Normal Plain Boring Gym Leader!

Immediately she sends out a Level 17 Clefairy, which is the level of my strongest Pokemon, but Owlowicios is ready to put it to sleep and Growl its offensive capabilities away. It goes very well, with Owlowicios nearly putting it to sleep and pecking it to death… but then Clefairy busts out the Roost. Yes, Roost. The FLYING TYPE HEALING MOVE. Why does Clefairy have Flying-Type healing? Probably to piss me off, exclusively. In addition, its Cute Charm keeps making Rocky fall in love with it, and love seems to have a 90% chance of immobilization. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s sure what it FEELS like.

Once Clefairy FINALLY goes down, I try to switch in Owlowicios against her Miltank to try to put her to sleep and depower her again… and Owlowicios… is no longer with us, stomped flat by the merciless hoof of Miltank. Rocky wants nothing more than to smash the Milktank in revenge, it HAS the power, what it lacks is the chance. Between Miltank’s Attract and the Flinch effect from Stomp he rarely gets a chance to attack at all. But eventually, he penetrates the wall of defenses and brings Milktank down, in honor of our second Pokemon’s sacrifice.

Now that we’ve lost four Pokemon today, our team is looking Depressingly thin, so Batman and Zubat joins our team, leaving us with one spot for the next Pokemon we find. And it’s been a Hell of a day in the Pokemon world, but we’re going to call it a day there. So far Rocky has been carrying the team on his back, basically, but we’re still eking our war forward. We’ll pick up our Pokemon journey another day.

Casualties:
Vampball the Gastly
Bee Where the Kakuna
Diaper Boy the Togepi
Owlowicios the HootHoot

Team:
Batman
Species: Zubat
Level: 6

Sir Sleepy
Species: Drowzee
Level: 14

Spike
Species: Ekans
Level: 14

Gummy
Species: Totodile
Level: 15

Rocky
Species: Onix
Level: 18

After clearing out the tunnels underneath Goldenrod and finding nothing of interest (seriously?) we continue our journey north. After breaking through the trainers along this route without incident, building up Batman along the way, we reach the Pokeathlon building that I’ve never actually heard of before, so we decide to kill some time with some minigames. It’s a stark reminder of everything that was wrong with the DS, shallow minigames with only kind-of functional controls. Oh well, moving onto the real meat of the adventure again!

Along Route 35 we run into a NidoranF as our next new Pokemon… but Batman of all things Crits with Bite for the kill. This is the FIRST Pokemon Batman has ever managed to kill on her own. So… congratulations, I guess? Also it turns out that Batman is female. Oh well, it’s 2019, she can totally be Batman if she wants to.

Just beyond this in the next route I run into a trainer with a Level 17 Tangela who seems to have a Sleep Powder move with 100% accuracy. Seriously, I actually Googled it to make sure it DOESN’T have 100% accuracy in Gen 4 just to make sure I’m not crazy. I’m not. It’s 75%. This should not be mathematically a thing, and yet here it is. So here we are, with a Tangela who has a 100% accurate Sleep Powder and who is on some serious Growth hormones Absorbing all of my Pokemon one at a time. Even the Pokemon who resist Absorb are having half their life done in a single shot, I dare not switch in Rocky or Gummy, they WILL DIE immediately. To make things worse, I can’t stall anymore, I have run out of Potions.

So in the end, I do the only thing I can do… Spike, I’m sorry, you’ve done some surprisingly good work, but you’re getting sucked dry vampire style for the greater good. In desperation I switch in Rocky hoping against hope that his high level will be able to take out the Tangela, but to no avail. Rocky gets sucked dry in a single turn. Gummy goes in for the Bite, but with identical results. Then Batman falls. Now Sir Sleepy stands, already asleep from the past 15 successful Sleep Powders in a row (which is perhaps the most appropriate way for him to go out). He, too, falls in a single mighty suck.

So that’s how my first Nuzlocke ends. Not in an epic battle of wills against a mighty Gym Leader, but against a random trainer with a Tangela who has supernatural luck (seriously, the entire battle, not a single one of the 15 or so Sleep Powders ever missed). Looking at how everything happened, I’m not 100% sure what I could have done differently short of simply being higher level, which is pretty disappointing. I was having a great time figuring out how to use moves and Pokemon properties I’ve never considered in ways that I’ve never used them before. Oneshotting everything with raw power and type advantages is the basic Pokemon experience, but bringing down way more powerful opponents with scrappy cunning just felt so…

Wait a minute. Owlowicios had “Insomnia” AND has a Flying-type resistance to Absorb... he would have dominated that fight if I hadn’t literally thrown him under Miltank’s Stomping hooves… FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU-----

Comments

[Tania tokustar]

Can’t you headbut tress to get a heracross?