The SSL's Pokemon Emerald Nuzlocke begins!

[Mafx]

On this first Post I'll like to answer a lot of the initial questions about the playthrough, If I miss anything I'll address it on the next post (Or on discord) This project has taken a lot more time to get going that I anticipated but I feel that with all the background work done it should be smooth sailing from now on.

As the title say I'm going to be playing Pokemon Emerald, originally released for the GBA which takes us to Hoenn, the region in which the third Generation of Pokémon takes place, the goal of this series of post is to beat the game, simple enough, right? That's when the Nuzlocke part kicks in, let me introduce you to the concept of it and to the rules we will abide by until the end of the season.

First of all, What is a Nuzlocke?

A Nuzlocke of a Pokemon game is a "hard" mode in which the player restricts itself to an arbitrary set of rules to make the game more difficult, and thus, more exciting. (An FM equivalent would be doing a Pentagon challenge, a Journeyman save, and similars) There are a LOT of variations on these rules but there's a couple that are universally agreed upon to be mandatory for a playthrough to be considered a nuzlocke, those being:

1. Once a Pokemon faints in battle its considered to be "dead" and can't be used again.
   
2. You can only catch the first Pokemon you encounter on every route.
   
3. You must nickname every Pokemon to form an emotional attachment to it.
   
   

Additionally there are a couple of "clauses" that are exceptions to the rules stated above which objective is to make the game more entertaining and provide more variety to the run, there are two that I'm going to play with, those being:

1. Dupes Clause: If the first Pokemon of a route its of the same species or is part of the evolution line of a Pokemon that has been caught previously elsewhere you can run away from the encounter and catch a different Pokemon.
   
2. Shiny Clause: If you encounter a Shiny Pokemon regardless of timing or location you can catch it and use it as it were the first encounter of a route.
   

Now that we have the concept of what a Nuzlocke is lets touch on what the SSL Nuzlocke will be.

This particular Nuzlocke will have a few add-ons that will tie it with the second division of the majors (In which my team, Romana, plays at) some of the MD across the season will have direct impact on the game itself and for that to happen the following rules will also be taken into consideration:

1. Every Pokemon will get assigned to a team based on the order and location on where they were captured.
   
2. There will be Registration rules, a full team of 6 party members needs to have one Pokemon from every team. If a team doesn't have one Pokemon alive or available then I can use a second member from a different SSL Team temporarily, this rule can only be used once per party arrangement, meaning if two teams have all of its members dead or unavailable I can only cover for one of them, making my party have one open unusable slot.
   
3. If a team loses in the MD chosen for the week a wheel will be spun, randomly killing one of the Pokemon associated with the team that lost. (Nothing happens on a tie or on a win)
   Pokemon will be named randomly after players on their assigned team. Inactives at the time of choosing will be skipped. If the available names for a team ran out Actives from their Minors team will be used instead.
   
4.  If a player gets a Red Card and a Pokemon shares name with said player, it will become unusable until the next gym has been cleared.
   

I know that this has been a lot of rules and introductions, but with those finally out of the way (For the most part, there's something else at the end of this post) we can jump into the actual game! This first post focus is mostly towards the rules of the playthrough and the introduction to everything we will do, but the next ones will be more story driven based on what happens both in the SLL and in the Pokemon game itself, with that out of the way, lets begin our journey!

After mashing through the professor speech we find ourselves on the small town of Littleroot. We go to visit our new neighbors and future rival on the only other house in the town (where do people live here, in the lab?)  and after talking with her we find that the professor its currently being attacked by a Zigzagoon, we run towards the bag and before pressing the A equivalent on my keyboard, we open the menu and go to the Trainer card, why? Because I like picking my starters depending on the last number of the Trainer ID, 1-3 its the one on the left, 4-6 the one in the middle, 7-9 the one on the right and 0 for a free choice, we check the ID and...



Torchic joins our team! the first of many, this little guy will get assigned to CF Catalunya, we will get to talk more about which Pokémon get assigned to which team in a moment so bear with me for a bit, in the meantime, Torchic (now Kawasaki) easily deals with the Zigzagoon and convinces the professor to gift us the Torchic, he also lets us know that his daughter, May, its in the next town over and to go check on her to put our starters to the test.

After training Kawasaki a bit and battling with May the professor encourages us to take on the Pokemon League challenge and for that he gives us pokeballs, which gives us access to capture Pokemons of all the nearby routes, thanks to that our party gets full, our very first members are...



As you can see we have been using Kawasaki quite a bit to steamroll through the early game, we will get the other Pokemon to an appropriate level later, but for now Kawasaki is enough to reach Rustboro city, the first location that has a gym in it, not before having an encounter with some man with a blue and black uniform, wonder what he was doing in the woods, but oh well not our problem (yet), we now get to catch our first Pokemon that won't go straight into our party, that being a Taillow in the route east of Rustboro, and since we already have 6 Pokemon with us he will get assigned to CF Catalunya too.


What this means is that this Taillow and our Torchic can't be in the team at the same time because of our registration rules, (Unless someone dies and we can sub one of them in).

Since the first gym is a Rock type one we trained Eilish the Marill and Mobek the Lotad, their water moves becoming a great asset to beat the other trainers in the gym, and before long we were already facing the first gym leader of the game, Roxanne.



After dealing easily with her first two Pokemons Roxanne's Nosepass proves to be a tougher nut to crack, thye cause the first of many deaths, Eilish the Marill, sole representative of Tokyo SC dies after being the target of the move block (Prevents switching out) and receiving a critical rock tomb, dropping its HP to 0



Mobek the Lotad comes in and finishes the job, but this victory taste bittersweet, on the grave of his friends, it evolves shortly after finishing the battle as if to mourn the lost of his comrade.



After beating the first gym we rescue the Pokemon of a sailor that will allow us to go to Dewford town in just a bit (Place where the second gym is) but before that we have to report to the commissioner about what happened at the gym and how this is a tie in from my Career Task #3



We backtrack to meet the sailor which Pokemon we saved and cash the favor for him to give us a ride on his boat to go to Dewford, the commissioner also told us to give his son a letter and to go across the sea to give some plans to an engineering company (weird thing to ask for someone that in game hasn't even begun high school but oh well) we arrive to our first destination.



Upon arriving here we get access to the old rod, that allow us to catch a couple of water type Pokemon in town and alongside the Granite cave on the west of the town make us complete the pool of available Pokemon for this split (more about this at the end of the post) our box and team assignments look like this:



The order of teams was decided by the schedule of the friendlies in the pre-season, since out starter, Torchic the Kawasaki was our first encounter and CF Catalunya were the home team on the first friendly they get that spot, the same is also true for the rest of the teams and positions. We welcome to the team Mizukana the Magicarp (I have high hopes for this one), Rivers the Tentacool (This name was a coincidence I swear) and Lee the Makuhita (The Sumo themed Pokemon getting an Asian name while playing for the Asian team is also a coincidence, the universe is funny like that sometimes). If you look carefully at the table you might have noticed that the sole representative of Romana has evolved into a Beautifly and that's no mere coincidence, since this gym is a Fighting type and Beautifly is a Bug/Flying type, which both resist the fighting type it makes it so any fighting type attack that Eyndhoven receives will only deal 1/4 of the damage it would normally do to any other Pokémon that doesn't have a resistance.

Thanks to that approach or Eyndhoven the Beautifly is able to Solo the gym leaders team, landing its gusts (a flying attack move) to deal super effective damage (2x multiplier) because fighting is weak to flying, Jenkins the Taillow was waiting for its chance to shine, but we didn't need him just yet.



And with that this update ends! the first split has been completed, and now I get to talk about what a split actually is, if you could please consult the table and explanation below:

 

I will now wait for the results of MD1 of the second division of the Majors, do the necessary changes/killings and proceed to play the next section of the game, but that's not all for this post, I want to consult you, the reader, of your opinion. As you might or might not know grinding is a necessity for this kind of playthroughs, however it's also very time consuming and it's not fun at all so something that has become the standard on the nuzlocking community is to use infinite rare candies (Item that raises your level by one) with limitations (You can't surpass the Gym leader highest level Pokemon, if you do, that Pokemon can't participate in battle until you clear the gym) basically introducing a hard level cap for the split. I plan on using them to provide more variety in team building and that there will be weeks in which I could lose 3 Pokemons and I'll need to put together a team which will take a lot of time if I needed to grind it every time that that happens. I'd rather skip that.

But I want to read your opinions about it, both about the use of the rare candies and about this project as a whole, feel free to reach out to me either here or on discord and i'll try to answer back ASAP! 

Finally, here's a photo of all the wheelspins I did to determine the names of every Pokemon catched so far (I will use the same method to determine which Pokemon gets killed come the beginning of the next split)

[norththegreatestshowman]

No Shanghai :'3

[Daleks]

This is peak.

[roquefort]

This is so cool!

[Aenir]

I request that if a Psyduck is to appear, he be assigned to Catalunya, both Omni and Myself are fond of the little headache bird and we would be appreciative! :D

[Squid]

wow this is unreal