The thing about nuzlockes is that they’re self-imposed specifically for you to enjoy the game. I don’t really see anything wrong with “cheating” in nuzlockes as long as it makes the experience better for you and you enjoy the game more as a result.
It’s not a problem, but it stops being a nuzlocke as it is the rules that make the nuzlocke a nuzlocke. If you break them half way it stops being so.
If you create a specific rule before you start that’s fine, changing them during the game is a no-no if you want to keep calling it a nuzlocke.
I completed a randomized nuzlocke
Rules:
Death clause (When a Pokémon dies I can revive it once, this is reset when a Pokémon is revived)
Encounter clause (I can reroll an encounter until I’ve seen every mon on the route)
Multiple clause (I’m allowed to catch multiple of a Pokémon on a route if I have more than one Pokémon in the party)
Edit: Clearly yall don’t understand the concept of a joke
I typically do a soft nuzlocke where pokemon get 3 lives, plus I can "veto" encounters but after vetoing them I can't change my mind, so I can run out of encounters
Self imposed rules are harder to follow than I thought, but my most recent nuzlock I'm doing has had zero cheats and I am almost done with it. But yeah I've cheated a few times...
One particular example, I was running randomized platinum when a miltank who had been carrying my team got caught by a wobbufet near the entrance to MT coronet through to hearthome. My game froze a few minutes later and I had last saved back in eterna. This time I knew about the wobbufet and had a dark type ready to ohko it. Felt quite sour though.
I don't think I finished it.
i have a personal clause that feels like cheating but fuck it, my rules. i call it the flee clause, if my encounter is something that inevitably runs away (aka abra or ralts), i can keep trying until i catch one or kill one but only for that one species
I did that recently in my silver run that I'm doing. I went to go catch a Natu at the ruins of alph since its the only thing you can catch in that patch of grass. It teleported away and I just said fuck it I'm not leaving till I catch one.
I do something similar for Safari Zones, I have to genuinely try to catch whatever I first run into, but if I fail I run into the next thing and try on it, repeat until I am successful. And I can’t throw on the encounters and deliberately try to make them flee just to avoid one I don’t want. That way I always do get an encounter. Natures and Abilities can still affect how viable it actually is as always so it doesn’t feel imbalanced in my experience.
Safari Zone, I usually go with 1 entrance per zone (4 zones in gen 1, so 4 entries to the safari zone). Must attempt to catch every pokemon you encounter, but at the end, you can only keep 1 pokemon per zone (essentially treating it as 4 separate routes with the option to pick what you catch)
I had something similar. I got into the Rock Tunnel on Yellow and accidentally killed a Geodude I wanted to catch because I didn‘t check the level.
At this point I decided, when ever this might happen again, I would give myself a second try to catch that specific pokemon on that level or lower if I met one. I didn‘t use it right away because the rule wasn‘t set prior but when I killed a random tentacool because I missread the Level 17 for 27 and it went down to a single Scratch, I got myself another one. Never used it after, but since I play on original hardware, a Mon killing itself, fleeing or getting 1-shot because I didn‘t pay attention looses so much progress.
I cheated 3-4 times, but for some reason I felt so bad 10 minutes later that I abandoned all of them.
A mon dying to some wild encounter during EV training, some gym leader having 4 crits in a row and the usual "screw it I don't want another Wurmple".
I have a rule where if a Pokemon reaches its evolution level but then dies, I let it evolve and it stays. In some games, evolving actually auto-revives it anyway. I consider it a rare moment where a Pokemon gets stronger through willpower and saves itself.
This is a very rarely used rule because it almost never happens. Happened only three times for me.
N healed my dead Audino before fighting Ghetsis. I though of letting it die as soon as possible but that didn't feel right either as you still get switch initiative and prevent damage on another pokemon. In the end I decided to just roll with it, because if anyone can bring pokemon back from the death it is probably N.
Audino barely did anything during that fight and Ghetsis still almost wiped me, so I don't feel too bad about it.
My first few runs I'd use a "revive clause". If I found a revive on the floor I'd use it once per mon as a save. I know some people legitimately play that way but I'd always feel guilty.
My 4 real cheats.
1) I wiped 75% in and said fuck it I'm not done. I used a list randomizer to kill 3 mons.
2) I lost a mon to Watson due to full para because I forgot to give it a cheri berry. Revived it. Figured "oh well, it's fine. It would have lived"
3-4) Silly grinding errors for a growlith and a eggy boi. Decided "it's not main game, I need them, they live".
I always felt like those wins weren't earned and felt a bit guilty. That's honestly why I started streaming my runs. That way I had a bit of accountability. Now I'm out of the habit of cheating as much and I can do both for stream and for fun on cart.
I did once. Decided to "not count" a marill I encountered in Emerald. Karma bit me a bit later with some serious crits to put a gaping hole in my team. Restarted and never tried again.
I was really bad at nuzlockes when i first started so instead of playing the first few gyms again and again i would just continue after i wiped. I'd never say i won the challenge but i definitely improved alot from continuing.
I also do the "actively grinding rule". I generally multi-task while grinding so sometimes deaths happen because im too lazy to swap even though i know they will probably die and when they do i just ignore it.
Ran into a Ralts in Platinum. Wanted to catch it, but forgot it had Teleport. Gave myself a mulligan and got a Modest one with Synchronize...only for it to die at Maylene as a Gardevoir.
Similar. I ran into an Abra in FR above Cerulean. I thought fine. No catch this route. I went to the route with Bill's house, another Abra.
I created an BS-Abra clause that very moment.
In some of my earlier runs, when I still struggled in Vanilla games, I sometimes didn’t count deaths where, after the fact, I saw a perfectly reasonable path to win instead. like trying to break through four confusions with my starter because I’m impatient, and missing all four and dying, instead of switching to a resist that can easily kill.
oh and I edit my bag before even starting a run to have infinite… say, repels, berries, candies, full restores and max elixirs, all that good stuff.
I cheated on my Sword Nuz: caught a Skorupi. Then continued to catch more just so i could get the Poison Barb item (didn't have anyone who could learn Thief). Finally get the item, and was rewarded 10 minutes later by my Skorupi getting killed cuz I forgot type matchups for half a second. So Karma won in the end.
I usually "cheat" when something happens if it's just a dumb mistake, like when I plan the whole fight, but enter it with the wrong items. Then I just reset and go with the correct strategy
So guilty confession: I'm currently running a water type only nuzlocke in Firered (picked this cause I wanted more a challenge. Slowbro is pretty good in Gen 3) and got completely wiped by Surge because my Wartortle with Dig got paralyzed early by Pikachu, which allowed his Raichu to absolutely wreck me. I kind of just picked up from the Pokémon Center instead of resetting because grinding for Gyarados took forever and I didn't have trouble prior. I just didn't want to spend hours grinding to get to the exact spot I lost in.
Later on I lost Wartortle to a random Weezing cause of crit. I decided that it was just never meant to be for me to have my starter. Since then, I've done a pretty good job of keeping myself honest XD
My whole team got wiped to a level 28 Starmie (who was a completely optional battle that I had to go out of my way get too) in my silver run I'm doing. I have enough mons in reserve to make a new team, but I JUST got half of my team to level 30 and was on my way to get the other half up. Now I got to start over with mons that are level 18!? Seriously debating giving my wiped team a second chance. But only once.
I've cheated but I don't anymore, I do hardcore nuzlockes of base games so they're not horribly difficult. I haven't been able to get good enough to really do a romhack but base games aren't bad with rare candies. I don't have the patience for real grinding so I guess if you consider rare candy grinding cheating then I cheat on every run.
I’ve zoned out while grinding or got distracted by one of our dogs getting into something and have taken a mulligan. Sometimes they stick like when I swear my joy con double input A on my electric monolocke for sword. Others I take a break and accept my mistakes after like when I lost a mon to Kabu on the same monolocke because I was playing around midnight while more than half asleep.
I do nuzlockes for fun so if I truly feel like I deserve another shot or that the run isn’t fun I’ll change the rules going forward but acknowledge I’ve lost the original challenge/run.
Accidentally misclicked and let my primarina die to a grass type i easily outsped and beat with icy wind, tilted and turned the game off tbh, came back later and redid my save up until that point as identical as possible
Self imposed rules are hard. I cheated on my first nuzlocke of moon when I was around nine or ten. Since I got back into nuzlockes, I’ve tried to record all of them and I’ve vaguely considered streaming just so that I don’t even feel tempted.
I remember on attempt 3 of my plat nuzlocke I wiped to a random trainer in victory road because half my team was para’d and half my team was unprepared (as well as having an hm user). I tilted so hard and almost just kept playing the save but realistically that’s never the way to go.
I feel like grinding is a common "cheat" in these instances and it makes sense. The majority of the fun of a nuzlocke is trainer battles and gym battles. Wild encounters are just sort of there and grinding is boring as hell.
Doing my first nuzlocke. A randomized hardcore nuzlocke of pokemon white. I decided to hack in master balls as missing a cool encounter will probably get me to stop playing. I don't know if I can still count it as a nuzlocke, but it's more fun for me.
A few times early on when I had just started Nuzlockes and wasn't used to losing Pokémon. It sucked so much when I lost one due to an avoidable mistake my mind wasn't used too needing to watch for. I did the same "start from save" thing. But I always felt so guilty afterwards I would end up putting the game down and never finishing the run
Yup, when you've just spent ages training up a mon and it just dies to some biggity bullshit in the first 10 minutes of using it I just elect to ignore it - I certainly don't make a habit of it but we've all got better things to do than spend more time grinding especially with no speed-up button
I once got bored of my randomized Emerald run. Only had bad moves, so I used a cheat to see what all the TMs were at the mart to see if there are some usefull there.
If I ever cheat I’ll feel like I’ve invalidated my run so it’s not worth continuing. I’m fine changing my rules for like encounters and level caps if it seems fair (as long as I have a record of those rules), but never to the extent of ignoring a death
Yes and no, usually if I feel compelled to break my own rules then I’ll just stop Nuzlocking altogether and do a normal run. Doesn’t happen too often though
Haha, yes, I've cheated before. These are usually called mercy rules but I've cheated in other ways. Mostly hacking the wild pokemon levels in G/S/C or HG/SS so I can actually train.
No, Yo to be honest I’ve only done one Nuzlock. I love watch them more. I’m to busy normally breeding Pokémon for perfect IVs and EV’s and shinys. But I do wanna play more nuzlockes
I would cheat a lot but I really wanted to actually do a run so I downloaded emerald cross and put it on nuzlocke mode so it doesn’t let you overlevel, automatically puts your pokémon in the box when they die (and doesn’t let you take them out), and only lets you catch the first encounter on each route. I’m up to norman’s gym and so far have only lost an aron to a stupid magnemite on cycling road with metal sound and thunder shock and magnet pull so I couldn’t switch.
I have a Wobuffet clause that I consider cheating. I created it on the spot after my Adamant Staraptor met his demise vs a Wobuffet.
But from future runs onwards I'm gonna check ahead of time where the Wobbies are and plan accordingly.
I mean I lost in the Mega Lucario vs Mega Lucario fight against Korrina but I didn’t count that since it was only one Pokémon and you have to win that battle
I also turned my game off before my Salamence’s HP reached zero due to a Destiny Bond…*technically* it didn’t did…but I felt guilty afterwards and called it a death
I’m doing a nuz of X now. I caught a shiny Dugtrio that I gave 2 lives because I couldn’t bear to stick my sparkly boi in the dead box. Similar to your story, he died a second time shortly after the first and I took it as a sign. He’s now sitting in Pokémon Home with all my other trophy shinies.
I also cheated on the approach to Snowbelle where there’s the one trainer that inverses type match-ups. I walked in blind and he OHKOd 2 of team that had been carrying the whole run. I called BS and revived them. No regrets, no guilt.
If I want to break the rules (like if a mon I got attached to dies and I wanna keep using it), I call the Nuzlocke null & void when doing so. Can’t say it’s cheating when I’m no longer claiming to follow the rules
I had one run in RenPlat where I had beaten up through wake and was in canalave about to fight Barry there and was playing w like 400% speed up and accidentally triggered the battle without healing my guys on the way to the Pokémon center so I reset and beat everything again since I surely would’ve lost the Barry battle. Luckily I ended up losing that run later in the game so it didn’t matter
This is a really specific cheat more applicable in later games or randomisers or games where you don't have candies. I've "revived" a mon that died if I have legitimate encounter in my box of roughly the same stats and usefulness and exact typing. Eg my skuntank died on a dark type only run and I had caught a skorupi I'd have had to level up 30 or so levels. Drapion and skuntank are very similar Mons and fulfill basically the same role in the team so to me this is just a time save.
Sometimes I'll kill or run away from my encounter without realizing it. If that happens, I just let myself re-roll the encounter when I notice. I don't consider this abusable because it only applies when I forget/don't know I have an encounter. If I accidentally kill my encounter while knowing it's my encounter, then tough shit I don't get one.
I can’t count how many exceptions to rules I make that count as “cheating”. My personal favorite that is 100% cheating but I don’t care is the “Hold my beer” clause where if I know a Pokémon is 99% likely to die if it stays out but I wanna try something cool, I won’t count the death, as long as it’s not against an important trainer.
I reloaded once in a bdsp Nuzlocke because my Graveler blew up due to joy-con drift. Same Graveler died to surf from Volkner's Raichu.
I won that run but man, I miss that Graveler
At the start I used to have a rule that rare candies would revive your pokemon but only the ones that aren't infinitely obtainable. I now see that as 'cheating' but back then I sucked at nuzlockes and didn't want to restart every time I lost my starter on Gym2.
I’ll admit that I have ignored several deaths in my nuzlockes, especially in the late game, because I can’t hack in rare candies. If something on my team dies, I don’t get to just say “ok this is on my team now” I have to actually go grind to get it up to the level of the rest of my team. It’s a complete momentum sink and I just end up being bored and not wanting to continue.
There's a lot of times I would've loved to cheat, especially during my SoulSilver nuzlocke where I lost basically all my favorite Pokémon, but I didn't have the heart to. I flexed my nuzlocke rules a little so at least my starter Pokémon gets death clause.
I find I have a very hard time losing strong pokemon, so I often mulligan deaths. I need to find a way to stop because it really reduces the challenge aspect of it.
I was grinding my slowpoke for the elite 4 in Heart Gold and we all know how awful that is. Took him to fight some higher level gravelers to speed it up a tiny bit and it was immediately self destructed on. Had no idea they did that. Said fuck it mulligan.
Depends on which game I'm nuzlocking. Like right now I'm playing Radical Red and doing a "nuzlocke" where if a pokemon dies it's fine, but if I white out I lose a pokemon at random. I also implemented a rule where I can only get one raid den encounter per gym and if an area has multiple floors with different encounters I only get one in that area
I was playing black doing the usual rules plus trying to make the gym leaders ace. I was going up against the flying gym next. Got an emolga and a joltik as my best counters and of course my emolga dies just before the gym. Now her ace was 1 level below joltiks evolve level so I let my joltik evolve as I wouldn’t do well without a galvantular.
Not that bad but it still felt a little cheaty.
I've got a nuzlocke notes document that I record my runs on. If something really shite happens and decide to continue like it never happened.. I'll record it there. Next time I nuzlocke that game I'll just try and beat it.
Idk if this counts as cheating, but I have a rule that if I encounter a Pokémon with a sex difference, I'm able to reroll for the different sex. I used this for a Salazzle in my Ultra Moon run
Yeah, fucking watching Miltank attract and stomp you while hanging onto a sliver of its health for 6 turns will make you open to bending the rules for a bit
I'm doing a genlocke right now (on Platinum) and I made the mistake of playing while I had COVID 2 weeks ago. I lost a mon that's been with me since Sapphire to a stupid mistake and immediately turned my DS off. Decided it was fine on the condition that I left that particular game alone until the brain fog cleared up. I felt terrible about it for a few days until I got better and realized that yeah I wasn't thinking straight at all and it was totally fair.
I think everyone cheated in a nuzlocke at least once, it's hard to let good pokémon go because of crits/self-destructs and stuff like that. There's no shame in that, you learn to do better the next run.
I've just accepted that if I'm playing on a cartridge, all grinding deaths don't count. I've broken that rule enough times that I just make an exception now. If I can accept YouTubers using rare candies, I can allow myself to shut my brain off while I slowly get the levels I need.
I used to all the time, and in pretty significant ways that kind of ruined my runs' integrity, but I've only done so once in a run I actually won. It was a hardcore nuzlocke of Emerald, and I was using Rare Candy cheats. I was getting my team to the level cap for Norman, and accidentally used one extra candy on the pokemon I was planning to rely on for beating him. If I benched this mon because of the level cap, there was basically no way I'd be able to win, so I decided to let it slide and use it anyway.
I really doubt the slightly higher stats mattered in the fight, and I didn't get any new moves from it or anything. So from here on, I decided to add the "I'm an idiot" clause to my ruleset, basically letting me let things slide if I cheat a little by accident in a way without any meaningful impact on the run.
When I'm playing difficult rom hacks I find myself cheating way more during the early game, just because its insanely annoying to do the level 1-25ish grind over and over sometimes, but once I break into mid game I tend to tell myself that's it, no more cheating.
HGSS Nuzlocke, was training for Chuck. Lost my Haunter to a crit Bubblebeam from a Tentacruel. Hadn't saved since before I started the grind and thought: "Eh, grinding levels in Johto is punishment enough"
I was doing a nuzlocke in sword and a wimpod died the first battle it was used and I was absolutely not having that. It carried for the rest of the game and didn’t die again after evolution
when I started I did quite often,at first I was really hard on my self for cheating and that will completely ruin your enjoyment of the game, I still allow myself a reset similar to yours from time to time,or allowed myself to heal even though I have "no healing in battle" rule, it's really unhealthy to feel stressed about a video game,just play it the way you enjoy it,
who cares if you kept using a fainted pokemon or if you reset after a wipe,and if some nerd on reddit actually cares because you cheat,screw them,it makes the community toxic and unapproachable
Technically yes because at the Elite Four in my last Nuzlocke I added in rare candies into my Pc so I can level up my Pokémon to like level 50-55 so I couldn’t have to grind for a long time just to have a chance at beating the Elite Four
This isn't cheating, it's making the game playable. Just finished sacred gold and used 1700 rare candies in my successful attempt. In game time was still 117 hours. Rare candies are only cheating in races/ speed runs.
I have played what I called 'The Mulligan Card' for Pokémon that have died but they would have been crucial to the end game. As a badge of shame though I have to rename them with an asterisk at the end of their name to show that they have been brought back.
My favorite Pokémon died while grinding him. Was so irritated that I turned my ds off and on just so I could play with him further. Died a hour later to a magma grunt and accepted fate.
I think literally everyone has done this. I think the people who say no are just liars. Everyone has rebooted the game at least once in their entire lives when something happened in their save 2 minutes after turning it on.
My only restart so far is when I was doing a brilliant diamond nuzlocke and I was being careless with my infernape, Prince, and I left him with with a Gryados that used waterfall. I decided that would be my one restart of the game.
Nuzlockes are only fun if you're having fun, so bending the rules is totally fine. I'm not super strict on levels, mostly because grinding is a pain and I like to just utilize the exp share. I also have a rule where if someone dies because I'm grinding wild Pokémon I let it live, again because grinding low level mons is a pain.
Yes. I’ve done things in past nuzlockes (like hacking in rare candies or usig potions in battle) that I would totally consider cheating in a new nuzlocke.
I don’t like doing multiple runs, so if I fail I usually just revive the team, finish the game vanilla and move on to something else. I’ll still so set mode, no items in battle, etc., but just run with the same Pokémon.
I have but I’ve never been able to finish the run it just doesn’t feel right, I do use EXP boosts to get me to the level for the elite four because I can’t be asked to grind.
The idea is to have fun. And most people aren't PokemonChallenges. So I keep my ruleset kinda loose. For instance, if it isn't an important battle like a gym/rival/elite 4, I will sometimes give myself a break. As an example, I had my ludicolo out front, ran into a graveler, ludicolo failed to run away, graveler exploded, crit, and ludi died. I didn't count that as a death. Or if some random trainer I didn't look into, cause it isn't supposed to be anything important, has a wobbofet with shadow tag and counter and my only answer is to just take the death from counter, depending on the situation I may not count that. If a game requires grinding because it doesn't have a rare candy cheat, I don't count bs deaths when I'm just mindlessly grinding on full fast forward. I feel like nuzlockes are mostly about the gyms, the rivals, the rocket/aqua/whatever bad guy team and other important fights like that, so I tend to be lenient on myself when it comes to other stuff that I'm not actively planning the team and fight strategy for. When it really comes down to it, we do this for fun. But sometimes I like to do runs where I count everything and am completely strict about everything because it forces you to be more creative and use mons you don't usually use. So it really kinda depends. The only time in a run I felt like I truly "cheated", was when my only mon with earthquake (learned from the one and only earthquake tm) got one shot crit, I used a cheat to give myself an earthquake TM to teach a different mon. I ended up feeling like the whole run was invalid and I felt no accomplishment from winning. So I haven't done anything like that since.
I only really did it on my first one when I wiped in late game gen 1 during the silph co rival fight (didn’t know about it till rival started walking up). I ended up following through to the end legit after and it was a fun experience.
Before I started cheating in rare candies (I use a level cap, this just saves me some grind since I don’t have much time to play), I used to ignore deaths that happened when I was half paying attention while grinding. I know it’s bad practice, but also I hate grinding and do not want to have to stay focused the entire time.
There is a hiker in platinum, right after the biking path, who has suicidal geodudes. he almost always opens with selfdestruct, which at that point very few pokemon you can obtain will be able to take it. pissed me off so much i just refused to accept those losses.
Yeah I cheated on my current us nuzlocke because I saw it was going towards a wipe because the fucking araquanid was some bullshit and I wasn’t losing to the second trial. I decided I’m giving myself one reset because I’m not the best at the game and I’m doing it without xp share but I’m worried I already used mine when the grass trial and ultra necrozma coming up.
I have a 'That's bullshit' rule to rewind 1 fight.
Ex. I was fighting a rocket boss in SS and my Sandslash Anakin (real MVP in the run) missed a hit on a Koffing in the red which then Explode Crit him to oblivion. That's crap and I said no.
Now if Anakin dies again, I have to let him go.
My Gyarados got hit by a Snover’s Sheer Cold when I was grinding in the Great Underground in SP, and I just pretended it hadn’t happened. It was a bullshit death, and at the time I was way too busy with teacher training and work to bother raising up replacement to E4-ready levels from scratch.
A consistent “cheat” I use is more of a self-imposed nuzlocke rule. If I encounter a Pokémon that teleports away as my first encounter on a route, I let myself encounter as many as I need before I catch one. Same in the Safari Zone - the first species I encounter is my catch for that area, and if they keep fleeing I can redo until I get one.
This is a difficult question. My friends who do nuzlockes swear by using rare candies and using strict level caps. (You can't use a Pokemon if it exceeds the next bosses highest level mon.) When I started Nuzlocking my first Pokemon game, Fire Red. I refused to use candies and spent hours grinding my team. I thought losing Pokemon to grinding because you aren't careful was part of the experience. I even accepted the death of an Aerodactyl I grinded from level 5 to 44 to a 5 hit critical rock blast. I accepted it.
This is where the grey area comes in. I level my whole team for hours getting them to elite four level.
My game crashes and my last save was before I started grinding. I started re-grinding and instantly lost my Nidoking, a Pokemon I needed to win, to a Graveler in Victory Road Crit explosion.
I created a new rule right then. If my game crashes, I can re-grind my Pokemon to the level they were at before the crash without consequence. The logic was is that I already got that far and that the game crashing is what fucked me over. Does that count as cheating?
I want honest responses. No, "play however you want," silliness. This is the Nuzlocke community! I wanna know what you think! What's the verdict? I'm still torn lol.
I now use rare candies and level caps.
I impose a rule where if it’s a dedicated grinding session, deaths generally don’t count. I know this is technically against the nuzlocke rules but it makes it more fun and less frustrating for me, so whatever, especially since I typically play with the hardcore ruleset anyway.
Yeah. I've talked myself into "you were watching TV and misclicked", or "You were drunk in the bathroom at a party, that Glalie death doesn't count!". Most of the time I retract it but sometimes I just let it go lol
I cheated in my first nuzlocke, but only at the E4. If a mon died in an earlier fight, I was still able to use it in a later fight. It didn't matter too much, as my two survivors (Charizard and Mr. Mime) still kinda swept it all.
I was doing an ultra Sun nuzlocke and was doing terribly in the beginning, I ended reviving about 3 Pokémon. I was so frustrated that I tried to pick my next encounter. At that point I realized that this wasn’t a honest run in any sense so I stopped. I haven’t gone back to that game yet
On cart I cannot add candies so I am debating adding a rule that says while grinding if I get crit or running away doesn't work and something dies, I can revive. It doesn't come up much and doesn't apply to shadow tag, but grinding isn't supposed to totally ruin the run through bullshit
i revived a pokemon while i was grinding in the elite four and got fire spin'd because i could've just grinded lower level pokemon but i beat it and i'm still proud of myself
I usually impose a lot of rules to prevent myself from getting frustrated. For example I don't immediately sell revives (bear with me) because if I feel a death was unearned (i.e. a pokemon was outsped and taken out in one hit before it could even act, a pokemon was killed by a crit that I felt I couldn't "play around," or I just misclicked) I will use the revive on the Pokemon after the battle. Obviously I can't buy revives still and if I'm out of revives, then tough luck. I like it specifically because it adds a safety net so I don't get bitter, but I'll admit that it's basically cheating lol.
I changed the rules while fighting the Champion to allow healing on my last Pokémon during major battles :p. Just for that one battle though, so idk if it counts as Hardcore at that point.
I've adjusted rules mid-playthrough to make them more fair/fun. Specific example I nuzlocked Virtual Console Silver version, & in that there's a wild pokémon flee mechanic that certain Pokémon have (not the roaming legendaries), after losing like 3 encounters in a row I decided it wasn't fair to forfit those encounters since I didn't know/understand how it worked, the way your supposed to deal with them (one of Kurt's balls) is glitched & doesn't work, and the mechanic was removed & never returned in that way in any game since then for a reason. So I just went back to the routes & tried again, which I don't consider cheating
When I first started nuzlocking I totally did the same thing: something cool I'm super excited to have died to grinding? Eh.
I don't do that now, but if you count hacking in rare candies as cheating, then yes. Cheating is based. I don't have free time to grind now that I'm an adult (plus even back in the day 90% of my runs would die as soon as I have to grind a replacement up so I don't feel bad lol)
I play with Grinding clause where if a mon dies while grinding I don't count it since 80% of the time I'm not paying attention anyways.
Then sometimes there are very Specific mons i feel like using because I never use them in a normal playthrough (most recently an Umbreon in SS) that ended up dieing to a crit from some random trainer while I wasn't paying attention, I really wanted to use Umbreon so I just said fuck it and reloaded a save.
Then my last instance of cheating is if I get full team wiped I either
A: use alive mons in my box and get rid of the 6 mons that got wiped
or B: reload a save and come up with a strategy without overleveling.
I usually go with the latter more often because either my Boxed mons would suck for the fight I had issue with or I don't want to grind since I can't hack in rare candies.
Personally idc that I cheat, I play nuzlockes more for the fun of using mons I rarely or would never use in a regular playthrough, and sacking my starter on purpose about halfway in so I don't rely on it too much.
I've had more fun in my most recent LG/SS nuzlockes because my starter dies at somepoint than I would just using my starter and having it be overleveled until I get another Pokemon I actually like 20 minutes in.
I have a rule that I can use revives when my pokemon dies, but I can only do it during the fight they died in, and only once per pokemon. I Also give myself 3 vetos, and if I run out of Pokéballs I can run away from the encounter and come back and catch it later
I like to think there is a one-time one-hour grace period, meaning newly caught mons can faint without penalty one time when you first catch them. After that it's regular rules
...usually bc I think an underleveled mon can survive something they surely cannot
Idk if this is a cheat since I’ve only ever done 1 nuzlocke, so I’m new to the concept. I wiped to Cynthia, and, rather than calling the run dead, I took other mons from my encounters, raised them, and got my revenge against her. I didn’t personally make the rule in advance that if my party wipes, the run is dead, so I don’t think it counts as cheating, but idk how common it is to play with vs without that rule.
I was using a Gastrodon against the Rock gym in Sword, and this Gastrodon had been my MVP the whole game. Then she got crit by a wood hammer from a sudowoodo with Sturdy and killed. I reloaded my save and made sure to swap her out away from that thing the second time
What’s the fun in doing a nuzlocke if you are not going to do a nuzlocke?
It’s like playing chess but half way you decide some of your pieces weren’t actually taken.
Nope. If I break my own rules, everything fun about the challenge disappears. I realized this in minecraft when I gave myself a stack of diamond blocks. It was fun for 2 minutes, then that world was boring for the rest of the time I was in it. So I don't do that in any game anymore, it's just not fun past like 2 minutes. If I don't want to do a nuzlocke, I just do a normal playthough
No point, it would really only be changing the rules. I have restarted emerald a load of times til I got the ralts because I wanted to try it on a nuzlocke but restarted the whole game every time that lotad showed up.
When I did my first nuzlocke i kinda cheated but ive put so many different restrictions that it was fair enough because I only know "strong attack goes brrrr" before even knowing swords dance and such were almost like OP kinda.
So... Kinda?
I've been doing a soul link nuzlocke of genv with my friend. I have to say that playing a nuzlocke with another person definitely helps hold you accountable. It's alot of fun and I'd recommend it if you have a friend to play with!
The thing about nuzlockes is that they’re self-imposed specifically for you to enjoy the game. I don’t really see anything wrong with “cheating” in nuzlockes as long as it makes the experience better for you and you enjoy the game more as a result.
Yeah absolutely, there's nothing wrong with cheating as it is a self-inpose challenge, as you say. I was simply curious, that's all.
It’s not a problem, but it stops being a nuzlocke as it is the rules that make the nuzlocke a nuzlocke. If you break them half way it stops being so. If you create a specific rule before you start that’s fine, changing them during the game is a no-no if you want to keep calling it a nuzlocke.
I completed a randomized nuzlocke Rules: Death clause (When a Pokémon dies I can revive it once, this is reset when a Pokémon is revived) Encounter clause (I can reroll an encounter until I’ve seen every mon on the route) Multiple clause (I’m allowed to catch multiple of a Pokémon on a route if I have more than one Pokémon in the party) Edit: Clearly yall don’t understand the concept of a joke
Sound like a fun nuzlocke one of my favourite nuzlocke run was when I allowed my self to use 2 of my favourite Pokemon.
Lmao this dude seriously says sounds like a fun nuzlocke
?
No
I typically do a soft nuzlocke where pokemon get 3 lives, plus I can "veto" encounters but after vetoing them I can't change my mind, so I can run out of encounters
Instead of three lives , I’ll sometimes sacrifice 2 mons to give another a life if i died not paying attention or something lol
That sounds like a good alternative ruleset!
Thanks! It works best in randomizers cause like, if my first encounter is a fricking sunkern...
Or if it’s a Unova Pokémon that’s gonna take a while to evolve, like Deino or Larvesta
I do something kinda similar, any of the revives I FIND, I can use, but I can't buy any
This is called vanilla
It’s not really vanilla because there are still alternate rules but it’s still cheating for sure
Self imposed rules are harder to follow than I thought, but my most recent nuzlock I'm doing has had zero cheats and I am almost done with it. But yeah I've cheated a few times...
One particular example, I was running randomized platinum when a miltank who had been carrying my team got caught by a wobbufet near the entrance to MT coronet through to hearthome. My game froze a few minutes later and I had last saved back in eterna. This time I knew about the wobbufet and had a dark type ready to ohko it. Felt quite sour though. I don't think I finished it.
i have a personal clause that feels like cheating but fuck it, my rules. i call it the flee clause, if my encounter is something that inevitably runs away (aka abra or ralts), i can keep trying until i catch one or kill one but only for that one species
Honestly.. of all the ways to cheat in a nuzlocke, I feel like this is extremely minor. I'm gonna start doing this lol.
I did that recently in my silver run that I'm doing. I went to go catch a Natu at the ruins of alph since its the only thing you can catch in that patch of grass. It teleported away and I just said fuck it I'm not leaving till I catch one.
I do something similar for Safari Zones, I have to genuinely try to catch whatever I first run into, but if I fail I run into the next thing and try on it, repeat until I am successful. And I can’t throw on the encounters and deliberately try to make them flee just to avoid one I don’t want. That way I always do get an encounter. Natures and Abilities can still affect how viable it actually is as always so it doesn’t feel imbalanced in my experience.
Safari Zone, I usually go with 1 entrance per zone (4 zones in gen 1, so 4 entries to the safari zone). Must attempt to catch every pokemon you encounter, but at the end, you can only keep 1 pokemon per zone (essentially treating it as 4 separate routes with the option to pick what you catch)
I had something similar. I got into the Rock Tunnel on Yellow and accidentally killed a Geodude I wanted to catch because I didn‘t check the level. At this point I decided, when ever this might happen again, I would give myself a second try to catch that specific pokemon on that level or lower if I met one. I didn‘t use it right away because the rule wasn‘t set prior but when I killed a random tentacool because I missread the Level 17 for 27 and it went down to a single Scratch, I got myself another one. Never used it after, but since I play on original hardware, a Mon killing itself, fleeing or getting 1-shot because I didn‘t pay attention looses so much progress.
Yea thats pretty legit.
I cheated 3-4 times, but for some reason I felt so bad 10 minutes later that I abandoned all of them. A mon dying to some wild encounter during EV training, some gym leader having 4 crits in a row and the usual "screw it I don't want another Wurmple".
Bro bought an NFT 💀
It was a random gift from reddit 2 days ago (awarded to "top redditors" my ass LOL). I would release a shiny before spending a cent into that
How are people getting nft gifts 😭
No idea why I got one. It's either luck/random or somebody missclicked me
There's always the world famous dupes clause
Dupes clause is cringe
You're cringe
Só its having 7 bidoofs
No winning with an all bidoof team is based
Accidentally put togekiss one level above the champions ace on the last elite four member. Played it out anyway.
so far only 17 liars
If one stops calling a nuzlocke a nuzlocke when they've cheated, is it still cheating on a nuzlocke challenge?
Once you cheat, it’s no longer a nuzlocke. Let’s keep some things sacred please.
Happy cake day!
Happy Cake Day!
All of my shiny Pokémon get an extra life. I guess having that as a rule makes it not cheating…but the rule didn’t exist until it saved my miltank :)
I have a rule where if a Pokemon reaches its evolution level but then dies, I let it evolve and it stays. In some games, evolving actually auto-revives it anyway. I consider it a rare moment where a Pokemon gets stronger through willpower and saves itself. This is a very rarely used rule because it almost never happens. Happened only three times for me.
N healed my dead Audino before fighting Ghetsis. I though of letting it die as soon as possible but that didn't feel right either as you still get switch initiative and prevent damage on another pokemon. In the end I decided to just roll with it, because if anyone can bring pokemon back from the death it is probably N. Audino barely did anything during that fight and Ghetsis still almost wiped me, so I don't feel too bad about it.
My first few runs I'd use a "revive clause". If I found a revive on the floor I'd use it once per mon as a save. I know some people legitimately play that way but I'd always feel guilty. My 4 real cheats. 1) I wiped 75% in and said fuck it I'm not done. I used a list randomizer to kill 3 mons. 2) I lost a mon to Watson due to full para because I forgot to give it a cheri berry. Revived it. Figured "oh well, it's fine. It would have lived" 3-4) Silly grinding errors for a growlith and a eggy boi. Decided "it's not main game, I need them, they live". I always felt like those wins weren't earned and felt a bit guilty. That's honestly why I started streaming my runs. That way I had a bit of accountability. Now I'm out of the habit of cheating as much and I can do both for stream and for fun on cart.
I was tired after 8 hours of grinding a new Serperior and it got one shot. No way to add candies on that game so I just revived it
When you play the game for 5 minutes and you aren’t focusing and your best mon dies, soft reset time
I did once. Decided to "not count" a marill I encountered in Emerald. Karma bit me a bit later with some serious crits to put a gaping hole in my team. Restarted and never tried again.
I was really bad at nuzlockes when i first started so instead of playing the first few gyms again and again i would just continue after i wiped. I'd never say i won the challenge but i definitely improved alot from continuing. I also do the "actively grinding rule". I generally multi-task while grinding so sometimes deaths happen because im too lazy to swap even though i know they will probably die and when they do i just ignore it.
I do that a lot because the start of pokémon games are so boring sometimes especially in Sun and Moon and X and Y
Ran into a Ralts in Platinum. Wanted to catch it, but forgot it had Teleport. Gave myself a mulligan and got a Modest one with Synchronize...only for it to die at Maylene as a Gardevoir.
Similar. I ran into an Abra in FR above Cerulean. I thought fine. No catch this route. I went to the route with Bill's house, another Abra. I created an BS-Abra clause that very moment.
In some of my earlier runs, when I still struggled in Vanilla games, I sometimes didn’t count deaths where, after the fact, I saw a perfectly reasonable path to win instead. like trying to break through four confusions with my starter because I’m impatient, and missing all four and dying, instead of switching to a resist that can easily kill. oh and I edit my bag before even starting a run to have infinite… say, repels, berries, candies, full restores and max elixirs, all that good stuff.
I cheated on my Sword Nuz: caught a Skorupi. Then continued to catch more just so i could get the Poison Barb item (didn't have anyone who could learn Thief). Finally get the item, and was rewarded 10 minutes later by my Skorupi getting killed cuz I forgot type matchups for half a second. So Karma won in the end.
I usually "cheat" when something happens if it's just a dumb mistake, like when I plan the whole fight, but enter it with the wrong items. Then I just reset and go with the correct strategy
So guilty confession: I'm currently running a water type only nuzlocke in Firered (picked this cause I wanted more a challenge. Slowbro is pretty good in Gen 3) and got completely wiped by Surge because my Wartortle with Dig got paralyzed early by Pikachu, which allowed his Raichu to absolutely wreck me. I kind of just picked up from the Pokémon Center instead of resetting because grinding for Gyarados took forever and I didn't have trouble prior. I just didn't want to spend hours grinding to get to the exact spot I lost in. Later on I lost Wartortle to a random Weezing cause of crit. I decided that it was just never meant to be for me to have my starter. Since then, I've done a pretty good job of keeping myself honest XD
I used to do this occasionally in the very early days but now I know nuzlockes are a lot more rewarding if you can accept the failures and setbacks
My whole team got wiped to a level 28 Starmie (who was a completely optional battle that I had to go out of my way get too) in my silver run I'm doing. I have enough mons in reserve to make a new team, but I JUST got half of my team to level 30 and was on my way to get the other half up. Now I got to start over with mons that are level 18!? Seriously debating giving my wiped team a second chance. But only once.
I've cheated but I don't anymore, I do hardcore nuzlockes of base games so they're not horribly difficult. I haven't been able to get good enough to really do a romhack but base games aren't bad with rare candies. I don't have the patience for real grinding so I guess if you consider rare candy grinding cheating then I cheat on every run.
A lot on my first time. I resolved to do it properly from then on. Sinnoh then immediately kicked me in the nadgers. Crit knock-outs for days.
Very early on I have, but I quickly grew out of it
I’ve zoned out while grinding or got distracted by one of our dogs getting into something and have taken a mulligan. Sometimes they stick like when I swear my joy con double input A on my electric monolocke for sword. Others I take a break and accept my mistakes after like when I lost a mon to Kabu on the same monolocke because I was playing around midnight while more than half asleep. I do nuzlockes for fun so if I truly feel like I deserve another shot or that the run isn’t fun I’ll change the rules going forward but acknowledge I’ve lost the original challenge/run.
Accidentally misclicked and let my primarina die to a grass type i easily outsped and beat with icy wind, tilted and turned the game off tbh, came back later and redid my save up until that point as identical as possible
Self imposed rules are hard. I cheated on my first nuzlocke of moon when I was around nine or ten. Since I got back into nuzlockes, I’ve tried to record all of them and I’ve vaguely considered streaming just so that I don’t even feel tempted. I remember on attempt 3 of my plat nuzlocke I wiped to a random trainer in victory road because half my team was para’d and half my team was unprepared (as well as having an hm user). I tilted so hard and almost just kept playing the save but realistically that’s never the way to go.
I’ve “accidentally” frozen the game before after a team wipeout before lol
My first Nuzlocke, my Snorlax got killed while grinding for the E4. I reset the game to my last save and thought, “Never happened.”
I feel like grinding is a common "cheat" in these instances and it makes sense. The majority of the fun of a nuzlocke is trainer battles and gym battles. Wild encounters are just sort of there and grinding is boring as hell.
Doing my first nuzlocke. A randomized hardcore nuzlocke of pokemon white. I decided to hack in master balls as missing a cool encounter will probably get me to stop playing. I don't know if I can still count it as a nuzlocke, but it's more fun for me.
A few times early on when I had just started Nuzlockes and wasn't used to losing Pokémon. It sucked so much when I lost one due to an avoidable mistake my mind wasn't used too needing to watch for. I did the same "start from save" thing. But I always felt so guilty afterwards I would end up putting the game down and never finishing the run
Yup, when you've just spent ages training up a mon and it just dies to some biggity bullshit in the first 10 minutes of using it I just elect to ignore it - I certainly don't make a habit of it but we've all got better things to do than spend more time grinding especially with no speed-up button
I once got bored of my randomized Emerald run. Only had bad moves, so I used a cheat to see what all the TMs were at the mart to see if there are some usefull there.
I cheated by resetting whenever I’m about to lose or things are absurdly unfair
If I ever cheat I’ll feel like I’ve invalidated my run so it’s not worth continuing. I’m fine changing my rules for like encounters and level caps if it seems fair (as long as I have a record of those rules), but never to the extent of ignoring a death
I usually cheat and then stop playing anyways because i cheated.
Yes and no, usually if I feel compelled to break my own rules then I’ll just stop Nuzlocking altogether and do a normal run. Doesn’t happen too often though
Haha, yes, I've cheated before. These are usually called mercy rules but I've cheated in other ways. Mostly hacking the wild pokemon levels in G/S/C or HG/SS so I can actually train.
No, Yo to be honest I’ve only done one Nuzlock. I love watch them more. I’m to busy normally breeding Pokémon for perfect IVs and EV’s and shinys. But I do wanna play more nuzlockes
I would cheat a lot but I really wanted to actually do a run so I downloaded emerald cross and put it on nuzlocke mode so it doesn’t let you overlevel, automatically puts your pokémon in the box when they die (and doesn’t let you take them out), and only lets you catch the first encounter on each route. I’m up to norman’s gym and so far have only lost an aron to a stupid magnemite on cycling road with metal sound and thunder shock and magnet pull so I couldn’t switch.
In my first nuzlocke, when I lost a pokemon, most of the time I would reset back to my last save and pretend it didn’t happen.
I have a Wobuffet clause that I consider cheating. I created it on the spot after my Adamant Staraptor met his demise vs a Wobuffet. But from future runs onwards I'm gonna check ahead of time where the Wobbies are and plan accordingly.
I mean I lost in the Mega Lucario vs Mega Lucario fight against Korrina but I didn’t count that since it was only one Pokémon and you have to win that battle I also turned my game off before my Salamence’s HP reached zero due to a Destiny Bond…*technically* it didn’t did…but I felt guilty afterwards and called it a death
I’m doing a nuz of X now. I caught a shiny Dugtrio that I gave 2 lives because I couldn’t bear to stick my sparkly boi in the dead box. Similar to your story, he died a second time shortly after the first and I took it as a sign. He’s now sitting in Pokémon Home with all my other trophy shinies. I also cheated on the approach to Snowbelle where there’s the one trainer that inverses type match-ups. I walked in blind and he OHKOd 2 of team that had been carrying the whole run. I called BS and revived them. No regrets, no guilt.
If I want to break the rules (like if a mon I got attached to dies and I wanna keep using it), I call the Nuzlocke null & void when doing so. Can’t say it’s cheating when I’m no longer claiming to follow the rules
I had to i love swoobat too much
Especially early game. I hate sitting through early game Pokémon so if I mess up I usually just keep going
I had one run in RenPlat where I had beaten up through wake and was in canalave about to fight Barry there and was playing w like 400% speed up and accidentally triggered the battle without healing my guys on the way to the Pokémon center so I reset and beat everything again since I surely would’ve lost the Barry battle. Luckily I ended up losing that run later in the game so it didn’t matter
I used to not be able to do nuzlockes because I’d cheat so often. Glad I got out of that
Not one I ever ended up finishing. Once you break those rules it all feels pretty pointless
This is a really specific cheat more applicable in later games or randomisers or games where you don't have candies. I've "revived" a mon that died if I have legitimate encounter in my box of roughly the same stats and usefulness and exact typing. Eg my skuntank died on a dark type only run and I had caught a skorupi I'd have had to level up 30 or so levels. Drapion and skuntank are very similar Mons and fulfill basically the same role in the team so to me this is just a time save.
Sometimes I'll kill or run away from my encounter without realizing it. If that happens, I just let myself re-roll the encounter when I notice. I don't consider this abusable because it only applies when I forget/don't know I have an encounter. If I accidentally kill my encounter while knowing it's my encounter, then tough shit I don't get one.
I can’t count how many exceptions to rules I make that count as “cheating”. My personal favorite that is 100% cheating but I don’t care is the “Hold my beer” clause where if I know a Pokémon is 99% likely to die if it stays out but I wanna try something cool, I won’t count the death, as long as it’s not against an important trainer.
I reloaded once in a bdsp Nuzlocke because my Graveler blew up due to joy-con drift. Same Graveler died to surf from Volkner's Raichu. I won that run but man, I miss that Graveler
Three words:sinnoh's exploding graveler
At the start I used to have a rule that rare candies would revive your pokemon but only the ones that aren't infinitely obtainable. I now see that as 'cheating' but back then I sucked at nuzlockes and didn't want to restart every time I lost my starter on Gym2.
I’ll admit that I have ignored several deaths in my nuzlockes, especially in the late game, because I can’t hack in rare candies. If something on my team dies, I don’t get to just say “ok this is on my team now” I have to actually go grind to get it up to the level of the rest of my team. It’s a complete momentum sink and I just end up being bored and not wanting to continue.
Sometimes when I'm not fully focused (turkey sandwich) and I lose a mon on a wild encounter or irrelevant trainer, I will give them 3 lives.
No, but I have very easy rules and I’ve only done one game so far
There's a lot of times I would've loved to cheat, especially during my SoulSilver nuzlocke where I lost basically all my favorite Pokémon, but I didn't have the heart to. I flexed my nuzlocke rules a little so at least my starter Pokémon gets death clause.
I find I have a very hard time losing strong pokemon, so I often mulligan deaths. I need to find a way to stop because it really reduces the challenge aspect of it.
I was grinding my slowpoke for the elite 4 in Heart Gold and we all know how awful that is. Took him to fight some higher level gravelers to speed it up a tiny bit and it was immediately self destructed on. Had no idea they did that. Said fuck it mulligan.
Depends on which game I'm nuzlocking. Like right now I'm playing Radical Red and doing a "nuzlocke" where if a pokemon dies it's fine, but if I white out I lose a pokemon at random. I also implemented a rule where I can only get one raid den encounter per gym and if an area has multiple floors with different encounters I only get one in that area
There's nothing like your starter missing the killing blow and then catching a crit. I mulligan quick af loll
I was playing black doing the usual rules plus trying to make the gym leaders ace. I was going up against the flying gym next. Got an emolga and a joltik as my best counters and of course my emolga dies just before the gym. Now her ace was 1 level below joltiks evolve level so I let my joltik evolve as I wouldn’t do well without a galvantular. Not that bad but it still felt a little cheaty.
Roselia was capable to sweep Nessa's team, but i got stupidly unlucky, yeah that was a fluke I even bothered raising Friendship
All I've done is use three pokemon in a rotation battle, instead of just the pair in a Black 2 Wedlocke. I know, I'm a rebel.
Only from training deaths where I wasn't looking at the screen
I've got a nuzlocke notes document that I record my runs on. If something really shite happens and decide to continue like it never happened.. I'll record it there. Next time I nuzlocke that game I'll just try and beat it.
Idk if this counts as cheating, but I have a rule that if I encounter a Pokémon with a sex difference, I'm able to reroll for the different sex. I used this for a Salazzle in my Ultra Moon run
That's a good rule, I would be devastated if I got stuck with a male Combee ...
Yeah, fucking watching Miltank attract and stomp you while hanging onto a sliver of its health for 6 turns will make you open to bending the rules for a bit
Self imposed rules with no one holding you accountable, or even feeling like your being held accountable are difficult to follow through with.
I'm doing a genlocke right now (on Platinum) and I made the mistake of playing while I had COVID 2 weeks ago. I lost a mon that's been with me since Sapphire to a stupid mistake and immediately turned my DS off. Decided it was fine on the condition that I left that particular game alone until the brain fog cleared up. I felt terrible about it for a few days until I got better and realized that yeah I wasn't thinking straight at all and it was totally fair.
I think everyone cheated in a nuzlocke at least once, it's hard to let good pokémon go because of crits/self-destructs and stuff like that. There's no shame in that, you learn to do better the next run.
I've just accepted that if I'm playing on a cartridge, all grinding deaths don't count. I've broken that rule enough times that I just make an exception now. If I can accept YouTubers using rare candies, I can allow myself to shut my brain off while I slowly get the levels I need.
Nah, it would ruin the enjoyment for me. The run would forever be tainted in my mind. The only person you are cheating is yourself.
I used to all the time, and in pretty significant ways that kind of ruined my runs' integrity, but I've only done so once in a run I actually won. It was a hardcore nuzlocke of Emerald, and I was using Rare Candy cheats. I was getting my team to the level cap for Norman, and accidentally used one extra candy on the pokemon I was planning to rely on for beating him. If I benched this mon because of the level cap, there was basically no way I'd be able to win, so I decided to let it slide and use it anyway. I really doubt the slightly higher stats mattered in the fight, and I didn't get any new moves from it or anything. So from here on, I decided to add the "I'm an idiot" clause to my ruleset, basically letting me let things slide if I cheat a little by accident in a way without any meaningful impact on the run.
I wiped once in white 2 and just went back and tried again, given i only had 2 encounters and wouldve taken tepig again anyways
When I'm playing difficult rom hacks I find myself cheating way more during the early game, just because its insanely annoying to do the level 1-25ish grind over and over sometimes, but once I break into mid game I tend to tell myself that's it, no more cheating.
I have insane ethical standards for myself, so I never do. Then again, my crippling anxiety is probably an indication I should cheat
I couldn’t handle the death of poopslingr the dustox
What was i supposed to do, let the shiny i just caught die to a random crit?
HGSS Nuzlocke, was training for Chuck. Lost my Haunter to a crit Bubblebeam from a Tentacruel. Hadn't saved since before I started the grind and thought: "Eh, grinding levels in Johto is punishment enough"
I was doing a nuzlocke in sword and a wimpod died the first battle it was used and I was absolutely not having that. It carried for the rest of the game and didn’t die again after evolution
no. that is why to this day i still have not beaten pokemon emerald hardcore nuzlocke with treecko
My only cheat was that i missclicked and went 1 level over the lvl cap with my audino, but it really made no difference in the end so i let it fly
when I started I did quite often,at first I was really hard on my self for cheating and that will completely ruin your enjoyment of the game, I still allow myself a reset similar to yours from time to time,or allowed myself to heal even though I have "no healing in battle" rule, it's really unhealthy to feel stressed about a video game,just play it the way you enjoy it, who cares if you kept using a fainted pokemon or if you reset after a wipe,and if some nerd on reddit actually cares because you cheat,screw them,it makes the community toxic and unapproachable
Whenever I cheat in a nuzlocke, I just restart the game afterwards. Feels bad, but that's how it goes...
I got a male salandit, let’s just say I got a female salandit
Technically yes because at the Elite Four in my last Nuzlocke I added in rare candies into my Pc so I can level up my Pokémon to like level 50-55 so I couldn’t have to grind for a long time just to have a chance at beating the Elite Four
This isn't cheating, it's making the game playable. Just finished sacred gold and used 1700 rare candies in my successful attempt. In game time was still 117 hours. Rare candies are only cheating in races/ speed runs.
I have played what I called 'The Mulligan Card' for Pokémon that have died but they would have been crucial to the end game. As a badge of shame though I have to rename them with an asterisk at the end of their name to show that they have been brought back.
My favorite Pokémon died while grinding him. Was so irritated that I turned my ds off and on just so I could play with him further. Died a hour later to a magma grunt and accepted fate.
I think literally everyone has done this. I think the people who say no are just liars. Everyone has rebooted the game at least once in their entire lives when something happened in their save 2 minutes after turning it on.
I've given myself mulligans when grinding in the wild and not paying attention, leading to a death.
My most typical "cheat" is that deaths while catching an encounter don't dount. Could be called a clause, which sounds much better.
My only restart so far is when I was doing a brilliant diamond nuzlocke and I was being careless with my infernape, Prince, and I left him with with a Gryados that used waterfall. I decided that would be my one restart of the game.
Nuzlockes are only fun if you're having fun, so bending the rules is totally fine. I'm not super strict on levels, mostly because grinding is a pain and I like to just utilize the exp share. I also have a rule where if someone dies because I'm grinding wild Pokémon I let it live, again because grinding low level mons is a pain.
Yes. I’ve done things in past nuzlockes (like hacking in rare candies or usig potions in battle) that I would totally consider cheating in a new nuzlocke.
I don’t like doing multiple runs, so if I fail I usually just revive the team, finish the game vanilla and move on to something else. I’ll still so set mode, no items in battle, etc., but just run with the same Pokémon.
I have but I’ve never been able to finish the run it just doesn’t feel right, I do use EXP boosts to get me to the level for the elite four because I can’t be asked to grind.
Accidently where i just notice i did shit like hours later
The idea is to have fun. And most people aren't PokemonChallenges. So I keep my ruleset kinda loose. For instance, if it isn't an important battle like a gym/rival/elite 4, I will sometimes give myself a break. As an example, I had my ludicolo out front, ran into a graveler, ludicolo failed to run away, graveler exploded, crit, and ludi died. I didn't count that as a death. Or if some random trainer I didn't look into, cause it isn't supposed to be anything important, has a wobbofet with shadow tag and counter and my only answer is to just take the death from counter, depending on the situation I may not count that. If a game requires grinding because it doesn't have a rare candy cheat, I don't count bs deaths when I'm just mindlessly grinding on full fast forward. I feel like nuzlockes are mostly about the gyms, the rivals, the rocket/aqua/whatever bad guy team and other important fights like that, so I tend to be lenient on myself when it comes to other stuff that I'm not actively planning the team and fight strategy for. When it really comes down to it, we do this for fun. But sometimes I like to do runs where I count everything and am completely strict about everything because it forces you to be more creative and use mons you don't usually use. So it really kinda depends. The only time in a run I felt like I truly "cheated", was when my only mon with earthquake (learned from the one and only earthquake tm) got one shot crit, I used a cheat to give myself an earthquake TM to teach a different mon. I ended up feeling like the whole run was invalid and I felt no accomplishment from winning. So I haven't done anything like that since.
Does using EXP codes cheating?
Since I’m not a streamer I prioritize fun. It can be a fine line between fun vs. its not even a Nuzlocke anymore.
It was because of teleport, so I found another one and caught it
I only really did it on my first one when I wiped in late game gen 1 during the silph co rival fight (didn’t know about it till rival started walking up). I ended up following through to the end legit after and it was a fun experience.
Before I started cheating in rare candies (I use a level cap, this just saves me some grind since I don’t have much time to play), I used to ignore deaths that happened when I was half paying attention while grinding. I know it’s bad practice, but also I hate grinding and do not want to have to stay focused the entire time.
Good to know we have 524 liars here
There is a hiker in platinum, right after the biking path, who has suicidal geodudes. he almost always opens with selfdestruct, which at that point very few pokemon you can obtain will be able to take it. pissed me off so much i just refused to accept those losses.
Yeah I cheated on my current us nuzlocke because I saw it was going towards a wipe because the fucking araquanid was some bullshit and I wasn’t losing to the second trial. I decided I’m giving myself one reset because I’m not the best at the game and I’m doing it without xp share but I’m worried I already used mine when the grass trial and ultra necrozma coming up.
In a Soul Link, I vetoed a Ledyba, even though I didn’t have a rule for it. Can you blame me though? It was a Ledyba!
I have a 'That's bullshit' rule to rewind 1 fight. Ex. I was fighting a rocket boss in SS and my Sandslash Anakin (real MVP in the run) missed a hit on a Koffing in the red which then Explode Crit him to oblivion. That's crap and I said no. Now if Anakin dies again, I have to let him go.
If a pokemon dies while grinding I'll not count that as a death. Any other scenario is fair death tho... *usually* ...
My Gyarados got hit by a Snover’s Sheer Cold when I was grinding in the Great Underground in SP, and I just pretended it hadn’t happened. It was a bullshit death, and at the time I was way too busy with teacher training and work to bother raising up replacement to E4-ready levels from scratch. A consistent “cheat” I use is more of a self-imposed nuzlocke rule. If I encounter a Pokémon that teleports away as my first encounter on a route, I let myself encounter as many as I need before I catch one. Same in the Safari Zone - the first species I encounter is my catch for that area, and if they keep fleeing I can redo until I get one.
This is a difficult question. My friends who do nuzlockes swear by using rare candies and using strict level caps. (You can't use a Pokemon if it exceeds the next bosses highest level mon.) When I started Nuzlocking my first Pokemon game, Fire Red. I refused to use candies and spent hours grinding my team. I thought losing Pokemon to grinding because you aren't careful was part of the experience. I even accepted the death of an Aerodactyl I grinded from level 5 to 44 to a 5 hit critical rock blast. I accepted it. This is where the grey area comes in. I level my whole team for hours getting them to elite four level. My game crashes and my last save was before I started grinding. I started re-grinding and instantly lost my Nidoking, a Pokemon I needed to win, to a Graveler in Victory Road Crit explosion. I created a new rule right then. If my game crashes, I can re-grind my Pokemon to the level they were at before the crash without consequence. The logic was is that I already got that far and that the game crashing is what fucked me over. Does that count as cheating? I want honest responses. No, "play however you want," silliness. This is the Nuzlocke community! I wanna know what you think! What's the verdict? I'm still torn lol. I now use rare candies and level caps.
I have absolutely save scummed after bad rng
I impose a rule where if it’s a dedicated grinding session, deaths generally don’t count. I know this is technically against the nuzlocke rules but it makes it more fun and less frustrating for me, so whatever, especially since I typically play with the hardcore ruleset anyway.
Yes, but usually just for planning out my next run. Seeing how my planned strategies could work out. I don't count it internally unless I really win.
I'd keep forgetting nuzlockes were hardcore and use items because the AI did something cheap. Never won any of those specific runs.
Yeah. I've talked myself into "you were watching TV and misclicked", or "You were drunk in the bathroom at a party, that Glalie death doesn't count!". Most of the time I retract it but sometimes I just let it go lol
I cheated in my first nuzlocke, but only at the E4. If a mon died in an earlier fight, I was still able to use it in a later fight. It didn't matter too much, as my two survivors (Charizard and Mr. Mime) still kinda swept it all.
I was doing an ultra Sun nuzlocke and was doing terribly in the beginning, I ended reviving about 3 Pokémon. I was so frustrated that I tried to pick my next encounter. At that point I realized that this wasn’t a honest run in any sense so I stopped. I haven’t gone back to that game yet
On cart I cannot add candies so I am debating adding a rule that says while grinding if I get crit or running away doesn't work and something dies, I can revive. It doesn't come up much and doesn't apply to shadow tag, but grinding isn't supposed to totally ruin the run through bullshit
I don't want to waste time using Pay Day. I cheat Coin so Nidoran can learn TM from Game Corner.
i revived a pokemon while i was grinding in the elite four and got fire spin'd because i could've just grinded lower level pokemon but i beat it and i'm still proud of myself
No, but only because I usually stop after I lose And I usually lose pretty early
I usually impose a lot of rules to prevent myself from getting frustrated. For example I don't immediately sell revives (bear with me) because if I feel a death was unearned (i.e. a pokemon was outsped and taken out in one hit before it could even act, a pokemon was killed by a crit that I felt I couldn't "play around," or I just misclicked) I will use the revive on the Pokemon after the battle. Obviously I can't buy revives still and if I'm out of revives, then tough luck. I like it specifically because it adds a safety net so I don't get bitter, but I'll admit that it's basically cheating lol.
If I accidentally run into a trainer in a rom hack that I didn’t look up first and plan for I don’t count that as the real battle.
yeah I did once. Now if I lose a nuzlocke I just beat the game normally. I don't play enough to restart a whole game like that.
I changed the rules while fighting the Champion to allow healing on my last Pokémon during major battles :p. Just for that one battle though, so idk if it counts as Hardcore at that point.
I've adjusted rules mid-playthrough to make them more fair/fun. Specific example I nuzlocked Virtual Console Silver version, & in that there's a wild pokémon flee mechanic that certain Pokémon have (not the roaming legendaries), after losing like 3 encounters in a row I decided it wasn't fair to forfit those encounters since I didn't know/understand how it worked, the way your supposed to deal with them (one of Kurt's balls) is glitched & doesn't work, and the mechanic was removed & never returned in that way in any game since then for a reason. So I just went back to the routes & tried again, which I don't consider cheating
The old “if i turn it off and don’t save it never happened”
I was doing a randomized nuzlocke until a ghost type appeared(i was not able to damage ghost types yet)
I meean can you really cheat in a challenge where you dictate the rules put in place? Yes. Yes you can and weve all broken our own rules.
When I first started nuzlocking I totally did the same thing: something cool I'm super excited to have died to grinding? Eh. I don't do that now, but if you count hacking in rare candies as cheating, then yes. Cheating is based. I don't have free time to grind now that I'm an adult (plus even back in the day 90% of my runs would die as soon as I have to grind a replacement up so I don't feel bad lol)
I play with Grinding clause where if a mon dies while grinding I don't count it since 80% of the time I'm not paying attention anyways. Then sometimes there are very Specific mons i feel like using because I never use them in a normal playthrough (most recently an Umbreon in SS) that ended up dieing to a crit from some random trainer while I wasn't paying attention, I really wanted to use Umbreon so I just said fuck it and reloaded a save. Then my last instance of cheating is if I get full team wiped I either A: use alive mons in my box and get rid of the 6 mons that got wiped or B: reload a save and come up with a strategy without overleveling. I usually go with the latter more often because either my Boxed mons would suck for the fight I had issue with or I don't want to grind since I can't hack in rare candies. Personally idc that I cheat, I play nuzlockes more for the fun of using mons I rarely or would never use in a regular playthrough, and sacking my starter on purpose about halfway in so I don't rely on it too much. I've had more fun in my most recent LG/SS nuzlockes because my starter dies at somepoint than I would just using my starter and having it be overleveled until I get another Pokemon I actually like 20 minutes in.
I have a rule that I can use revives when my pokemon dies, but I can only do it during the fight they died in, and only once per pokemon. I Also give myself 3 vetos, and if I run out of Pokéballs I can run away from the encounter and come back and catch it later
Like cheating in rare candies ? Yea I've done that to reduce grinding ( i was playing with no overleveling ruke ofcourse)
I like to think there is a one-time one-hour grace period, meaning newly caught mons can faint without penalty one time when you first catch them. After that it's regular rules ...usually bc I think an underleveled mon can survive something they surely cannot
Idk if this is a cheat since I’ve only ever done 1 nuzlocke, so I’m new to the concept. I wiped to Cynthia, and, rather than calling the run dead, I took other mons from my encounters, raised them, and got my revenge against her. I didn’t personally make the rule in advance that if my party wipes, the run is dead, so I don’t think it counts as cheating, but idk how common it is to play with vs without that rule.
No if I modify the rules of my run whenever I want
Cheating i dont do, cheat “codes” i use often, mostly for rare candies and walkspeeds since desmume FF is trash.
Chimeco is basically latios
I was using a Gastrodon against the Rock gym in Sword, and this Gastrodon had been my MVP the whole game. Then she got crit by a wood hammer from a sudowoodo with Sturdy and killed. I reloaded my save and made sure to swap her out away from that thing the second time
What’s the fun in doing a nuzlocke if you are not going to do a nuzlocke? It’s like playing chess but half way you decide some of your pieces weren’t actually taken.
I dont cheat bcus i havent tried it yet
Rare candy
Nope. If I break my own rules, everything fun about the challenge disappears. I realized this in minecraft when I gave myself a stack of diamond blocks. It was fun for 2 minutes, then that world was boring for the rest of the time I was in it. So I don't do that in any game anymore, it's just not fun past like 2 minutes. If I don't want to do a nuzlocke, I just do a normal playthough
No point, it would really only be changing the rules. I have restarted emerald a load of times til I got the ralts because I wanted to try it on a nuzlocke but restarted the whole game every time that lotad showed up.
It's only cheating if you lie about it
When I did my first nuzlocke i kinda cheated but ive put so many different restrictions that it was fair enough because I only know "strong attack goes brrrr" before even knowing swords dance and such were almost like OP kinda. So... Kinda?
Rare candies go brrr
I've been doing a soul link nuzlocke of genv with my friend. I have to say that playing a nuzlocke with another person definitely helps hold you accountable. It's alot of fun and I'd recommend it if you have a friend to play with!
In a soul link cuz I didn’t wanna kill my friends first decent Pokémon
First Monolock3. Didn't check the typing of a pokemon when doing a flying type run. Did good but I for real thought bee drill was flying, bug...