Everyone Who Does Pokemon Challenges Cheats

[@quaggotoak]

a wise man once said, “grinding is cringe, cheating is based”

[@Micchi-]

Chat is this real?

[@hexi9595]

Alpharad Quote lmao

[@majintv24]

I lkve the current exp share it saves so much time. The ability to turn it off would be good but overall not having to battle everyone and saving time is nice

[@yasminchan7425]

​@@Micchi-alpharad, wise words

[@creativelybankrupt23]

“cheating is cringe, grinding is based” - verlisify, probably

[@steenie986]

It used to be called "Off Screen Grinding".

[@APootisBirb]

"I did a bit of building offscreen"

[@lordgrub12345]

"No bro trust me, I didn't use cheats to make my 24 story Skyscraper made exclusively with diamond blocks. I just grinded offline"

[@neBen_]

"I did a little mining off camera"

[@ethanrutledge166]

Thats raw effort sir. You DESERVE the respect of all gamers. are you the legend 27?!

[@colorsabsract7107]

@@neBen_damn bro how come I’m jus realizing I was an ignorant n gullible kid. I fucking believed they actually legit mined off screen 😭 💀

[@lforc3829]

"Everyone who does pokemon challenges" Damn Jan gets around 🥵

[@Kozmic_CL]

But they all cheat on him, sadly

[@SoftwareLearningify]

@@Kozmic_CLPFFFFF LMAO

[@hansdykstra3869]

What did he say?

[@kingkit4856]

@@Kozmic_CLbut he always has criticism for them

[@MajicLaMa]

I do miss the random side characters and wild Pokemon that derail a streamers progress to the gym though

[@joshuarobinson6011]

Radical red tends to have that happen

[@lemonscentedgames3641]

The worst is the wobbuffet trainers man. Fuck them.

[@lemonscentedgames3641]

The worst is the wobbuffet trainers

[@NotSoChillBozo]

​@@joshuarobinson6011 Don't firget the fuschia city trainer with Mega Laptas.

[@misalignedmisanthropist]

Run & Bun, Radical Red be like: 👀

[@stephenveerasammy3074]

I totally appreciate the rare candy cheat

[@One-piece-is-real1552]

Ya

[@MisterHeroman]

I like how it exposes all the shitters who use it.

[@MattressGuy]

@@MisterHeroman all it does is save time, chill out dude

[@enzoforgets9456]

​@@MisterHeromandont manage other peoples time Especially when you behave like a shitter, yet call others

[@edge3646]

​@@MisterHeromanbruh

[@theboi5584]

Possibly the best thing to ever originate from the nuzlocking community. Grinding sucks, and I’m glad it’s become more widely accepted to just use rare candies as long as you don’t over level.

[@mariorivera7969]

i don't overlevel and i wait until i beat all the gym trainers up to the leader to level up to that level cap. That way i don't just cheese fights all the way through and need to make strategic choices and still a bit of grinding. No full team grind anymore though, so, whoo.

[@bovinleephann6210]

As a bonus, it prevents EV training, so it sorta balances out anyway

[@Sh1ranu1]

@@bovinleephann6210you can EV train in the late game when the Pokémon only give like 15xp/10000xp if you so wish

[@mariorivera7969]

@@bovinleephann6210 you mean the rom hacks i'm assuming? i try to ev grind a bit if i think i need it for the e4

[@De1tAStreaM]

​@@mariorivera7969He means that when you use rare candy you don't gain EVs when leveling up. So in essence you do level up quickly but you are not going to have the random EV boost you get from grinding against wild Pokemon. Plus realistically in the hardcore rom hacks where we do even do EV training is at the late game. At that point the boss battles all have perfect IV and EV trained mons.

[@Inaktha]

I'm so glad rare candies became normal use. Grinding was the #1 things preventing me from doing these.

[@Dkownzall]

Can respect this man’s push for rare candy normalization throughout his last couple years. We want content and they want ease of frustration, it’s a win win.

[@thomasj5862]

It's 100% a decision based on content, not frustration. If people engaged more with grinding then they'd make rules to extend the grinding as much as possible so they could make more content. That's why they don't cheat to take out things like critical hits or miss chances and in fact make challenges based on new arbitrary rules that make the games more frustrating. That's the sort of content people engage with.

[@DarkLordsServant]

@@thomasj5862 I mean is it frustrating to edit through 8 hours worth of grinding.

[@dchev]

@@thomasj5862I don’t see how taking out critical hits is at all similar to taking out experience grinding. One thing can be played around with safer play, the other thing takes 0 skill and tons of time.

[@iceblockyt212]

I love as he showed the nuzlockers are adding more and more rules. He just showed his challenges getting harder and harder.

[@GreyPunkWolf]

Not really. It also added way more loopholes that people can exploit. Idgaf about shiny clause if you spent 2 hours trying to find one because you were out of viable encounters, reset the damn run. Or don't call it a nuzlocke, idk.

[@thundergamespt99]

​@@GreyPunkWolfwell, a lot of serious nuzlockers like to ignore the shiny clause entirely because of that, or they can catch the pokemon but he cant be used, thats common too.

[@Horystar]

​@@thundergamespt99agreed. Shiny clause is only used to allow a catch, not use the Pokémon itself, unless you're in a dire situation, on the sole condition that the shiny was not hunted.

[@thundergamespt99]

@@Horystar i, funnily enough, have used a shiny in a run before. He happened to be a shiny psyduck in Platinum, and he was my first encounter. He carried the run. It was also my first run. But yeah, i think that shiny clause should never be considered as a way to get encounters. If it was, it would absolutely break Radical Red nuzlockes lol

[@Horystar]

@@thundergamespt99 I agree with you. Shiny clause isn't a get out of jail for free card

[@Chelarino]

level caps but infinite levels in exchange are probably THE rule that made nuzlockes appealing to me after ignoring them for years. i love myelf a clean-cut and fair challenge, and this rule really just makes it clear what is important and what needs to be focussed on.

[@profchaos91]

but using candies usually trivializes non-boss fights, since they usually are a full 5-10 levels under the thext level cap. I think they should introduce a level cap pre-boss, and one for the boss itself

[@GreyPunkWolf]

Kinda agree with this one. If anything, it's the only additional rule I find acceptable in a nuzlocke. It's just too easy to grind and overlevel your starter asap so you roll over the whole challenge.

[@Digital_Butterfly]

​@@profchaos91That's largely just because real Pokemon games aren't designed with challenge runners in mind. A lot of modern ROM hacks with difficulty in mind do have route trainers that are a few levels below the next gym, but the team layout and strats more than pull weight.

[@jasperjones8401]

@@profchaos91most common way of dealing with this is that you cant use rare candies until every trainer before the next gym leader/boss is beaten

[@DegenWeb]

@@profchaos91non boss fights are never a threat anyway, and due to skipping the grind you never get the ev’s for your pokemon.

[@dplays7978]

This was the post that made Verlisify cry

[@12jswilson]

Verlisify has a hard-on for the most tedious, skill-less parts of Pokemon (breeding, grinding, soft resetting). This is to make up for the fact that he has no skill of his own and to make himself feel better because anyone better than himself is a "cheater."

[@lockl00p27]

@@12jswilsonSure, but this? This is absolutely cheating. I mean you’re litterally cheating items in.

[@xuanathan]

@@lockl00p27 Whats the problem with free exp if you aren't even allowed to outlevel the gym leader? If anything its actually harder now that they're cheating than it was becore

[@lockl00p27]

@@xuanathan Now you can’t lose your run to grinding or other trainers as the only ones you’re actually fighting at a reasonable level are the gym leaders.

[@xuanathan]

@@lockl00p27 losing mons to grinding is a sign you need a coffee, not need to improve, its not any skill issue and skills all they care about. As for trainers their mons are only at most like a few below a leader's ace, and assuming you were playing a "Classic" Nuzlocke you could just outlevel those guys so easily since as you point out they're lower than the Leader's

[@dorkenspache8353]

A certain furry is probably pissing himself in anger right now

[@creativelybankrupt23]

That certain furry made a whole video crying about Jan using infinite rare candies and accusing him of cheating when Jan himself literally admitted that in this short lmao he makes everything way more deep that it has to be

[@dorkenspache8353]

@@creativelybankrupt23 It is because that guy wants to start drama since its the only thing keeping his name relevant. So he has to create manufactured outrage against someone without actually feeling it. And it really does suck because there is a huge issue with genning and cheating, but because he is such a contrarian most of the time, it makes people go to thinking genning and cheating isn't a big deal or doesn't actually provide an advantage. And it is funny how he doesn't see how he is contributing to people thinking that

[@Omeggia]

I discovered that guys channel the other day and he really is the definition of a has-been. Used to be fairly respected and have a decent viewer base 5 years ago and has fallen into irrelevancy. He's now resorted to flinging poop at people who don't play a children's game the way he wants them to. Some people will choose the strangest hills to die on.

[@dorkenspache8353]

@@Omeggia He wasn't respected even 5 years ago. He has been this way for 10 years now and refuses to let shit from 2016 go (Wolfey's Dream Ball Raichu)

[@observerf-03p.d39]

Who's this furry you're referring to?

[@Houtblokje]

My friend wanted to do a nuzlocke but he said he didn't enjoy grinding. I just told him to take the rare candy pill. He is enjoying his nuzlocke way more after he started using rare candies.

[@Solar_Symphony]

Honestly, I need to do the same. Every nuzlocke I've ever tried starting has hardly gotten anywhere because I just can't dedicate to the grind.

[@EPE77U]

​@@Solar_SymphonyI usually ended up being low level for gyms and losing it and just thought nuzlocke might not be for me

[@Inaktha]

Mind telling me how they accomplished this? I've wanted to do Nuzlocke for a long time and this has made it possible for me (time reasons)

[@dekunere]

​@@InakthaMost commonly cheat codes or modified version of games are used to either start with the max amount of rare candies in bag or make them available in shops for free

[@Raj-vy2yn]

@@Inaktha This is 7 months old so I hope you found out by now, but I'll post for anyone scrolling through comments. There's two main ways to do so, assuming your not playing a Rom Hack which either has it done by default or it may not work. Action Replay Cheats will give max Rare Candy and medicine so your not running to the Pokemon Centre, assuming your including a rule on Zero items in battle that aren't Pokeballs. Other way I favour is using PKHex to add RC, Full Restore, Max Elixirs, as I can specify what I want, which makes it easier to tell what I pick up in the wild so that I can sell it to fuel purchasing all the Pokeballs, so I can be safer catching mons, especially since I usually catch Mons at full HP if I don't have a Set Damage move or a status condition. PKHex also shows me my Pokemon's IV's which allow me to make better plans, and has permanently benched some mons as soon as I got a substitute. Also allows a self made rule, which is that when of my mons dies, I can give their EV's to another mon of my choice, which lets them start running way better. If you want it just google it, and add your save file.

[@TheJH1015]

it's also fun because using Rare Candies also causes another level of difficulty, because by using them to level up instead of grinding, you don't accumulate as many EVS (if at all) that make your mons a bit bulkier, hit a bit harder, or be a bit faster (obv unless there's an EV train NPC in the game you can just use to pump EVs into your mons)

[@GreyPunkWolf]

Not if you nuzlocke the first 3 gens. Badge boost is way stronger than EVs.

[@TheJH1015]

@@GreyPunkWolf not gonna lie... I always forget about the badge boosts xD

[@LunarWingCloud]

It's pretty common in really challenging mods/hacks that allow EVs to do EV training/grinding anyway since you need those extra points. Then the candies usually come in after to cap off for the next boss fight

[@bigmemvb]

You cheated in Rare Candies, why stop there, cheat in the Vitamins/Feathers too

[@teejay4312]

There is no challenge to adding free levels lol

[@TARDIS915]

EVs are what allowed Jaiden to win her first Nuzlocke

[@ShinyUmbreon106]

But she didn’t know what ev’s she got and she was playing on a handheld so she could easily hack in rare candies

[@chaosflash912]

I know you'll never read these Jan, but your stance on 'Your Nuzlocke, your rules' is the reason why I like your content as much as I do. That kind of stance makes the concept of getting into Nuzlockes more approachable, and I say this as someone who hated them growing up since I got annoyed by the oversaturation of Nuzlocke content when I was growing up.

[@greyscaleadaven]

Honestly I've played enough nuzlockes of the same games over and over to tell you that while they're great the first few times or for viewing content, they're not particularly fun for playing in off-time as an adult. But I use this rule in a sense to restrict my challenges in other ways. There are a lot of metrics of difficulty that can make a Pokémon game harder, like restricting the amount of Pokémon you can use in major battles, what moves you can use, or what Pokémon you can catch (monotype, BST, etc.). I think nuzlockes were a great jumping off point for me at least to find what I enjoyed and didn't enjoy about the Pokémon experience. I enjoy having fair fights (no healing, level cap, same Pokémon amount), and I like to keep a core team that maybe only changes if I get some insane luck with encounters. I don't really care for boxing Pokémon when they faint because I want to use things that I haven't before in an entire playthrough. Everyone's going to feel different though, and I think that's the real point of that sentiment.

[@SnowLily06]

Grinding is the main reason ive done so few nuzlockes because i either got ridiculously bored grinding pokemon up or i ignored the grinding and payed the price so yea. Grinding is cringe and cheating is based.

[@marcsaliba3783]

Same tho ikr, thinking about grinding kills my urge to start a nuzlock lmao

[@MisterHeroman]

Or just get good.

[@idkwhy77]

I actually enjoy grinding since I'm still in school and got time to spare and waste away. But cool.

[@DemonLordRaiden]

@@MisterHeroman How does grinding equate "get[ting] good?" I swear, Dark Souls ruined video game discourse.

[@pallingtontheshrike6374]

@@DemonLordRaidenobjection, true dark souls heads realize that a lot of souls games have ways to kill bosses at lvl 1 with minimal material grinding, if anything jrpgs are worse in this regard

[@quetzalthegamer]

Perfect looping, as always.

[@pengoschwortz4734]

I don’t think you know what perfect means

[@AznYunHou]

​@@pengoschwortz4734yeah, wasn't seamless

[@keiferskog579]

You’ve gotten so much better at projecting your voice learning from alpharad it’s actually crazy

[@AyyFuji]

It makes so much sense, and I’m glad it’s a widely accepted rule in nuzlocking. The challenge is purely in the actual battles, forcing wild grinding just to have a chance for a death would be unwarranted.

[@Deepkeel]

Everything is fine and dandy until someone cheats on Pokedad Challenges.

[@reillymcginnis7064]

I remember doing nuzlockes and randomly losing my Pokémon to the grind on some one-off chance of a combo or crit or something while trying to level them… hey I never said I was good at nuzlockes 😅

[@0y1on]

If you're dying while grinding then you're either training on wild pokes that can kill you from full health with a crit or not healing often enough (probably the latter)

[@chaoscasserole5990]

Nuzlocke or not, I feel like this is bound to happen to everyone at least once (especially if you're playing gens 2-5 where crits are 2x damage instead of 1.5x)

[@itsOZone]

The efficient thing is to grind on high speed low level Pokemon u can outspeed and 1 hit to never risk. Which is even more boring than grinding similarly lvl wild Pokemon.

[@antoinepolnareff8970]

​@@itsOZoneThe problem is that you can only do that with EV training and that always you are gonna need to train for the first few gyms

[@riccardomosena4162]

Sometimes I apply the rule that, if I'm only battling for levels/grinding, I can allow to faint to avoid going too many times to the center to heal. Like, I only grind in the zones before the center, so not going on new zones. Even more if I'm on an emulator and can speed up the process by just mashing A until something dies xD

[@cursedhfy3558]

Any challenge that would allow grinding may as well allow the end result of a grind unless the grind is risky in it of itself. In the case of a well designed challenge, anything gained should have an opportunity cost in the game rather than in real life.

[@faby6515]

Jan is progressively improving his "outside voice"

[@Steampunk_Wizard]

I understand that it fixed the fundamental flaw of pokemon nuzlockes (where the actual difficulty of any given fight can be raised/lowered by more or less grinding) But it still feels wrong. For me, a nuzlocke is about insurmountable odds. Victory should be attained by a ragtag team of misfits atop the graves of their fallen comrades, not by a carefully selected group tailored to a specific fight.

[@EzKay_PX]

Honestly might do this for my own runs, the 1 thing that always turns me off pokemon is just the stupid levels of grinding it needs for these challenges and this might actually get me into it

[@mkjirak]

If you're having fun you're doing it right.

[@mattb6522]

Honestly, it does make more sense to do it this way as the standard. As long as there are certain rules in play to keep it fair (like not leveling past a Gym Leader's levels), this definitely would seem to make the experience more fun for both Nuzlocker and the viewers!

[@khpichu]

I agree 100%

[@StarfieldDisarray]

I started using Rare Candies in my first Nuzlocke in years (FireRed) and the difference felt was unimaginable. Rare Candies lets you actually change your team for encounters rather than be pressured to use the same 6 Pokemon the whole game cause you don't want to spend time grinding. It's so freeing.

[@yurij6068]

Thats not difficulty, just annoiyng

[@3eve0n]

true, anyone who says grinding is difficulty is either coping hard or is actually just terrible at games. maybe both.

[@yurij6068]

@@3eve0n i find annoiyng also open the map, think at grinding.

[@drstrange4625]

That’s because people are lazy and don’t actually want to play fair like everybody else. Which is why I can see them making legends games the main series titles. As they don’t have to include competitive. Legends arceus didn’t.

[@J.R.WilliamsFilmMaker]

I am so happy to hear this. I never knew this was common practice. I've been trying to get into nuzlocking for years and more than half I screwed up during the grinding process and it would cause me to give up and start over. I always assumed content creators used exp boosting cheats or something of that nature to speed up the process for videos, but if it's as simple as adding candies then that's great! It means I can focus on the fights that actually matter rather than get one bad instance of RNG during grinding that ends my run.

[@nightdrivenen7909]

I remember being told by adults who played the game back in 1990, that using the Rare Candy Glitch was not. Now we are just straight up HACKING the same candy glitch into all of our games XD

[@MrAw3sum]

I thought the point of pokemon challenges was to induce suffering. No rare candies, embrace pain, become Sisyphus

[@ZaChemas]

Nah, it's to challenge yourself XD

[@FrankiePhoenix]

It's just a more fun way to play the game than the version gamefreak provided. Challenges could be fun, too, especially when the games of the past decade have been braindead levels of easy.

[@deathgenie]

Off screen I'd agree but if you wanna stream and make good content no one really wants to watch the grinding.

[@Darknova67]

​@@deathgenieThat always would get cut out or turned into a montage

[@Dexrazor]

@@Darknova67 can’t cut that out of a stream but even for a video it still takes up a ton of their time and they have to record it all to prove they actually did it. It’s much easier for a majority of people to just agree that rare candies are just better for everyone, the viewers and the content creator.

[@dannydanggang1675]

Sometimes the rare candy cheat actually may be a bad idea. Everyone remember Jaiden's Magneton that survived thanks to grinding?

[@LordSadCat]

Oh they cheat that too they will cheat the vitamins

[@thatguymike7401]

I still grind a little bit, especially in the early game. I've found that more challenging because when you don't grind at all in the early game then you aren't risking your mons. I understand late game, when you can take your 30+ mons to the first route and never worry about it, so just candy to save time. But early on the snowball effect of losing something really makes it more of a challenge.

[@fartmicrowave]

My man's getting better at this youtube stuff

[@FRAPPEFIZZYY]

Verlisify is pissing his pants watching this

[@mugiwaraLux]

Bro made a video about Jan and shit about how he plays his single player self imposed challenge. Dude probably crying

[@spacenai4461]

Dude fr just going after random people.

[@ItzM36Spadez]

not surprising at all that KZbinrs don’t show how the Pokémon gain levels at all (most of the time)

[@Raethrean]

prestigious pokemon challenge. my guy don't pretend there's any prestige behind any of this

[@shreadhead5260]

These candies actually make the game harder because grinding to level your box mons would give them EVS and this doesnt

[@Steven-ly9ei]

You know you're a success when "cheating is based" is adopted by rom hack developers too 😂😂

[@PANICBLADE]

It also bypasses EV training, so your pokemon's stats aren't optimized going into each fight. An added level of challenge is granted by circumnavigating grinding.

[@undergroundmonorail]

True, but a lot of the hardcore, hyperdifficult romhacks that people like PokemonChallenges are playing disable EVs anyway

[@axelblaze6052]

There’s this Spanish youtuber, Folagor. From the ones I’ve seen he definitely does the hardest challenges. He does randomlockes so basically nuzlockes with everything randomized. From pokemon, to the moves they learn, to the items you can find. Now on top of doing that, he also does lives. So each fainted pokemon is a life gone. It’s almost entirely based on luck because you could suddenly be fighting a megapod that just so happens to have ice beam and suddenly one shot your dragonite

[@jesuisunstroopwafel]

So... the level cap exists because we all bypass grinding.

[@pandamemes9870]

Not purplecliffe …….. he will make you wait hours if that’s what it takes because us as a chat is pretty mean and he lets us choose everything so when he laughs we make him lose his best and in return he makes us sit there until he grinds back on

[@thetetrisdom]

"The most Prestigious pokemon challenge is the nuzlocke" Kaizo Ironmon: allow me to introduce myself

[@Pandora223]

Yea, that is a weird claim for him to make, since nuzlocke is the most basic of pokemon challenges

[@walmartnibba4726]

@@Pandora223 every harder challenge is just based off the traditional nuzlocke rules.

[@EJ-vd1up]

I'm not gonna lie, ironmon has MUCH less actual strategy due to being limited to one pokemon. It's a whole lot more RNG based as well.

[@mohaa556]

To be fair the literal worst part of Pokemon games in general are the level grind parts, so I think skipping that and not forcing people to go through hours of mindlessly pressing the same button combinations hundreds of times is just a plain good additon, not to mention as long as overleveling is avoided it's not like it is making the challenge any easier.

[@0xFluke]

Just a better experience watching the challenge itself while displaying your knowledge. Which is actually what we want as the end product, any of us can grind for hours.

[@SetoIsLive]

I think it’s a fair trade off for convenience since you do miss out on EVs when you just candy up.

[@Locormus2]

Why not hack in PokeRus and EV-item? You can get your EV's from lowlevel pokemon (Starly, Taillow, Fletchling for speed, etc) and then push the RareCandies to wherever the levelcap is. Not that hard to do?

[@reversalring3522]

Rare Candy usage was the best change in the nuzlocke community.

[@Scorch1510]

Honestly, this might be the highest quality short I've seen.

[@lsbp4033]

I remember the days when they would grind and show it (obviously like times 100 speed) and at end they would tell us that they used a 2 time or 3 times exp experience

[@NidotheKing]

Based and candypilled

[@certainlynotapineapple664]

Cheating is based, grinding is cringe - PC

[@anonanonymous9670]

Are you ever gonna Nuzlocke Pokemon Clover or is the anti-cheat scaring you? :P

[@ateddybear1392]

That makes sense, always wondered how they’d always train up random box Pokémon to catch up. That grind is so annoying (before the recent games where it’s pretty easy to level all Pokémon)

[@gameboyn64]

This is my response whenever i hear someone say the exp share nuked the difficulty of modern pokemon games. Grinding isn't a show of skill, just a waste of time.

[@Minedeleis]

People are here to watch your Pokemon die, not watch you grind wild pokemons for 8hours between each gyms

[@PowdergameFan18]

Grinding is only a problem when you play a pokemon game more than a few times, repeatedly. Those arguing against grinding calling it a core gameplay loop, are: 1) Correct its a core gameplay loop, and 2) Have never played the same pokemon Nuzlocke 10-150 times in a row. The people that cheat are past the grind gameplay loop, because that magic has shifted to fighting and battle-by-battle team composition and puzzle-solving

[@Ender_Onryo]

Not only does it save hours and hours of mindless grind. Since your don't get bonus ev/ivs (i can't remember which one it is) from killing pokemon it actually makes the game harder. My favorite kind of cheating.

[@AeonQuasar]

Before the rare candy strat I used to use an personal optional rule that said only trainer fights counted. It's so easy to lose a pokemon in the wild if you don't pay attention. Also grinding for like 2 hours does something with your head.

[@lancerotalucardhd8793]

You know when this YT short is booming beacuse Verlisify tries to start a drama with it

[@lafolleauxmostisma]

Lmao the video was so dumb too "im the only one calling this out" bro everyone knew that already get a life 😂

[@tripleaaabattery8480]

Bro is that guy even relevant anymore

[@lancerotalucardhd8793]

@@tripleaaabattery8480 i dunno,but he made a video trying to start a beef with pchal of all people,and accusing him of cheating,all because of the rare Candy stuff,do you believe that,sometimes i'm glad thank i stop watching that dude years ago

[@creativelybankrupt23]

@@tripleaaabattery8480absolutely not he tries to stir up drama for views and fails miserably

[@lockl00p27]

@@lancerotalucardhd8793he is cheating though.

[@nickboon1235]

I feel like this is alright, just don’t cheat in 200 masterballs to guarantee the encounter; as catching it is a challenge in and of its own

[@cptKamina]

Kinda true but also if you hate the catching thing, it is totally based to just hack in the masterballs anyways. First rule ist to have fun.

[@richcantgame]

How walking through the game without training or catching Pokémon is fun I’ll never know.

[@3eve0n]

@@cptKamina if you have to go to that length to have fun then I'd say nuzlockes aren't for you.

[@cptKamina]

@@3eve0n Well it's a good thing then that your opinion does not matter :)

[@3eve0n]

@@cptKamina Why can't you let things be niche? Telling people that clearly aren't in the target audience of challenge runs that they should remove the challenge in order to have fun isn't only backwards af but also lowkey toxic. Just let them have fun playing casually.

[@ethosterros9430]

I miss pchals vibe from the old days. Like his storm silver run was so chill when he was a smaller streamer. He seems checked out now that its his job instead of his hobby.

[@bigby1602]

If he had to grind while also doing the various calculations for each move, stats and such, it would take an eternity for him to get through a single run

[@coxy6966]

Real gamers would just fight the gyms at a level disadvantage

[@kahlebhowarth-jennings9688]

Rare candies aren’t even helping you when cheating, it’s literally just a time save, you lose EV’s for not fighting Pokémon to level up but you gain 12 hours of your life back

[@flamboyantwarlock7101]

It's also a Pokemon saver, though. Cheating in candies removes the possibility of a mon dying whilst training, and let's you steamroll through every trainer that's not the boss you're using as a level limit.

[@kahlebhowarth-jennings9688]

@@flamboyantwarlock7101 most people don’t Candy their Pokémon until right before a gym as to not over level them and make them unusable

[@tulazozaur]

I was about to write that. Grinding is in fact boring and time consuming, but it gives your pokemon more power. But when your pokemon already have EVs maxed, it's probably the best for you to use Rare Candies

[@Moothead2]

Except it allows you to build a team suited for the next difficult trainer instead of having to go in with a suboptimal team composition because the pokemon in your box aren't leveled.

[@flamboyantwarlock7101]

​@@Moothead2 I.e, it makes the game easier by letting you constantly swap out to an optimised team instead of having to adapt and work with what you have. That's literally the opposite of what a Nuzlocke challenge is meant to do.

[@fScS2H]

So real because I have literally lost nuzlockes just from not wanting to grind up super low level mons to a point where they could fight, and it ended up just making it more about grinding than the actual challenge

[@shinobuu__]

except when you'd see someone lose to a pokemon when grinding back in the day.

[@Nimos087]

True, but let's not forget most deaths are from not paying attention, therefore you hugely decrease the difficulty by using rare candies. I'm not even gonna talk about EV's.

[@psychosound4417]

If it makes the game more fun, more power to you. Everyone should play by their own desired rules.

[@MisterHeroman]

Kinda defeats the purpose of a nuzlocke then.

[@JacksonBoJackson]

​@DarkHamsterlordSA No its not. The purpose is to put yourself through a stressful hell. It's meant to turn Pokémon boys into Pokémon Men. These were created to be a CHALLENGE. Taking away the "challenge" part only makes it worthless.

[@JacksonBoJackson]

@DarkHamsterlordSA I agree. You still didn't complete the challenge if you have to cheat in stuff to give you the advantage. That's the point. Have fun all day, cheat whatever you want in. Just don't say you beat the challenge when it's extremely obvious you didn't.

[@jamesnolan4681]

​@@JacksonBoJacksonNo one needs you're validation or stamp of approval when completing any personal challenges in games though..hope that helps.

[@seungkwanbot3203]

​@@JacksonBoJacksonwhat's the advantage? the rule literally comes with the stipulation you can't over-level... so literally nothing has changed, you just skipped the hours of grind, and in fact get LESS EVs.

[@EchoAbenstern]

Doing a Platinum Nuzlock now. Ended up losing almost my whole team around level 40 and couldn’t be asked to retrain a bunch of Pokemon (my best boxed was a level 27). Doing it on the DS and don’t have an Action Replay. Ended up just not counting it because I want to actually enjoy the game instead. I instead started a system where I release other Pokemon in the box in their place. If the box runs out then I have to start whittling down my party. Makes the Nuzlock run much better and prevents dozens of hours of grinding and prevents overleveling.

[@theoverseer393]

Grinding would give EVs though, so in a way it’s a balanced system. If you cheat, you don’t get those god tier 1% survivals or low-chance kills, but you still have a faster run

[@gofglida4155]

Once I started to take the rare candy pill, I was finding nuzlockes much more enjoyable. I no longer needed to spend 2 weeks grinding on victory road Pokémon just to get my Pokémon to an appropriate level.

[@naproupi]

The absurdity is that when an rpg removes the neccessity of grinding everyone call it "too easy" but no one likes it and everyone will avoid it if possible...

[@JohnSmith-ti9uq]

Grinding in RPGs is often fun. Grinding tons of pokemon in wold areas for tiny amounts of exp while not even being sure if they're the right fit for your team is not fun.

[@naproupi]

@@JohnSmith-ti9uq grinding in RPG is rarely fun, I don't know what you're on about Doing the same action dozens or hundreds of time so you can progress in a game is never a good part

[@Jack-kx5rf]

@@naproupi I disagree, while I don't enjoy grinding if I exploit to skip it I feel hollow. Couldn't look into a mirror when I duped items to sell to get 100k gold for the trophy in Skyrim.

[@naproupi]

@@Jack-kx5rf I don't like cheating, but in my case I just do not do any trophy that requires hours of mindless grind, because I do not see the point

[@Sly88Frye]

Okay I did not realize this. Pretty interesting stuff though. Yeah having to grind so much does sound like a pain in the ass. Although grinding a lot is one of the main things that has always been in pokémon

[@frogalex8915]

What’s funny is in reality depending on the game you play you are actually putting yourself at a disadvantage using the candies.

[@pheonixfire667]

Hear me out on this, you can only use the rare candies up to the level once you about to challenge the gym, and you can only use rare candies up to the level cap of the previous gym you have defeated otherwise, so you still get a challenge if you get into a route encounter that would otherwise be trivial if tou were already close to the next gym level cap

[@3eve0n]

This is how I play. I can't stand grinding but also hate turning the game into a giant boss rush by skipping past everything else. This is a good compromise.

[@GallusEtGlobulus]

It even makes your pokemon weaker (as long as evs arent removed from the rom hack)

[@virtualcolt]

Grinding is probably the worst thing about the older Pokemon games. That is why most of us when we where kids played only using our starters or a bunch of overleveled legendaries.

[@fna1985]

I mean grinding doesn't add to the challenge, it just wastes time. The challenge comes from the actual major fights so yeah, rare candies go brrr.

[@joyul8216]

You can literally lose a Pokémon during a grind.

[@Moothead2]

And being able to rare candy any Pokémon allows you to pick an optimal team for said major battles because you don't have to worry about grinding under levelled Pokémon that would otherwise be left in the box. The trade off for having an optimal team for the next difficult battle is having to grind them up if you want to make it easier.

[@gofglida4155]

@@joyul8216 You can literally grind via the daycare.

[@Xifihas]

Sounds like the problem is that the hacks and fan games are as poorly balanced as the official games, just in the opposite direction.

[@abryn6864]

But that's the point, so good

[@seanromine3932]

Just rare candies? None of the stat boosting food items? Iron and proteins and such? Imagine playing by dragon warrior monsters rules where bred pokemon vanish leaving you your egg.

[@joemck85]

If I nuzlocke an unmodified game I don't cheat. But I can definitely see doing it with these difficulty hack ones.

[@spongebabe27]

I think the candies are okay only if you only use them to level up Pokémon you haven't been using before a major fight. If you beat Roxanne and immediately rare candy all your mons up to the next level cap it invalidates all the trainer battles between level caps

[@m05513]

Yeah but if you do that, suddenly you overlevel brawly and need to catch new pokemon for his gym, reducing your options

[@Math.Bandit]

But the optimal play would be to do that anyways. Let's say after killing Roxanne I could level my whole team to 19 without overlevelling for Brawly. If I didn't have candies, it just means that after beating Roxanne I need to spend a ton of hours running back to Littleroot and killing hundreds upon hundreds of lvl 2 Zigzagoons. The candies don't change the difficulty of any fights between Roxanne and Brawly, just skip the time where after every gym leader you need to backtrack all the way to Littleroot to grind for hours.

[@spongebabe27]

@@Math.Bandit ok so this might take a little bit of explaining, but this outlines my problem with it: let's say completely hypothetically, the level cap for Roxanne is 10, and it's 20 for Brawly. If you hack in rare candies, it's very feasible that you beat Roxanne with all level 10 mons, and then since the next level cap is 20 for Brawly, whilst still in the Rustboro Gym, you candy all your mons up to 20. You get out of Rustboro Gym and go North of Rustboro to fight the cheeky grunt in Rusturf tunnel, who (again hypothetically) has a level 18 Zubat. If you were playing properly, you have to either take on that Zubat with underlevelled mons, or manually level up your mons in grass to the point where you can beat the Zubat (let's pretend it's a top %age Zubat), during which time, with it being a Nuzlocke, you could ABSOLUTELY lose an important member of your team during the grind, or even during the Zubat battle itself. If you level straight to the cap immediately after beating Roxanne, you cheese all trainers and wild Pokémon battles between gyms which I will never ever agree with because it removes a lot of the difficulty and planning for the run. That being said, if you need a Golduck for Mossdeep Gym and you have a level 4 Golduck in your box, that's when in my opinion you should be allowed to train the Psyduck into Golduck before the boss battle, but not level straight up to the next cap as soon as you pass the prior cap. That's the way I see it at least :)

[@spongebabe27]

@@Math.Bandit also to point out, if you rare candy to the next level cap immediately after beating Roxanne, it absolutely does change the difficulty of ALL fights between Roxanne and Brawly. If you want to be overlevelled for the fight right after Roxanne you should absolutely have to grind for that, otherwise there's no real reason to not have every Mon be at the level cap at all times, which ruins a Nuzlocke as it means 90% of the time you're fighting fights where there's basically 0 risk of losing a mon, i.e. fighting a level 13 Rattata with a level 20 Combusken vs the level 12 Torchic you might have otherwise had without Rare Candies and without putting the time in to grind It's extremely important to remember that you absolutely can lose Pokémon in a Nuzlocke from wild grass encounters and that if you remove that aspect, it kills some of the difficulty

[@Math.Bandit]

@@spongebabe27I get where you're coming from. But let's say there are no candies. So instead, I beat Roxanne with lvlcap 10. Then before I go fight the Zubat guy I walk all the way back to Littleroot Town where I can grind on Lvl2 Zigzagoons and Poochyenas without ever risking dying (so there's no risk at all) until I get to lvl 19, then I go back and kill the Zubat guy.

[@hikarikibou9880]

Nuzlocke is normally to bond further with your pokemon at its core and add difficulty. Grinding helps with the bonding aspect

[@kevintheshitposter4274]

grinding helps with unbonding with one's will to live

[@hikarikibou9880]

@@kevintheshitposter4274 actually I feel it relaxing

[@kevintheshitposter4274]

@@hikarikibou9880 we can agree to disagree then

[@saltyralts]

​@@hikarikibou9880 I don't Personal taste moment

[@samlewis6487]

Grinding would make me care about my pokemon LESS because I have to stare at them spam a single move for 10 hours.

[@kylepratt1217]

Apparently this man hasn’t met grandpoobear lol. He did a 1 Pokémon, no candy and no grinding challenge and beat the game. Granted it took him a year to do it. Highly recommend the series

[@jjohnsonnccc]

If anything, using rare candies actually makes the challenge harder. You’re skipping out on all the effort values that you would have gotten by grinding, which normally makes a huge difference between your Pokémon’s stats vs the NPCs’

[@RebornZombie]

Destroys the part of nuzlocking that appeals to me, tbh

[@Gich101]

Grinding?

[@RebornZombie]

@@Gich101 Well that's part of it. The part that has kinda been thrown to the wayside in recent years is the storyline and connection to the Pokémon as characters. You don't get that deep feeling of "this Pokémon is my friend and ally" anymore with the current way Nuzlockes are presented, a death doesn't hit as close to home because there's no long-term investment. Getting rid of the grind removes that even from the person playing. A death is a mild annoyance, not even really an inconvenience, rather than something impactful.

[@Deluvenai]

​@RebornZombie aaaaaaaaand all hardcore nuzlockers have been doing this for ages and are jaded by the deaths do you really think they have emotions for their tools of war to win the nuzlocke challenge?? Emotional attachment to pokemon is for playing the game normally not for a nuzlocke.

[@RebornZombie]

@@Deluvenai I massively disagree shorty.

[@Deluvenai]

@@RebornZombie you can disagree against a proven fact its fine pokemon scarlet pfp

[@lilitpatchwork]

My dumb butt just assumed that every nuzlocker was grinding. I respect focusing on the game mechanics and knowledge of them

[@UntitledSpecifics]

Less evs 👍 Unless you know, those Cabos and other drinks for the mons

[@anjuju2]

What a way to Gaslight the "community" into "Pro-cheating"

[@Ross516]

You say that word, but I don't think you know what it means...

[@anjuju2]

​@CatboyMP4 they are literally Claiming that "Everyone Cheats" & "thats Good" therefore by Proxy Planting the seed "Cheating = Good" "Since everyone is doing it" Actively Distorting the Communities perception of Cheating in Pokémon Games (which is already at a Terrible High) Not just Nuzlocks) And therefor giving these Cheaters even more Free Reign without Reprecussions Is that not Manipulation of Judgment for Own Gains?

[@anjuju2]

+ Nuzlocks are About setting the Challenge in the Danger that Every Encounter Counts Skipping out on 90% of sed Dangerous Sittuations basicly goes Against the Whole Formula One Doesn't Run in a Marathon by taking the Bus to the Finishline

[@Ross516]

@@anjuju2 "free gains" like being able to make KZbin videos without spending a month on one run? Boohoo Also, again, not what gaslighting means. Gaslighting is a very, VERY specific form of abuse, not a KZbin man making claims on a video. You can't be gaslit from one video, it's something that takes place over a period of time to make you question yourself and your own sanity. Not go "everyone cheats? That doesn't seem right, I'm going to go watch someone else who says otherwise"

[@anjuju2]

+ they are Activly De-legitimizing all the Effort that Many Players have put in Actually Doing their Nuzlocks

[@hamcan5869]

Sad to here everyone is cheating on you pChal, I hope things start to look up for you

[@MisterHeroman]

Cheater gets cheated on lmao

[@battalion8736]

I think the most prestigious pokemon challenge is becoming vgc world champion

[@samlewis6487]

If it's an added rule, it's not cheating.

[@girlbossalex8065]

This is a big reason why I think the stigma around cheating (in SINGLE PLAYER games) needs to go away. If cheating in a game makes it more fun or less tedious for you, then I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. People should be able to enjoy games the way they want. Even in difficulty based experiences like the souls games I’m of the opinion that even if you cheated to do so, if you beat the game then you’re allowed to say you beat the game. This weird elitist attitude we have about whether someone’s playthrough is valid is just silly and gatekeeping.

[@anonanonymous9670]

Why would you even need to cheat in Dark Souls when it already has easy mode? This post smells like a cope

[@girlbossalex8065]

@@anonanonymous9670 This is exactly the attitude I’m talking about. I’ve beaten dark souls without cheating, but this whole asinine dialogue about whether someone’s playthrough was “easy” or not only results in gatekeeping the series and making people who play it a certain way feel shitty and outcasted. People should be able to have fun playing a game without being relentlessly scrutinised over the alleged “validity” of their completion.

[@girlbossalex8065]

@@anonanonymous9670 Video games are supposed to be fun, and forcing this conceited ideology of what is and isn’t “valid” just forces people to play in a certain way that they might not even enjoy, and in turn leads to them dropping a game that they might actually have a lot of fun playing if they were able to play in a way that suited them more.

[@anonanonymous9670]

@@girlbossalex8065 "Video games are supposed to be fun" Yes and the challenge is part of the fun, getting rid of the challenge makes it less fun And if you want an actual challenging game (unlike Dark Souls) play the 3D Ninja Gaidens Cheating in video games is the same as generating AI drawings and calling them art

[@girlbossalex8065]

@@anonanonymous9670 Some people enjoy the challenge in games, some people don’t. Even games that are built around challenge like the dark souls series have elements to them seperate from the core challenging gameplay that can be enjoyed independently (narrative, world design, NPC interactions, etc.) To say that you can’t enjoy a game without engaging in one particular part of it is, again, conceited and deliberately ignorant of how different people enjoy games in different ways. AI art is literal plagiarism and theft. Cheating in (single player) games is just tailoring the experience to how you most enjoy it. It doesn’t hurt anybody and it makes the game more fun for the person who engages in it. There’s quite literally no downside to it.

[@roderixdekaper]

"I cheat, so from now on everyone cheats"

[@bryanlemmens68]

Meanwhile me who nuzlockes on cartridges "Tf you mean cheat?!"

[@ugxsan]

It makes perfect sense. You’re already not playing by the games rules so giving yourself advantages you wouldn’t otherwise have to avoid a part of the challenge that doesn’t really elevate the challenge much and simply raises an already very high barrier of entry to require even *more* patience. Just skipping the boring part and getting to the spicy part.

[@TheClandestineFox]

"Everyone in Nuzlocke cheats. Over the years the community has changed the rules of nuzlockes to allow you to hack in candies in exchange for not being able to overlevel the next gym leader. So to summarize, everyone who does a nuzlocke, cheats." Homie doesn't know what "Cheating" is.

[@MazCat]

Like, sometimes I wish these people would admit they're not even vaguely playing Pokemon anymore.

[@masterofbeys]

Except, they are? Everything is still the same. Just a different rule set

[@SergE1020]

They’re playing the exact game, just cutting out the parts of the game that’s not parts of the game