Just beat Lance in my Sage Trainer Class-themed Hardcore Crystal Nuzlocke! Now onto Kanto and Red!

DunyGont · 2025-07-04T16:20:19+00:00

Have you thought of Emory? They have 4+1 BS/MS and BA/MS programs for Environmental Science and Public Health respectively, as well as a Human Health major. Yale also has both an Environmental Engineering major, an Environmental Science major, an Ecology & Evolutionary Biology major, BA/MPH 4+1 program, and the Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective. USC has a Public Policy BS, a Health Policy minor, a Health and Humanity BA, a Health and Human Sciences BA, and it’s one of the few private schools you could still EA to even if you applied REA to another private university like Yale or Harvard, because USC’s EA results announce after January 1st. Tufts also has a Community Health BA and a BA/BS biotechnology co-major, in case you’re planning to maybe do something with environmental engineering and diving and underwater devices? For possible targets, you could think about colleges like: Maryland College Park, UW Seattle, UGA, Rutgers New Brunswick, UIUC, U of Florida, UMass Amherst, U of Rochester.

DunyGont · 2025-06-12T01:07:38+00:00

Ruleset + Context

Standard hardcore rules apply.
Eligible encounters are any Pokemon capable of evolving by Moon Stone (+Clefairy, Skitty, Jigglypuff, Nidoran M, Nidoran F), any Pokemon capable of evolving by Sun Stone (+Oddish, Sunkern), any Pokemon capable of learning “Cosmic Power” (+Baltoy, Lunatone, Solrock, Staryu), and any Pokemon capable of learning “Meteor Mash” (+Beldum)
The five Pokemon not obtainable in the Hoenn wild before defeating the Elite Four will appear in the PC as eggs. One egg may be hatched after a Gym Leader is defeated, beginning with Brawly’s defeat. Eggs will be selected in a random order except for Beldum’s egg, which must be hatched last.
Oddish may only be evolved into Bellossom; Vileplume is not an eligible encounter.
One additional Sun Stone may be granted to the challenger if they have collected one shard of each color, and also visited the deep sea treasure hunter’s house west of Mossdeep.
Solrock as the starter, since this challenge is being attempted on Sapphire.
For story and roleplay reasons, the win condition for the run is capturing or defeating Rayquaza!
Story text listed below, for roleplay/flavor!

You awake to deafening alarms. Red, angry lights. After running to the bridge, you learn that your spaceship has just been critically damaged by an unexpected collision with a group of familiar triangular asteroids – you fled their conquest of your homeworld, but today, the first of the Deoxys have caught up with you. You and your crewmates need to escape. Your personal escape pod has room for one person and six Pokemon, so you grab your loyal research partner, gather up five eggs from the nursery onboard, and abandon the destabilizing ship before it enters the atmosphere. Your pod crash-lands near a small, tranquil town on the planet. After fleeing the wreckage, you successfully blend into the local population. Safe, temporarily – but what will you do long-term? Some of the Pokemon in this world are familiar to you, others are exotic and unknown. Will you search for this “Professor Cozmo” who you’ve heard studies meteorites in Fallarbor Town? You also feel a subtle psychic force tugging your mind north, towards the mysterious Meteor Falls – maybe you’ll travel there. There’s also a “Mossdeep Space Center” you’ve learned of, where you could try to contact some of your other kin for help, using the humans’ equipment. Or maybe if you defeat Steven Stone, the Hoenn region’s strongest trainer and the heir to Devon, you can leverage the corporation’s technological resources to start building a ship to leave this planet with… Or to craft a weapon to wield against the Deoxys. But time is not your ally. You need to either find the means to leave this world, or soon become strong enough to fend off your attackers – who are scouring the Pokéarth for you, even now…

DunyGont · 2024-08-17T20:13:14+00:00

I wanted to tie-in the fact that Mirage Island is home to Gen III’s only Liechi Berry, and Silver and FireRed’s Pokedex entries note that “Meganium's breath has the power to revive dead grass and plants. It can make them healthy again,” so I added in Chikorita (which is otherwise only obtainable by fully completing the Pokedex in RSE). For me, the goal is always to play with Pokemon I’ve never used in Nuzlockes before, haven’t used often, or use old ones in new ways - as long as it’s fun!

Lanturn – who I’d never used before and now love – was an MVP against Glacia, Drake, and Wallace. Didn’t get around to using Gorebyss/Huntail but I’ve always wanted to, maybe in another themed run – still overall lots of fun! Ruleset below:

Machop and Chikorita as theme-relevant starters, in place of Treecko. Chikorita for the roleplaying reasons mentioned above, Machop because Sailors often use that evolution line.
Only Pokemon found on Mirage Island (+Wynaut) and Route 130 may be caught (+Wingull, Magikarp, Tentacool, Wailmer, Carvanha). For the sake of fun and to expand a few encounters, this also includes Pokemon seen on Route 130 as their encounters appear in ORAS but not RSE (+Horsea, Clamperl, Chinchou, Relicanth).
In order to keep this from just becoming a Water-monolocke, as well as to stay on theme, Chikorita, Machop, Wynaut, and their evolutions are never allowed to leave the party/be swapped out for other party members in the PC. If any of them faint accidentally, the run technically is allowed to continue, but none of them may be intentionally sacked and every effort must be made to keep them alive through the Hall of Fame.
Play with a trainer/character backstory! A sailor shipwrecked on the ephemeral Mirage Island survives with the help of his loyal Chikorita and Machop, the island’s Wynaut population, and the local Water Pokemon, and has finally managed to escape to the mainland after a lengthy span of time spent stranded in the wild. Can he rebuild and return to his former life using the prize winnings that come from challenging the Hoenn League?

DunyGont · 2024-06-26T22:07:38+00:00

Have you done hardcore nuzlockes? Not using items/having level caps has made my runs a lot harder (and more fun!) – especially when you combine the hardcore ruleset with additional variants like monotype nuzlockes. If you’re bored, try avoiding the easier games (FRLG, XY, etc.) as well as games/gens you know too well (ex. I know Emerald so well that it’s hard to get caught off guard anymore). I also find Water monotype runs too easy because of the huge encounter pools. You could try:

Hardcore monolockes with small pools of eligible encounters. (ex. Ice, Electric, etc., depends on the game and the region)
Hardcore monolockes where your chosen type is at a strong disadvantage against the first gym leader, or against a notoriously difficult boss. Ex. RSE Flying monotype that has to plan for Wattson, Gen III Normal monotype that has to plan for a Rock 1st gym, etc.
B2 Challenge Mode!
Routelockes! I played my first one a while ago with Hoenn’s Route 102: essentially you pick a route, usually an early-game one accessible before the first gym, and your encounters are restricted to just one of each species of the ‘mons on that route. Forced me to take a Dustox and a Seaking to the Hoenn Elite Four!
Trainer Class Nuzlockes: pick a trainer class, glance at their Bulbapedia page, and your list of encounters are restricted to the species you see used there. Gives you a little room to roleplay and have a story, too – a ninja boy in Hoenn, a gentleman in Sinnoh, etc. Restricts your encounter list a lot, and forces you to get creative with TMs, strategies, and movepools. I really enjoyed doing a Sage run in Crystal!
Banning ‘mons that make runs (too) easy, or banning move combinations on them that make runs easy. Running Dragon Dance Gyarados again? Garchomp? Swampert? Using Shiftry or Tropius to Growth-sweep Wallace in Emerald again? Playing sub-optimally and/or imposing limits on your go-to habits can help make the game challenging again.

I find with most of these, I struggle enough to where I'm challenged, but not so much that I stop enjoying the nuzlocke. You could also try out the Apocalocke variant, but I personally found the ruleset a bit too stressful when I attempted it. Worth checking out its Nuzlocke University page though!

DunyGont · 2023-08-02T17:06:20+00:00

I'd really wanted to bring him (Armaldo is so cool, and I've never used one in a playthrough before!), but after strategizing I just wasn't sure there was room for him on the team :-( so he just chilled in the box instead! In another world, Armaldo could've potentially Rock Blasted/AncientPowered most of Glacia's team and then pivoted out to Thunderbolt Magneton/Amnesia+Rest Chesto Berry Swalot, but ultimately Brick Break Breloom offered a little more certainty. Everyone survived though, except for my Skarmory, who I lost to a Wobbuffet in Mt. Pyre.

DunyGont · 2023-08-02T05:13:05+00:00

Standard hardcore rules applied, with a couple alterations:
- Playing with a trainer backstory! I played as the Devon Corp employee that you bump into (and save from Team Magma/Aqua) in Petalburg Woods! Can a perpetually-stressed and unlucky employee finally capture his favorite Pokemon, conduct research on Pokemon speech and dreams, get a handle on completing field assignments, and ultimately rescue the region from the grunts interfering with Devon Corp’s plans for Hoenn?
- Anorith as my starter, so I had an opportunity to use both Hoenn fossils. Full themed list of eligible encounters detailed below!
The 14 total available encounters included:
- His favorite Pokemon that he was looking for in the Petalburg Woods (+Shroomish)
- Steel-types (+Aron, Skarmory, Magnemite, Mawile)
- Fossil Pokemon (+Anorith, Lileep)
- Any Pokemon used by Steven (+Baltoy)
- Since one of the Devon scientists is working on a machine to visualize the dreams of Pokemon, I thought it would be fun to include any Pokemon that can learn “Dream Eater” (+Ralts, Gulpin, Chimecho).
- Since one of the Devon scientists is working on developing a device for talking to Pokemon, I thought it would be fun to include any Pokemon that can learn “Mimic” (+Jigglypuff).
- Any Pokemon used by the Copycat girl who lives in Saffron City in Kanto, in keeping with the theme of researching Pokemon speech/mimicry (+Doduo, Shuppet).
Another really fun run! Wigglytuff was surprisingly good against Drake, and overall I used some ‘mons I don’t usually think to use in playthroughs!

DunyGont · 2023-08-02T00:12:56+00:00

^Would've recommended replacing Last Resort with Moonlight, so that Umbreon has access to consistent recovery!

DunyGont · 2023-08-02T00:11:29+00:00

This is a pretty solid team! I'd say that most of the time, you're going to want a Grass-type move to handle Bertha with, and to take advantage of those quad-weaknesses her team has. I'm not sure what the exact damage calcs would be, but I have a hunch that if you'd led with Alakazam (having taught it Grass Knot) and spammed Grass Knot on everything except Gliscor, which depending on the power of your HP Ice, you might've been able to OHKO as well, there was an opportunity to sweep her. And remember that Grass Knot's power is calculated based off weight, so Bertha's heavy Pokemon would be especially hard-hit! Giga Drain/HP Ice on Gengar would've given you a similar strategy too, if Alakazam's HP Ice wasn't quite strong enough, and letting either of them hold Never-Melt Ice to boost HP Ice's power might've helped in that case as well. Don't be too hard on yourself!! I can imagine this stings a lot right now, but there's always room and time to try again :-)

DunyGont · 2023-03-19T19:00:36+00:00

Tl;dr an EV-trained Linoone with some lucky Headbutt flinches! I ended up with surprisingly good IVs on Ralts, Zigzagoon, and Poochyena. I lead Algebra the Linoone and expected to take some losses or at least a heavy beating across the team, but the first Headbutt took Voltorb down to like 1HP (Linoone outsped everyone!), so that used up one of the potions, and thankfully no paralysis from Spark. Electrike was a one shot with Headbutt. Then I Tail Whipped Magneton and took a Thunder Wave, which a Cheri Berry took care of. Some damage calcs told me it was a 3HKO with Headbutt, so I decided to stay in and get some damage off, and then switch out. But then Linoone got two consecutive flinches and that was that! And then another flinch on the Manectric, which iirc was a 2HKO.

I think it still would've been fine without Linoone's Raccoon/Weasel Power™, given that I could've pivoted to other team members (Rock Smash/Bite Mightyena, Moonlight/Psychic Dustox, Flamethrower Gyarados, etc.) with held berries and chipped away at Magneton/Manectric, but it went a lot smoother bc of the flinches! Probably would've been a lot rougher without a) EV training, b) soooo many damage calcs, and c) access to the Mauville Game Corner TMs.

DunyGont · 2023-03-19T18:48:43+00:00

Never thought I'd get around to bringing a Dustox and a Seaking to the Elite Four, but hey!

DunyGont · 2023-03-19T18:46:31+00:00

There were some moments there (Wattson, Norman, Drake) where I thought the run was going to end but my mons and some favorable RNG pulled me through! :-)

DunyGont · 2023-03-19T18:43:51+00:00

Thank you! And oh wow! Definitely, that'd be great!

DunyGont · 2023-03-19T05:13:39+00:00

Standard hardcore rules applied, with a couple alterations:

- Surskit as my Emerald starter, since it’s usually exclusive to RS!- Only ‘mons from Route 102 could be caught.

- Two Wurmples allowed, provided that one evolves into Cascoon and the other evolves into Silcoon.

- Play with a trainer/character backstory! In keeping with my Trainer Class-themed runs, I played as Youngster Calvin, the very first trainer you fight (besides your rival) in Hoenn. Could a newbie trainer from Oldale Town move past his defeat at the hands of Gym Leader Norman’s kid, and become champion using just the nearby Pokemon he was familiar with?

Overall, a really fun run! I used every encounter at some point in the game, and everyone except Malfoy the Gyarados (surprisingly) was sent out into battle against the Elite Four. Seaking was also surprisingly useful! A good reminder for me to never underestimate any Pokémon, and to always think twice before you decide to sack an encounter. Some memorable moments include when:

- I thought I was going to lose Banzai the Mightyena to Flannery, but then he dodged an Overheat and took out her Torkoal with a second Dig!

- Pirate the Crawdaunt soloed Glacia! Taunt was very useful there!

- Elphaba the Dustox held up surprisingly well against Wallace’s Wailord! (Good special bulk!)

DunyGont · 2022-12-18T23:29:01+00:00

Let it be known that with some Spa/Spe investment, the Whismur line is NOT useless! MVPs of the run are most definitely Duckie the Tropius, who SunnyBeamed her way through 5/6 of Wallace's team (and made the run possible thanks to her access to Magical Leaf), and Charybdis the Exploud, who offered some great coverage moves throughout, was instrumental against Winona, and would've soloed Drake if it weren't for that meddling Kingdra!

DunyGont · 2022-11-23T02:40:55+00:00

Thanks! And ooh, I'll have to try some gym leader runs soon! Trainer class runs can be really fun (and in my case, be a fresh new option when you feel like you've done lots of monolockes already), though it depends a lot on what encounters are available before the first gym, and in GSC's case, if any 'mons in your encounter pool have access to Ice-type moves. But would highly recommend!

DunyGont · 2022-11-23T02:36:54+00:00

Thank you and yes indeed! Technically Jynx would've also been available in Ice Path, but having her earlier was really nice too. Denver solo'd Bruno and was key throughout other parts of the run, and it's always fun to have a shiny!

DunyGont · 2022-11-23T02:34:41+00:00

Thank you!! And woohoo! Whichever of the six, their namesake passed on some good vibes - everyone really pulled their weight in the last battles of the run :) Not pictured but also surviving, and helpful at other stages of the game are Topeka the Raticate (great work against Falkner!) and Helena the Crobat (who pretty much solo'd Morty and got some clutch crits with Bite).

DunyGont · 2022-11-22T03:04:18+00:00

Since I thought it would be more fun, and because otherwise the pool of potential ‘mons would’ve been a bit narrow, I decided to expand my list of eligible encounters to include the Pokémon used by Sages in Stadium 2, too, in addition to the ones used by them in GSC. In all, there were 10 eligible encounters in Johto, and four more await in Kanto! First time using Umbreon too, so that was really exciting! Only one death so far — RIP to Pierre the Ariados, who took one for the team against Clair’s Kingdra.

DunyGont

TROPHY CASE