Death by Steel : Pinkie’s First Pokémon Randomiser Nuzlocke Journal Part I

Hello Dear Island Guests! It is time for a new Pokémon series! While this one will not be weekly I am going to share my adventures of the first ever Nuzlocke I will try to complete! Every so often I will update you on my adventures in a journal form!  Taking you through my first ever Nuzlocke in the game Pokémon Heart Gold… but with a twist! Every Pokémon is Randomised.

About the Nuzlocke

What is a Nuzlocke you might wonder? Well it is a special way of playing trough Pokémon.
In it you have to nickname all your Pokémon, you can only catch one pokémon per route and only your first encounter ..and if you miss it.. no luck! If you encounter a Pokémon you already have you can  search for another though.  If a pokémon is reduced to 0HP in battle and it faints it is considered dead and you have to box it or release it and can not use it during your challenge again. If you lose your entire team you lose the Nuzlocke and have to start all over again. Then there are  several ways to play, like in some forms your items are limited or you can not leave a gym once you enter it.  Since I don’t want to be too depressed I made a few light rule tweeks.  So here are my rules:

Randomiser Details

-Pokémon have been randomised, thus I play this game emulated, I do own a legal copy of the game but for entertainment purposes a randomiser seems more fun. Because I know this game by heart and it is a lot more fun to highlight random Pokémon. Every Pokemon deserves love!
-Pokémon will also have their abilities randomised! This makes things a lot more fun! However evolutions and movesets will not be randomised.. their teachable move capabilities HAVE been randomised as .. I love randomness but I am not a strong enough Pokémon player to be prepared for ANY move! I got to have some structure.
-Starters are randomised into anything, and legendaries have been randomised into other legendaries. All trainers have randomised trainer class names and personal names just for fun.
-Items that can be found on the ground are randomised as well as pokémon held items! 
-If I ever lose the game I have to make a new randomisation so I don’t know what is ahead.

In Game Rules

-If A Pokémon Faints it dies and has to be boxed. Since I made sure everyone can learn all HM’s I can not use dead hm slaves. HM moves can only be taught to one party member to make sure I don’t spam surf or fly.
-If I encounter a duplicate pokémon I can search for a new pokémon on that route OR I can catch it to add a life to that Pokémon I already have.
-If I get knocked out by early Dragon Rage, or get stuck on an early Wonder Guard user I am allowed to keep the knocked out Pokémon in return for discarding all my Pokéballs or healing items.
-If I encounter a shiny I am allowed to try and capture it! However it then MUST be used on the team.
-I am allowed to grind and leave gyms!  I am not allowed to hack in rare candies to skip a grind.
-Mom has to collect money for me.. she is so happy to help me out.. it would be rude to tell her no!

With that ruleset I was ready to play my randomised copy of Heart Gold which I named Pokémon Pink Gold! I also made a nice visual for that so I can skip this block of text next time and keep you all updated even if you aren’t reading!

Today I became a Pokémon Trainer

I woke up groggily in my like 32 bit bed! Mom called! Today I was supposed to help Professor Elm out  with a Chore! I hobbled down the stairs and saw mom sitting at the dining room table. She gave me my Pokégear for my adventure even if I had no Pokémon.. a person can’t do without their gear. Before I left she also gave me a cellphone and a bag! It isn’t even my birthday Mamma! How sweet of you! Then she said she had something else that seemed pretty useful and she gave me the possibility to save and an options Menu!  That is super nice! The mamma I have in the real world never gave me an options menu! Perhaps that is why I am such a NEET now! After I got so many new stuff I ventured outside. The Neighbour Kid Ethan was out there playing with his Marill. Man he sure liked to run that thing in my face!  I did not have a Pokémon!  He reminded me that Professor Elm was looking for me! .. Jeez thanks Ethan.. he is the reason I got up this early in the afternoon! 

So I waddled over to the Pokémon Lab. I am not a strong walker so it felt a bit sluggish but eventually got there. There was a suspicious kid standing in front of the window and he shoved me off when I asked him what he was doing! Super rude! I got inside and Professor Elm told me that he had a friend named Mister Pokémon who made an amazing discovery.  He was tied up at the lab and he needed someone he could trust to go there. Despite having like three aides.. it was me he chose to send.. Odd to send a 10 year old to gather important research but hey!  He told me I would get a Pokémon so I had no complaints.  I walked up to a machine holding three Pokéballs. One held a Hitmonlee, one held a Feebas and one Held a Vigoroth.  Feebas I think is actually useless in this game, I am not sure if you could even evolve it and I am not getting far in a Nuzlocke with a pokémon that only knows Splash.
So I had to choose between either Vigoroth or Hitmonlee! Since Vigoroth would evolve once more and would turn into a Slaking who doesn’t know the ability Truant but instead has a Random ability I chose him!  He had a nice beard so I decided to name it Raist.

Raist and me set out to travel to the tall grass! We saw a few amazing Pokémon along our way to Mister Pokémon’s house. We leveled him up until he was almost level 10.. since he already evolved once his leveling took a bit longer than a random pokémon like .. let’s say Cyndaquil would take. On route 29 I saw a Machamp which would compliment my new friend nicely.   There was also a Heatran and a Houndoom there so straight away we had some good options!  Yet we did not have pokéballs yet so for now it had to wait! On route 30 we fought a few Uxie so we even had some legendary options.  I was looking forward to it all. Yet first we had an errand to run! We encountered an old man who had magical shoes! When you wear these shoes. a person would develop the ability to RUN! He gave me a pair that he had on him! It is kind of creepy that an old man who shows a 10 year old girl around town hands you shoes in your size.. but let’s be honest! He already had these running shoes on himself.. if the creep guy could run and I could not I would be in much more trouble so I accepted them.. he later came running after me.. to give me a map.

After fleeing from that creep I walked into some random guys house who was so glad to see me that he gave me a little satchel to store Apricorns in. This is hard fruit in rainbow colours that a man named Kurt might be able to turn into pokéballs for me! I accepted the gift.. looted his tree and traveled on to Mister Pokémon’s place.. who had a visit from the famous Professor Oak. The man talked about a lot of stuff , mostly promoting his radio show and then he gave me an egg for Professor Birch and a pokédex.. okay so this was his discovery? How is Mister Pokemon evolved?! If you have traveled so far why would you not go the extra mile to see Birch yourself?! The discovery that pokémon might hatch from eggs seems like a big responsibility to leave to ten year old me! But hey it got me cool stuff! I was now an official pokémon trainer! Or so I thought!  A phone call from professor Elm would change a lot. I had to rush back home.. as something terrible had happened.

Pinkie makes new Friends

Using the perverts shoes, I sped as home as quickly as I could! I had full confidence in Raist’s abilities as an evolved pokémon and then we encountered that red haired Douchebag from before! We fought him and Raist  smoked his ass. He carried an exeggcute! It was no match for my wild white beast!.. it even got Raist to level 10. The trainer dropped his passport.. which all trainers carry on them and I saw that Red Douche’s name was Indigo! He told me that he would become my rival and he would get stronger. I shrugged and ran off! It turns out that Indigo stole a pokémon from Professor Elm! .. Well he certainly did not take it from the machine then.. but no time to dwell on that.  I handed over the egg to be done with my responsibilities.  The professor was shocked that eggs existed.. even though we are in a remake taking place in a generation that already invented these features! Later remakes would tackle that issue a lot better!  But hey I played along and as payment I could keep Raist. Well yeah.. I already named it guy! I was gonna keep it anyway!

I walked outside and Ethan was in the grass with his Marril..he showed me how to catch a pokémon and handed me five Pokéballs!  Now I could make new friends yay!  However Raist disagreed! He killed both my encounter on route 29 as well as the one on route 46.. which had a small patch of grass you could pick pokémon up from! He both killed a Yanma and a Mankey! I guess he did not like to share!  So we had a little talk and I told him that if he had some Tomodachi it might mean he would live longer..as I showed it Yanma’s broken corpse he nodded showing me he would be more careful on route 30! There we were lucky enough to encounter one of those Uxie Legendaries again…but I ran out of pokéballs and we failed to get Raist a friend. I sold everything I had to scrounge up a few pokéballs for route 31 and there we finally encountered a cute Gorbebyss which is a pink fish pokémon wearing a purple shell bikini like thing. It is a Pokémon that sucks up it’s opponents bodily fluids as a way of battling. Since it was rather pink and happy as well as a male I decided to name it Dylan.  In a nearby cave I discovered a quagsire I named Heather. She was so durable and sturdy!   I leveled Dylan and Heather up a bit by murdering some Uxie and Zubat as well as killing the Pokémon of former Bugcatcher now turned dancer!  As he sat there among his dead pokémon I merrily continued my way to that blasted city!

Raist had reached level 11, with Heather and Dylan being at 8! I knew there was some work to be done before I could face the gymleader.. believing his ace to be at level 12. So first I went to some ruins to the south of the city where I solved the ancient puzzle of the Unown in like… 30 seconds or so! How did no one ever solve this before?!  If it was a complete slide puzzle I could understand but this was about as hard as one of those children’s block puzzles with a square shaped hole a triangle hole and a round hole!  I caught myself a Misdreavous there which I named Mallow. In a patch of grass I also found a Snubull which I named Lyn. My team of friends was beginning to grow!

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We were nowhere near ready to face Falkner though so.. it was off to beat up some monks! Which usually are fairy big pushovers. With random Pokémon though it turned out to be a tad harder. As I had killed two monks entire teams without much effort it was up to Heather to level up next. During one fight a monk sent out Kabuto! I had switched out of Heather before as his former pokémon was a grass type and she is 4x weak to that and Mallow fought in her stead. Upon switching in to the Kabuto Heather missed a Mud Slap or Mud Shot.. I always confuse those  and the pokemon used a water gun on her. Quagsire is a Bulky pokémon so she took it fairly well. I could easily survive even a critical hit of that. Heather surely could obliterate this tiny Kabuto. Her second attack missed again.. and that’s when it happened.  Kabuto revealed to have the move Absorb! .. I did not expect it.. I didn’t even know it learned that move.. and just like that Heather was gone! Drained of all life! My Quagsire was dead!

Misdreavous exacted revenge for Heather and we destroyed all the monk’s left! It gave us a useless TM . Indigo had also just fought all the monks so the place was literally littered with piles of dead Pokémon! While he got an escape rope.. I got a chople berry! So I had to walk past all the corpses again. On the way down I found a Cleffa I named Meg. We gave Heather a small burial and went on to take down the Gym Leader Falkner. While everything was randomised for some reason every gym trainer got given a ghost pokémon so we had to use a lot of potions to keep Mallow alive. We went back out to stock up again and I realised I got a lot less money than I would have hoped for! I bought three potions and healed everyone up and it was time to face the gym leader .. Falkner!  Little did I know I would discover about THAT power I had.. or that this would already be the last battle I would ever have with my new friends.

We started out fine.. Falkner opened up with Spinarak!  Mallow eats tiny spiders for breakfast and with a few ghostly moves it was gone..then the message on the screen read. Dancer Laura is about to Sent In Registeel.. Do you wish to swap Pokémon?! Excuse me?!  Registeel?! I also forgot I boosted levels a bit..thinking it would let me grind faster as well.. and so came a level 15 Registeel! I kept Mallow in, knowing sometimes the Regi’s get Explosion at an early level hoping that it could explode and we would be fine! Yet it used Metal Claw.. a high power metal type physical move that can boost attack.. sometimes. Of course he got the attack boosts!  I swapped in Megan and Lyn as sacrificial lambs.. while I came up with a strategy.. and both were clawed in half.  Then.. I swapped in Raist.. hoping it might trigger him using explosion, switching back into Mallow.. hoping for a miracle. The metal cleaved the little ghosty as it could no longer maintain it’s form! It fades away from the after life into complete death.  Raist came out next and he could take two hits.. such a champion he went down fighting!  Next was Dylan.. perhaps he could use confusion to keep the steel giant in place… but no!  My little pink fish soon got turned into sushi!.

Surrounded by my dead friends Falkner laughed at me diabolically and in panic I passed out!  However Falkner’s gym is several  meters in the air.. lets say about five or six stories high. And you walk through him on a balancing beam.. so passing out did not end well for me! I fell six stories down and left a pinkish red crater in the floor.. I was dead!  Then suddenly … I woke up again.. I was in my own bed!  Mom called me downstairs.. and said Professor Elm had a chore for me.. she handed me .. a bag.. a cell phone and even an options menu! What was going on here?  Outside Ethan stuffed his Marill in my face again… but something was different. Out in the grass to the West I heard other pokémon.. instead of Magikarp swimming in the river to the east there was a Kricketune.. what was going on? There was only one possibility! I returned by death! And the world becomes more randomised!  I stepped in the lab of Professor Elm as he told me for the second time, my very first pokémon adventure was about to begin!Mallow, Heather, Raist and Dylan you will be remembered. Lyn and Megan.. you were just death fodder! You will return.. in the next life!…maybe!

Days Past: 1
Number of Deaths: 6
Game Overs: 1
Gym Badges: 0

And so my Nuzlocke was not of to a good start! Luckily I wasn’t that far into the game yet so I felt motivated enough to try again! Will I have more succes in my second run?! Find out in the next episode! Will a Pokémon be named after you?! Maybe! Be sure to follow the blog and be active in the comments and you will have a good chance to be part of my team! And if you like being a small creature why not be a coconut?! By supporting my Kofi you can have your own little unique Coconut minion on Paradise! Or just leave a nice comment! Did you ever play a Nuzlocke? What is your favourite game to Nuzlocke in?! Let me know in the comments and I will see you on the next adventure!