[Gen 3] Soul Link Ruby & Sapphire Nuzlocke by Reginald Cosmic ft. Dr Milk

[Reginald Cosmic]

Happy Groundhog Watchog Day from the beautiful Hoenn Region! Some of you might be wondering what I'm doing here in Petalburg Woods? Well, to answer that I gotta take you back many months to when I still had a semi-active Let's Play channel on YouTube. I wanted to show off Pokémon Sapphire Version to my audience of one human being with a pulse, and Dr Milk suggested the idea of us doing a Soul Link Nuzlocke for the original Ruby and Sapphire. So, we tried that out... then we realized we couldn't keep the footage high-quality due to technical problems on both his side and mine, so we gave up on that dream for quite some time. (I'll explain the rules in a minute.) We were going to complete it with the randomized ROMs since I was lucky enough to start the game off with a Bagon (Dragon, dragon! Rock the Dragon!), but last week, we said "Let's just [hyperlink blocked] do this!" and Dr Milk randomized some more ROMs. We were going to wait until tomorrow, but I caught Dr Milk in an exceptionally good mood on the 1st of February, so we used his Dialga to do it yesterday and tomorrow. ... I should probably explain the rules now.


So I'm sure you're familiar with the Nuzlocke rules. You can only catch the very first Pokémon on a route, and when a Pokémon faints, you gotta hoard it in the PC and never take it out again (or release it from the PC, but no one does that, I think). Now, with Soul Link Nuzlocke, it's collaborative: the two players' Pokémon from each area are "soul linked" like Piccolo and Kami from Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z. If one dies, the other dies too. (They don't actually die. We're just [hyperlinked block] to our Pokémon.) Both players must make the catch to get anything from the route. If one player catches and Abra on that route, and the other player makes their first encounter faint, it's over. Also, people usually use randomizers for this. There's also a really weird rule about not duplicating primary types, but we, well, I am not that crazy.

Here are the full list of rules (made collapsable for your convenience)

Spoiler:

Full list of rules:

* The first encounter in each area must be successfully caught by both Reg and Milk, or else no Pokémon can be caught there.

* Each pair from the same area between save files are considered "soul linked," so if one faints, the other faints. Exceptions (which cannot be used in battle for any reason) can be made for the following reasons:

*** Shiny Pokémon (Duh!) [Must be deposited in PC as soon as possible UNLESS it was caught as the natural first encounter in the area]

*** HM Muhls (none of this [Hyperlink Blocked] about having to teach a team member HM move "Cut") [Cannot be used in battle for any reason]

* Randomizer in effect (for wild Pokémon ONLY), but no legendary Pokémon, or Pokémon that evolved early (eg, no level 3 Charizard on Route 101). Trainer Pokémon are all the same except for the rival's starter Pokémon. Also of note, "Dr Milk" randomized some of the trainers' names.

*** Note: Dr Milk made the executive decision that the main rival's starter Pokémon is unchanged.

* Trades with NPCs are not allowed

* Safari Zone counts as one area with ONLY ONE encounter

* Areas such as Rusturf Cave count as their own dungeon (even though they're within a route) with their own "first encounter" (just in case that's not clear)

* IMPORTANT Each Gym Leader's defeat counts as a checkpoint, but we can only reset to the point after the previous Gym Leader's defeat. If we lose to Norman, we have to restart from right after we defeated Flannery.

* We gave ourselves three different randomized ROMs, so we could choose from nine starters instead of three.

* Static encounters such as the Kecleon that Steven finds can be caught without exhausting the route's one encounter. In other words, we can catch "Kecleon" independently of the one encounter for that route.

* Nuzlocke rules do not take effect until Professor Birch hands us our first Pokéballs.

* We didn't think about this until the 1st of February, but the dupes clause is used kind of liberally to apply to both players at once. Spoiler warning I guess: Dr Milk had a Dustox and said my Whurmple didn't necessarily count because Dustox evolves from Whurmple.

Also, I forgot to mention, Dr Milk is playing as the female protagonist "Marina" in Pokémon Ruby, and I am playing as the male protagonist Landon in Pokémon Sapphire. Get it? Sea and Land ... because Marina is fighting Team Magma, and Landon is fighting Team Aqua. We also kind of decided to unofficially name the Rival "Skye" but ... obviously, this is the only Gen I through IV region where the player can't name a rival, so it's just for these forum posts.

Our story began with Professor Birch showing off his pet Gardevoir (weird flex, but okay) and promptly vanishing to Route 101. I think. I don't know. I was button mashing pretty hard to catch up to where Dr Milk was in his emulator.

My first choice of starters were: Omanyte, Vulpix, and Caterpie. My second batch were Natu, Psyduck, and Onyx. My third batch consisted of Magnemite, Pudgy, and Poochyena.

Now, jokes about Lord Helix aside, Dr Milk and I had a serious discussion about my choice because Vulpix, Natu, and Magnemite were all terrible against Gym Leader Roxanne near the start of the game. Dr Milk then said, "Why not Psyduck?" and we both looked up Psyduck's Gen III learn set and declared "That's why not Psyduck." Psyduck is no substitute for Slowpoke; don't @ me!

So, against my better judgement, I decided to save Professor Birch's life with a Magnemite. Meanwhile in the Ruby timeline, Professor Birch was waiting so long for Dr Milk to break out the Pokéball containing Remoraid, he suffered multiple heart attacks and nearly died.

At this point, we had to name our starter Pokémon something. Dr Milk suggested "OctoMite" (because of Octillery and Magnemite), and I liked the sound of it. In hindsight, it doesn't really make sense because the final evolution of my Pokémon is Magneton, not Magnemite, but whatever.

With that, we started our journey. Kind of. We still weren't allowed to catch any more Pokémon catch any more Pokémon until we beat our rival in a one-on-one Pokémon battle and return to Professor Birch. So instead, we explored around Route 101 and Route 103.

My first encounter (which I could not catch) was a Wynaut, and for a minute there, I was paranoid that this Wynaut would use Destiny Bond, but Dr Milk assured me this Wynaut wouldn't at this level. Dr Milk and I had a good laugh about Wynaut using "Encore" to be punched in the face by a magnet. Also, Dr Milk got an Igglybuff as his first encounter he couldn't catch, then as I was using Tackle on Wynaut, Dr Milk met his ultimate challenge: a Wooper with Water Absorb (an ability that converts any water attack into healing for the user). I was scared we had to restart, and then Dr Milk said, "No, I can just Run."

My second uncatchable encounter on Route 101 was a Ralts. For some reason, both games were randomized such that Ralts is a common encounter, which made me very happy, but Dr Milk was less than impressed.

It took me longer than Dr Milk expected for me to level up Magnemite a couple of times. I caught an earful from him consider he got his starter up to level 9 or 10. We both ended up beating the tar out of our rival Skye. My rival had Torchic, and ... I'm actually not sure what starter Pokémon Dr Milk's rival had. I'm looking over the footage, and I can't get a clear shot of the battle. Yeah, I recorded the footage for this, but with the connection quality and everything, I knew in advance there was no uploading it to YouTube. I will ask Dr Milk if he remembers, but I should probably wait until tomorrow.

Now that we had badly beaten Professor Birch's offspring Skye in a Pokémon battle, Professor Birch decided we could catch Pokémon now. Dr Milk let me see my first encounter first, and then he'd see what he got, and we'd both try to catch them.

Route 101 Encounter: I got a Skitty, and Dr Milk got a Cascoon. Dr Milk was happy about the Dustox for 2nd Gym Leader Brawly... but I wasn't... albeit I'm glad I didn't have to grind it up. We named this Pokémon "CatBug" because... shoot, what was that show again? Was it Bravest Warriors. I don't think I'd actually watched it, and I didn't want to tell Dr Milk cuz I just thought it was kind of perfect.

Route 103 Encounter: So I accidentally ran into a Pokémon before Dr Milk could (breaking the intended turn order), but... I got really lucky. I got a male Nidoran, and Dr Milk got a Zigzagoon, and I was really disappointed that he got a Route 103 Zigzagoon with a randomizer, but then ... we realized: Zigzagoon has the Pickup which causes it to find items, which is completely bonkers in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. We named this Pokémon "Ziggoran" because we're not very creative. I was kind of scared when I started seeing my Skitty's HP go down with poisoning in the overworld, (Yeah, Nidoran's "poison point" got her), so I wasted an antidote.

At this point, I think I should go ahead and hit that "Post Thread" button because this post is really long. I will create another post or two today (unless something changes).

Thanks so much to anyone who reads this! It's great to be here.

EDIT No. 1: I actually got confused. Dr Milk and I are picking things back up on Saturday the 4th of February, so I have an extra day to post updates to this thread. --Reginald Cosmic (2 Feb 2023 at approx. 7:11 PM CST)

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

I've never done this much grinding in Hoenn unless the Elite Four were involved. Oh, hi, welcome back to the adventure. Yep, I'm still in Petalburg Woods. Let me continue the story.

In addition to getting tomorrow's date wrong, I forgot to mention in the last post that Dr Milk and I both spent the full 2,000 Pokémon Dollars on Pokéballs to get a free premier ball. I don't know if this is important, but I thought I'd mention it nonetheless.

Dr. Milk and I made our way to Route 102. This time it was Dr Milk's turn to go first with his encounter.

Route 102 Encounter: Dr Milk got a [hyperlinked blocked] Caterpie this time around (although Butterfree's Confusion would be useful at the fighting-type gym), and I got a Sentret. We named this Pokémon "Butter-Fur" because I thought it sounded like a trademark non-infringing candy bar you'd see on TV or something. I should mention that when I saw Sentret had a Pearl as a held item, I'd made the assumption it had the ability "Pickup" when it really didn't, so later on, Dr Milk and I got very confused.

So there wasn't too much happening on Route 102. I ran into Pokémon such as Tyrogue and Sunkern. Tyrogue actually scared me at first, so I ran from it just to protect my male Nidoran. I think Sunkern has the lowest base stat total of any Pokémon, or at least it did as of Generation 6, so I'm really glad it wasn't a first encounter. Other than that, the only interesting thing on our trip through Route 102 was when Dr Milk ran into a Wynaut with Shadow Tag (an ability that prevents the opponent from switching out), so Dr Milk had to use Cascoon's Harden until it ran out of PP, and he could use Struggle on the Wynaut.

We soon made it to the Petalburg City, and the player's dad Norman gives Wally a rental Pokémon to let him catch his own. So even though Wally's team isn't affected by the randomizer, the Wally from Dr Milk's Ruby game did encounter a level 3 Dragonite with a Tauros, and my version of Wally ran into a Swellow and sent out Gligar.

Route 104 Encounter: Dr Milk ran into a Ralts, and I encountered a Whismur. Neither of us were particularly impressed. Dr Milk also pointed out that his Ralts was male. Sorry, there's no Gallade in Gen III. Dr Milk got to thinking about Twitch streamers, so we named this pair "Streamer"

So Dr Milk just charged into the fight with the Youngster on the beach, which resulted in what he called a "wipe" last time. Thankfully, this time, Bide didn't get the chance to hurt his team. I played it really safe here because even in a casual playthrough, the dude caught me off-guard. I streamed Sapphire on YouTube once, and my friend made a joke about "Youngster for Smash" and all that. It was pretty funny. Also, the Rich Boy at the entrance to Petalburg Woods was a bit of a pushover.

So, in Petalburg Woods, I initially ran into a Whurmple, but Dr Milk said I could do "dupes clause," so I got a Togepi instead, and he got a Meowth, so we named the Mon "Cash MONey"

So that's kind of where I am now, grinding for tomorrow's session. I'm grinding on wild Tyrogue, Poliwag, Togepi, Spearow, and ... Squritle's a common encounter here, seriously? Those poor little Squirtle.

So, yeah, I might do some more grinding tonight before Dr Milk and I continue. That's about it. See ya.

 

[Reginald Cosmic]

Welp, Dr Milk let his pride get to him. I had a Nidoran with Double Kick and a Lombre (named Fear-Lu because it was linked to a Spearow) with TM move Bullet Seed, and Dr Milk ended up losing his starting Remoraid to a critical hit from Roxanne's Geodude. I must admit I almost let my Fear-Lu faint from the pure shock of seeing my friend lose the only counter to the rock-type, but I really didn't lose a single Pokémon. My friend has done Nuzlockes before, but he had to admit he was too cocky going into Roxanne's gym. Route 116 Encounter: Fear-Lu the Spearow (Dr Milk)/Lombre (Reginald. Rusturf Tunnnel Encounter: Punchline the Surskit (Dr Milk) / Poochyena (Reginald). I had high hopes for this. [Thread Over]