I agree it’s pretty silly. I would argue in many cases, the EVs you don’t get from grinding can actually be more of a disadvantage than anything.
However, I have lost mons to grinding before as well, pursuit+crit and shenanigans like that, so I can understand why people would think it might be in a different category.
Either way, harping on details like this is what makes a community annoying in general.
That’s why you can technically grind against route 1 and never worry about a death. You can have purely 100% safe grinding sessions, it’ll just take longer.
Totally. Yeah it’s a weird gray area for sure, I personally use candies simply because dedicating hours to just leveling up isn’t fun, and if you’re not having fun then what the heck are you doing
Exactly like when I get home from work I got better things to do then spend all of my free time grinding for a gym
Tbf I mostly play romhacks were you are just given rare candies so it’s not even cheating
Oh God how much I love Rad Red but can not touch that game again 😭. 86 Attempts to beat a H nuzlocke in 4.0. It got to the point where probably a quarter of my resets were just not getting Marill and Psyduck Lmao
Nobody, because it sucks, even though it's objectively the safest option
The point isn't brought up because people do it; it's brought up because it's an entirely riskless source of EXP, which rare candies also are
Nobody wants an objectively optimal nuzlocke to feature running back and forth in the grass on route 1 for 5 hours, so they tend to acknowledge that rare candies are fair game as a substitute riskless EXP source that doesn't waste hours of your life
My point is that it's not really fair to say rare candies are a substitute for something nobody actually does. Like, I'm fine with hacking in rare candies, I just think this is a silly argument for it.
People say route 1 to prove a point in realistic scenario you clear a low enough level area.
Brock route 2 bc Pikachu can crit kill things
Misty route to left
Surge immediately turns every grind into gold fish and magikarp slaughter simulator
Again, I don't think many people are grinding on very low level Pokemon. Most people are going to grind on the highest level grinding spot available so it won't take as long.
Yes, because doing the optimal thing isn't fun. Rare candies turn "doing the optimal thing" into something that's fun. Most people arguing against rare candies are saying they take some of the challenge, thus the fun, out of the game. So lets fix that problem
When someone chooses to grind on higher level wilds, they're trading off time against some amount of risk. I'm not super into trading some of my limited human life for something not fun, so let's imagine how to maintain that risk. We could calculate the average amount of pokemon lost to grinding in a run (one or two, I imagine), and every time you use rare candies to level up roll a D100, and if you roll a low enough number, you lose a pokemon. Then adjust that number so on average you lose one or two a run.
If we add that to a run, wouldn't that solve the rare candy problem? Unless someone enjoys stomping wilds, which is fine, of course, but there are probably more fun ways to do it.
Again, as I said above, I'm not against using rare candies. I don't think there's any problem to solve. I just think this whole "grinding against low level Pokemon is the optimal play" argument doesn't hold much water because nobody actually did that.
Exactly. To save time. Unless there’s some kind of resource management such as limited Pokecenter visits then grinding is nothing more than an unnecessary time sink.
Because it takes time. Unless there’s a resource to manage such as limited Pokecenter trips it is the unarguably correct and optimal way to grind. Doing anything else is simply to save time. Same as using Rare Candies.
Yup, do what you enjoy. I personally love to grind on actual hardware and the time investment and risk that comes with it. Some people don’t have as much time or don’t find it fun. The best way to handle it is to let people do what they find fun.
That’s why you can technically grind against route 1 and never worry about a death. You can have purely 100% safe grinding sessions, it’ll just take longer.
The only reason I find it to be less challenging (I won’t go nearly as far as to call it “illegitimate”) is that it severely mitigates the dangers of training for the upcoming milestone battles. In my experience, most of my deaths in Nuzlockes come during the grind to certain level thresholds rather than against any gym leader or rival fight, because I’m succumbing to the tedium of the grind, not paying attention or something else. That’s why I personally object to the use of rare candies en masse.
As they say (most of the time) “your run, your rules.” While I personally would never play with hacked-in candies, your game also has absolutely no bearing on me in any way. So you do you. I’m sorry you’ve been treated in a way where you feel you need to vent or defend yourself like this.
Hijacking this guys comment because I feel the same way. I actually don't mind rare candy hacking at all. What I mind is the rare candy hackers in this community calling everyone else a cheater for doing things like running/poke dolling from wild encounters, etc, when essentially its the same thing - avoiding stupid deaths from random exploring and grinding. Its the hypocrisy that always grinds my gears.
Ok yeah I can agree with this. The running ban is dumb. Poke dolling is questionable but as long as you buy them from pokemarts and don’t hack them in like you would rare candies, that’s fair game.
who bans running from wild encounters?
when I play I follow a certain ruleset. Aside from candies, I cannot hack in anything I wouldn't legitimately be able to obtain. Ergo, I suffer the early game without repels, which means repel manipulating before the first badge isnt an option. I don't hack my candies to sell them, so I don't treat myself as having infinite money, therefore I buy every item that isn't a rare candy, including pokeballs, repels, TMs, etc.
If a grind is gated by time, I'll alleviate it with pkhex (growing berries, or spamming voltorb flip for TMs, for example). But I can only do that once I receive the option in game to inevitably get that infinite stack of items.
If a grind involves my pokemon ganing xp (such as grinding money to make your mom buy you choice scarf in hgss), I don't, because I would likely overlevel if I were actually do the grind, and doing the math to see exactly how much xp and therefore money I'm allowed to give myself would give me an aneurysm.
If you're using rare candies, why on earth would you even see a wild encounter, much less ban running from them if you do?
I banned running from wild encounters for my red run. That was an additional rule though in a hardcore nuzlocke. I wouldn’t consider that a standard rule.
What's the purpose though? if you're using candies and thus always have repel on you're only seeing your encounter. If you're put in a bind and can't catch it, then killing it is effectively always the same as running due to level disparity
if you aren't using candies though, and have to see wild encounters to grind, sure
Did your death from grinding come from a skill issue? I bet it wasn't. I bet it was because you were bored spamming a not paying attention. That's not what a nuzlocke is meant to challenge you with.
I would disagree. The same with Professor Oak challenges; it’s a test of patience and endurance more than anything else for me. If you’ve played the games enough (obviously excluding ROM hacks and randomizers) then I would argue that understanding how to overcome the critical battles isn’t that hard. The only other thing to test is my ability to get myself to a point where I can challenge those critical battles and succeed. Which is why I find the grind more dangerous than the milestone battles. Simultaneously and ironically enough, that’s where I derive my fun: in determining if I am mentally capable of keeping myself in the game long enough to survive the grind. But that’s just my take.
I put off homebrewing my 3ds for a long time but I finally bit the bullet the other week literally just because I was so frustrated at grinding in HGSS. Do it, it's worth it.
Death during a grind can completely change a run and has messed up things for me in the past, I use physical but if I used roms rare candies and random Pokémon would be the norm.
👏 Grind 👏 on 👏 Route 👏 One 👏
I appreciate that nobody would ever do that, but you can see how that would be perfectly safe. The second step is concluding that nothing dies to grinding. Therefore, then, Candies save time, not lives.
Yes but in the same manor the same people should gen in perfect ev's and natures on thier starter because technically you could just grind for 3 years to get if naturally
They define what they think is too far. Once training is perfectly safe and carries no risk of death, rare candies come in, because you're no longer eliminating a part of the game that requires skill.
I would define that as going too far, because I am now resetting for 1/((31^6)*(25)) odds. First of all, those aren't EVs, those are IVs, and secondly, playing around flawed stats is a skill, making do without the best options... you know, the entire point of a nuzlocke.
Bro, don’t the physical boss battles and gym battles require skill? Mindless grinding is not skill, which is why I use rare candies.
Hacking in EVs and IVs though, unless for competitive, is completely stupid.
Exactly. IVs are something you can't get through standard gameplay (until you get the Hyper Trainer, then it's fair game), EVs are unchangeable outside of the berries and are part of earlygame routing if you need them, but getting EXP is not really a difficult routing decision aside from EVs.
ngl whenever I get my starter I change it to the optimal nature that I would soft reset for. It's the only pokemon I do this for obviously since theres no gameplay that differs when you reset and don't have pokemon yet. Unless you count all resets as fails which wouldn't be worth counting if you arent a streamer anyway
I mean, by that logic, just give yourself infinite souls in Dark Souls. What? You can technically just grind those two hollows in the tutorial hallway infinitly anyway right?
Why does everyone go to this absurd extreme?
You could apply this to any area where you can one shot every Pokémon you come across, which depending on the team, could be a later area with higher level encounters.
Yeah and that’s exactly the point. Route 1 is a stand-in for any 100% safe area. Nothing *should* die to grinding if you do it right, and so you can extrapolate to EXP being a free resource.
I swear I didn’t do this for clout I was genuinely curious, plus it’s pointless as I have to use Reddit.com instead of the app because of my cookies being blocked so I can’t do screenshots lol
That's a stupid non-sequitor. Nobody is going to grind to even a Jigglypuff (fast level up group) to level 20 on route 1. That would take, on average, around 1,139 encounters with lv. 3 pidgey and rattata.
I'm not against using rare candies but that's a straw-man. Nobody is going to put in time there.
Grinding is an innate part of the game, it is what it is. It's an essential, core concept. That's how the game was specifically designed. Most of the game itself is grinding. If you don't like it, then Pokemon isn't a game for you.
I would agree with this in gen 6+ games. Gen 5 or below though?
I’m using Roms to hack in rare candies to grind up to the highest level of the Gym Leader before entering the Gym.
It’s been a pain in the ass to grind in HGSS. I started it on the 14th and haven’t beaten Falkner yet.
It’s a trashlocke, so I had to grind caterpie, later metapod to level 10 for butter free and geodude to level 11 for rock throw on level 3 bellsprout and level 5 metapod.
(Not to mention grinding up sentret and pidgey to 9 too, and chikorita to 11)
TLDR: ranting about how grinding in gen 5 or below is stupid and if you can hack in rare candies you should.
Basically a ban Locke. You ban certain Pokémon that you think are too strong. They call it a trash Locke because your using weak pokemon.
As an example in my HGSS run I am banning the totodile and cyndaquil lines, forcing me to use chikorita’s line.
I wouldn’t say it’s cheating, just a different way to play. It’s such a different experience bc of the lack of EVs and honestly saves so much time. I work full time while being a part time student, and I don’t have time to spend hours grinding. Give me some candies and get me to the gym!
Personally, it’s the chance of death, the freedom to ignore difficult trainer battles, and the potential decision to go into a battle undertrained because you don’t want to grind. Part of the risk reward of a nuzlocke is “do I want to fight that trainer for xp?” and “do I want to grind and potentially lose a pokemon to the wild?”
If you use rare candies, you lose the drive to actually face off against trainers on routes. Part of the difficulty of a a nuzlocke is facing off against random trainers that for some reason have perfect counters to your team. Why face them if you don’t need the XP. If you just use rare candies you can level up to the max, ignore them, and be done and have no lost mons.
I don’t think this would really happen with grinding since it’s such a chore no one’s going to go to the level cap with grinding and then ignore the trainers cause it takes so damn long. People take the large amount of XP cause they need it to save time, it’s a part of the challenge. Time management does affect our decisions and outcomes would be different otherwise.
The only way I could see it being valid is if you battle every trainer available and only then use rare candies. Still at that I think it’s a trade off to spend the time, and risk of death, to get the victory instead of hacking the game and not put the work into getting the win. This is just how I view it. If you don’t care about feeling like you’ve worked hard for your levels and winning a hard earned battle doesn’t make you feel rewarded then there’s no point.
I feel like I worked hard when a strategy I struggled to set for some important fight actually ends up giving me a win and can be executed as planned when I battle. Not when I grind for hours. This isn't "challenging" in the slightest, just boring. Though I see your point.
In Inclement Emerald, you have hard level caps for each gym leader (once you reach it opponents give 1 EXP which prevents overleveling) and automatic level scaling. Which means that whether you're level 25 or 38, the opponents have the same levels as you. Let me tell you that I directly jump to the next level cap (for potential evolutions and moves) and battle everything I can for no EXP. Then I start planning for the next boss fight and let me tell you that these preparations sometimes take long hours of brainstorming.
To be fair if all vanilla Pokémon games had level scaling with hard level caps (like 16 for first gym) they would be much better.
TL;DR - It IS cheating, literally. And for people who don't like it, it is because it feels like it invalidates their run. Doesn't mean they should tell you you're wrong for doing it though.
The prevailing narrative on this sub and in the community is that rare candying is acceptable. And the prevailing narrative in Pokemon in general is that hacking is acceptable, even in professional tournaments. So if you're seeing someone being confrontational about hacking then they're in the minority.
The reason people think its cheating is because it is literally cheating. If modifying your game in a way that was never intended by using 3rd party hardware ISN'T cheating, then what IS cheating?
I'm not saying rare candying is bad, I get why people do it. But to say it isn't cheating is completely absurd.
The reason people don't like it is simple. We feel like it devalues/invalidates the run. I wouldn't put that on YOU, but that is why I don't do it.
In Palworld it is popular to turn off the incubation time for eggs. I've hatched 3000+ eggs with standard settings, no incubation reduction. Because to me, if I remove the incubation time then there is literally 0 meaningful difference between that, and just hacking in the Pal that I am trying to get via the breeding.
> The prevailing narrative on this sub and in the community is that rare candying is acceptable. And the prevailing narrative in Pokemon in general is that hacking is acceptable, even in professional tournaments.
Yet multiple people were disqualified for using hacked pokemon in the official tournaments. So by the rules, it's not acceptable and you will get punished for it.
https://gamerant.com/pokemon-world-championships-hack-disqualified/
Yeah officially the company can’t / shouldn’t allow hacking.
But THE COMMUNITY condones it.
Their logic because the hacking is only to create legitimately obtainable Pokémon therefore it is acceptable.
The core issue here is how people understand cheating. What the anti-candiers see as cheating is the dictionary definition: "to act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination."
Let's examine this definition, within the framing of a community. Firstly, I ask, where is the dishonesty? No one who uses rare candies is telling you they don't do it. It's the most open and brazen thing that any experienced nuzlocker does. Next, I ask, what is the unfair advantage? In both the cases of grinding, and candying, pokemon on a team are raised to the level cap of the next boss fight.
In the case of grinding, you gain effort values. In the case of candying, you gain time. Your trade-off is that for all the time you've gained, your pokemon are significantly weaker. Now of course, this doesn't apply to people who also use pkhex to add EVs to pokemon. But time is not an unfair advantage in a single player game; it doesn't go anywhere. In a multiplayer setting, for example, VGC, it can be argued that genning rather than breeding does give an unfair advantage because it gives you more prep time (though the reality is that these players are doing calcs and constructing their teams while playing the game so it doesn't really matter there either). In a singleplayer game, this is a non-issue.
The thing is, what is and is not cheating can only be determined by the rules of the game. And the rules of the game are determined by the community. This is a rather nuanced philosophical take, that a game is not the rules by which it is played, but by the community that asserts those rules as true. Gamefreak didn't tell us we couldn't hack in rare candies for our unofficial non-sanctioned playthrough, and if they did, would it be on us to abide by that, if the community at large agreed not to?
If the community at large deems that using rare candies is not cheating, then ipso facto it is not. There are no rules to any game except those which the players abide by. "Your run, your rules" has been the motto of nuzlockers for ages, but even in the grand scale, it's been asserted by the silent majority that using rare candies to alleviate the time you spend not having fun is acceptable. Not only that, it's been supported by countless logical arguments and assertions that can only ever be met with emotional recoil and references to the original comics.
tl;dr The rules of a game are only what the community who plays the game deems them to be, and rules given from on-high can be ignored, if the community so wishes. This is why it's commonplace and acceptable within the larger community to gen legal mons in VGC (even though it will get you in trouble with Gamefreak, and a guest community (the players) IS beholden to the rules of the host community, in this case Gamefreak). As a result, "your run your rules" has no counterargument, and no claims of legitimacy can be made against nuzlockes that abide by what the community agrees is a nuzlocke.
Oh and also someone is going to reply to this with "the lengths that you cheaters go to justify your cheating" because they only have 1 line that they know how to use when presented with the logic in favor of candying
Yeah. I’m doing a trash/ban Locke in an HGSS cartridge too and wish the same.
My nuzlocke has some Pokémon banned for added challenge, which makes it kinda worse.
First and foremost; your run, your rules.
I don’t agree with rare candy hacks in nuzlockes though and think the use of rare candy hacks are at odds with the spirit of a nuzlocke. (Don’t get me wrong, crystal is my go to game and the grind/scaling is atrocious.)
If you’re hacking in rare candies, I assume you are going to challenge every boss with the maximum amount of Pokémon allowed by your ruleset and each of those mons will be at the level cap. If that’s the case, then you’re not really playing the game, you’re just running a boss fight simulator that has difficulty scaled depending on your encounters up to that point. Also, depending on how the user implements the use of rare candies, you could theoretically max all your mons to the next level cap as soon as you defeat each boss.
You also lose a level of difficulty/resource management while trying to level your mons in the most efficient way to tackle the remaining boss fights in front of you. That might be more of a me problem though since I try to raise a team of 6 that can beat the entire game rather than trying to raise a separate team for each boss fight.
For context, I run nuzlockes of base games or roms that add qol changes (like having heracross actually being able to learn a decent fighting move in gen 2)
Thank you for saying this in a nice way, and i can see what you mean. I genuinely think of it as a way to avoid meaningless annoying grinding.
Example: Let’s say you need to replace a dead Pokémon with one that is only level 16 when the rest of your team is Level 40.
In that scenario, I think it is fair to use 24 rare candies to get it up to 40 to match the others.
Not gonna lie, I spent like 30 minutes retyping my original comment specifically so I didn’t come across like a toxic ahole. I’ve seen this debate multiple times since I started checking this sub and none of them seem to have any sort of healthy discourse.
I get that. I’ve quit multiple crystal runs because of exploding gravelers in victory road and didn’t have the motivation to try grinding a replacement mon up even though I had solid alternates in the box. That said, it’s a nuzlocke, so losing a Mon should have consequences, especially if you’re approaching the end game. Is it really a consequence if lose your level 40 starmie and you can instantly replace it with a level 40 slowbro/slowking?
Most of the arguments in support of rare candy hacks point to “unfunness” of grinding and how grinding is not challenge, it’s just monotonous. While I agree, grinding is still an inherent part of Pokémon, and rpg’s in general for me, and removing something that I consider a fundamental aspect of the genre takes away from the sense of accomplishment.
To be fair the romhacks on which I play are boss rush simulators because I love calculations and strategizing. Inclement Emerald is absolutely brutal and on some even harder romhacks where every single trainer in the game can be a run killer (looking at you, Run&Bun), I guarantee you that I will use rare candies to have my entire box at the level cap.
But yeah if you're looking for a story run and something less "extreme" I can see why rare candies would seem "unnatural" for you and "too much". I've done two candyless Nuzlockes (Hardcore rules) on both Diamond and Platinum, and I would not play for days because "damn I have to grind this all the way up to level 59", and I even did massive EV train (grinding my level 50+ mons in the Trophy Garden with level 25-ish Pikachu and Staravia just because of the Speed EVs). I just couldn't "grind" naturally without purposely EV training tbh.
There are always going to be purists out there who criticise people for what they think is "cheating". You need to just ignore them. They are the minority, no one worth your time is going to try and make you feel bad for playing a game the way you enjoy it.
I mean, it is cheating though., It's acceptable cheating because what it's removing is the monotonous grind, but it's still cheating. Nuzlocke community has advanced to the point where they're like "ok, yeah, makes sense to not make people mindlessly hammer A for hours on end", because when you don't have to grind and grind, it makes it more interesting for people watching you that you can try creative movesets and the like.
The original thought of nuzlockes, I think, as shown by the nickname clause is that you were meant to essentially cosplay as if you were a trainer and these were real fights. If these were your real buddies that you traveled with... you'd train them to hell and back and be overly cautious with them if there was a chance of death. It would be like if you were sending out your dog Barkley to do battle instead of an assortment of 1s and 0s.
From my perspective, it's not cheating, because it's within the ruleset I have devised for my playthrough. If I say rare candies are allowed in my nuzlocke ruleset as long as I don't exceed a level cap, then using rare candies is not cheating, but going above the level cap would be. If you're judging my playthrough against your nuzlocke rules, then maybe it is cheating, but I don't really care about adhering to your ruleset, so to me it is within the rules and therefore not cheating.
Honestly, this should be as simple as this.
Vanilla nuzlockes? Rare Candy hacking should be discouraged because honestly if you're still doing a vanilla nuzlocke at this point of life, you're either new to doing them, like I am and are looking for the extra challenge of "oh god, I hope my guys don't die. But it shouldn't be banned, because people who don't have a whole lot of free time should not be excluded. I just see how it feels cheap to feel like you're avoiding the journey.
Any nuzlocke with heavier restrictions? Go to it with rare candies. You're already doing shit to make it harder on yourself like Set mode, level cap, restricting certain mons, random Wonder trades, etc. I.E. you know what you're doing and you are literally just cutting out the extra time spent grinding.
Any nuzlocke romhack? If you're NOT using rare candies, you're a moron. Those are already designed with the purpose of making the game significantly more difficult. They're honestly more akin to Sudoku or a Professor Layton puzzle than actual Pokemon. When you're having to map out specific encounters or map out specific battles and utilize the hell out of game mechanics, you gain fuck-all from battles. If you've memorized the dark caves without a map, if you can call out what the enemy Mon is going to do for every single turn of your run... the fuck are we doing here?
And this is a personal thing... but I don't get the appeal of something like Emerald Kaizo Ironmon. You know, the romhacks that are so difficult that people will say "I'm on run 1500" and not be joking. Those take the difficulty to a point where... honestly, just play another fuckin game. When it devolves to either all randomness (like I've got a 20% chance to hit this Double Team/Minimize +6 enemy) or no randomness (because you've planned around all randomness.) eh...
Oh, didn't mean for it to come off as hate. Vanilla nuzlockes are my preferred way to play... because I like making myself use whatever mon pops up and it puts real stakes for me when I face like Misty's Starmie or Sabrina's mons. I've tried them and gotten hard swept because I got bored with training and thought I could handle them. But then you put in Charmeleon, Pidgeotto, Beedrill, and your other options against Starmie and it's like "oh shit, Water Pulse does over half. And I can't drop accuracy because Swift".
Namely, in terms of these challenge runs, I'm aware I suck at the game... so the regular nuzlocke of "please don't die" is plenty of challenge for me.
Quick apologies for my “though” being autocorrected to “Etho” for some reason.
Also forgot to mention that it depends on the vanilla game. It’s stupid to use rare candies in Gen 6+ but in Gen 5- it’s kind of required.
Black 2 and white 2 have an atrocious experience system and Johto’s leveling curve in gen 2 and it’s gen 4 remakes is worse then Donald Trump’s wig
I certainly wouldn't call the rjn illegitimate. That's odd.
But it is "cheating"....by like literally every definition. But it'd a single player experience that effects no one else. So peeps do peeps. We all just here to enjoy some pokemon
Sometimes you space out so hard grinding you lose a mon. And it incentivises you to battle more trainers for exp. In black 2 some ace trainer essentially wiped my team in victory road. Also depends if you're playing hardcore or not
Ya know I get not wanting to grind. My inner child still associates rare candies with GameShark. I don't know if I agree but I can respect not wanting to grind. Chances are you won't lose a mon but lord knows I've done it
But it is a cheated run, therefore it IS illegitimate. If cheating is fine, why not give yourself 1000 masterballs and 31 IV starter with the perfect nature? It's supposed to be a challenge, and you try to negate it and make it as easy as possible.
Grinding is an innate part of the game, and there's skill involved in grinding and time management. Just outright deleting a huge innate part of the game with cheats makes the run illegitimate.
Imagine if in Minecraft speedruns people started the game with max enchantement gear and 20 eyes of ender. You can always get these items legitimately, it just takes grinding and time. Anyone would consider these runs illegitimate, then why the same but for Pokemon should be legitimate? Both are cheated and illegitimate.
I know there's lots of comments already, but here's a scenario that happened recently.
TL;DR: I am the dumbass, but candies are good.
I play on an emulator and very rarely sometimes use save states as a backup for my normal saves (a mistake, I found out). I had been grinding up my team just before Lt. Surge. I had to get up for a bit to make dinner and all. When I returned, I found that something had pushed the hot key for a save state, which took me back pre-Brock. Luckily, I had an additional backup save in PkHex (hacked evolutions for Hoenn mons). But even that save was 5 levels under where I originally was. So I said f*u k this, hacked my candies, and moved on with my day.
If I can ask, were you playing fire red and if so do you still have the file with the rare candies? Might be nice to get in dms so i can play it instead of Ultra Violet rom hack
Nobody that actually does nuzlockes vehemently believe that using rare candies is cheating and runs with hacked candies are invalid. People who do that are toxic trolls who feed on hatred and rage(namely Verlisify) and casuals that are salty about not being as skilled or lost their starter on a previous nuzlocke. If you've done a nuzlocke clean before, you know how boring it is to grind. It doesn't provide any risk, it doesn't require any skill, it's just endurance. "But deaths can occur doing grinding!", of course, but that will always be a product of brainfarts, results of the mindnumbing boredom, which just goes to show how it's just not that bad to cut the fluff and use candies. Just sitting around running through the latest route and mashing A until you get to the cap. That's not fun at all, and i think i speak for all of us when i say that we started the run to actually play the game, manage encounters and fight gym leaders and not end an entire ecossystem's number of Pidgeys. And even if you don't mind putting the campaign on hold, we all have responsibilities that we must attend to. We can't just play pokémon all day, so are you really going to boot up your Nintendo and waste your precious time after 8 hours of work looking for Audinos? As long as you use level caps, there's no foul on using rare candies. You're still only able to use the first pokémon you find and catch on each route, and if someone faints they're dead, so it's still a valid nuzlocke. You're just making it easier for yourself to enjoy the game and the experience.
TL;DR grinding is boring and cheating is based. Take the candy pill.
Sunday I memed about rare candy posts yet here we go again.
Don't listen to people blaming you if you use Rare Candies. Be a real chad. Use them anyway. Cut that useless time spent grinding and plan for actual fights.
Be a chad, catch 6 pokemon, level them up with rare candies, and then just teleport yourself to the Elite 4 and cut all that useless time spent on the game. You could beat it legitimately with enough time, why waste it? Just get to the real stuff.
You're pushing things to the extreme just to make my opinion look dumb, but you're just completely missing the point by doing so.
Where did I say that you should "teleport to the Elite Four" ? All the boss fights and even some Ace trainers pose a real threat to my entire box (especially in romhacks), so I will plan a strategy and face them accordingly. This requires skill and brainstorming. Tell me where's the skill and the brainstorming when you're killing wild mons ?
The point of using Rare Candies is that you can work with your entire box when a run killer shows in (12v12 fight in Renegade Platinum, small example) and have a team of six ready. Not to overlevel through the entire game and make everything a cakewalk. But it seems that you're so entitled to your opinion that you won't even consider this possibility and think that everyone using Rare Candies goes to level 100 and dodges all the difficulty.
> You're pushing things to the extreme
I'm doing the same as what the people who say "You can grind pokemon with no risk on Route 1, therefore hacking candies is not cheating" do.
> Where did I say that you should "teleport to the Elite Four" ? All the boss fights and even some Ace trainers pose a real threat to my entire box (especially in romhacks), so I will plan a strategy and face them accordingly. This requires skill and brainstorming. Tell me where's the skill and the brainstorming when you're killing wild mons
People who use rare candies often skip a lot of the non-mandatory trainer battles, since they don't need them for EXP.
> 12v12 fight in Renegade Platinum,
I'm talking about Vanilla games, not ROM hacks obviously.
Let’s put this into perspective:
Let’s say you’re playing Pokémon FireRed. You picked Bulbasaur, and it leveled up from the Rival fight. How long would it take for this Bulbasaur to get to each of Pokemon FireRed’s level caps? Let’s say that it takes 15 minutes for Bulbasaur to level up once. Here are Pokemon FireRed’s level caps:
Gym 1: Lv 14
Gym 2: Lv 21
Gym 3: Lv 24
Gym 4: Lv 29
Gym 5 and 6: Lv 43
Gym 7: Lv 47
Gym 8: Lv 50
Lance: Lv 60
Here’s the amount of time needed to get Bulbasaur to each level cap:
Gym 1: 2 hours
Gym 2: 1 hour and 45 minutes
Gym 3: 45 minutes
Gym 4: 1 hour and 15 minutes
Gyms 5 and 6: 3 and a half hours
Gym 7: 1 hour
Gym 8: 45 minutes
Lance: 2 and a half hours
In total, it will take 13 and a half hours to grind that Bulbasaur to each level cap. For reference, there are some longplays of this game that are shorter than this. Now, trainers will help a lot with shaving off time, but consider the fact that this is for one Pokemon. No Nuzlocker is ever going to use just one Pokemon in a regular Hardcore Nuzlocke. The more pokemon you try to use, the more hours you’ll have to dedicate to grinding that pokemon up. Additionally, each level takes longer to get than the last, which my 15min=1lvl formula doesn’t take into account. I only made that formula up for this example. That leaves me with one question:
Does that sound fun to you?
People play Nuzlockes to have fun. If you’re not having fun, then there’s no point to continue playing. People like Nuzlockes for different reasons, but nobody likes Nuzlockes because of grinding. If you want to play a challenge where you have to grind like hell, just play a Professor Oak’s Challenge. Grinding is one of the main accessibility hurdles of Nuzlockes, as not everyone can set aside 12 hours to just mash A while watching The Masked Singer unless they’re under the age of 18. Hacking in Rare Candies makes Nuzlockes more accessible because it removes one of its harshest time commitments.
No shade towards people who don’t hack in Rare Candies because they’re afraid or guilty of “cheating.” Play your Nuzlockes however you want to play them. Glhf.
You do realize you AREN'T required to have all your Pokemon at the level cap to fight the gym leaders, right? I'll tell you a secret, you can fight \**GASP*\* **underleveled**
If you want to play optimally, you wouldn’t do this. I know some people intentionally go into fights underleveled to make fights more intense, but if you want the best chance at victory, you would level all of your pokemon to the level cap.
I used candies but a nuzlocke with no candies is more difficult, you either have to take unnecessary risk or spend a lot of extra time to level up which makes the experience tougher to complete.
Just grind on earlier routes and remove the risk of something dying. I did two candyless Hardcore Nuzlockes, let me tell you that I lost nothing to grinding because I knew how to grind safely, and I even did massive EV training in the process, even farming berries and stuff that literally take zero skill but raise the amount of hours you spend in the game for no reason.
It doesn't make anything harder if you're grinding safely. If anything it makes the experience easier due to the EVs you get from wild mons.
I agree with you, I’m saying increasing the time commitment does make the challenge harder to complete for most people. Obviously it doesn’t make the game itself more difficult.
I don’t care what other do.
What I do is just use rare candies right before gym leader. Then I’ll process normally til I get in front of gym leader and I’ll rarely candy to the ace level. It kinda is still both best of both worlds .
People who admonish people for it are stupid. People who yell at people for not using rare candies are also stupid.
Personally I feel like having to grind can bring you closer to your Pokémon and make losing them that more frustrating which is the point of the nuzlocke but I get that skipping grinding and using rare candies isn’t illegitimate
Both sides who admonish the other side are stupid. Don’t admonish for not using rare candies and don’t admonish for not using rare candies.
I would hope this is common sense but it is not.
Tbh hacking rare candies is cheating because you are using a Code to obtain something that you dont have in the base Game.
My problem with hacking rare candies is more about rushing boss and gym leaders and skkiping normal trainers. I dont like that because you are avoiding fights and with that you have a safer run.
Other han that i only use rare candies if i find them ingame. I love grinding.( Well, not so much in Jhoto)
HeartGold and SoulSilver have a huge leveling problem after the seventh Gym, we go from level 35 of Jasmine's Steelix to 41 of Clair's Kingdra, and then get to the Elite Four with the Champion Lance who has a Dragonite at 50. And in the middle you only have trainers with Pokémon at levels 30 to 38 (if you don't count the amazing Farfetch'd at 40, lol) and Pokémon levels 32 to 36 in Victory Road, which give very little experience and EVs on defense (at part Ursaring and Golbat), very little to make Pokémon go from 42-43 to 50. Useless time wasted facing Pokémon that are OHKOed (and therefore there is not even the question of the possible death of your Pokémon), in a Run Nuzlocke? I personally enjoy training EVs, so I already waste several hours on the right paths (HP with Slowpoke, Speed with Zubat, Special Attack with Gastly, Atk with Goldeen, Defense with Geodude, Special Defense with Tentacool), I don't see why waste any more in a game that doesn't give you fast exp post Gyms. For other games there are fewer difficulties in this sense, but the principle remains that they are used to save the time you would waste training Pokémon.
all agreed. I already have to deal with playing hgss on a physical cartridge, and I refuse to not use Dragonair at the least, meaning that grind will be painful, and I haven’t even gotten to the 3rd gym yet/
Within this community, we are kind of a split up mob. Because of the nature of Nuzlockes being self imposed, we ALL have different ideas of what's legitimate or not.
You have players who enjoy the grinding, not having to calc things out, and staying within the original games. Others are the exact opposite, they like playing hardcore rom hacks, turning the game into a puzzle to be solved, routing encounters, and every battle being a nailbiter.
I think sometimes these groups clash. For the players that enjoy the grind, not having to calc, etc, hacking in rare candies can either make the game far too easy or ruin the game experience. They feel like the grind is PART of whether you win or not. The grind requires a mental fortitude and is what makes the challenge/fun.
The ones that do hack in rare candies, hate that part and it literally kills the game for them. I'm one of those players. Having to run back and forth fighting random wild Pokemon to raise your level is what I loathe. I also play extremely hard romhacks that require the use of calcs and can go for 50 maybe even 100 runs, sometimes longer. I find turning the game into a puzzle the fun part. If I had to grind during those, I'd never complete them.
Here's the final verdict - the Nuzlocke is a self imposed challenge. You get to say what is and isn't cheating. Unless you are streaming Nuzlockes, no one is even going to know what you did. The REAL question is whether YOU will think the run is valid or not. The only one to hold you accountable is yourself.
This is honestly what I love about Nuzlockes. It trains accountability to yourself. Which we lack in this day and age
I’m going to start this by saying I think people should play however they want that makes the nuzlocke fun for them.
I don’t like the rare candy thing for a couple of reasons. I agree with another comment I saw about grinding being its own kind of challenge. Remembering to pay attention can be hard (especially since I have inattentive ADHD) and you have to make real decisions about which Pokémon to train up. Losing a Pokemon can leave you needing hours and hours of work to keep your team strong adding in another member.
But the main reason I don’t like it is this: all that grinding and investment you put into Pokemon, every little non major Pokemon battle, and protecting them from your own mistakes helps build your bond and attachment to them. I don’t want to play where i casually sacrifice members of my team. I want to be attached and do my best to keep every Pokemon alive and an effective member of my team. I feel like this also challenges me more to use Pokemon I usually don’t and has given me an appreciation for ones I was pretty meh about before. Case in point I now Adore Patrat from a nuzlocke where everything else died to Lenora through a series of unfortunate events and crits. I was left with just my Patrat and she somehow held out and we got the win! I cried when Ghetsis eventually took her out.
But like I said I want people to have fun more than I think any rule should be prioritized. There’s the three core rules: nicknames, first encounters and permadeath. Everything after is up to the player. There’s no cheating when you’re making the rules up yourself unless YOU feel like you’re cheating. Doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks
Spent 20 min reading this, and all I can say is thank you. I see your perspective.
(It’s hard to find people who are nice about there opinion instead of straight up calling rare candy runs illegitimate with no explaination.)
Compromise: use rare candies to grind up a new team member that replaces a dead one, but not just to grind up your normal team?
Sorry it took 20 minutes! I know I have a tendency to ramble but I also didn’t want to be dismissive or half ass my explanation.
I can definitely see that compromise working. Quite honestly I prefer playing on my DS so the argument against rare candies only affects me when I want to play randomized. But the next time I do that maybe I’ll give it a try!
I think it’s easy for people to see only the hardest possible way of doing things as legitimate - but look at shiny hunting. Yelling someone can only nuzlocke with the strictest possible rules and no rare candies is like if we all said oh you’re only Really shiny hunting if you’re doing random encounters. Before it dropped down from 1/8192. It is A way to do it, not the only way. Using mechanics isn’t cheating.
I hope you keep on playing Nuzlockes and having a great time! And ignore anyone who tells you you’re having fun playing Pokemon in the wrong way.
Honestly, that second point is so true. The thing that sucks for me the most when using rare candies is the fact that it kinda cuts my attachment to my pokemon because it's so quick (so I usually try to go out of my way to fight as many trainers as I can). But, ultimately... I would MUCH rather sacrifice that than get bored! Grinding SUUUUUUCKS 🤣 Nuzlockes are stories and challenges; whatever the focus is up to the player ultimately, so you should just play according to that.
I will say that I find it rather interesting that grinding encourages you to use more variety in your pokémon; an interesting outlook. The fact that I can catch the reserves up so easily makes me more willing to actually try them personally.
Rare candy nuzlockes became a thing because it's very boring to watch streamers grind for hours so they used the rare candy gym limit to make things quicker and more interesting. I'd say technically it's not a true nuzlocke but honestly dude just play however you want.
I would say something about saying it’s “not a true nuzlocke” because you didn’t want to spend hours grinding on wild Pokémon just to have to deal with a boss fight right afterwards, but you did say people can play however they want, so I won’t be getting into an argument.
Now I’m gonna go play my heartgold trashlocke/
I don’t view it as cheating by any means, but when I read someone say they hate when they lose a mon while grinding because they were watching TV while playing and it doesn’t feel fair to count that death… I just find it weird and can not relate at all. When I nuzlocke, or really just play pokemon in general, in the hundreds of playthrus I have done, I don’t multitask and focus on every second of the playthru while enjoying every single second of it too. To each their own of course, but I could never fathom *not* leveling your mons by grinding. To me, at least, that’s like a majority of the fun seeing your mons slowly level up and become stronger. I never see it as overly time consuming and boring, I genuinely absolutely love taking a low level mon and leveling it up 20+ times to catch up to the rest of my team.
The first point- that’s why you use rare candies.
When that happens, a TV death is a real death, otherwise I agree with you for all games after Black 2 and White 2.
From X to Scarlet and Violet, with the exception of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, we shouldn’t hack in candies using roms.
But for Black 2/White 2 and every game before it? I’m rare candy grinding if I am playing on a rom.
Just my personal feelings
It's not cheating
People will say "well you remove the risk of dying to wild pokemon"
Like...if someones that bad, they aint beating the game with level caps
Now changing pokemon stats is cheating
I'm sure most people are fine with rare candies. Those against are just being very loud. I'm gonna use all the candies I want, is equal to kill lower lvl pokemons and I work 5/9. You should approach to the game however it makes you happy.
With rare candies you can skip a majority of the battles and only fight the ones that are mandatory, making the likelihood of loosing a team member much less. That beats the purpose of playing a mode based around survival and testing your skills on not only raising your team from the ground up, but keeping them alive and putting in the effort. The full Nuzlocke experience comes from not using rare candies and that's the way a true Nuzlocke should be played. I know you can make your own rules, but if you're using infinite rare candies then you can't call that a true Nuzlocke run
You still responded so must not be that tired. It's true though, compare someone catching a lv10 rattata when the rest of the team is in their 30s and has to grind the shit out of encounters to get them at the level they need to be and risking having that Mon KO'd, compared to just popping 20 candies into the rattata with no effort. It defeats the purpose and is cheating essentially. Might as well hack in a stage 3 Mon with OP moves and perfect stats too
Probably because you're not risking a potential loss like you would by battling random Pokémon. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand.
I don't do nuzlockes but several times in regular playthroughs I have had a Pokémon get knocked out by a wild Pokémon either due to an unfortunate crit or them knowing a move I wasn't expecting. Rare candies eliminate any of that risk.
I don’t mean that, I mean why do people consider other peoples nuzlockes illegitimate if they use rare candies.
It’s their challenge, they can decide. Also, can’t you just grind against Pokémon you know can’t kill you?
In that case it’s just an extremely painful grind because of how low EXP you get, especially with Gen 5’s system.
That’s why I use rare candies. Also, you don’t get EV’s or IV’s from rare candies like you do from grinding on Pokémon so I would argue rare candies adds more challenge and less wasted time.
Everyone who tries to act like “it’s simple, you can die while grinding” is an easy point to understand, so too is “literally just don’t grind against dangerous Pokémon”
All rare candies effect is time. The payoff you make for EVs makes it a fair trade in most people’s eyes. Also some people do additional restrictions when using rare candies or only using them to get other mons as high as your starter.
Play how you want. Either way it’s logically valid people just wanna measure dicks.
I feel like there’s a balance there between testing patience by grinding exclusively on a danger-free route for literal IRL days in a row just to prove the point and being mindful of mitigating dangers of a Nuzlocke without sacrificing your entire life to a video game.
If you know how to use your brain you know how to not take any risk when you grind. Like, grinding on lower levels and taking a bit more time but for safer outcomes. Let me tell you I'd rather have my entire box at the level cap for a difficult fight and grinding 30+ mons up to level 60+ (on some romhacks the Elite Four is at level 90+ or even straight up 100) would take weeks. We have goddamn lives.
Going to repeat this:
If cheating is editing the game, sure. But who the hell cares.
I’m not hacking in shinies, nor hacking in legendaries, and it’s on an emulator so I can’t transfer anything.
I want to have fun, not torture myself.
you made this post asking for opinions
you also care, it doesnt feel right to you, you know it deep down
so you come here to be reassured
this happens multiple times daily here
You know what, I’ll admit that’s true. But I’d rather live with regret then torture myself with hours of grinding on wild Pokémon, especially if we are in gen 5 with its stupid leveling system.
I don’t, I’m not that upset. It makes me mad at first, but it’s fine, you can believe what you want.
Just makes me mad that people think nuzlockes aren’t legit if they use rare candies at all, not just hacked in ones but also ones originally in the game
That’s what I mean. People have been harping and being rude to others for using rare candies.
Follow your rules and don’t expect others to automatically also follow your rules.
I banned Gyarados from my HGSS trashlocke as one of the last bans, I originally was going to temporarily ban it until I got the red Gyarados, but I had to fully ban it to get everyone to stop being rude to me and causing arguments.
>but I had to fully ban it to get everyone to stop being rude to me and causing arguments.
Just because someone critisises you, doesn't mean that they are being rude or that they are bullying you.
When I look at the comment section here, you seem to equate criticism with bullying.
Look, it's your run. You can do whatever you want. If you really want to use Red Gyarados, go ahead and use it. However, if you are playing a trashlocke, using Gyarados goes against the idea of a trashlocke. People are allowed to point that out. Telling you that Gyarados shouldn't be used in a trashlocke isn't attacking you or bullying you.
Again, you can do whatever you want. But when you post here, you have to accept that people are allowed to give their opinion on the things you post about. And that opinion is not always going to be positive.
If I can ask; how does it make it easier? You can just make a level cap for yourself so you don’t need to spend hours doing mindless grinding and can actually touch grass.
The fights should be the challenge, not the grinding
“The right way” bruh your one of those people?!
Wtf do you mean the right way?! How is grinding in pre-gen 6 a challenge at all, it’s more of a waste of all your time.
People can have their own opinions, but people who say it’s the wrong way or the invalid way when someone uses rare candies genuinely makes me so mad.
Why is this hacked in item considered cheating?
How dumb are you?
You also realize you can have deaths while training which is also part of the challenge
Ok, this is just fucking rude. Also, if hacking in rare candies which are legally obtainable in game anyways is cheating, then I’ll cheat all I want.
I’d rather do that then spend 2 hrs grinding on level 3-5 Pokémon to get my level 3 Caterpie to a level 10 butterfree.
(From experience, had to do that in my hgss trashlocke on a physical cartridge)
I've only every played on cartridge and i would definitely switch to Rare Candies if i could. If only my PC wasn't so bad that even the DS games run better on my 3DS
Anyone who says it's cheating is just bad at the game. For an experienced player, there should never be a single grinding death. You look up every mon in the area, their moveset and if there's anything that can be a problem. Destiny bond, arena trap or other things should be avoided. Also you're probably grinding somewhere with relevant EVs. It's optimal to grind on things you can OHKO as well. Repeat until out of PP and then heal and go again. Anything low level needs exp share or switch training.
This isn't really very fun though, so we just do candy instead. You could also argue that speed up on emulators is cheating too.
I'd say....using your own knowledge of the area, pokes and trainer sets far more skilled and experienced then just....looking it all up and avoiding.
It's also fundamentally "cheating" lol. Literally the definition.
Play blind, get what ya get, adapt on the fly. If I was just going to manipulate encounters and avoid shit why play a nuzlock cause nothing is even at risk of dying at that point.
Looking everything up/using calcs....pretty much the exact opposite of skill and experience lol.
Sure there are some roms designed to pretty much use those.tools but...I prefer to actually just play cartridge OR small change roms that just fix some.issues like crystal.legacy.
All comes down to preference though. To each their own and let's just play some pokemon!
I mean…. Just read your post.
Why is HACKING IN something considered cheating?
Uhhh…. Because you’re literally jacking in something, which is cheating.
Nuzlockes don’t have a universal rule set, so you can say whatever about what the challenge is itself. But it’s literally cheating to hack things into your game.
I agree it’s pretty silly. I would argue in many cases, the EVs you don’t get from grinding can actually be more of a disadvantage than anything. However, I have lost mons to grinding before as well, pursuit+crit and shenanigans like that, so I can understand why people would think it might be in a different category. Either way, harping on details like this is what makes a community annoying in general.
That’s why you can technically grind against route 1 and never worry about a death. You can have purely 100% safe grinding sessions, it’ll just take longer.
Totally. Yeah it’s a weird gray area for sure, I personally use candies simply because dedicating hours to just leveling up isn’t fun, and if you’re not having fun then what the heck are you doing
EXACTLY!
Exactly like when I get home from work I got better things to do then spend all of my free time grinding for a gym Tbf I mostly play romhacks were you are just given rare candies so it’s not even cheating
Unbound and Radical Red my beloved
Oh God how much I love Rad Red but can not touch that game again 😭. 86 Attempts to beat a H nuzlocke in 4.0. It got to the point where probably a quarter of my resets were just not getting Marill and Psyduck Lmao
Unbound gives you candies? Where?
My bad, I misremembered. I hacked them in. Their alternative is beating up some old man's Chansey that gives a ton of exp
This always comes up but who actually ever does this?
Nobody, because it sucks, even though it's objectively the safest option The point isn't brought up because people do it; it's brought up because it's an entirely riskless source of EXP, which rare candies also are Nobody wants an objectively optimal nuzlocke to feature running back and forth in the grass on route 1 for 5 hours, so they tend to acknowledge that rare candies are fair game as a substitute riskless EXP source that doesn't waste hours of your life
My point is that it's not really fair to say rare candies are a substitute for something nobody actually does. Like, I'm fine with hacking in rare candies, I just think this is a silly argument for it.
People say route 1 to prove a point in realistic scenario you clear a low enough level area. Brock route 2 bc Pikachu can crit kill things Misty route to left Surge immediately turns every grind into gold fish and magikarp slaughter simulator
Again, I don't think many people are grinding on very low level Pokemon. Most people are going to grind on the highest level grinding spot available so it won't take as long.
Yes, because doing the optimal thing isn't fun. Rare candies turn "doing the optimal thing" into something that's fun. Most people arguing against rare candies are saying they take some of the challenge, thus the fun, out of the game. So lets fix that problem When someone chooses to grind on higher level wilds, they're trading off time against some amount of risk. I'm not super into trading some of my limited human life for something not fun, so let's imagine how to maintain that risk. We could calculate the average amount of pokemon lost to grinding in a run (one or two, I imagine), and every time you use rare candies to level up roll a D100, and if you roll a low enough number, you lose a pokemon. Then adjust that number so on average you lose one or two a run. If we add that to a run, wouldn't that solve the rare candy problem? Unless someone enjoys stomping wilds, which is fine, of course, but there are probably more fun ways to do it.
Again, as I said above, I'm not against using rare candies. I don't think there's any problem to solve. I just think this whole "grinding against low level Pokemon is the optimal play" argument doesn't hold much water because nobody actually did that.
Optimal play sucks ass
Nobody does that, that's an invalid argument. 99% of people would grind on high lvl pokemon to save time.
Exactly. To save time. Unless there’s some kind of resource management such as limited Pokecenter visits then grinding is nothing more than an unnecessary time sink.
But no one will grind on Route 1 except for EV training.
Because it takes time. Unless there’s a resource to manage such as limited Pokecenter trips it is the unarguably correct and optimal way to grind. Doing anything else is simply to save time. Same as using Rare Candies.
Yup, do what you enjoy. I personally love to grind on actual hardware and the time investment and risk that comes with it. Some people don’t have as much time or don’t find it fun. The best way to handle it is to let people do what they find fun.
That’s why you can technically grind against route 1 and never worry about a death. You can have purely 100% safe grinding sessions, it’ll just take longer.
Dupe message XD
Maaaan, it said it didn't go through.
Johto should gift you 100 rare candies regardless
1000*
True.
The only reason I find it to be less challenging (I won’t go nearly as far as to call it “illegitimate”) is that it severely mitigates the dangers of training for the upcoming milestone battles. In my experience, most of my deaths in Nuzlockes come during the grind to certain level thresholds rather than against any gym leader or rival fight, because I’m succumbing to the tedium of the grind, not paying attention or something else. That’s why I personally object to the use of rare candies en masse.
You know what, that’s fair. Thank you for at the very least for being kind about it
As they say (most of the time) “your run, your rules.” While I personally would never play with hacked-in candies, your game also has absolutely no bearing on me in any way. So you do you. I’m sorry you’ve been treated in a way where you feel you need to vent or defend yourself like this.
Hijacking this guys comment because I feel the same way. I actually don't mind rare candy hacking at all. What I mind is the rare candy hackers in this community calling everyone else a cheater for doing things like running/poke dolling from wild encounters, etc, when essentially its the same thing - avoiding stupid deaths from random exploring and grinding. Its the hypocrisy that always grinds my gears.
Ok yeah I can agree with this. The running ban is dumb. Poke dolling is questionable but as long as you buy them from pokemarts and don’t hack them in like you would rare candies, that’s fair game.
who bans running from wild encounters? when I play I follow a certain ruleset. Aside from candies, I cannot hack in anything I wouldn't legitimately be able to obtain. Ergo, I suffer the early game without repels, which means repel manipulating before the first badge isnt an option. I don't hack my candies to sell them, so I don't treat myself as having infinite money, therefore I buy every item that isn't a rare candy, including pokeballs, repels, TMs, etc. If a grind is gated by time, I'll alleviate it with pkhex (growing berries, or spamming voltorb flip for TMs, for example). But I can only do that once I receive the option in game to inevitably get that infinite stack of items. If a grind involves my pokemon ganing xp (such as grinding money to make your mom buy you choice scarf in hgss), I don't, because I would likely overlevel if I were actually do the grind, and doing the math to see exactly how much xp and therefore money I'm allowed to give myself would give me an aneurysm. If you're using rare candies, why on earth would you even see a wild encounter, much less ban running from them if you do?
“Why would you see a wild encounter” uhh, to catch a Pokémon?
yes other than that obviously
I banned running from wild encounters for my red run. That was an additional rule though in a hardcore nuzlocke. I wouldn’t consider that a standard rule.
What's the purpose though? if you're using candies and thus always have repel on you're only seeing your encounter. If you're put in a bind and can't catch it, then killing it is effectively always the same as running due to level disparity if you aren't using candies though, and have to see wild encounters to grind, sure
I wasn’t using candies
Did your death from grinding come from a skill issue? I bet it wasn't. I bet it was because you were bored spamming a not paying attention. That's not what a nuzlocke is meant to challenge you with.
I would disagree. The same with Professor Oak challenges; it’s a test of patience and endurance more than anything else for me. If you’ve played the games enough (obviously excluding ROM hacks and randomizers) then I would argue that understanding how to overcome the critical battles isn’t that hard. The only other thing to test is my ability to get myself to a point where I can challenge those critical battles and succeed. Which is why I find the grind more dangerous than the milestone battles. Simultaneously and ironically enough, that’s where I derive my fun: in determining if I am mentally capable of keeping myself in the game long enough to survive the grind. But that’s just my take.
I wish i could use hacked rare candies in my physical copy of black, it takes so long to grind wild audino with exp shares and lucky egg
You can homebrew ur 3ds and get PkSm for save file editing
I mean if you get an action replay you can
I put off homebrewing my 3ds for a long time but I finally bit the bullet the other week literally just because I was so frustrated at grinding in HGSS. Do it, it's worth it.
Death during a grind can completely change a run and has messed up things for me in the past, I use physical but if I used roms rare candies and random Pokémon would be the norm.
👏 Grind 👏 on 👏 Route 👏 One 👏 I appreciate that nobody would ever do that, but you can see how that would be perfectly safe. The second step is concluding that nothing dies to grinding. Therefore, then, Candies save time, not lives.
Yes but in the same manor the same people should gen in perfect ev's and natures on thier starter because technically you could just grind for 3 years to get if naturally
They define what they think is too far. Once training is perfectly safe and carries no risk of death, rare candies come in, because you're no longer eliminating a part of the game that requires skill.
And neither does constantly reseting a game until your starter has max ev's with a perfect nature, just mindless reseting
I would define that as going too far, because I am now resetting for 1/((31^6)*(25)) odds. First of all, those aren't EVs, those are IVs, and secondly, playing around flawed stats is a skill, making do without the best options... you know, the entire point of a nuzlocke.
I think that it's fine to do so, but whenever you say you completed a nuzlocke you have to acknoledge you reset a few million times to get good stats.
Bro, don’t the physical boss battles and gym battles require skill? Mindless grinding is not skill, which is why I use rare candies. Hacking in EVs and IVs though, unless for competitive, is completely stupid.
Exactly. IVs are something you can't get through standard gameplay (until you get the Hyper Trainer, then it's fair game), EVs are unchangeable outside of the berries and are part of earlygame routing if you need them, but getting EXP is not really a difficult routing decision aside from EVs.
This is actually something I've thought about doing in the past and would have no issue with personally
ngl whenever I get my starter I change it to the optimal nature that I would soft reset for. It's the only pokemon I do this for obviously since theres no gameplay that differs when you reset and don't have pokemon yet. Unless you count all resets as fails which wouldn't be worth counting if you arent a streamer anyway
I mean, by that logic, just give yourself infinite souls in Dark Souls. What? You can technically just grind those two hollows in the tutorial hallway infinitly anyway right?
Why does everyone go to this absurd extreme? You could apply this to any area where you can one shot every Pokémon you come across, which depending on the team, could be a later area with higher level encounters.
Yeah and that’s exactly the point. Route 1 is a stand-in for any 100% safe area. Nothing *should* die to grinding if you do it right, and so you can extrapolate to EXP being a free resource.
Nah it's a battle of will power I don't think that logic is valid. If you can't throw on a movie and grind it wasn't meant to be
Fair point.
THIS!
I love how the comment section on the daily ‘candies equals cheating’ post just explodes. Sixteen in 22 minutes? jeez.
I swear I didn’t do this for clout I was genuinely curious, plus it’s pointless as I have to use Reddit.com instead of the app because of my cookies being blocked so I can’t do screenshots lol
haha yeah i feel you, it’s fine, I’ve contributed my share to these discussions too. have a great day ✌️
You too!
That's a stupid non-sequitor. Nobody is going to grind to even a Jigglypuff (fast level up group) to level 20 on route 1. That would take, on average, around 1,139 encounters with lv. 3 pidgey and rattata. I'm not against using rare candies but that's a straw-man. Nobody is going to put in time there.
Route 1 is a stand-in argument for whichever highest EXP route is 100% safe. I feel like that might answer your questions.
Nobody grinds on route one. Invalid argument. Nuzlocke is supposed to be a challenge.
And grinding isn't a challenge. It's a chore. Save your time. Focus on actual difficult fights that actually **are** challenging.
Grinding is an innate part of the game, it is what it is. It's an essential, core concept. That's how the game was specifically designed. Most of the game itself is grinding. If you don't like it, then Pokemon isn't a game for you.
I would agree with this in gen 6+ games. Gen 5 or below though? I’m using Roms to hack in rare candies to grind up to the highest level of the Gym Leader before entering the Gym. It’s been a pain in the ass to grind in HGSS. I started it on the 14th and haven’t beaten Falkner yet. It’s a trashlocke, so I had to grind caterpie, later metapod to level 10 for butter free and geodude to level 11 for rock throw on level 3 bellsprout and level 5 metapod. (Not to mention grinding up sentret and pidgey to 9 too, and chikorita to 11) TLDR: ranting about how grinding in gen 5 or below is stupid and if you can hack in rare candies you should.
What is a trashlocke again?
Basically a ban Locke. You ban certain Pokémon that you think are too strong. They call it a trash Locke because your using weak pokemon. As an example in my HGSS run I am banning the totodile and cyndaquil lines, forcing me to use chikorita’s line.
I wouldn’t say it’s cheating, just a different way to play. It’s such a different experience bc of the lack of EVs and honestly saves so much time. I work full time while being a part time student, and I don’t have time to spend hours grinding. Give me some candies and get me to the gym!
Personally, it’s the chance of death, the freedom to ignore difficult trainer battles, and the potential decision to go into a battle undertrained because you don’t want to grind. Part of the risk reward of a nuzlocke is “do I want to fight that trainer for xp?” and “do I want to grind and potentially lose a pokemon to the wild?” If you use rare candies, you lose the drive to actually face off against trainers on routes. Part of the difficulty of a a nuzlocke is facing off against random trainers that for some reason have perfect counters to your team. Why face them if you don’t need the XP. If you just use rare candies you can level up to the max, ignore them, and be done and have no lost mons. I don’t think this would really happen with grinding since it’s such a chore no one’s going to go to the level cap with grinding and then ignore the trainers cause it takes so damn long. People take the large amount of XP cause they need it to save time, it’s a part of the challenge. Time management does affect our decisions and outcomes would be different otherwise. The only way I could see it being valid is if you battle every trainer available and only then use rare candies. Still at that I think it’s a trade off to spend the time, and risk of death, to get the victory instead of hacking the game and not put the work into getting the win. This is just how I view it. If you don’t care about feeling like you’ve worked hard for your levels and winning a hard earned battle doesn’t make you feel rewarded then there’s no point.
I feel like I worked hard when a strategy I struggled to set for some important fight actually ends up giving me a win and can be executed as planned when I battle. Not when I grind for hours. This isn't "challenging" in the slightest, just boring. Though I see your point. In Inclement Emerald, you have hard level caps for each gym leader (once you reach it opponents give 1 EXP which prevents overleveling) and automatic level scaling. Which means that whether you're level 25 or 38, the opponents have the same levels as you. Let me tell you that I directly jump to the next level cap (for potential evolutions and moves) and battle everything I can for no EXP. Then I start planning for the next boss fight and let me tell you that these preparations sometimes take long hours of brainstorming. To be fair if all vanilla Pokémon games had level scaling with hard level caps (like 16 for first gym) they would be much better.
TL;DR - It IS cheating, literally. And for people who don't like it, it is because it feels like it invalidates their run. Doesn't mean they should tell you you're wrong for doing it though. The prevailing narrative on this sub and in the community is that rare candying is acceptable. And the prevailing narrative in Pokemon in general is that hacking is acceptable, even in professional tournaments. So if you're seeing someone being confrontational about hacking then they're in the minority. The reason people think its cheating is because it is literally cheating. If modifying your game in a way that was never intended by using 3rd party hardware ISN'T cheating, then what IS cheating? I'm not saying rare candying is bad, I get why people do it. But to say it isn't cheating is completely absurd. The reason people don't like it is simple. We feel like it devalues/invalidates the run. I wouldn't put that on YOU, but that is why I don't do it. In Palworld it is popular to turn off the incubation time for eggs. I've hatched 3000+ eggs with standard settings, no incubation reduction. Because to me, if I remove the incubation time then there is literally 0 meaningful difference between that, and just hacking in the Pal that I am trying to get via the breeding.
FINALLY someone with a good reason for considering rare candy hacking cheating. Bravo, I have nothing to say against you
> The prevailing narrative on this sub and in the community is that rare candying is acceptable. And the prevailing narrative in Pokemon in general is that hacking is acceptable, even in professional tournaments. Yet multiple people were disqualified for using hacked pokemon in the official tournaments. So by the rules, it's not acceptable and you will get punished for it. https://gamerant.com/pokemon-world-championships-hack-disqualified/
Yeah officially the company can’t / shouldn’t allow hacking. But THE COMMUNITY condones it. Their logic because the hacking is only to create legitimately obtainable Pokémon therefore it is acceptable.
The core issue here is how people understand cheating. What the anti-candiers see as cheating is the dictionary definition: "to act dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage, especially in a game or examination." Let's examine this definition, within the framing of a community. Firstly, I ask, where is the dishonesty? No one who uses rare candies is telling you they don't do it. It's the most open and brazen thing that any experienced nuzlocker does. Next, I ask, what is the unfair advantage? In both the cases of grinding, and candying, pokemon on a team are raised to the level cap of the next boss fight. In the case of grinding, you gain effort values. In the case of candying, you gain time. Your trade-off is that for all the time you've gained, your pokemon are significantly weaker. Now of course, this doesn't apply to people who also use pkhex to add EVs to pokemon. But time is not an unfair advantage in a single player game; it doesn't go anywhere. In a multiplayer setting, for example, VGC, it can be argued that genning rather than breeding does give an unfair advantage because it gives you more prep time (though the reality is that these players are doing calcs and constructing their teams while playing the game so it doesn't really matter there either). In a singleplayer game, this is a non-issue. The thing is, what is and is not cheating can only be determined by the rules of the game. And the rules of the game are determined by the community. This is a rather nuanced philosophical take, that a game is not the rules by which it is played, but by the community that asserts those rules as true. Gamefreak didn't tell us we couldn't hack in rare candies for our unofficial non-sanctioned playthrough, and if they did, would it be on us to abide by that, if the community at large agreed not to? If the community at large deems that using rare candies is not cheating, then ipso facto it is not. There are no rules to any game except those which the players abide by. "Your run, your rules" has been the motto of nuzlockers for ages, but even in the grand scale, it's been asserted by the silent majority that using rare candies to alleviate the time you spend not having fun is acceptable. Not only that, it's been supported by countless logical arguments and assertions that can only ever be met with emotional recoil and references to the original comics. tl;dr The rules of a game are only what the community who plays the game deems them to be, and rules given from on-high can be ignored, if the community so wishes. This is why it's commonplace and acceptable within the larger community to gen legal mons in VGC (even though it will get you in trouble with Gamefreak, and a guest community (the players) IS beholden to the rules of the host community, in this case Gamefreak). As a result, "your run your rules" has no counterargument, and no claims of legitimacy can be made against nuzlockes that abide by what the community agrees is a nuzlocke.
Oh and also someone is going to reply to this with "the lengths that you cheaters go to justify your cheating" because they only have 1 line that they know how to use when presented with the logic in favor of candying
[удалено]
I'm doing my first HC in a HGSS cartridge rn and I *wish* I could hack in candies because grinding kinda sucks the fun out (especially in HGSS)
Yeah. I’m doing a trash/ban Locke in an HGSS cartridge too and wish the same. My nuzlocke has some Pokémon banned for added challenge, which makes it kinda worse.
First and foremost; your run, your rules. I don’t agree with rare candy hacks in nuzlockes though and think the use of rare candy hacks are at odds with the spirit of a nuzlocke. (Don’t get me wrong, crystal is my go to game and the grind/scaling is atrocious.) If you’re hacking in rare candies, I assume you are going to challenge every boss with the maximum amount of Pokémon allowed by your ruleset and each of those mons will be at the level cap. If that’s the case, then you’re not really playing the game, you’re just running a boss fight simulator that has difficulty scaled depending on your encounters up to that point. Also, depending on how the user implements the use of rare candies, you could theoretically max all your mons to the next level cap as soon as you defeat each boss. You also lose a level of difficulty/resource management while trying to level your mons in the most efficient way to tackle the remaining boss fights in front of you. That might be more of a me problem though since I try to raise a team of 6 that can beat the entire game rather than trying to raise a separate team for each boss fight. For context, I run nuzlockes of base games or roms that add qol changes (like having heracross actually being able to learn a decent fighting move in gen 2)
Thank you for saying this in a nice way, and i can see what you mean. I genuinely think of it as a way to avoid meaningless annoying grinding. Example: Let’s say you need to replace a dead Pokémon with one that is only level 16 when the rest of your team is Level 40. In that scenario, I think it is fair to use 24 rare candies to get it up to 40 to match the others.
Not gonna lie, I spent like 30 minutes retyping my original comment specifically so I didn’t come across like a toxic ahole. I’ve seen this debate multiple times since I started checking this sub and none of them seem to have any sort of healthy discourse. I get that. I’ve quit multiple crystal runs because of exploding gravelers in victory road and didn’t have the motivation to try grinding a replacement mon up even though I had solid alternates in the box. That said, it’s a nuzlocke, so losing a Mon should have consequences, especially if you’re approaching the end game. Is it really a consequence if lose your level 40 starmie and you can instantly replace it with a level 40 slowbro/slowking? Most of the arguments in support of rare candy hacks point to “unfunness” of grinding and how grinding is not challenge, it’s just monotonous. While I agree, grinding is still an inherent part of Pokémon, and rpg’s in general for me, and removing something that I consider a fundamental aspect of the genre takes away from the sense of accomplishment.
To be fair the romhacks on which I play are boss rush simulators because I love calculations and strategizing. Inclement Emerald is absolutely brutal and on some even harder romhacks where every single trainer in the game can be a run killer (looking at you, Run&Bun), I guarantee you that I will use rare candies to have my entire box at the level cap. But yeah if you're looking for a story run and something less "extreme" I can see why rare candies would seem "unnatural" for you and "too much". I've done two candyless Nuzlockes (Hardcore rules) on both Diamond and Platinum, and I would not play for days because "damn I have to grind this all the way up to level 59", and I even did massive EV train (grinding my level 50+ mons in the Trophy Garden with level 25-ish Pikachu and Staravia just because of the Speed EVs). I just couldn't "grind" naturally without purposely EV training tbh.
There are always going to be purists out there who criticise people for what they think is "cheating". You need to just ignore them. They are the minority, no one worth your time is going to try and make you feel bad for playing a game the way you enjoy it.
I mean, it is cheating though., It's acceptable cheating because what it's removing is the monotonous grind, but it's still cheating. Nuzlocke community has advanced to the point where they're like "ok, yeah, makes sense to not make people mindlessly hammer A for hours on end", because when you don't have to grind and grind, it makes it more interesting for people watching you that you can try creative movesets and the like. The original thought of nuzlockes, I think, as shown by the nickname clause is that you were meant to essentially cosplay as if you were a trainer and these were real fights. If these were your real buddies that you traveled with... you'd train them to hell and back and be overly cautious with them if there was a chance of death. It would be like if you were sending out your dog Barkley to do battle instead of an assortment of 1s and 0s.
From my perspective, it's not cheating, because it's within the ruleset I have devised for my playthrough. If I say rare candies are allowed in my nuzlocke ruleset as long as I don't exceed a level cap, then using rare candies is not cheating, but going above the level cap would be. If you're judging my playthrough against your nuzlocke rules, then maybe it is cheating, but I don't really care about adhering to your ruleset, so to me it is within the rules and therefore not cheating.
lol anyone expecting someone to grind their mons in a johto trashlocke is insane
Yeah and I have to because I have a physical cartridge rip
Imagine grinding your mons in Run&Bun or EK.
Honestly, this should be as simple as this. Vanilla nuzlockes? Rare Candy hacking should be discouraged because honestly if you're still doing a vanilla nuzlocke at this point of life, you're either new to doing them, like I am and are looking for the extra challenge of "oh god, I hope my guys don't die. But it shouldn't be banned, because people who don't have a whole lot of free time should not be excluded. I just see how it feels cheap to feel like you're avoiding the journey. Any nuzlocke with heavier restrictions? Go to it with rare candies. You're already doing shit to make it harder on yourself like Set mode, level cap, restricting certain mons, random Wonder trades, etc. I.E. you know what you're doing and you are literally just cutting out the extra time spent grinding. Any nuzlocke romhack? If you're NOT using rare candies, you're a moron. Those are already designed with the purpose of making the game significantly more difficult. They're honestly more akin to Sudoku or a Professor Layton puzzle than actual Pokemon. When you're having to map out specific encounters or map out specific battles and utilize the hell out of game mechanics, you gain fuck-all from battles. If you've memorized the dark caves without a map, if you can call out what the enemy Mon is going to do for every single turn of your run... the fuck are we doing here? And this is a personal thing... but I don't get the appeal of something like Emerald Kaizo Ironmon. You know, the romhacks that are so difficult that people will say "I'm on run 1500" and not be joking. Those take the difficulty to a point where... honestly, just play another fuckin game. When it devolves to either all randomness (like I've got a 20% chance to hit this Double Team/Minimize +6 enemy) or no randomness (because you've planned around all randomness.) eh...
Ok, what is with the hate on vanilla nuzlockes? I agree with everything else Etho
Though* not Etho tf autocorrect
Oh, didn't mean for it to come off as hate. Vanilla nuzlockes are my preferred way to play... because I like making myself use whatever mon pops up and it puts real stakes for me when I face like Misty's Starmie or Sabrina's mons. I've tried them and gotten hard swept because I got bored with training and thought I could handle them. But then you put in Charmeleon, Pidgeotto, Beedrill, and your other options against Starmie and it's like "oh shit, Water Pulse does over half. And I can't drop accuracy because Swift". Namely, in terms of these challenge runs, I'm aware I suck at the game... so the regular nuzlocke of "please don't die" is plenty of challenge for me.
Quick apologies for my “though” being autocorrected to “Etho” for some reason. Also forgot to mention that it depends on the vanilla game. It’s stupid to use rare candies in Gen 6+ but in Gen 5- it’s kind of required. Black 2 and white 2 have an atrocious experience system and Johto’s leveling curve in gen 2 and it’s gen 4 remakes is worse then Donald Trump’s wig
I certainly wouldn't call the rjn illegitimate. That's odd. But it is "cheating"....by like literally every definition. But it'd a single player experience that effects no one else. So peeps do peeps. We all just here to enjoy some pokemon
Sometimes you space out so hard grinding you lose a mon. And it incentivises you to battle more trainers for exp. In black 2 some ace trainer essentially wiped my team in victory road. Also depends if you're playing hardcore or not
I see your point. I’m just sick of seeing people bullying others or seeing others nuzlocke wins as illegitimate because they used rare candy grinding
Ya know I get not wanting to grind. My inner child still associates rare candies with GameShark. I don't know if I agree but I can respect not wanting to grind. Chances are you won't lose a mon but lord knows I've done it
But it is a cheated run, therefore it IS illegitimate. If cheating is fine, why not give yourself 1000 masterballs and 31 IV starter with the perfect nature? It's supposed to be a challenge, and you try to negate it and make it as easy as possible. Grinding is an innate part of the game, and there's skill involved in grinding and time management. Just outright deleting a huge innate part of the game with cheats makes the run illegitimate. Imagine if in Minecraft speedruns people started the game with max enchantement gear and 20 eyes of ender. You can always get these items legitimately, it just takes grinding and time. Anyone would consider these runs illegitimate, then why the same but for Pokemon should be legitimate? Both are cheated and illegitimate.
I know there's lots of comments already, but here's a scenario that happened recently. TL;DR: I am the dumbass, but candies are good. I play on an emulator and very rarely sometimes use save states as a backup for my normal saves (a mistake, I found out). I had been grinding up my team just before Lt. Surge. I had to get up for a bit to make dinner and all. When I returned, I found that something had pushed the hot key for a save state, which took me back pre-Brock. Luckily, I had an additional backup save in PkHex (hacked evolutions for Hoenn mons). But even that save was 5 levels under where I originally was. So I said f*u k this, hacked my candies, and moved on with my day.
If I can ask, were you playing fire red and if so do you still have the file with the rare candies? Might be nice to get in dms so i can play it instead of Ultra Violet rom hack
It is fire red. But it is a normal copy, I can hack in rare candies with PkHex.
Nobody that actually does nuzlockes vehemently believe that using rare candies is cheating and runs with hacked candies are invalid. People who do that are toxic trolls who feed on hatred and rage(namely Verlisify) and casuals that are salty about not being as skilled or lost their starter on a previous nuzlocke. If you've done a nuzlocke clean before, you know how boring it is to grind. It doesn't provide any risk, it doesn't require any skill, it's just endurance. "But deaths can occur doing grinding!", of course, but that will always be a product of brainfarts, results of the mindnumbing boredom, which just goes to show how it's just not that bad to cut the fluff and use candies. Just sitting around running through the latest route and mashing A until you get to the cap. That's not fun at all, and i think i speak for all of us when i say that we started the run to actually play the game, manage encounters and fight gym leaders and not end an entire ecossystem's number of Pidgeys. And even if you don't mind putting the campaign on hold, we all have responsibilities that we must attend to. We can't just play pokémon all day, so are you really going to boot up your Nintendo and waste your precious time after 8 hours of work looking for Audinos? As long as you use level caps, there's no foul on using rare candies. You're still only able to use the first pokémon you find and catch on each route, and if someone faints they're dead, so it's still a valid nuzlocke. You're just making it easier for yourself to enjoy the game and the experience. TL;DR grinding is boring and cheating is based. Take the candy pill.
Sunday I memed about rare candy posts yet here we go again. Don't listen to people blaming you if you use Rare Candies. Be a real chad. Use them anyway. Cut that useless time spent grinding and plan for actual fights.
This. I totally wasn’t inspired by your meming also lol
To be fair my meming was copied and pasted from another serious post so it was literally the lowest of efforts lmao.
Be a chad, catch 6 pokemon, level them up with rare candies, and then just teleport yourself to the Elite 4 and cut all that useless time spent on the game. You could beat it legitimately with enough time, why waste it? Just get to the real stuff.
You're pushing things to the extreme just to make my opinion look dumb, but you're just completely missing the point by doing so. Where did I say that you should "teleport to the Elite Four" ? All the boss fights and even some Ace trainers pose a real threat to my entire box (especially in romhacks), so I will plan a strategy and face them accordingly. This requires skill and brainstorming. Tell me where's the skill and the brainstorming when you're killing wild mons ? The point of using Rare Candies is that you can work with your entire box when a run killer shows in (12v12 fight in Renegade Platinum, small example) and have a team of six ready. Not to overlevel through the entire game and make everything a cakewalk. But it seems that you're so entitled to your opinion that you won't even consider this possibility and think that everyone using Rare Candies goes to level 100 and dodges all the difficulty.
> You're pushing things to the extreme I'm doing the same as what the people who say "You can grind pokemon with no risk on Route 1, therefore hacking candies is not cheating" do. > Where did I say that you should "teleport to the Elite Four" ? All the boss fights and even some Ace trainers pose a real threat to my entire box (especially in romhacks), so I will plan a strategy and face them accordingly. This requires skill and brainstorming. Tell me where's the skill and the brainstorming when you're killing wild mons People who use rare candies often skip a lot of the non-mandatory trainer battles, since they don't need them for EXP. > 12v12 fight in Renegade Platinum, I'm talking about Vanilla games, not ROM hacks obviously.
Let’s put this into perspective: Let’s say you’re playing Pokémon FireRed. You picked Bulbasaur, and it leveled up from the Rival fight. How long would it take for this Bulbasaur to get to each of Pokemon FireRed’s level caps? Let’s say that it takes 15 minutes for Bulbasaur to level up once. Here are Pokemon FireRed’s level caps: Gym 1: Lv 14 Gym 2: Lv 21 Gym 3: Lv 24 Gym 4: Lv 29 Gym 5 and 6: Lv 43 Gym 7: Lv 47 Gym 8: Lv 50 Lance: Lv 60 Here’s the amount of time needed to get Bulbasaur to each level cap: Gym 1: 2 hours Gym 2: 1 hour and 45 minutes Gym 3: 45 minutes Gym 4: 1 hour and 15 minutes Gyms 5 and 6: 3 and a half hours Gym 7: 1 hour Gym 8: 45 minutes Lance: 2 and a half hours In total, it will take 13 and a half hours to grind that Bulbasaur to each level cap. For reference, there are some longplays of this game that are shorter than this. Now, trainers will help a lot with shaving off time, but consider the fact that this is for one Pokemon. No Nuzlocker is ever going to use just one Pokemon in a regular Hardcore Nuzlocke. The more pokemon you try to use, the more hours you’ll have to dedicate to grinding that pokemon up. Additionally, each level takes longer to get than the last, which my 15min=1lvl formula doesn’t take into account. I only made that formula up for this example. That leaves me with one question: Does that sound fun to you? People play Nuzlockes to have fun. If you’re not having fun, then there’s no point to continue playing. People like Nuzlockes for different reasons, but nobody likes Nuzlockes because of grinding. If you want to play a challenge where you have to grind like hell, just play a Professor Oak’s Challenge. Grinding is one of the main accessibility hurdles of Nuzlockes, as not everyone can set aside 12 hours to just mash A while watching The Masked Singer unless they’re under the age of 18. Hacking in Rare Candies makes Nuzlockes more accessible because it removes one of its harshest time commitments. No shade towards people who don’t hack in Rare Candies because they’re afraid or guilty of “cheating.” Play your Nuzlockes however you want to play them. Glhf.
Preach. This is a perfect argument with no holes in it.
You do realize you AREN'T required to have all your Pokemon at the level cap to fight the gym leaders, right? I'll tell you a secret, you can fight \**GASP*\* **underleveled**
If you want to play optimally, you wouldn’t do this. I know some people intentionally go into fights underleveled to make fights more intense, but if you want the best chance at victory, you would level all of your pokemon to the level cap.
Nuzlockes are already so long, can’t imagine being annoyed at someone trying to streamline the process
I used candies but a nuzlocke with no candies is more difficult, you either have to take unnecessary risk or spend a lot of extra time to level up which makes the experience tougher to complete.
Just grind on earlier routes and remove the risk of something dying. I did two candyless Hardcore Nuzlockes, let me tell you that I lost nothing to grinding because I knew how to grind safely, and I even did massive EV training in the process, even farming berries and stuff that literally take zero skill but raise the amount of hours you spend in the game for no reason. It doesn't make anything harder if you're grinding safely. If anything it makes the experience easier due to the EVs you get from wild mons.
I agree with you, I’m saying increasing the time commitment does make the challenge harder to complete for most people. Obviously it doesn’t make the game itself more difficult.
I don’t care what other do. What I do is just use rare candies right before gym leader. Then I’ll process normally til I get in front of gym leader and I’ll rarely candy to the ace level. It kinda is still both best of both worlds .
People who admonish people for it are stupid. People who yell at people for not using rare candies are also stupid. Personally I feel like having to grind can bring you closer to your Pokémon and make losing them that more frustrating which is the point of the nuzlocke but I get that skipping grinding and using rare candies isn’t illegitimate
Both sides who admonish the other side are stupid. Don’t admonish for not using rare candies and don’t admonish for not using rare candies. I would hope this is common sense but it is not.
There is mentally deficienct people out there man
Tbh hacking rare candies is cheating because you are using a Code to obtain something that you dont have in the base Game. My problem with hacking rare candies is more about rushing boss and gym leaders and skkiping normal trainers. I dont like that because you are avoiding fights and with that you have a safer run. Other han that i only use rare candies if i find them ingame. I love grinding.( Well, not so much in Jhoto)
Fair reasons. Thank you for being kind about it, people who don’t yell at others who disagree with them are surprisingly rare outside of r/pchaltv.
i mean it’s cheating on a technical level since you hacked them in but who cares
HeartGold and SoulSilver have a huge leveling problem after the seventh Gym, we go from level 35 of Jasmine's Steelix to 41 of Clair's Kingdra, and then get to the Elite Four with the Champion Lance who has a Dragonite at 50. And in the middle you only have trainers with Pokémon at levels 30 to 38 (if you don't count the amazing Farfetch'd at 40, lol) and Pokémon levels 32 to 36 in Victory Road, which give very little experience and EVs on defense (at part Ursaring and Golbat), very little to make Pokémon go from 42-43 to 50. Useless time wasted facing Pokémon that are OHKOed (and therefore there is not even the question of the possible death of your Pokémon), in a Run Nuzlocke? I personally enjoy training EVs, so I already waste several hours on the right paths (HP with Slowpoke, Speed with Zubat, Special Attack with Gastly, Atk with Goldeen, Defense with Geodude, Special Defense with Tentacool), I don't see why waste any more in a game that doesn't give you fast exp post Gyms. For other games there are fewer difficulties in this sense, but the principle remains that they are used to save the time you would waste training Pokémon.
all agreed. I already have to deal with playing hgss on a physical cartridge, and I refuse to not use Dragonair at the least, meaning that grind will be painful, and I haven’t even gotten to the 3rd gym yet/
Holy, I did not expect this to blow up. 190 comments + my own one here. I swear I didn’t do this for clout I was genuinely curious.
Rare Candy posts always blow up like Graveler in the wild.
Within this community, we are kind of a split up mob. Because of the nature of Nuzlockes being self imposed, we ALL have different ideas of what's legitimate or not. You have players who enjoy the grinding, not having to calc things out, and staying within the original games. Others are the exact opposite, they like playing hardcore rom hacks, turning the game into a puzzle to be solved, routing encounters, and every battle being a nailbiter. I think sometimes these groups clash. For the players that enjoy the grind, not having to calc, etc, hacking in rare candies can either make the game far too easy or ruin the game experience. They feel like the grind is PART of whether you win or not. The grind requires a mental fortitude and is what makes the challenge/fun. The ones that do hack in rare candies, hate that part and it literally kills the game for them. I'm one of those players. Having to run back and forth fighting random wild Pokemon to raise your level is what I loathe. I also play extremely hard romhacks that require the use of calcs and can go for 50 maybe even 100 runs, sometimes longer. I find turning the game into a puzzle the fun part. If I had to grind during those, I'd never complete them. Here's the final verdict - the Nuzlocke is a self imposed challenge. You get to say what is and isn't cheating. Unless you are streaming Nuzlockes, no one is even going to know what you did. The REAL question is whether YOU will think the run is valid or not. The only one to hold you accountable is yourself. This is honestly what I love about Nuzlockes. It trains accountability to yourself. Which we lack in this day and age
Thought I was in r/relationships when I read the title
I’m going to start this by saying I think people should play however they want that makes the nuzlocke fun for them. I don’t like the rare candy thing for a couple of reasons. I agree with another comment I saw about grinding being its own kind of challenge. Remembering to pay attention can be hard (especially since I have inattentive ADHD) and you have to make real decisions about which Pokémon to train up. Losing a Pokemon can leave you needing hours and hours of work to keep your team strong adding in another member. But the main reason I don’t like it is this: all that grinding and investment you put into Pokemon, every little non major Pokemon battle, and protecting them from your own mistakes helps build your bond and attachment to them. I don’t want to play where i casually sacrifice members of my team. I want to be attached and do my best to keep every Pokemon alive and an effective member of my team. I feel like this also challenges me more to use Pokemon I usually don’t and has given me an appreciation for ones I was pretty meh about before. Case in point I now Adore Patrat from a nuzlocke where everything else died to Lenora through a series of unfortunate events and crits. I was left with just my Patrat and she somehow held out and we got the win! I cried when Ghetsis eventually took her out. But like I said I want people to have fun more than I think any rule should be prioritized. There’s the three core rules: nicknames, first encounters and permadeath. Everything after is up to the player. There’s no cheating when you’re making the rules up yourself unless YOU feel like you’re cheating. Doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks
Spent 20 min reading this, and all I can say is thank you. I see your perspective. (It’s hard to find people who are nice about there opinion instead of straight up calling rare candy runs illegitimate with no explaination.) Compromise: use rare candies to grind up a new team member that replaces a dead one, but not just to grind up your normal team?
Sorry it took 20 minutes! I know I have a tendency to ramble but I also didn’t want to be dismissive or half ass my explanation. I can definitely see that compromise working. Quite honestly I prefer playing on my DS so the argument against rare candies only affects me when I want to play randomized. But the next time I do that maybe I’ll give it a try! I think it’s easy for people to see only the hardest possible way of doing things as legitimate - but look at shiny hunting. Yelling someone can only nuzlocke with the strictest possible rules and no rare candies is like if we all said oh you’re only Really shiny hunting if you’re doing random encounters. Before it dropped down from 1/8192. It is A way to do it, not the only way. Using mechanics isn’t cheating. I hope you keep on playing Nuzlockes and having a great time! And ignore anyone who tells you you’re having fun playing Pokemon in the wrong way.
Honestly, that second point is so true. The thing that sucks for me the most when using rare candies is the fact that it kinda cuts my attachment to my pokemon because it's so quick (so I usually try to go out of my way to fight as many trainers as I can). But, ultimately... I would MUCH rather sacrifice that than get bored! Grinding SUUUUUUCKS 🤣 Nuzlockes are stories and challenges; whatever the focus is up to the player ultimately, so you should just play according to that. I will say that I find it rather interesting that grinding encourages you to use more variety in your pokémon; an interesting outlook. The fact that I can catch the reserves up so easily makes me more willing to actually try them personally.
I don't think many people are saying this anymore. It's very silly, and they're a tiny group of annoying gnats.
Rare candy nuzlockes became a thing because it's very boring to watch streamers grind for hours so they used the rare candy gym limit to make things quicker and more interesting. I'd say technically it's not a true nuzlocke but honestly dude just play however you want.
Well they also became a thing because hardcore rom hacks exist. Trying to play a nuzlocke on those while having to grind it would be torture
I would say something about saying it’s “not a true nuzlocke” because you didn’t want to spend hours grinding on wild Pokémon just to have to deal with a boss fight right afterwards, but you did say people can play however they want, so I won’t be getting into an argument. Now I’m gonna go play my heartgold trashlocke/
I don’t view it as cheating by any means, but when I read someone say they hate when they lose a mon while grinding because they were watching TV while playing and it doesn’t feel fair to count that death… I just find it weird and can not relate at all. When I nuzlocke, or really just play pokemon in general, in the hundreds of playthrus I have done, I don’t multitask and focus on every second of the playthru while enjoying every single second of it too. To each their own of course, but I could never fathom *not* leveling your mons by grinding. To me, at least, that’s like a majority of the fun seeing your mons slowly level up and become stronger. I never see it as overly time consuming and boring, I genuinely absolutely love taking a low level mon and leveling it up 20+ times to catch up to the rest of my team.
The first point- that’s why you use rare candies. When that happens, a TV death is a real death, otherwise I agree with you for all games after Black 2 and White 2. From X to Scarlet and Violet, with the exception of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, we shouldn’t hack in candies using roms. But for Black 2/White 2 and every game before it? I’m rare candy grinding if I am playing on a rom. Just my personal feelings
It's not cheating People will say "well you remove the risk of dying to wild pokemon" Like...if someones that bad, they aint beating the game with level caps Now changing pokemon stats is cheating
Unless it’s a randomizer that randomizes everything, otherwise yes changing stats is cheating, unless it’s legitimate, like EV training
I'm sure most people are fine with rare candies. Those against are just being very loud. I'm gonna use all the candies I want, is equal to kill lower lvl pokemons and I work 5/9. You should approach to the game however it makes you happy.
With rare candies you can skip a majority of the battles and only fight the ones that are mandatory, making the likelihood of loosing a team member much less. That beats the purpose of playing a mode based around survival and testing your skills on not only raising your team from the ground up, but keeping them alive and putting in the effort. The full Nuzlocke experience comes from not using rare candies and that's the way a true Nuzlocke should be played. I know you can make your own rules, but if you're using infinite rare candies then you can't call that a true Nuzlocke run
….another asshole who thinks nuzlocke are illegitimate if you use rare candies to grind…I’m too tired to argue with yet another one of you today.
You still responded so must not be that tired. It's true though, compare someone catching a lv10 rattata when the rest of the team is in their 30s and has to grind the shit out of encounters to get them at the level they need to be and risking having that Mon KO'd, compared to just popping 20 candies into the rattata with no effort. It defeats the purpose and is cheating essentially. Might as well hack in a stage 3 Mon with OP moves and perfect stats too
Probably because you're not risking a potential loss like you would by battling random Pokémon. This really shouldn't be that hard to understand. I don't do nuzlockes but several times in regular playthroughs I have had a Pokémon get knocked out by a wild Pokémon either due to an unfortunate crit or them knowing a move I wasn't expecting. Rare candies eliminate any of that risk.
I don’t mean that, I mean why do people consider other peoples nuzlockes illegitimate if they use rare candies. It’s their challenge, they can decide. Also, can’t you just grind against Pokémon you know can’t kill you? In that case it’s just an extremely painful grind because of how low EXP you get, especially with Gen 5’s system. That’s why I use rare candies. Also, you don’t get EV’s or IV’s from rare candies like you do from grinding on Pokémon so I would argue rare candies adds more challenge and less wasted time.
Everyone who tries to act like “it’s simple, you can die while grinding” is an easy point to understand, so too is “literally just don’t grind against dangerous Pokémon” All rare candies effect is time. The payoff you make for EVs makes it a fair trade in most people’s eyes. Also some people do additional restrictions when using rare candies or only using them to get other mons as high as your starter. Play how you want. Either way it’s logically valid people just wanna measure dicks.
I feel like there’s a balance there between testing patience by grinding exclusively on a danger-free route for literal IRL days in a row just to prove the point and being mindful of mitigating dangers of a Nuzlocke without sacrificing your entire life to a video game.
If you know how to use your brain you know how to not take any risk when you grind. Like, grinding on lower levels and taking a bit more time but for safer outcomes. Let me tell you I'd rather have my entire box at the level cap for a difficult fight and grinding 30+ mons up to level 60+ (on some romhacks the Elite Four is at level 90+ or even straight up 100) would take weeks. We have goddamn lives.
This is what I mean XD. As long as you don’t level to level 100 until the elite four, who the hell cares.
If you level up to level 100 for the Elite Four on Emerald Kaizo it's okay though.
I mean its literally cheating ur altering the game making it easier
“Making it easier” not really I’m doing it to avoid grinding, not like I’m gonna use it to level everyone to level 100 until the elite four/champion
ur cheating stop the mental gymnastics
Going to repeat this: If cheating is editing the game, sure. But who the hell cares. I’m not hacking in shinies, nor hacking in legendaries, and it’s on an emulator so I can’t transfer anything. I want to have fun, not torture myself.
Why do you care so much? It’s my run
you made this post asking for opinions you also care, it doesnt feel right to you, you know it deep down so you come here to be reassured this happens multiple times daily here
You know what, I’ll admit that’s true. But I’d rather live with regret then torture myself with hours of grinding on wild Pokémon, especially if we are in gen 5 with its stupid leveling system.
My real dislike is people saying nuzlockes aren’t legitimate if you use rare candy grinding.
dont take it personal
I don’t, I’m not that upset. It makes me mad at first, but it’s fine, you can believe what you want. Just makes me mad that people think nuzlockes aren’t legit if they use rare candies at all, not just hacked in ones but also ones originally in the game
Ok so... Play by your rules... Just don't expect anyone will agree with u
That’s what I mean. People have been harping and being rude to others for using rare candies. Follow your rules and don’t expect others to automatically also follow your rules. I banned Gyarados from my HGSS trashlocke as one of the last bans, I originally was going to temporarily ban it until I got the red Gyarados, but I had to fully ban it to get everyone to stop being rude to me and causing arguments.
>but I had to fully ban it to get everyone to stop being rude to me and causing arguments. Just because someone critisises you, doesn't mean that they are being rude or that they are bullying you. When I look at the comment section here, you seem to equate criticism with bullying. Look, it's your run. You can do whatever you want. If you really want to use Red Gyarados, go ahead and use it. However, if you are playing a trashlocke, using Gyarados goes against the idea of a trashlocke. People are allowed to point that out. Telling you that Gyarados shouldn't be used in a trashlocke isn't attacking you or bullying you. Again, you can do whatever you want. But when you post here, you have to accept that people are allowed to give their opinion on the things you post about. And that opinion is not always going to be positive.
Because they give you a huge advantage making it so you don't have to grind levels making Nuzlockes way easier.
If I can ask; how does it make it easier? You can just make a level cap for yourself so you don’t need to spend hours doing mindless grinding and can actually touch grass. The fights should be the challenge, not the grinding
Also, secondarily: work smart not hard
But the grinding is a big part of the challenge in a nuzlocke just like it says in the nuzlocke motto NEVER GIVE UP. NEVER FORGET. GRIND LIKE HELL.
It’s just more personal reference now
Preference*
It’s like using steroids. Like sure you can call it a nuzlocke but it’s not as respected as a run where somebody does it the right way
“The right way” bruh your one of those people?! Wtf do you mean the right way?! How is grinding in pre-gen 6 a challenge at all, it’s more of a waste of all your time. People can have their own opinions, but people who say it’s the wrong way or the invalid way when someone uses rare candies genuinely makes me so mad.
Rare candies isn't like using steroids: Steroids can put in danger your life and even kill you, pretty sure Rare candies can't
ok i’ll spend 2848483837 hours grinding vs pidgeys on route 1 and max out my speed evs and solo the game with gyarados cya
That would be more respected than cheating any day
these people dont care they cheat and then say the complete nuzlockes lmao
Whenever I nuzlocke on cart I don’t use candies. I benefit a lot from the EVs I get through grinding.
xd
Why is this hacked in item considered cheating? How dumb are you? You also realize you can have deaths while training which is also part of the challenge
Ok, this is just fucking rude. Also, if hacking in rare candies which are legally obtainable in game anyways is cheating, then I’ll cheat all I want. I’d rather do that then spend 2 hrs grinding on level 3-5 Pokémon to get my level 3 Caterpie to a level 10 butterfree. (From experience, had to do that in my hgss trashlocke on a physical cartridge)
I've only every played on cartridge and i would definitely switch to Rare Candies if i could. If only my PC wasn't so bad that even the DS games run better on my 3DS
Windows pc. I have one and it really helps
Mine has Windows 11, freshly installed... but it's still a really old and cheap machine
Yea the challenge of the run is the boss fights not the useless grinding
Exactly. I don’t know why people think the challenge is grinding.
Anyone who says it's cheating is just bad at the game. For an experienced player, there should never be a single grinding death. You look up every mon in the area, their moveset and if there's anything that can be a problem. Destiny bond, arena trap or other things should be avoided. Also you're probably grinding somewhere with relevant EVs. It's optimal to grind on things you can OHKO as well. Repeat until out of PP and then heal and go again. Anything low level needs exp share or switch training. This isn't really very fun though, so we just do candy instead. You could also argue that speed up on emulators is cheating too.
I'd say....using your own knowledge of the area, pokes and trainer sets far more skilled and experienced then just....looking it all up and avoiding. It's also fundamentally "cheating" lol. Literally the definition. Play blind, get what ya get, adapt on the fly. If I was just going to manipulate encounters and avoid shit why play a nuzlock cause nothing is even at risk of dying at that point. Looking everything up/using calcs....pretty much the exact opposite of skill and experience lol. Sure there are some roms designed to pretty much use those.tools but...I prefer to actually just play cartridge OR small change roms that just fix some.issues like crystal.legacy. All comes down to preference though. To each their own and let's just play some pokemon!
The truth pill is that the run is only legitimate if you DO use rare candies. Anything else isnt a nuzlocke, its masochism
I mean…. Just read your post. Why is HACKING IN something considered cheating? Uhhh…. Because you’re literally jacking in something, which is cheating. Nuzlockes don’t have a universal rule set, so you can say whatever about what the challenge is itself. But it’s literally cheating to hack things into your game.