Always fun to participate in these Challenge events

Name: Sumner
Game: Platinum
Who do you love: My heart does and will always belong to Cynthia
Optional rules: Rainbow Wedlocke rules, Dupes Clause, Shiny Clause

This time I'll do everything to finish this run for once

Question: how about genderless mons with "opposites" natures? I mean, how are they supposed to be handled?

saniachan said:

Question: how about genderless mons with "opposites" natures? I mean, how are they supposed to be handled?

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Good question. I would probably pair them with another genderless Pokémon.

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Here's my list of natures and the preferences that they represent:


Segment 1
-Chose Michael the Chimchar as my starter, a male with Brave nature.
-Route 201: Caught Sam the Starly, a male with Bashful nature. Paired with Michael.
-Lake Verity: Caught Xavier the Bidoof, a male with Lax nature.
-Route 202: Caught Alexa the Shinx, a female with Rash nature.
-Route 204: Caught Tristan the Budew, a male with Adamant nature
-Ravaged Path: Caught Barbara the Zubat, a female with Careful nature. Paired with Xavier.
-Route 203: Caught Raj the Abra (luckily), a male with Brave nature.
-Route 207: Caught Charles the Geodude, a male with Brave nature.
-Michael evolved into Monferno and learned Mach Punch. Will probably be valuable for the next gym.
-Sam also evolved into Staravia.
-Michael solo'ed Roark's gym. No casualties.

Screenshots (9)


Points made
-Caught 8 Pokémon (+8)
-Formed 2 pairs (+4)
-Shinx has Rivalry (+1)
-Missed a catch at the Oreburgh Gate (-2)
-First badge obtained (+2)
-Gym beaten with no deaths (+2)
15 points
Total: 15

Team

Janp said:

Good question. I would probably pair them with another genderless Pokémon.

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Aight then. If it's allowed to be handled differently, I'd rather pair them up with "any" Pokemon (read: those with "any" natures) instead. Hopefully it's gonna be okay since this is my first Rainbow Wedlocke.

Now that I said that, might as well sign up~

Name: saniachan
Game: Platinum
Who do you love: Cynthia, duh. Who else?
Optional rules:

• Rainbow Wedlocke
• Dupes, gift, shiny clauses on
• Nicknaming theme: other Pokemon from gen 5 onward (this is gen 4, after all)

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I'll play as a girl named Mina (from Minako Aino a.k.a. Sailor Venus' civilian self). Her rival's going to be Kunzite, Sailor Venus' "counterpart" in Sailor Moon series' Dark Kingdom arc.

I have a question... Why does beating gym leaders and team galactic grunts give points, won't they be the same for everyone who beats the game?:o
Although not with grunts because they can be skipped I suppose x3, but that makes it unfair because I think Platinum has more grunts!:O
Regardless, I'm in for a challenge :)

Sign-up
Name: 11wildy
Game: Platinum
Who do you love: I am going through this whole adventure because I want to marry my love Cynthia

saniachan said:

Aight then. If it's allowed to be handled differently, I'd rather pair them up with "any" Pokemon (read: those with "any" natures) instead. Hopefully it's gonna be okay since this is my first Rainbow Wedlocke.

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I think it's totally okay.

11wildy said:

I have a question... Why does beating gym leaders and team galactic grunts give points, won't they be the same for everyone who beats the game?

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It's there so you won't end up with that many negative points. And to force you not to skip grunts, which can lead to accidental deaths.

So I finally got to write an update for my own run. I started the game as female this time and my ID ends with 2, so I'll be picking Pythagoras the Turtwig as my starter. I also play Rainbow variant, because I hate myself.
I should also mention I kept all my notes in an Excel sheet to keep track of all the possible pairs and points. I'll be referring to it this whole update, so here it is:
As you can see, I had no luck in forming a pair all the way to Route 204. I was kinda happy with the pair of Euler the Bidoof and Uhlenbeck the Budew. I call them Bidew. As you can see, I went with famous mathematicians as nicknaming theme. And I found that there are a lot of female mathematicians I've never heard about.

So Bidew was pretty nice for this part. Bidoof took care of most of the opponents, with only exception being Geodude and Onix. And Budew's Poison Point was the only reason I beat Barry and some other trainers. I was ready to taky on Roark with this pair alone, but then caught Riemann the Onix and Pythagoras got someone to love.

WIth these two pairs, Roark had no chance. I've beat him using only Pythagoras. But I also almost got heart attack when Roark's Cranidos landed a critical hit.
After that I backtracked and got some more Pokémon and was able to form a new pair - Gauss the Abra and Lovelace the Zubat. I stopped at Valley Windworks to train and that's all for this update.

Continuing from where I ended last time, I beat Team Galactic grunts and admins and started to get a little bit bored with how smoothly everything went. To be honest, the only interesting thing that happened was that I accidentally nicknamed my Beautifly only K, instead of Krieger. Battle against Gardenia was piece of cake. I picked Gauss and Lovelace as a pair that will beat her and she went down quite quickly.
But then, the shit hit the fan. I run out of Poké Balls and forgot to buy new, so I couldn't catch Ponyta on Route 206. One of a few Fire-types and I miss it. I got another opportunity to catch another Ponyta on Route 210 and while I caught it, it had Adamant nature, which makes it Ace and I can't pair her with anyone.

Gauss died in double battle against two Ace Trainers on Route 2015 right before entering Veilstone City. So I decided to box Lovelace and formed new pair made out of Chingling and Starly. After some training (and Starly evolving in Staravia) I was sure they can take on Maylene. Staravia was able to beat Meditite and Machoke, but Maylene's Lucario easily beat her with Metal Claw and Drain Punch. Chingling had no chance and was purged with one Drain Punch, healing Lucario to full health in the process. I sent out Pythagoras to quickly beat Lucario, but it already costed me too many points.
And to wrap this update, I failed another catch - Girafarig on Route 2014. She got poisoned by Uhlenbeck and died before I was able to catch it.

Name: BlissyMKW
Game: Platinum
Who do you love: Cynthia, especially when she blindsides you in Gen 5 and blows up your underleveled team
Optional rules: After the ultimate curse fiasco I went through back in October, I'm going to play it safe and not go with any optional rules. Also dupes clause because I don't want 9001 Bidoofs.

Also, you put down Team Plasma instead of Galactic...and Cynthia is misspelled twice in the "How to get points" section.

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Natures:


Segment 2
-Valley Windworks: Caught Hermione the Buizel, a female with Hasty nature. Paired with Alexa.
-Route 205: Caught Devon the Shellos, a male with Rash nature.
-Route 211: Caught Jack the Meditite, a male with Hasty nature.
-Mt. Coronet: Caught Prism the Bronzor, with Bold nature.

Since I've got a pair with both having a type advantage against Grass-types, Gardenia's gym was expectedly very straightforward. Michael alone was able to clean up the gym battle for himself.


-Old Chateau: Caught Silver the Rotom, with Careful nature.

Jupiter's battle was scary to deal with. Her Skuntank's first Night Slash landed a crit on Michael which took almost half of his health. After healing, I started attacking it and got a lucky burn. Thankfully there weren't any more crits in the battle and Skuntank slowly took itself down with the burn.

-Route 206: Caught Scorpius the Gligar, a male with Impish nature.
-Wayward Cave: Caught Houston the Gible, a male with Careful nature.
-Hearthome City: Received the Eevee from Bebe, nicknamed Steve, a male with Lax nature.
-Hatched the Togepi egg I received from Cynthia in Eterna and named him Nene. It's a male with Quirky nature.
-Route 208: Caught Vanya the Ralts, a female with Naive nature. Paired with Houston.

Vanya died while grinding for a Rollout Bibarel, which is devastating. I was so happy I could finally make another pair.

I made sure everyone had been leveled up to level 30 because I'm not playing around with Fantina, and in the process Alexa turned into a Luxray and Hermione also evolved. She was able to single-handedly take on everyone in the gym, nuking everything with a Crunch: except for Fantina's Mismagius, which had Magical Leaf, so Alexa had to take care of it.


-Route 209: Caught Rachel the Duskull, a female with Relaxed nature. Paired with Houston.
-Route 210: Caught Headless the Ponyta, a female with Brave nature.
-Route 215: Caught Atlas the Lickitung, a female with Sassy nature.

Houston died to a self-exploding Geodude, because of course he did. I'm glad I didn't teach him Earthquake. Now Rachel is paired with Steve.

-Veilstone City: Acquired a Porygon called Smooth, with a Mild nature.
-Valor Lakefront: Caught Persephone the Houndour, a female with Bashful nature.
-Route 214: Caught Calem the Rhyhorn, a male with Sassy nature.

I battled the trainers on Route 214 to get some experience and went to the gym afterward. Maylene was pretty easy since I had the perfect pair again to face her with Sam being strong against two of her Pokémon and Michael tanking Licario's Drain Punch while hitting him with both super-effective STABs.

Points Count
-16 encounters (+16)
-3 pairs (+6)
-7 Galactic grunts (+7)
-Beat Mars with no deaths (+4)
-Failed a catch (-2)
-Beat Gardenia with no deaths (+4)
-5 Galactic grunts (+5)
-Beat Jupiter with no deaths (+4)
-2 deaths (-4)
-Beat Fantina with no deaths (+4)
-Beat Maylene with no deaths (+4)
45 points
Total: 60

Team

10 days to do an entire Wedlocke. Hoo boy, this should be fun.

Episode 1 - A Curse Free Zone of Love (unless it's cursed luck)

So after the last event challenge, which I'm still recovering from being slapped with Rectangular Force and various other things at the worst possible times, the time has come to embark on a trip to Sinnoh for the first time in an eternity. As always, because the female sprite is better in every way, I'm going with the female. Opening stuff, opening stuff, and opening stuff, and then it's time to get a starter. But I need to point out how easily you can take Rowan's "How big of you" out of context. Anyway, starters. I went with Piplup, who will later be named Kingpin...because nicknames are hard.


+1 for capture, even if it's the starter

Anyway, off to Sandgem Town, where I have no Poke Balls and therefore no ability to catch anything yet...well, after the Cyrus thing I totally forgot about. Because I can't catch anything, I just beat up anything I ran into to get some more experience on Kingpin on the way to town. Conversation, Dex, and backtracking later and we're off for reals this time, to go get our Poke Balls and get this show on the road. Now, it's back to Route 201 to get our first pair set up. I'm hoping for a Starly, but let's see what we get.

....I hate this game already. I got a Bidoof. I guess it's better to get it out of the way early, but for my first pair? A true shame, really. I almost killed it with Pound, but we got out lucky.


+1 for capture, +2 for a new pair

Welcome Derpy to the team. She got Unaware, so ignoring stat changes will be nice. She also lived on 1 HP. Anyway, next up is Lake Verity and then onward to Route 202. I'll probably do some leveling up after I get these encounters so we don't get slam jammed by Barry later.

Since Lake Verity's water isn't accessible and I already have a Bidoof, the only remaining encounter is Starly, and it's gender doesn't matter. It's female, which is fine. It'll get Intimidate either way later on. I crit it on the first shot and forgot for a minute that Derpy ignores stat changes so Growl means nothing to her. That could've ended badly, and it took me 2 Poke Balls to get the catch. Either way, Sky is now a member of the squad.


+1 for a new capture

And now, it's off to Route 202, where my options are either Shinx or garbage. Hoping pretty hard for the Shinx, especially because it's encounter rate is higher on Route 202 in Platinum, but I also have cursed luck, so you never know.

CURSED LUCK! I found the infamous garbage can himself, Kricketot. No new moves until he evolves at Level 10, but his first new move is Fury Cutter. Fury. Cutter. Normally, I'd just take it and move on, but not this time. I don't want to afford losing more points just because of trash, so I'm gonna take the point loss by killing it. Gasp as much as you desire, because I refuse to use such a trash mon. I'd take pre OR/AS Beedrill over this thing anyday.

-2 for taking out the trash

Ahem, anyway, now it kinda sucks that Sky will have no partner until we reach Jubilife City, but the first Shinx I ran into was female. Gonna have to just deal with it. I'm gonna get these two caught up and we'll be right back after this commercial break.


A short grind later and we're back. Here is the team before...


And after...



I got Kingpin to Level 10 since he's the leader. Sky is holding her own well since she got Quick Attack, but Derpy has...well, nothing to make him stand out. Maybe in the future, maybe not. For now, it's off to get the next encounter after blowing through some trainers. Of course, Lucas has to ambush me the second I walk into town and start asking questions like an annoying little bug. Unimportant. Time to get an encounter and then get ready for Barry to murder me and spam Withdraw some more.

I RAN INTO ANOTHER KRICKETOT!? Are you for real? Why am I suffering all these earlygame point losses already? I don't want this thing! Get the -2 ready...again. Please just go away, Kricketot. I would've taken the Wurmple I ran into if it was male.

-2 for more garbage disposal

Well with two failed encounters, I need some kind of miracle to get more into the green now. Map returning, Potion getting, and Poketch later and it's time for Barry 2. I swear to Arceus, if I run into a third Kricketot, I am going to explode. Also I used Sky on Barry because she nukes his whole team with Wing Attack. Anyway, now, let us pray to Arceus for NO Kricketots, please.

I got an Abra, which is bad. If I fail to catch it, I'm in the red. I actually had to cross my fingers IRL in hopes the ball would work, and good news, ladies and gentlemen, it actually did. It's male, an Abra, and only has Teleport, but I caught it. Sky will have to carry for the both of them until we can fix the problem of having no moves. Hoo boy, we're getting back in there. As for a nickname, I always name the Abra line after some kind of wizard or mage like Agahnim or Wizzro from Hyrule Warriors. I can't think of any male mages, so I'll just name him Agahnim. What I realize, though is, they removed the free Hidden Power TM from the Trainer's School, so unless I waste my Return TM, he can't fight at all until he evolves. Thanks game devs. Love you too.


+1 for new capture, +2 for new pair

Now, with that aside, we have a lot of farming to do, and a bunch of trainers to blow through for free experience. After that, we have another encounter chance with Orghburgh Gate. Let's get right to it.



Ah, our first cave, where I should expect to catch a Zubat. Anyway, we get our free Rock Smash, which is useful, but what's more useful is our encounter chance, which will likely be a Zubat. As expected by absolutely nobody, it was a Zubat. Easy catch. I named it Bloodwing. He is also male.


+1 for new catch

Now, we come to a crossroad. We can go north and get an encounter or go south to the mine for a potential Onix...that can't be evolved at all because trade evolution. I think the choice here is clear. North we go to maybe get a Machop or something. There are Geodudes, but I found the Machop, and it's female. I named her Lisa after Lisa Silverman from Persona 2: Innocent Sin, since she fights using her fists. I could've used Ulala too since she also fights with her fists, but...I never finished Eternal Punishment.


+1 for capture, +2 for new pair

And with that, we have our pairs. Kingpin and Derpy, Sky and Agahnim, and then Bloodwing and Lisa. Let's see how long they last. I'll be putting the newbies through the training regimen after the gym so they can catch up and maybe I can get Agahnim evolved. Anyway, time for business. It's off to the mine to get an encounter and drag the gym leader back to the gym. Mine encounter is a female Geodude, but it'll be boxed for now. I named her Rockzilla. Now, with that aside, let's go and drag the gym leader back to his gym. Also, +1 for capture.

The first gym is easy. You can either ignore the trainers completely or face them for extra experience, which I did. Kingpin did the work while Derpy was just along for the ride. Because Cranidos hits like a truck, I bought a couple of extra potions before going up against Roark. I also started stocking up on Heal Balls for that sweet, sweet bonus. Anyway, time for Roark. Same plan applies. Derpy gets switched out for free experience while Kingpin does the work. Geodude got the rocks up before being instakilled, and the Onix tanked a Bubble and I made Roark waste his Potion. Next is the big boy himself, Cranidos. He crits me turn 1 and reveals Pursuit, which is scary. Luckily, Derpy lived on 1 HP. Growl will play a good role in this battle to lower the sheer damage output of this monster. Using a ton of Growls and all my Potions, I lowered it's Attack enough for Kingpin to safely switch in. After a Leer, I used my X Defend just to play it safe and continued with the Bubble until eventually, the Cranidos went down...and I crit him on the second Bubble, without using my Dire Hit. Derpy got Rollout and Kingpin got cheaped out of getting Level 15. More importantly, we survived with no losses.


+2 for gym win, +2 for gym win with no deaths

And now, we get our shiny new Coal Badge and a worthless Stealth Rock TM. Although, I have no potions left, so...I'm gonna go buy some and get started on grinding, so next time will be the journey to Eterna City and it's gym.

Point Compendium

Let's wrap this up. I currently can't upload any images because of faulty internet, but I think this update might come though. Which also means I will leave final point count for later.

To be honest, nothing spectacular happened for the rest of the run. I beat Crasher Wake with the Bidew combo (with newly evolved Uhlenbeck). Cleffa also evolved during this time and I decided to equip her with Shadow Ball to take down Fantina.

But right before that, foggy weather on Route 210 was fatal to Uhlenbeck, who fall to a random trainer and his Gible. So I had to pick a new pair. This is kinda weird without the excel sheet, but I caught Ace Wooper (Fubini) and so I could put him together with Ponyta (Goldwasser) and they proved themselves to be worthy to be on my team by beating Byron without any problems.

And so this team helped me through last two Gyms and I even challenges E4 with them. But before that I had to put them through intense training and give them items. I wanted to play this safe, since in the perfect world, I would only need to use 2 Pokémon on each trainer.

Aaron, Berta and Flint were easy. But Lucian's Alakazam's Focus Blast crit killed Riemann. Pythagoras took not just him down, but won the rest of the battle.

I decided to lead with Pythagoras on Cynthia, knowing he will die. Cynthia's Spiritomb used Embargo and I was sure Pythagoras won't survive this match. He took down Spiritomb, Milotic and Gastrodon until falling to Cynthia's big boi Garchomp. I sent out Boole and was able to put Toxic on Garchomp (twice). After not so brave tactic of hiding behind Protects, Garchomp is down. Cynthia's sends out Lucario and I switch to Johnson. One Drain Punch later and Cynthia is down to her last Pokémon. And since I took a time and taught Johnson Ice Punch, this battle was over in no time.

The best Pokémon of the run were totally Pythagoras and Boole. They carried the whole team, both in their own way. Pythagoras was able to deal damage when it was needed and Boole provided such a needed imunity against Fantina. And STAB Hyper Beam is always fun to use.

So I only got to play up to the first gym before my emulator stopped working (read: iNDS gotten revoked) for whatever reasons. 😢

Mina and Kunzite started their adventures together with the boy picking Turtwig and the girl picking Piplup (Samurott the relaxed Piplup, treated as her Twinleaf Town encounter). The two then went on their own adventures with Mina catching these bunch on her way:
Mina eventually reached Oreburgh City and got to challenge Roark, the very first gym leader she had to battle with. Samurott managed to deal with both his Geodude and Onix, but not with his Cranidos. Since Talonflame couldn't help with it either (they both died btw), Tsareena had to jump in to clean up the mess Cranidos had caused. Only then did Mina get her first badge. Not without paying for it with Samurott's and Talonflame's lives, though.

Hi, now that the event is over, could you give some feedback for this event? Like what is your opinion on this type event? Would you like to see more events like this in the future? Is a month enough time to complete it? Thanks :)

Hi, I had a lot of fun playing this, and I'm glad to see other people participate too. I think one month is plenty of time to finish a run (even though I haven't completed mine yet... haha), way better than the 10-15 days I've seen in events before. The points system is kind of confusing, given all the times I had to come here to double check what things gave points or how many points some activity would give. Some of the tasks like catching Pokémon or forming pairs or defeating bosses are very easy to follow, but some others aren't. I also wish we could have a real-time chat with other participants (i.e. a Discord channel), that would be fun. I would definitely like to see more of these events in the future!

Janp said:

Spoiler:

Hi, now that the event is over, could you give some feedback for this event? Like what is your opinion on this type event? Would you like to see more events like this in the future? Is a month enough time to complete it? Thanks :)

Click to expand...

I do like this type of event, although my life has been quite busy, so I've literally not beaten Roark yet. Which is partly because of me being busy, but also partly because this is a nuzlocke, requiring more grinding, so I was still grinding my team to level 14/15 for Roark, taking a few hours on the low levels

So for me a month surely wasn't enough, but that's for me personally. I'll go complete it as a normal nuzlocke now on my own pace, being able to combine it with a different challenge elsewhere

I'd suggest making events less grinding focussed, so I'd rather not see a nuzlocke, but a normal team-building or in-game challenge. The team can be very restricted and catching only the first per route is fine too, just that every death makes you grind more takes a lot of time

Other events I liked had a restriction per team slot, which I liked because you had to make weird team choices based on stuff other than stats/moveset/typing


On top of that, please don't do the point system, it's quite a hassle to keep track of them and since it's not really a competition/nothing to win there's not much value in it either.


To comment on Summer's feedback: a live chat with others who are doing the challenge/event would be great fun!


Lastly, a personal suggestion:
I would love for there to be a more competitive focussed challenge. For example, gather X amount of players, let them play up to gym 2 or however far, make them battle (showdown, either put no evs or any evs of choice), then play on, let players battle again after gym 4

Then after like 4 rounds of battles (preferably using swiss system), everyone beats the league and the top 4 players face off in a knock-out semi-final+final. Maybe the winner gets traded a shiny Pokemon, gets some art or idk really

Of course, combined with an in-game challenge so not everyone goes catch the best pokemon in the game, to spark some creativity!

Janp said:

Hi, now that the event is over, could you give some feedback for this event? Like what is your opinion on this type event? Would you like to see more events like this in the future? Is a month enough time to complete it? Thanks :)

Click to expand...

Despite being unable to finish because of throwing myself under a figurative bus by choosing to play 2 Mystery Dungeon games to do a comparison review (and starting my run far too late to do it without devoting all my time to it), yes, seeing more events like this would be interesting...but I'd highly agree with dropping the points system.