I'm not pinging anyone right now, because that can get annoying.

Okay, so here's my hardcore party


That's Hard


Here's Core


And that's Hardcore.

And I'm full of puns!

Edit: no equipment as of yet.

Good luck Kitty! :)

It sounds like a fun idea! And certainly makes battling more careful! :D


I'm not sure if I'll continue my own trial, but it is certainly an interesting idea. If I enjoyed battling more, I probably would!

@Amarok

Sounds like what I figured (lots of grinding to over-level pets to be able to survive the next zone).

For emotional investment, max stats make sense. But max stats would be even more grinding and less challenge, since they would be "super pets" at the beginning. Would be terrible to breeze all the way into the LG and lose them there!

Rare tagged or exclusive would work for emotional investment (and still low stat), but I'm not sure I'd have the stomach to get rid of a truly valuable pet!

I probably won't continue the challenge, but do keep me posted/pinged with their progress! I do like the idea of it, even if I have a low grinding tolerance!

Good luck Kitty! May the RNG be with you

(p.s. avoid the bandit dungeon until level 30 at least. I got a nasty scare when I brought my level 20 HC pets in there and my first encounter was a buncha level 29's)

So. Yeah. Let me tell you some of my 'progress' My party has nearly died 3 times already! There's something about hardcore mode in video games that causes me to make stupid mistakes???

We've identified the problem at least. I don't think all the random rules are working out too well. It's my earth side pet that's nearly dying. She's earth so she taunts but she was assigned to dexterity so shes a squishy girl. Being a squishy tank element in the side position is just fine but...she...taunts... uhm. Yeah.

Anyway first time she got down to 20% health and I kinda noped the heck out of it.
Then second time the entire party was in danger because I ran into level 29 dungeon enemies (at like level 20) and I was unable to run away from battles...I had to use elixirs for that!
third time squishy earth girl got down to 2% when i tried to transition to the umbra forest and...yeah. I'm stopping here (for now) to calm down cause i'm going to have a heart attack my dudes, and will probably rethink the rules.

Do you guys think some rules needs to be changed? Or do you think I'm being too soft? I've never done nuzlocke in pokemon so I don't know if that kind of situation is supposed to be 'normal' ?

forgot to ping you...look up :P

Nm. The party died. Farewell beautiful family.

oh, didn't see your ping!

It really depends on how crazy you want the challenge. The "no-dying" mode makes it interesting, but not necessarily super-difficult on its own (if you use, say, max stats, great gear, etc).

Changing it to whatever the pet itself can find is great, and makes it more real. Random -caught pets also make it more challenging/real (though getting emotional investment was hard for me).

Randomising stats though (in a game that has changeable flexi-stats) and even positions (where moving pets around is an established feature), seem like handicapping tactics to make things harder.

Talking with krin about the new named, there is one even he is struggling with...

Just elaine is *really* difficult with a non-optimised team, and at least one of the new named is even harder...

I say caught lvl 0 pet/only found items useable/and no dying are enough to count as hardcore!

But up to you! The additional rules make it extra, extra hardcore. But to be honest, it seems more likely to lead to a lot of squishy deaths and replacements if rng isn't kind. (Which defeats the aim of protecting a special team). And for that to happen late in the game (i.e. lost grove), which would be annoying. Elaine with a lvl 0 anyone? Or all the time lost raising up another pet and hoping for rng kindness...?

Then again, RNG stats are like the pet choosing for itself... if you want something harder, but not ridiculously hard, what about random elements, but you choose the battle tactics, formations, and stats?

replied to ping before reading post... so sad. :(

maybe another family with less restrictions? I ended up releasing/donating my own team, since I knew I wouldn't have the patience to carry it through.

As an alternative, you could start like a new player. (i.e. one generated or chosen pet and a handful of traps). And only go with what you can find, including more pets.

And how about no using gold? (but all other found items are ok). But no rng. So you can choose elements/stats, but cant use the gold to change it afterwards...

Hmm about the newbie thing, that'd be an idea. Could make it proper nuzlocke style...and this might make it cooler... so:

in a pokemon Nuzlocke, you're only allowed to tame one pet from each route, this pet is the first pokemon you see. if the pokemon dies, you need to go to a different route and tame it from that.

So for sylestia it would be like. Tame the first pet you see from trollsblight caverns, battle with it, move onto the fungus grove, tame the first pet you see, add it to your party, etc. (which is sort of what I already did without realizing. I tamed 3 at once from the 3 zones and then started battling)

this means you'd only be able to find a total of 13 pets for a single nuzlocke run (including dungeons). Finding egglings in the wild is like finding shinies in pokemon. It won't count as a restriction so they can be kept.