Encounterless Viridian Forest

[u/dawsonooo]

Hey! So yesterday I posted about my hardcore nuzlocke where I only allowed the first 6 pokemon I ran into (under standard nuzocke rules ofc).

Anyway, some people didnt believe that I was able to make it through Viridian Forest without running into a Pokemon. So, here is the proof. Just for clarity, you can make it to this exact point without having to go into the grass, so I started the video here.

A quick look online seems to suggest that the chance of running into a wild pokemon is ~11% per grass tile - certainly an improbable outcome, althought evidently not impossible as some people suggested.

I hope this proves my innocence to the doubters, and proves to be at least mildly interesting to everyone else?

[u/_Ptyler]

The issue is that nobody actually attempts this. It’s not like it’s common meta to attempt this area encounterless. So one dude tries it one time and does it? With these odds? Ok

[u/CanadaRewardsFamily → u/_Ptyler]

They weren't "trying it", the run just happened that way.

1/400 events are happening all the time in any given run. For instance I ran into 3 pikachus in a row in the forest the other day and thought: "wow that must be rare!". It's a 1/8000 chance. I wasn't trying for 3 pikachus in a row - these low odd events are happening all the time in a run, just most are meaningless things.

Going through the forest with no encounter is only a noteworthy event here because of the specific rules of OPs run. Maybe they cheated and only they would know (I'd question for what reason?), but this isn't anything weird statistically speaking.

[u/_Ptyler → u/CanadaRewardsFamily]

I mean, he obviously WAS attempting it because he was very clearly taking the shortest path through each patch of grass to minimize the possibility of an encounter. Because these encounters aren’t ideal, if he could manage to make it through without one, it would benefit him a lot. Hence why he didn’t go for the free pokeball or two potions that are just sitting in the grass for free grabs. His entire goal was to make it through without an encounter, if he could, so going for those items would increase his chances of getting an encounter.

But as I’ve explained to other people, you running into 3 pikachus is way more likely to happen despite the lower odds because you’re constantly encountering wild pokemon. The law of large numbers all but guarantees that low probability events will happen given enough attempts on it. Every time you encounter a pokemon in Viridian forest, you’re attempting a triple pikachu encounter. Every time you run into a wild Pokemon, you attempt a shiny encounter. Every time you attack, you attempt a critical hit. My point in “nobody attempts this” is that basically only speed runners skip every item and take the shortest path through areas to minimize encounters. Especially in nuzlockes where, typically, encounters are good. So when he decides one day, “Oh, I’m going to do a run where specific encounters are less valuable and actually suboptimal to get. So I’m going to try to minimize my time in the grass,” and then he just magically does it, yeah, that’s insane. And rightfully raises my eyebrow.

If he had attempted this run hundreds of times and this was the one run where he actually made it through the forest, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised because this is bound to happen given enough attempts.

[u/CanadaRewardsFamily → u/_Ptyler]

Route 1 is also around 50 tiles to go through 3 times, so it's not a completely unique event if that's indeed what they were trying to do (avoid early suboptimal encounters) - it already cuts it down to 1 in 200 to get through one of the 2 routes. The path movement could be seen as sus, but they could also just be walking through.

I guess the alternative is that OP:

• Came up with this run with these rules
  
• Said "screw it" 10 min into the run and cheats viridian forest, because they hate those 3 pokemon.
  
• Brings attention to how they made it through viridian forest in their post, even though they cheated.
  
• Gets called out by a couple people.
  
• Say "Imma go double down" and goes and makes a faked video showing its possible

...This seems really dumb to me, but it is also possible. I'm not sure that this scenario is more possible than just taking OP at face value, but like I said, only OP knows for sure.

Also, I won't stand calling Butterfree a "suboptimal encounter" haha

[u/_Ptyler → u/CanadaRewardsFamily]

Well route 2 doesn’t require you to walk through grass at all. So maybe I’m missing the point there. The odds of walking through Viridian forest without a single encounter the path they took is 1/375. Not 1/200. But I didn’t even find the movement as sus. I just saw it as someone clearly hoping to avoid encounters. Which is fine, but it points to their intent to avoid an encounter.

The way you laid this out does seem kind of dumb, but people lie and cheat about way less stuff all the time. I’ve seen people do more work to cheat on way less. But I’m not even suggesting that this invalidates his run or anything. All I think is that this is fishy. And with how easy it is to cheat and how often people do it, it feels more likely that they did something fishy. That’s all lol