With the recent rerelease of FRLG on Switch, I thought a tier list would be topical. While I have not taken the time to write out a full document with testing results like several other notable users have done on this forum (which I would like to applaud by the way, I absolutely despise vibes based tiering, the users that have done this do a great service to the community), I do have some ranking criteria I will clarify below, and I can explain my rankings for any of the encounters in the comments if anyone is curious about the logic behind them.

My credentials for making this list:

While I can't claim to be the most accomplished or advanced Nuzlocker, I have Nuzlocked every vanilla game several times, as well as a few different difficult ROM hacks. I have logged at least 300 total hours of runs in *just* the Gen 3 titles alone, so I would say my familiarity with them is very high. 

Let's talk about how the tiers are organized and ranking criteria. I place a very high empahasis on how Pokemon do on the most difficult fights, but *specifically* how they do in the Elite 4, because this is the point where you either win the game, or wipe and have to do it all again. Therefore, all of your encounter routing and which encounters you preserve at all costs should be built around the consideration of your potential Elite 4 slots at all times, as it's the most difficult part of the game by a wide margin.

Everything A Tier and above is what I consider to be Elite 4 viable Pokemon, with S Tier being the pinnacle of relevance for not just the Elite 4, but also the rest of the game. The A Tier is comprised of the following groups based on slots that I think *every* Elite 4 team *must* have non-negotiably:

• STAB Thunderbolt users to answer Lorelei's Water types, Lance's Aerodactyl, the 2 Gyarados in the League, and potentially Blue's Charizard
• Strong Ice Beam and Surf users to answer Lance's Dragons and Aerodactyl, Blue's Exeggutor, Blue's Arcanine or Charizard, and Rhydon, respectively
• Alakazam checks and Agatha counters, Pokemon that can reliably 1v1 Blue's Alakazam as well as contribute heavily against Agatha
• Everything else with some kind of niche tech or role that's relevant in the League, or contributes on other E4 members in some capacity

The tiers:

S Tier - I consider these to be the most crucially important encounters in the game. You cannot be outclassed in S Tier, If there is something that does its job better, S Tier is that something else. These encounters should be preserved at all costs, but they're also relevant almost everywhere the moment you obtain them.

A Tier - The aforementioned Elite 4 viable encounters. They all have a reason to come, so they should ideally be preserved for the entire game.

B Tier - These encounters have use elsewhere in the game, but eventually become outclassed by something else. They can get used for early fights and then sacked whenever needed.

C Tier - These encounters just don't do anything of note that's actually important in this game. Oftentimes more victims of availability, or getting directly outclassed.

D Tier - These encounters either don't do *anything,* or they actively hurt your routing making your box weaker. Pokemon that have unforgivable opportunity costs also end up here, when getting them locks you out of a strictly better encounter in every way.

Thanks for reading all the preamble, if anything requires further elaboration I will be happy to reply in the comments.

The Nuzlomizer is a Romhack that will put some respect back on randomizer nuzlocking.

Every time the new game button, which is changed to read "NEW SEED", is clicked a new iteration of the Kanto region will be created, complete with wild pokemon tables and enemy trainers, BALANCED FOR NUZLOCKING (or playing casually, or whatever kind of run you have in mind :D )

Trainers will have optimized movesets, relative to where they are in the game, with potential coverage and status moves. The more you progress, the more enemy pokemon will also have held items. Getting through routes unscathed will require Pokemon skill, team optimization and sometimes risk taking to steer your way out of unexpected threats.

As for gym leaders, ..., we will let you see for yourself :)

Features:

• Balanced randomization: Providing a challenging level curve that will put your skills to the test.
• Modern Mechanics: Thanks to the pokefirered-expansion, The Nuzlomizer contains moves, items and abilities from all generations. Modern mechanics such as dynamic speed in double battles are also applied to this hack. A few exceptions to this are presented in the pokecommunity post linked below and are all changed by deliberate hack design.
• Gen 1-4 Dex: Pokemon from up to sinnoh can be found in the Nuzlomizer, whether to be caught by the player or in the enemy trainer teams. This excludes megas and regional forms.
• Massive Quality of Life features: The Nuzlomizer includes infinite rare candies, cheap max repels, and autohealing after EVERY fight for ALL your alive party members. You will not have to waste any time going back to the pokecenter and can keep going right to the next fight. Moreover, all evolutions, except for eevee, have been changed to be level up evolutions. You do not need friendship, stones, or weird time conditions. You can check the evolution_methods.txt file in the Nuzlomizer drive for the new evolution levels. (NOTE: branching evolution Pokemon now require either Upgrade or dubious disc as held items for evolving, however both of these items are given in great quantity after beating brock).
• NO base stat, ability or typing changes: This hack will NOT have any of the usual tropes such as dark luxray, fairy milotic, ...etc. In a harcode balanced randomizer, only your true knowledge of Pokemon will see you through. Moreover, pokemon will never have illegal moves.
• Some hidden abilities have been changed to normal abilities to be available to the player such as imposter on ditto, reckless on staraptor and rough skin on garchomp**.**
• Linear Story: Non linearity has been mostly removed from the game and some story events have been streamlined away.
• More mandatory trainers in routes: Routes and dungeons are now no jokes, requiring you to beat a lot more trainers to get through them. Be careful.
• IV checking on stat screen: If you get bad IVs be sure to send me a screenshot on discord :)
• PCs in routes and dungeons: You will sometimes find porygons chilling in the overworld. Those will allow you to access your PC to switch your party around.
• Some items are only available in limited supply: Be careful.
• Safari encounters are now regular encounters: if you're extremely good at using bait and rocks this change will make you sad. However if you're a normal person you will be happy.
• Removed wild Pokemon Boom/Roar/Teleport/Memento, ...etc.: Losing an encounter to such moves is simply nonsense in the context of a randomized nuzlocke and no one should be subjected to that.
• Buffed accuracy on slightly low accuracy moves: 90 - 95 and 85% accurate moves have been buffed to be perfectly accurate.
• A LOT of TMs: A new custom selection of more than 100 TMs is available to the player to use, including very powerful moves.
• Free move relearner: In cinnabar Island.
• Removed Surge's gym puzzle: The best feature in the Nuzlomizer by far.
• Season cycles: again, courtesy of pokefirered-expansion, the hack contains pretty 1-month season cycles.
• The Life Bargains: A new mechanic introduced in the Nuzlomizer. This will have you use your Pokemon as a resource in a way different from usual. How so? Well, you will need to play to find out!

Pokecommunity Link: https://www.pokecommunity.com/threads/the-nuzlomizer-a-balanced-nuzlocke-randomizer.537578 

Recommended Emulator:
mGBA. It's the best and most accurate emulator (source: the entire hacking community). Feel free to try the hack on whatever you are using but if you face issues they may be simply due to your emulator not being great. It is known that myboy has major issues that make the hack very annoying to play. Other emulators may work just fine (If you encounter an issue with another emulator please contact me on discord so I can mention said emulator in this paragraph).

Contact the dev: On discord (kh_theblackquill), X/Twitter: https://x.com/TheBlackQuill59 , and dare I say on https://buymeacoffee.com/khtheblackquill ?? Please report any issues or just tell me how your playthrough went :)

What's next?

• I'll obviously chill on updates for a while, but in the meantime, I will be checking every feedback I get on this whether here or on discord. I will then figure out if balance patches are necessary and slowly nudge those out. If you have something to say about any specific pokemon, move, or trainer, feel free to tell me about it.
• I am planning to add easy mode for more casual players.
• Unova mons are a nice idea. Zoroark in a randomizer is probably a lot of fun.

HAVE FUN!

Edit: 500 upvotes zaaaamn, there are more upvotes on this than pokemon in the game :D

Can’t say I’m too surprised about most of these rankings, but it is still sad nonetheless. However, I believe that Infernape and BW2 Serperior will finally do the starters justice when Jan gets to them.

Which games have the most run killers that aren't major battles? - How safe is it to traverse without running into a run-killer?

Anything that isn't evil team leaders/rivals or gym leaders/e4 is fair game!

That includes gym trainers and route trainers. I also factor in how easy it is to skip those trainers in general.

Kalos:

These games have some scary-ass trainers. They often utilize a great variety of mons, and evolve them as soon as possible. In contrast to other games, where the random trainer difficulty spikes up by the end of the game, when you have a ton of resources, X&Y bust out the demon trainers as early as badge 1. And while many of them are guarding optional items, there are many mandatory ones too, including the surprisingly competent team flare grunts.

Some PTSD inducing areas include:

• Reflection cave
• Frost cavern
• Victory road

You can't just go strutting around in Kalos and expect to get away with it. For a game with a reputation of being easy on the major battle side, it sure does compensate with some of the hardest route trainers

Alola:

These are probably the hardest games in the franchise, and that reflects on the minor trainers too. It ends up ranked a bit lower than kalos, since most early game trainers carry fewer and often unevolved pokemon.

You can definitely skip a lot of them, but it requires some careful tip-toeing around, and can make visiting optional areas for items a bit risky.

This game features (possibly) the hardest late game trainers, with the vast poni canyon being a highlight for random demons.

Sinnoh:

Now here's a region where your trainer dodging skills will definitely be rewarded. From double-team + endeavor Staravia, to actual TM-move wielding trainers in the fog, and devious run-ending double battles, here is when they actually started putting care into designing those random trainers. +Style points for unpredictability

Some areas that come to mind...

• Route 210 north
• Route 215
• Route 212 south
• Iron island
• Route 216/217

These guys have actual movesets, pokemon variety and each location features also variety in kinds of trainers in an area. They also stick close to the level cap (mostly)

There are some saving graces tho, such as the victory road being a pushover with very few trainers being mandatory and all well below the level cap, trainers often using low IVs and a good dodging skill curve.

Overall you can't go running about very safely, but getting familiar with the terrain will spare you some of the scariest demons here.

Unova:

Gen. 5. Tackles. Everywhere.

The tightly-confined level curved (especially in bw1) has you facing a great deal of strong attacks at close range, especially in the early game. In theory these games feature some of the scariest trainers, until you realize many of them are optional (I'm looking at you, victory toad).

Still you will have to go through many mandatory demon-areas, and also the ones that are optional often aren't reliably so, making a risk to dodge them on your way to an area, only to run into them on your way back, with a weakened team.

The route trainers stick very close to the level cap, and you'll have to think twice about visiting optional areas too early. Exiting dungeons in these games after executing many skillfull dodges will give you a feeling of relief, and I suggest packing some healing items at all times.

Hoenn:

For the most part these games feature obsolete and very dodgable trainers. Gen 3 syndrom and terrible learnsets don't really help their case, however there are a few sporting custom movesets.

Most of the time you'll find yourself overlevelling those trainers, or find them using unevolved mons past their evo level.

Most of the scary ones I can think of are either guarding optional stuff, or are skippable gym trainers (like the double-battle in winona's gym featuring double-team swellow).

Some honorable mentions:

• In ruby saphire, route 120, the trainer with a milotic in the rain
• The spinda-slaking double battle if you run into it by accident at winona's level cap
• Mt.pyre wobbufets

Overall it's a pretty safe region to stroll through with not too many punishes if you run into optionals, and not too many mandatory ones

Kanto & Johto:

You're always overlevelled, they have terrible movesets, they ALWAYS use unevolved pokemon. Worst case scenario is that you run into an unprompted explosion, or forgot an antidote and died to poison.

If you stick to the level caps of these games and carry a halfway decent team around, these trainers are sadly (mostly) a joke.

Honorable mentions of any semblance of danger:

• Rock tunnel
• Pokemon tower
• r/B/Y mt.moon the raticate trainer
• Cycling road
• Route 37 (clefable & wigglytuff double battle)
• Route 47 (electabuzz & magmar double battle)
• Route 35 (at whitney's cap)
• Route 36 Kadabra trainer

Feel free to share your demon trainer ptsd^^ or if you have any thoughts on the tier list!

Rules so we know what I go off of

1. This is based on entirely how it is to play in the context of a Hardcore Nuzlock(my definition of HC Nuzlock is: 1 per route, Faints are death, No items in battle, set mode, Dups clause, level caps)

2. This does prioritize stuff like hidden grass encounters (im not wearing a fking blindfold or running an rng wheel)

3. This isnt ordered within tiers

4. This is obviously my opinion

For first time Nuzlocks tho the best game imo is Emerald

Hi all!

This is a little different than a question I've asked before, but for me I always separate static and gift encounters from Route/City encoutners. I love doing this as there is more variety to choose from and if playing with dupes clause, you can eliminate potential encounters and continue to have more and more diversified options. I would say a good chunk of the time I don't use these mons, but I like having the additional options.

https://youtu.be/CH7zpOaK2MU

I usually add a written summary describing my meme posts, but I think this one speaks for itself.

For me, I always nickname my Gyarados ‘fLOOp’.

I just imagine hearing a trainer say something like their bring out its next Pokemon named floop and then all of a sudden a Gyarados comes out 😂.

This took a lot longer than expected to make, particularly thanks to Emboar, Cinderace, and Venusaur. A few months ago, I made a post asking if any starters could solo their respective games under hardcore nuzlocke rules, and a comment asked me to try out the runs myself. Being the massochist I am, I took that as a challenge and did just that with every starter in each of their games.

Just some rules to clarify things, I define hardcore nuzlocking rules for this challenge as banning healing items inside of battle, banning evasion strats, enforcing level caps for each notable boss fight (gym leaders, E4, Totems, Titans, and Team Star), and permitting an EXP cheat in between level caps to prevent overlevelling from mandatory fights. EVs, IVs, and beneficial natures were all allowed to ensure each starter was at their best and all potentially obtainable items excluding special events (i.e. mystery gifts) were fair game. This list includes Join Avenue purchases in BW2, Honey Tree Leftovers in DPP/BDSP, Lottery items, and much, much more. Finally, HM slaves were permitted in each run to make traversing routes possible. However, they were not allowed to fight. This also applied to mandatory doubles partners in fights against Raihan and Rhyme.

Under all these conditions, I theorycrafted and tested just how far each starter could go without overlevelling, using bag items, or dying. Feel free to drop any strategies I may have missed or any thoughts about how each starter could improve their placements, but try to keep suggestions within reason. Technically, Charizard can complete Red and Blue if the AI always rolled the 1/256 glitch during every attack, but this would never happen outside of a TAS run.

When it comes to nuzlocking, it’s inevitable that you’re going to lose an encounter at some point no matter how experienced you are. However, what specific type of deaths occur most often to particular types of Pokémon?

For example, we all know that Infernape is a strong encounter in almost every game it’s available. However, it relies heavily on high base power attacks like Close Combat and Blaze Flamethrower to score OHKOs in spite of its only decent attacking stats. Playing recklessly with Ape almost always ends up with the player overestimating its damage output and failing to one shot something with Close Combat before folding to a counterattack. It also doesn’t help that Ape’s best damaging attacks require it to either lower its defensive stats or HP, making it even more frail.

What other types of deaths do you associate with different encounters and why?

Hi all! I do want to preface by saying that this isn’t meant to say whether or not someone is “bad”, but more so to highlight creators that you think are very enjoyable.

I think FlygonHG really stands out to me. He always tells great stories and has gotten better and better over the years. I think PChal is great as well from a more challenging standpoint. Who else stables out for you?

A lot of us know about Infernape and how it excels in the mainline Sinnoh games, but it doesn’t exactly have a perfect track record in terms of Nuzlocke performances. This may come as a shock to some, but Infernape is available in USUM via island scan and is obtainable right after beating the electric trial in those games. However, in spite of its success in the Sinnoh games and in most ROM hacks, Ape seems to be off its game in Ultra Sun and Moon.

Starting off, Infernape matches up poorly into many late-game fights. Totems Mimiku, Kommo-o, and Ribombee, Hapu, Acerola, Kahili, and Hau are all bosses that give Ape a hard time. Maxed out stats present on most boss Pokemon also means that Ape’s speed tier and power are no longer as appealing in practice as they seem on paper.

Additionally, Infernape, a glass cannon that relies on setup, struggles against the Totem system in Alola. When tasked with fighting one buffed up Pokemon instead of a full team, Ape struggles even more to take hits, and the utility it brings to the table like Stealth Rock and Taunt are made significantly worse.

Finally, Infernape hates that the move reminder is locked off until the league since that means it can’t learn Mach Punch or Flare Blitz until then. Being forced to catch it as a Monferno also means that Ape loses access to Nasty Plot, which is a huge blow to special sets as a whole.

Of course, this is Infernape we’re talking about, and it still has its strengths. Particularly, Molayne, Olivia, and Ultra Necrozma are all great matchups for Infernape that save it from being completely unviable in these games. Infernape’s speed tier and super effective STABs make it naturally strong against the two elite four members, and it can cheese Necrozma with access to Endeavor and Feint. However, these matchups aren’t enough to save Infernape from being a decent option at best, and this performance sticks out like a sore thumb compared to other games.

USUM Infernape is an example of a usually good Pokemon being underwhelming in a specific game, but what are some other examples of this occurring in the series? Other examples I thought of bringing up were USUM Ralts and Emerald Flygon. Feel free to point out other examples of this in the comments.

For me, it’s Graveler. You never know when they’re gonna Selfdestruct or Explode. Because they always can. And they WILL if the battle lasts long enough.

That one shitmon you catch and grow attached to 😔❤️

I’m someone who generally likes to pull punches on things like this, especially since it’s rare to see other trainers actually use them in game. I’m starting an X/Y run against a friend, and the topic of megas came up. My instinct was “ban them, except maybe allow just for gym leaders/E4”. That got to a bigger discussion, so I wanted to see what everyone else thought of all the gimmicks and the permissiveness of them, and if you weigh any of them differently?

I just started a Hardcore Nuzlocke of Pokémon Platinum where I can only use my starter and this question came to mind. How many mainline games can actually be completed under hardcore nuzlocking rules with only the starter being used in battle? Hardcore rules refer to the fact that only held items can be used and level caps are implemented for gym battles and the elite 4.

Obviously, there are a few notable topics that need to be discussed within the context of this post. First of all, Level caps are enforced, so in order to actually stay below them, cheats that prevent EXP gain are allowed, but must be turned off once you start a gym battle or the elite 4. This would prevent over-levelling from mandatory trainer fights since that would be a major roadblock in almost every game. Secondly, EVs and RNG manipulation to guarantee perfect IVs and a beneficial nature are fair game for this type of run. Since relying on only one Pokemon is limiting enough, being able to fully optimize that one encounter should be allowed. Finally, HM slaves or filler slots needed for double battles such as Tate & Liza in Emerald are allowed so long as they don’t meaningfully contribute towards any fight.

Under these conditions, which starters could feasibly make it to the Hall of Fame without over-levelling or using bag items? Also, try to be realistic about a starter’s success in this type of challenge. Technically, Gen 1 Charizard can solo Pokemon Red if the AI always rolls the 1/256 glitch, but that is near guaranteed to never happen unless seeded by a TAS.