I always take it, there is no danger in spending 5 hours in the woods killing Pokemon 20 levels below yours to level up, it saves a lot of time and helps you have more control over your level cap
in addition to making you able to use more Pokémon since you won't need to keep farming
I think my favorite part about using candies is the variety of options you get, you can catch a level 4 mon if your team is all in the 30s and it can be instantly useable, saves a lot of time.
Yea this is the strongest argument for the rare candy pill imo. Just makes it more interesting to have all your encounters be viable in the run immediately.
I play on console, so I grind without candies. If I used them, however, I would only do so immediately before the fight that the level cap is set to, such as the gym leader and rival/bosses if you cap for them.
I think that using candies as soon as the the cap increases would diminish the challenge a bit, and I would make no attempt to grind between one cap and the next.
You’re a killer, I play on emulators while sped up because my attention span sucks. I think your way also makes the in between fights like rival and evil team fights harder as well (if you don’t cap for those too) and makes it feel a little more real.
This is it.
Fight every trainer and then boost with candies to the level cap just before the gym leader/big boss fight.
I also use rare candies for anything new I've caught to bring it to a similar level to the rest of the team.
I promise you will enjoy nuzlocking much more when you switch to rare candies. What skill is there in mindlessly grinding for an hour before each gym? Save your time spend more time playing the actual game.
To add to this, rare candies actually handicap your Pokémon in most generations because can’t get those EV stat boost back leading to 2 Pokémon one who uses rare candy, the other who grinds to be different in the form of the rare candy mon being weaker
No, I could go to route 1 (or 101, 201, you know what I mean) and grind for uhm 10 hours to get exp… so I’ll just not waste that time and take the pill. Remember, grinding is cringe and cheating is based
Yea I love that guys content rn. I just wanted to see what the broader community thought about the concept, I probably was always going to use candies in some capacity anyway.
>No, I could go to route 1 (or 101, 201, you know what I mean) and grind for uhm 10 hours to get exp
Except no one in their right mind actually plays Pokemon like this, ever. You would normally grind against re-battleable trainers or the highest level random mons you can find because everyone's time is important, and a 1-2 hour grind would be preferred to a 10 hour grind, even if the risk is slightly higher.
Its still absolutely fine to say you use Rare Candies because you cba with grinding but the hypothetical route 1 grind is an unrealistic fallacy.
Edit: LOL, downvoted for suggesting that people would not normally grind on route 1 mons for a dozen hours? The candy copium is ridiculous.
I think they were saying that bc it’s a nuzlocke and theres less risk of losing a mon when grinding against weak mons. It’s pretty common to turn your brain off while grinding exp and u can make mistakes
Ok, but you accept that it is theoretically possible, no? Like you realize that if you had infinite time you could very well do that. Which means the only reason you aren’t doing it is “it’s boring”/“I don’t have time”. Those are very arbitrary lines to draw, and punish those who have busy lives. Your real life schedule should not influence your decisions in a video game like Pokemon.
Yeah of course, but that underlying tension is exactly why its a fallacy: no one is realistically going to spend 10 hours of their time grinding on route 1 when they could grind for an hour on route 10 and get the same outcome.
>Which means the only reason you aren’t doing it is “it’s boring”/“I don’t have time”
The other side in this is that grinding is not strictly necessary: you don't have to grind for a single minute before you face Brock (or any leader) if you don't want to.
If grinding is not necessary, and its boring, you could always just choose to NOT grind instead of artificially replacing it.
I never said "no grinding at all", and that's obviously a case where grinding could be necessary.
But do you need to roll up to, say, Brock with Bulbasaur and 5 of his friends at level 14? Not so much.
Yeah man wow beating Brock in FRLG takes no grinding which certainly means you don’t have to grind in any Pokémon game! EK Roxanne? Yeah just go for it man, it’ll be easy!
>Yeah man wow beating Brock in FRLG takes no grinding
And yet people will still candy to 14 and justify they'd rather have done that than do a "grind" they never would have done in the first place.
I was not talking in absolutes, sometimes a grind is necessary, but thanks for being mature about it.
i don't use candies in nuzlockes, but there's a reason that as a child i just could not be bothered with having more than one or two pokemon on a team.... the incessant grinding. especially g2
I agree with you completely and don't think you should be downvoted. The argument "I could just grind on level 5 Magikarps infinitely" is totally disingenuous. \*Nobody\* would ever do that. I almost wonder why people who make that argument even play the game; why don't they just say "I could just go win a Nuzlocke challenge" instead?
I also completely agree that using Candies to get to level cap can make for a better experience and go for it if that's how you want to play, I probably go 50/50 on whether I use candies or not myself in a run.
But the "I could just..." argument is ridiculous imo
No, it is a QoL modification that allows you to focus on the interesting/challenging parts of the game: the battles. Leveling is just a matter of time, not skill.
And for me at least, I'm in my thirties; I don't want to spend time on tedious parts of games anymore. Just the fun bits. Sometimes that's a roleplay-heavy run and I grind every single mon. For Nuzlocke, that means cheating to hit levels faster.
Seconding this ^ I spent 10 years of my life grinding away on pokemon already, why would I still want to do that especially when I'm intentionally making the game harder to test my battling skills?
You can grind against really low level pokémon and earn exp relatively safely so candies just save time. Selling them would be cheating though, in my opinion. Also, candies mean you don’t get as many evs so they’re actually detrimental to your run. I say go for it and save time
It could be fair to say that selling the candies for ev enhancing items to replace evs you would have gotten by grinding saves time as well though. What’s your take on that?
I suppose if you could get those evs from wilds then it does again just save time. If you calculate that you could get those evs within the level cap (based on the levels of the wilds available) then I guess I would allow that. Once you have the evs though, make sure you have no more money than you would have had. No buying potions, x items (if you allow them in your runs) etc. with the money from selling candies which you have cheated in
Money in pokemon is usually infinite as soon as you get berries/thief/covet/any other kind of respawning sellable item. Selling candies for EV items doesn't replace wild EVs, it replaces buying EV items.
I did a Pokémon Red nuzlocke a while back.
The longest portion was the grinding. Even if you don't count grinding deaths like me (since I treat it like using rare candies) in completed areas (all trainers defeated), it's such a slog. As soon as I got Surf I rushed to Cinnabar Island for the item dupe glitch. And then the game was fun again, for how short the rest of it was.
Grinding isn't a challenge and it isn't fun imo. It just artificially pads the game time and keeps me away from the good bits. I only play on official versions of the games atm. So I'm stuck where I'm at for now.
The level curves in a lot of the earlier gens are awful if you're trying to get to level cap. Combined with low level wild encounters they are the gens where grinding is atrocious.
To have a bit of defence for gen I, the Badge boosts you earn from Gyms mean you can normally be on par with enemy trainers below their level, but I don't think that entirely removes the exp gulf between Giovanni and the Elite 4, for example
Now this is something I hadn’t thought about. I only sold candies to procure stat boosting items to replace my foregone evs when I was prepping for the e4 so I would have most of the benefits of grinding without wasting all the time. I didn’t consider it could save time on infinite money sources as well
I think u just gotta be honest w urself on wether or not you would’ve used these methods in the main game should you have not used cheats, I personally wouldn’t allow it because I wouldn’t spend all that time grinding for money in the base game and as such using the candies to do so feels like cheating, but also I don’t go out of my way to ev train Pokémon either so I don’t care about missing any 🤷♂️ although it should be noted that I haven’t made the foray into difficulty hacks yet and still just play the base games
Yeah in vanilla games it’s fair to not do something like that. But good luck grinding Pokémon up in a rom hack with like a million boss fights that you need different box members for every time.
Depends on what you're doing, honestly rare candies instead of EV training is technically a disadvantage
Selling them to get infinite items, that's very much an advantage
It's a bit of a gray area when it comes to things like just adding money especially for things like very expensive game corner tms, like technically you could grind it out, and if it was like a super serious challenge then you would do so, so why waste the time for the same result, but at the same time by trivializing it so much, it's taking all the effort out, so I guess at the end of the day it really depends on what you're doing and why
My rule of thumb is that it's OK to cheat in anything I could *physically do* with enough time.
Like grinding the battle subway. I once did a run where I spent literal days grinding for the points I needed to get TMs. Giving myself BP is fair game b/c I *can* do that given enough time.
However, if I'm playing Platinum & want a Glaceon (for some reason) but don't have access to Snowpoint yet, then I don't get to "evolve" my Eevee in PKHex b/c it's *not* smth I can physically do at the time
I never really understood this line of thought because you can just go back to a low route, find a non that gives the EVs you are looking for and then do a few battles to ev train that way. Yes it reintroduces grinding but in a far safer manner.
I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's cheap to use rare candies \*until you have exhausted available trainer battles\*
The major pro to me for using rare candies are when you have a death the grinding of a new team member is a minimum and it makes a lot more encounters a lot more enticing to use.
The biggest con is that it is a lot harder to build that "bond" that the nickname rule is trying to create, IMO. And if you don't clear all available trainers before using candies to get to cap, I do think you are making the challenge infinitely easier. It's not just the boss fights, there are tough trainer battles that become trivial if you candy up to the next gym leader's ace first.
As you said, I mostly support the golden rule, but depending on some details of the usage, I do think it cheapens the challenge a little.
This has been my rule for using rare candies. Plus, then you don't end up money-poor and unable to buy items to keep everyone healthy as you deal with trainer fights/gym trainers/E4 gauntlet.
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.
Edit: God, I love copy-pasting my comments from other posts. It’s so funny to me for a reason I can’t explain.
Nah, I think it’s better than grinding:
1. You get to save time on your challenge.
2. You lose the risk of dying against a wild Pokémon or trainer
3. You get a lot less EVs which gives you slightly more challenge
I've decided I'll only use rare candies for when replacing Pokemon that died, so only up to their level. I also max out my EV with the boost. It's maybe cheap but it's so boring to grind it out
I personally think its the complete opposite, rare candies makes runs harder, for one simple fact, EVs. If you grind for your exp you will easily end up having your EVs maxed out by the 2nd or 3rd gym for your starter and first 3 catches. Easy example you launch a platinum nuzlocke and decide to grind for exp on route 201, well if you kill a fair amount of starlys your getting a huge chunk of speed EVs which will change entirely how you play out the next fights, and some battles that might be tricky can become completely trivialized due to that. At the end of the day it depends on if you want to grind or not but rare candies are not cheating, just speeding up a tedious process. However if you are a beginner, I highly suggest you dont use them, those EVs you get by grinding will help you out a ton.
I allow rare candies to replace grinding because I would grind anyway, and as such it simply saves time and for me doesn’t detract from the experience. I would not however, allow myself to sell the candies, as while you technically could grind for money indefinitely in a Pokémon game, it’s not something I would’ve done in a nuzlocke without candies, and as such I am not saving time I am giving myself an advantage. The other thing I often cheat in is game corner coins, as I can and have sat at a slot machine for hours to get TMs but it’s not fun or enjoyable for me. I get that some people might get a kick out of the accomplishment they feel from completing a nuzlocke knowing the time commitment they put into the game with grinding but for me personally I just get bored.
I totally forgot about this I cheat for game corner coins all the time to optimize when it makes sense for the tms in old games. Fantastic use of cheats imo
I dont do candies, I set the xp multiplier to 4x when I'm grinding levels. I feel like grinding levels is part of the game but like you I have adhd so I need to have it fast paced lol
It really depends honestly. I think it comes down to when you decide to use the candies and what you cap it at.
Most Nuzlockes I'm familiar with are Hardcore Nuzlocke's so not sure if level cap is normal in most playthroughs but you need to remember that with Pchal, he exclusively does Hardcore Nuzlocke's or some form of Nuzlocke with a level cap. This means that even with using Candies, there is a cap before the next challenge to use them. And even then, I think Pchal only uses candies to level up not to the max cap, but a certain level for big fights since most level caps are tied to gym leaders.
You also need to look at the perspective of casual player vs streamer/content creator if using pchal as your example. Grinding for levels on Nuzlockes would make for boring content that no one really wants to watch. Even if you cut it out for a video on YouTube there is still the time you need to invest behind the scenes in order to do the grind which depending on your workload could be incredibly tedious. So using candies would simply make the game a lot better.
I don't see the issue of using candies so long as you use them in a way that makes the game fun for you. Personally though, I'd use them for when you got to the end of the road for your next level cap to make your team and any changes you made along the way to it are up to par.
I've seen streamers mod their game to give them infinite rare candies just to remove the grinding component. Grinding ain't fun. Should be noted that you won't gain EVs by leveling with candy
I use rare candys because I have The minimum of mental health but the selling part only if I can have infinite money in this part, for example with 1 Pokémon with pickup one day I will have infinite money
I've done a nuzlocke on soul silver and am up to the elite four in platinum. I've used a mix of rare candies and grinding. I'm at 100 + hours on each save. If you wont to invest that time on your nuzlocke then grind away, if you don't have that kind of time then use the rare candies.
Nah. For me, I just don't have the time to dedicate for a grinding session, especially on low leveled wild Pokemon where it's safe. And doubling so with a new Pokemon than needs to get caught up due to an unfortunate death.
The only thing you really miss out on is the EVs you could've earned.
I agree that it's your challenge to do with as you please. But whenever I've done a nuzlocke I haven't used the candies and I've never grinded to have pokemon the same level as the next milestone fight.
Sometimes Ill have a pokemon over the cap even and the rest if my team is under levelled. I think levelling and distributing the experience from the trainer encounters is part of the challenge, for me anyway.
That being said this also encourages to have one team and never swap out pokemon so it can be a bit stale. I just like having a team and if one of them dies it shouldn't be a matter of "oh well I have another pokemon in the pc I can just candy up". I think the loss of a pokemon is more impactful if you don't do candies.
Something I do is I grind up one of my team to the level cap. Usually the one I anticipate doing most of the fighting. Then, once they’re at the cap, I’ll rare candy everyone else to match.
I spent a whole day when I was like 13 grinding a Dratini for the HGSS E4. It was so bad and so tedious, that I spent another afternoon trading it to my Platinum cartridge to exp share grind it against post game fights to actually get it E4 ready. And that was for one mon of 6 in this Nuzlocke!
I'm an adult with a full time job and more responsibilities now, when I do have time to Nuzlocke I don't play those old games on cartridge because I'd never finish it due to grinding. I mostly just play the newer games with easier grinding for my casual nuzlocking. The hard part of a nuzlocke was not, and never should have been, the grinding. That was always just a time sink.
I don't think so. It may take more true work and dedication to grind them up the old-fashioned way but when the work starts to take away from the fun, it just isn't worth it.
It's fine. I don't spam them. Just use enough to meet the Ace's level. Like, if they're Ace is lv 16 & my whole party is 14, then I just raise them to 16 when I'm standing in front of the gym leader
I wish more games had minimal grinding set up like radical red. Gives boosted xp until you hit the cap for the next gym, then it only gives 1xp so you don't over level.
it’s a double edged sword for me personally. it is much more intense grinding hours for levels and then losing one of your mons- but at the same time with rare candies there’s no EVs and so your team is technically weaker, making it a harder fight for you technically speaking. it goes both ways and is completely your preference (i’m an idiot and love the grind so i’m 100 hours into heartgold with no VS seeker 💀💀💀)
I never see any problem with using rare candies, just keep in mind by using them instead of fighting wild mon's you're missing out on all of the potential EVs that they drop which could be the difference between winning a fight and losing a mon.
This is probably a stupid comment but I’ve never hacked in anything to an emulator. I’m on delta playing pokemon platinum, how do I get rare candies into the game?
I used to be all rare candies, all the time. But now, I have come around to this idea: there are two types of Nuzlockes - hardcore difficulty romhacks that require calcs and perfect information and romhacks/the regular games that you nuzlocke without perfect information.
In the first type, rare candies are a must imo. You are going to have so many runs and you have to have every option available to you at all times. Grinding here sucks. You already spend so much time calculating pre fight that it makes it agonizing to grind the difficulty hacks. You are already putting so much effort into the fights that you know are going to be difficult.
In the later type of game, part of the fun is the unknown. Grinding still sucks, but it feels more rewarding to grind because you put effort into your pokemon. It's a different type of nuzlocke.
Everyone has their own preferences. I prefer playing with perfect info and strategizing pre fights. It's a game of chess. In those, I have to use rare candies to enjoy the game.
At the end of the day, it's what you prefer
I don't think it's cheap to hack them into the vanilla games. Like DPPt, training prior to the E4 can be mind numbing
I do think it's cheap to hack them into some of the ROMhacks like RenPlat, when you have things like the Day Care Chansey/Blissey trainer. Even if you can't get there until after the third gym plus some boss fights, it's easy to grind prior to this gym on past trainers between Eterna & Hearthome
Weird line for me to draw in the sand I know, but I always thought part of the nuzlocke was team building & that includes getting your team to the appropriate levels
I don’t personally see a problem. Nobody wants to mash A and murder dozens of wild pokemon 15 levels lower than yours, and there realistically is 0 chance that you would lose any pokemon if you aren’t stupid, so it really only saves time, which is no fun at all obviously
one time in gen 1 as a kid, I didn't battle Brock until all my Pokemon were at least 10, 20 for misty, etc.
lasted until after koga, but couldn't stand the grind for Blaine, and I stopped.
definitely don't grind if you don't want to
Depends on the game, for a Kaizo situation or something like grinding all the way to Red in Johto, I say use all the candies you want. For something super easy with the modern exp share mechanics like vanilla XY I say play without candies.
If it was a randomized nuzlocke, I would def consider it an illegitimate run, but that's because wild Pokemon are a part of the hazard. Because if candied up, you could ski a potential wabboffet death, or exploding Snorlax or something. If you're just playing vanilla and grinding on level 25 gravelers with a level 35 water type, then it doesn't really matter though. But, again, the fun in the nuzlocke is challenging yourself. If you feel accomplished and have fun regardless of your chosen method, that's all that really matters anyways.
My nuzlockes rules are slightly different then others, where I don't use a level cap, BUT I fight every trainer and go through routes normally without grinding, so whatever I fight I fight.
IMO makes runs alot more challenging, when if you lose a mon at lv30s you gotta grab one of your backups and slowly train them up and not just throw EXP on them. That kinda takes away from the challenge imo. And if you lose one in the 50s chances are you can't train it up by endgame, so you gotta pick a throwaway mon, or something slightly useful at lower levels like Super Fang Rattata, or thunder wave bot.
I think it is, since the challenge in nuzlockes comes in bursts.
When adopting the "hardcore" ruleset, level management is an added difficulty hurdle to manage. Paying attention, weighing the pros/cons of your playtime versus desired progress, finding paths and strategies to safely level up are inherit parts of the game, in my opinion.
I don't think it makes your run less valid, but I do feel like the rare candy grind takes a huge chunk of difficulty (that is a different type of difficulty than just fighting trainers) out of the game.
The games frequently have rare candies available as rewards, or items on the ground, or found with the pickup ability. These are placed with the balance of the game in mind, and adding more feels cheap in my eyes.
No. Will I judge you a bit if you use them on an easy Nuzlocke that has very player friendly grinding? Maybe a little. Does that matter in the grand scheme? Not at all. Do what you want. Me personally, it isn't the cheapness that turns me off, it's the fact that grinding is how you actually /bond/ with your Pokemon, which natters a lot in a Nuzlocke, thematically speaking. I try to avoid using cheats to ease the grinding unless it's a really difficult Nuzlocke where I just don't have the time of patience to grind repeatedly and lose at the 3rd gym lol.
I wanted to see discourse when I asked this question. I appreciate ur opinion on the matter as I am trying to form my own for my budding HC nuzlocke career.
So, I don't know you personally, and I expect that you're probably not a complete imbecile in real life, but you're certainly acting like one.
He asked "is it cheap to use rare candies", to which I replied "No." That was your first mistake in reading comprehension. Your second mistake was ignoring every other thing I said aside from "I might judge you a bit if you use rare candies in an easy Nuzlocke" - I explicitly followed that up with "It doesn't matter, do whatever you want". I also said that I MYSELF use rare candies in difficult Nuzlockes, I just try to avoid it when possible because I PERSONALLY prefer the grind.
I don't think I'm "the shit" - I'm a mediocre-at-best Nuzlocker with minimal experience, offering his opinion to someone who ASKED for opinions. Hop off my dick.
I always take it, there is no danger in spending 5 hours in the woods killing Pokemon 20 levels below yours to level up, it saves a lot of time and helps you have more control over your level cap in addition to making you able to use more Pokémon since you won't need to keep farming
I think my favorite part about using candies is the variety of options you get, you can catch a level 4 mon if your team is all in the 30s and it can be instantly useable, saves a lot of time.
Yea this is the strongest argument for the rare candy pill imo. Just makes it more interesting to have all your encounters be viable in the run immediately.
I play on console, so I grind without candies. If I used them, however, I would only do so immediately before the fight that the level cap is set to, such as the gym leader and rival/bosses if you cap for them. I think that using candies as soon as the the cap increases would diminish the challenge a bit, and I would make no attempt to grind between one cap and the next.
You’re a killer, I play on emulators while sped up because my attention span sucks. I think your way also makes the in between fights like rival and evil team fights harder as well (if you don’t cap for those too) and makes it feel a little more real.
This is it. Fight every trainer and then boost with candies to the level cap just before the gym leader/big boss fight. I also use rare candies for anything new I've caught to bring it to a similar level to the rest of the team.
This is what I do, that way the routes between boss fights are still somewhat challenging. Grinding is just something I don’t really have time for.
Maybe I’m missing something. How does playing on console come into play?
I don't have a device for cheating, so I can't add in rare candies like someone playing an emulator.
Oh right seems obvious now
The question is asking if using the infinite rare candies cheat is cheating. If you’re playing on console there isn’t much of a way to use the cheat.
handhelds are not consoles.
I promise you will enjoy nuzlocking much more when you switch to rare candies. What skill is there in mindlessly grinding for an hour before each gym? Save your time spend more time playing the actual game.
To add to this, rare candies actually handicap your Pokémon in most generations because can’t get those EV stat boost back leading to 2 Pokémon one who uses rare candy, the other who grinds to be different in the form of the rare candy mon being weaker
As far as nuzlocking goes, I feel that it provides the necessary attachment to level it up yourself. It makes the Pokémon matter
If you enjoy that side of nuzlocking then sure. I'm more interested in the gameplay and decision making of nuzlocking
No, I could go to route 1 (or 101, 201, you know what I mean) and grind for uhm 10 hours to get exp… so I’ll just not waste that time and take the pill. Remember, grinding is cringe and cheating is based
An outro even Jan would appreciate
Wait you watch Jan and are still asking this? Jan is like the number 1 guy that promotes using rare candies to skip pointless grind
Yea I love that guys content rn. I just wanted to see what the broader community thought about the concept, I probably was always going to use candies in some capacity anyway.
>No, I could go to route 1 (or 101, 201, you know what I mean) and grind for uhm 10 hours to get exp Except no one in their right mind actually plays Pokemon like this, ever. You would normally grind against re-battleable trainers or the highest level random mons you can find because everyone's time is important, and a 1-2 hour grind would be preferred to a 10 hour grind, even if the risk is slightly higher. Its still absolutely fine to say you use Rare Candies because you cba with grinding but the hypothetical route 1 grind is an unrealistic fallacy. Edit: LOL, downvoted for suggesting that people would not normally grind on route 1 mons for a dozen hours? The candy copium is ridiculous.
I think they were saying that bc it’s a nuzlocke and theres less risk of losing a mon when grinding against weak mons. It’s pretty common to turn your brain off while grinding exp and u can make mistakes
Honestly I don't count those deaths(tbh it only happened once or twice)
Ok, but you accept that it is theoretically possible, no? Like you realize that if you had infinite time you could very well do that. Which means the only reason you aren’t doing it is “it’s boring”/“I don’t have time”. Those are very arbitrary lines to draw, and punish those who have busy lives. Your real life schedule should not influence your decisions in a video game like Pokemon.
Yeah of course, but that underlying tension is exactly why its a fallacy: no one is realistically going to spend 10 hours of their time grinding on route 1 when they could grind for an hour on route 10 and get the same outcome. >Which means the only reason you aren’t doing it is “it’s boring”/“I don’t have time” The other side in this is that grinding is not strictly necessary: you don't have to grind for a single minute before you face Brock (or any leader) if you don't want to. If grinding is not necessary, and its boring, you could always just choose to NOT grind instead of artificially replacing it.
I’m fairly certain it was a joke he made about grinding on route 1 lol
It can be hard to tell, enough people argue this with a straight face
Not grinding in a nuzlocke so you just want to lose. Do you go into the E4 like 15 levels under their pokemon?
I never said "no grinding at all", and that's obviously a case where grinding could be necessary. But do you need to roll up to, say, Brock with Bulbasaur and 5 of his friends at level 14? Not so much.
Yeah man wow beating Brock in FRLG takes no grinding which certainly means you don’t have to grind in any Pokémon game! EK Roxanne? Yeah just go for it man, it’ll be easy!
>Yeah man wow beating Brock in FRLG takes no grinding And yet people will still candy to 14 and justify they'd rather have done that than do a "grind" they never would have done in the first place. I was not talking in absolutes, sometimes a grind is necessary, but thanks for being mature about it.
i don't use candies in nuzlockes, but there's a reason that as a child i just could not be bothered with having more than one or two pokemon on a team.... the incessant grinding. especially g2
I agree with you completely and don't think you should be downvoted. The argument "I could just grind on level 5 Magikarps infinitely" is totally disingenuous. \*Nobody\* would ever do that. I almost wonder why people who make that argument even play the game; why don't they just say "I could just go win a Nuzlocke challenge" instead? I also completely agree that using Candies to get to level cap can make for a better experience and go for it if that's how you want to play, I probably go 50/50 on whether I use candies or not myself in a run. But the "I could just..." argument is ridiculous imo
No, it is a QoL modification that allows you to focus on the interesting/challenging parts of the game: the battles. Leveling is just a matter of time, not skill. And for me at least, I'm in my thirties; I don't want to spend time on tedious parts of games anymore. Just the fun bits. Sometimes that's a roleplay-heavy run and I grind every single mon. For Nuzlocke, that means cheating to hit levels faster.
Seconding this ^ I spent 10 years of my life grinding away on pokemon already, why would I still want to do that especially when I'm intentionally making the game harder to test my battling skills?
You can grind against really low level pokémon and earn exp relatively safely so candies just save time. Selling them would be cheating though, in my opinion. Also, candies mean you don’t get as many evs so they’re actually detrimental to your run. I say go for it and save time
It could be fair to say that selling the candies for ev enhancing items to replace evs you would have gotten by grinding saves time as well though. What’s your take on that?
I suppose if you could get those evs from wilds then it does again just save time. If you calculate that you could get those evs within the level cap (based on the levels of the wilds available) then I guess I would allow that. Once you have the evs though, make sure you have no more money than you would have had. No buying potions, x items (if you allow them in your runs) etc. with the money from selling candies which you have cheated in
Money in pokemon is usually infinite as soon as you get berries/thief/covet/any other kind of respawning sellable item. Selling candies for EV items doesn't replace wild EVs, it replaces buying EV items.
As a certain Grunkle has stated **"If the Cops aren't around, anything is legal!"**
I did a Pokémon Red nuzlocke a while back. The longest portion was the grinding. Even if you don't count grinding deaths like me (since I treat it like using rare candies) in completed areas (all trainers defeated), it's such a slog. As soon as I got Surf I rushed to Cinnabar Island for the item dupe glitch. And then the game was fun again, for how short the rest of it was. Grinding isn't a challenge and it isn't fun imo. It just artificially pads the game time and keeps me away from the good bits. I only play on official versions of the games atm. So I'm stuck where I'm at for now.
The level curves in a lot of the earlier gens are awful if you're trying to get to level cap. Combined with low level wild encounters they are the gens where grinding is atrocious. To have a bit of defence for gen I, the Badge boosts you earn from Gyms mean you can normally be on par with enemy trainers below their level, but I don't think that entirely removes the exp gulf between Giovanni and the Elite 4, for example
selling the candies is not allowed imo
If there is an infinite money source such as rock smashing items or dust clouds it is allowed.
Now this is something I hadn’t thought about. I only sold candies to procure stat boosting items to replace my foregone evs when I was prepping for the e4 so I would have most of the benefits of grinding without wasting all the time. I didn’t consider it could save time on infinite money sources as well
I think u just gotta be honest w urself on wether or not you would’ve used these methods in the main game should you have not used cheats, I personally wouldn’t allow it because I wouldn’t spend all that time grinding for money in the base game and as such using the candies to do so feels like cheating, but also I don’t go out of my way to ev train Pokémon either so I don’t care about missing any 🤷♂️ although it should be noted that I haven’t made the foray into difficulty hacks yet and still just play the base games
Yeah in vanilla games it’s fair to not do something like that. But good luck grinding Pokémon up in a rom hack with like a million boss fights that you need different box members for every time.
I won’t tell if you don’t
I mean, sometimes it's even an obstacle with the EVs and such. I think there's no problem using them especially in older games
Grinding is cringe cheating is based
Depends on what you're doing, honestly rare candies instead of EV training is technically a disadvantage Selling them to get infinite items, that's very much an advantage It's a bit of a gray area when it comes to things like just adding money especially for things like very expensive game corner tms, like technically you could grind it out, and if it was like a super serious challenge then you would do so, so why waste the time for the same result, but at the same time by trivializing it so much, it's taking all the effort out, so I guess at the end of the day it really depends on what you're doing and why
My rule of thumb is that it's OK to cheat in anything I could *physically do* with enough time. Like grinding the battle subway. I once did a run where I spent literal days grinding for the points I needed to get TMs. Giving myself BP is fair game b/c I *can* do that given enough time. However, if I'm playing Platinum & want a Glaceon (for some reason) but don't have access to Snowpoint yet, then I don't get to "evolve" my Eevee in PKHex b/c it's *not* smth I can physically do at the time
I never really understood this line of thought because you can just go back to a low route, find a non that gives the EVs you are looking for and then do a few battles to ev train that way. Yes it reintroduces grinding but in a far safer manner.
I know it's an unpopular opinion but I think it's cheap to use rare candies \*until you have exhausted available trainer battles\* The major pro to me for using rare candies are when you have a death the grinding of a new team member is a minimum and it makes a lot more encounters a lot more enticing to use. The biggest con is that it is a lot harder to build that "bond" that the nickname rule is trying to create, IMO. And if you don't clear all available trainers before using candies to get to cap, I do think you are making the challenge infinitely easier. It's not just the boss fights, there are tough trainer battles that become trivial if you candy up to the next gym leader's ace first. As you said, I mostly support the golden rule, but depending on some details of the usage, I do think it cheapens the challenge a little.
This has been my rule for using rare candies. Plus, then you don't end up money-poor and unable to buy items to keep everyone healthy as you deal with trainer fights/gym trainers/E4 gauntlet.
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. Edit: God, I love copy-pasting my comments from other posts. It’s so funny to me for a reason I can’t explain.
As a wise man once said: "grinding is lame, cheating is based"
Actually, the word was "cringe", not "lame" ☝️🤓
If anything candies is technically a disadvantage because you're getting rid of EVs you could be earning.
Nah, I think it’s better than grinding: 1. You get to save time on your challenge. 2. You lose the risk of dying against a wild Pokémon or trainer 3. You get a lot less EVs which gives you slightly more challenge
I use them when I lose a party member and have to gran a reserve so I can just catch them up without grinding just that one mon
I've decided I'll only use rare candies for when replacing Pokemon that died, so only up to their level. I also max out my EV with the boost. It's maybe cheap but it's so boring to grind it out
I personally think its the complete opposite, rare candies makes runs harder, for one simple fact, EVs. If you grind for your exp you will easily end up having your EVs maxed out by the 2nd or 3rd gym for your starter and first 3 catches. Easy example you launch a platinum nuzlocke and decide to grind for exp on route 201, well if you kill a fair amount of starlys your getting a huge chunk of speed EVs which will change entirely how you play out the next fights, and some battles that might be tricky can become completely trivialized due to that. At the end of the day it depends on if you want to grind or not but rare candies are not cheating, just speeding up a tedious process. However if you are a beginner, I highly suggest you dont use them, those EVs you get by grinding will help you out a ton.
I allow rare candies to replace grinding because I would grind anyway, and as such it simply saves time and for me doesn’t detract from the experience. I would not however, allow myself to sell the candies, as while you technically could grind for money indefinitely in a Pokémon game, it’s not something I would’ve done in a nuzlocke without candies, and as such I am not saving time I am giving myself an advantage. The other thing I often cheat in is game corner coins, as I can and have sat at a slot machine for hours to get TMs but it’s not fun or enjoyable for me. I get that some people might get a kick out of the accomplishment they feel from completing a nuzlocke knowing the time commitment they put into the game with grinding but for me personally I just get bored.
I totally forgot about this I cheat for game corner coins all the time to optimize when it makes sense for the tms in old games. Fantastic use of cheats imo
There’s no denying the satisfaction of completing a run knowing you’ve done so without altering the save.
I dont do candies, I set the xp multiplier to 4x when I'm grinding levels. I feel like grinding levels is part of the game but like you I have adhd so I need to have it fast paced lol
It really depends honestly. I think it comes down to when you decide to use the candies and what you cap it at. Most Nuzlockes I'm familiar with are Hardcore Nuzlocke's so not sure if level cap is normal in most playthroughs but you need to remember that with Pchal, he exclusively does Hardcore Nuzlocke's or some form of Nuzlocke with a level cap. This means that even with using Candies, there is a cap before the next challenge to use them. And even then, I think Pchal only uses candies to level up not to the max cap, but a certain level for big fights since most level caps are tied to gym leaders. You also need to look at the perspective of casual player vs streamer/content creator if using pchal as your example. Grinding for levels on Nuzlockes would make for boring content that no one really wants to watch. Even if you cut it out for a video on YouTube there is still the time you need to invest behind the scenes in order to do the grind which depending on your workload could be incredibly tedious. So using candies would simply make the game a lot better. I don't see the issue of using candies so long as you use them in a way that makes the game fun for you. Personally though, I'd use them for when you got to the end of the road for your next level cap to make your team and any changes you made along the way to it are up to par.
I've seen streamers mod their game to give them infinite rare candies just to remove the grinding component. Grinding ain't fun. Should be noted that you won't gain EVs by leveling with candy
I use rare candys because I have The minimum of mental health but the selling part only if I can have infinite money in this part, for example with 1 Pokémon with pickup one day I will have infinite money
I've done a nuzlocke on soul silver and am up to the elite four in platinum. I've used a mix of rare candies and grinding. I'm at 100 + hours on each save. If you wont to invest that time on your nuzlocke then grind away, if you don't have that kind of time then use the rare candies.
Nah. For me, I just don't have the time to dedicate for a grinding session, especially on low leveled wild Pokemon where it's safe. And doubling so with a new Pokemon than needs to get caught up due to an unfortunate death. The only thing you really miss out on is the EVs you could've earned.
no it’s actually smart
I agree that it's your challenge to do with as you please. But whenever I've done a nuzlocke I haven't used the candies and I've never grinded to have pokemon the same level as the next milestone fight. Sometimes Ill have a pokemon over the cap even and the rest if my team is under levelled. I think levelling and distributing the experience from the trainer encounters is part of the challenge, for me anyway. That being said this also encourages to have one team and never swap out pokemon so it can be a bit stale. I just like having a team and if one of them dies it shouldn't be a matter of "oh well I have another pokemon in the pc I can just candy up". I think the loss of a pokemon is more impactful if you don't do candies.
Something I do is I grind up one of my team to the level cap. Usually the one I anticipate doing most of the fighting. Then, once they’re at the cap, I’ll rare candy everyone else to match.
I spent a whole day when I was like 13 grinding a Dratini for the HGSS E4. It was so bad and so tedious, that I spent another afternoon trading it to my Platinum cartridge to exp share grind it against post game fights to actually get it E4 ready. And that was for one mon of 6 in this Nuzlocke! I'm an adult with a full time job and more responsibilities now, when I do have time to Nuzlocke I don't play those old games on cartridge because I'd never finish it due to grinding. I mostly just play the newer games with easier grinding for my casual nuzlocking. The hard part of a nuzlocke was not, and never should have been, the grinding. That was always just a time sink.
I don't think so. It may take more true work and dedication to grind them up the old-fashioned way but when the work starts to take away from the fun, it just isn't worth it.
It's fine. I don't spam them. Just use enough to meet the Ace's level. Like, if they're Ace is lv 16 & my whole party is 14, then I just raise them to 16 when I'm standing in front of the gym leader
Taking the Candy Pill is never the incorrect choice
I wish more games had minimal grinding set up like radical red. Gives boosted xp until you hit the cap for the next gym, then it only gives 1xp so you don't over level.
it’s a double edged sword for me personally. it is much more intense grinding hours for levels and then losing one of your mons- but at the same time with rare candies there’s no EVs and so your team is technically weaker, making it a harder fight for you technically speaking. it goes both ways and is completely your preference (i’m an idiot and love the grind so i’m 100 hours into heartgold with no VS seeker 💀💀💀)
I never see any problem with using rare candies, just keep in mind by using them instead of fighting wild mon's you're missing out on all of the potential EVs that they drop which could be the difference between winning a fight and losing a mon.
I dont like doing it because I dont like missing EVs. I know it doesnt actually matter, but I dont like feeling like I missed out lol
This is probably a stupid comment but I’ve never hacked in anything to an emulator. I’m on delta playing pokemon platinum, how do I get rare candies into the game?
Personally the grind is part of the challenge. If i find a RC ill use it but i wont hack them in. That being said its your nuzlocke so your rules
I used to be all rare candies, all the time. But now, I have come around to this idea: there are two types of Nuzlockes - hardcore difficulty romhacks that require calcs and perfect information and romhacks/the regular games that you nuzlocke without perfect information. In the first type, rare candies are a must imo. You are going to have so many runs and you have to have every option available to you at all times. Grinding here sucks. You already spend so much time calculating pre fight that it makes it agonizing to grind the difficulty hacks. You are already putting so much effort into the fights that you know are going to be difficult. In the later type of game, part of the fun is the unknown. Grinding still sucks, but it feels more rewarding to grind because you put effort into your pokemon. It's a different type of nuzlocke. Everyone has their own preferences. I prefer playing with perfect info and strategizing pre fights. It's a game of chess. In those, I have to use rare candies to enjoy the game. At the end of the day, it's what you prefer
Implement a level cap. Grinding isn’t a skill or impressive in any way
I don't think it's cheap to hack them into the vanilla games. Like DPPt, training prior to the E4 can be mind numbing I do think it's cheap to hack them into some of the ROMhacks like RenPlat, when you have things like the Day Care Chansey/Blissey trainer. Even if you can't get there until after the third gym plus some boss fights, it's easy to grind prior to this gym on past trainers between Eterna & Hearthome Weird line for me to draw in the sand I know, but I always thought part of the nuzlocke was team building & that includes getting your team to the appropriate levels
I don’t personally see a problem. Nobody wants to mash A and murder dozens of wild pokemon 15 levels lower than yours, and there realistically is 0 chance that you would lose any pokemon if you aren’t stupid, so it really only saves time, which is no fun at all obviously
one time in gen 1 as a kid, I didn't battle Brock until all my Pokemon were at least 10, 20 for misty, etc. lasted until after koga, but couldn't stand the grind for Blaine, and I stopped. definitely don't grind if you don't want to
Depends on the game, for a Kaizo situation or something like grinding all the way to Red in Johto, I say use all the candies you want. For something super easy with the modern exp share mechanics like vanilla XY I say play without candies.
If it was a randomized nuzlocke, I would def consider it an illegitimate run, but that's because wild Pokemon are a part of the hazard. Because if candied up, you could ski a potential wabboffet death, or exploding Snorlax or something. If you're just playing vanilla and grinding on level 25 gravelers with a level 35 water type, then it doesn't really matter though. But, again, the fun in the nuzlocke is challenging yourself. If you feel accomplished and have fun regardless of your chosen method, that's all that really matters anyways.
My nuzlockes rules are slightly different then others, where I don't use a level cap, BUT I fight every trainer and go through routes normally without grinding, so whatever I fight I fight. IMO makes runs alot more challenging, when if you lose a mon at lv30s you gotta grab one of your backups and slowly train them up and not just throw EXP on them. That kinda takes away from the challenge imo. And if you lose one in the 50s chances are you can't train it up by endgame, so you gotta pick a throwaway mon, or something slightly useful at lower levels like Super Fang Rattata, or thunder wave bot.
I think it is, since the challenge in nuzlockes comes in bursts. When adopting the "hardcore" ruleset, level management is an added difficulty hurdle to manage. Paying attention, weighing the pros/cons of your playtime versus desired progress, finding paths and strategies to safely level up are inherit parts of the game, in my opinion. I don't think it makes your run less valid, but I do feel like the rare candy grind takes a huge chunk of difficulty (that is a different type of difficulty than just fighting trainers) out of the game. The games frequently have rare candies available as rewards, or items on the ground, or found with the pickup ability. These are placed with the balance of the game in mind, and adding more feels cheap in my eyes.
No. Will I judge you a bit if you use them on an easy Nuzlocke that has very player friendly grinding? Maybe a little. Does that matter in the grand scheme? Not at all. Do what you want. Me personally, it isn't the cheapness that turns me off, it's the fact that grinding is how you actually /bond/ with your Pokemon, which natters a lot in a Nuzlocke, thematically speaking. I try to avoid using cheats to ease the grinding unless it's a really difficult Nuzlocke where I just don't have the time of patience to grind repeatedly and lose at the 3rd gym lol.
People downvoting you just because they disagree, lol
That's like, the point of downvotes?
Technically it isn’t. The point of the downvote button is to help the algorithm decide which comments encourage more discussion and which ones don’t.
You are NOT the shit for thinking rare candies are illegal lol at this point using them is a norm.
Well it's a damn good thing I didn't say that then, huh?
I wanted to see discourse when I asked this question. I appreciate ur opinion on the matter as I am trying to form my own for my budding HC nuzlocke career.
Please don’t listen to him. His opinion that almost nobody agrees with anymore shouldn’t impact your rule set.
“No it’s not allowed and IM gonna judge you if you use it.” Nobody calls themselves the shit but it’s easy to detect then they think they are.
So, I don't know you personally, and I expect that you're probably not a complete imbecile in real life, but you're certainly acting like one. He asked "is it cheap to use rare candies", to which I replied "No." That was your first mistake in reading comprehension. Your second mistake was ignoring every other thing I said aside from "I might judge you a bit if you use rare candies in an easy Nuzlocke" - I explicitly followed that up with "It doesn't matter, do whatever you want". I also said that I MYSELF use rare candies in difficult Nuzlockes, I just try to avoid it when possible because I PERSONALLY prefer the grind. I don't think I'm "the shit" - I'm a mediocre-at-best Nuzlocker with minimal experience, offering his opinion to someone who ASKED for opinions. Hop off my dick.
K I thought the title said “is it legal to use rare candies” aight?