Similar to the SurpriseLocke, an EggLocke is a standard Nuzlocke with some wacky encounter rules. So, if the thought of baby talk seeping from the real world into your video games doesn’t send a shiver down your spine, then an EggLocke might be for you. While it’s not as aggressively infant-heavy as Death Stranding or Yoshi’s Island, it does involve a lot of breeding. Friends, parents, partners, every conversation is sprog crazy. Many OG Pokemon fans are getting to the stage in life where all anyone talks about is babies.
EggLocke: Do you trust your friends? To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Every trade could result in anything from a Charizard to a Cherrim, and if you’re willing to take that risk, you're in for a lot of fun – just remember to avoid letting your Pokemon faint, or you’ll be releasing them quicker than you can say Gigantamax. Chances are, you’ll receive a lot of weak Caterpies and Skwovets, which will make battling considerably more difficult, but you could find yourself with something much more powerful.Ī SurpriseLocke is more risky than any other playthrough, but if you’re willing to roll the dice, then it could also be the most rewarding. In return, you could receive any Pokemon in the game. Losing fainted Pokemon permanently adds instant difficulty to any playthrough, but if that isn’t exciting enough to you, why not try fishing for a real surprise encounter? SurpriseLocke: A risky encounterįancy yourself as a bit of a gambler? Stick an acca on the Uruguayan second division every weekend or spend most of your work hours sat on the loo playing PokerStars and pretending to have the shits? A SurpriseLocke follows the standard Nuzlocke rules, but adds a gambling element where you trade your first encounter on each route for a random Pokemon using the Surprise Trade feature (hence, you know, “surprise”). Sword and Shield bring Dynamax and Gigantamax Pokemon to the battlefield, which can easily knock out one of your Pokemon in a single hit, making a Nuzlocker’s life even more difficult than in previous generations. This prevents you from ending up with a boring team that consists of six of the same Pokemon.Ī Nuzlocke basically adds a self-imposed perma-death mechanic to your playthrough. This creates a stronger bond between you and your Pokemon, making it more painful when you inevitably have to release them upon their untimely demise. There are also a couple of extra rules that fans have widely accepted in addition to the two core rules: Your job is simple: keep your team alive, and don’t white out by losing all six Pokemon in your party.
You can only catch the first Pokemon you encounter in each new area or route.Most of our difficulty-enhancing rulesets use these rules as a starting point, before twisting the details or adding further rules, so if the term is new to you, read these directions very carefully: Their name was based on the first wild catch in the playthrough, Nuzleaf, and Lost character John Locke, but the comic’s popularity came from the Hard Mode rules, which millions of fans implement in their games to this very day.
This challenge originated as an expletive-filled webcomic called Pokémon Ruby: Hard Mode, authored by someone named only “Nuzlocke”. Here are some of our favourites, starting with the humble Nuzlocke: Nuzlocke: Don’t let your monsters drop To see this content please enable targeting cookies. While some of the missing Pokemon are set to return via DLC, developer Game Freak doesn't appear poised to address the difficulty complaints - but groups of more productive fans have been adding their own rules to their Pokemon playthroughs for years to make things more exciting, more refreshing, and more difficult. Just search Pokemon on Twitter and you’ll see a whole host of angry tweets arguing about the difficulty of a game that is, let’s be honest, made for children. While much of the seething anger comes from the fact that some Pokemon are missing from Sword and Shield, some fans also felt that the games were too easy. If you’ve ever been online, which I don’t advise, you may have noticed that lots of gamers are extremely mad at Pokemon.