Home in Time for Christmas - a Pokemon Red "nuzlocke" challenge report

[Seperallis]

4




Having made it through roughly half the game with no losses and with a pretty decent team, I was starting to feel pretty confident. We went back and beat all the trainers we’d skipped and entered the Team Rocket hideout beneath the Celadon City Game Corner, where “I” feasted upon their silly poison type pokemon. I was beginning to like the fella.

After failing to catch a bigger, blacker better Growlithe thanks to the stupidest case of forced fleeing, my dumb ass finally remembered the “Fly” HM existed and grabbed it, before heading back to Lavender Town. In order to progress, we needed to clear the Snorlax from the roads with the PokeFlute, which necessitated clearing the Pokemon Tower and its “ghastly” denizens. After pushing WHAT aside (who curiously swapped Raticate for Exeggcute), we cleared the tower of ghosts and Team Rocket ne’er-do-wells, grabbed the flute, and claimed YEET the Cubone.



From Lavender, it’s a straight shot south and around the coast west to the fifth gym in Fuchsia City, beating trainers with ease and finally getting access to the Super Rod for getting them nice water pokemon. The attempt at catching the Snorlax south of town ended in disappointment as his hard-hitting headbutts, repeated resting, and continuous breakouts from my pokeballs eventually made continued attempts too dangerous...and we had to put him down. To take his lost place in the reserves was Swede (another Oddish) and Nope the Venonat, as we arrived in Fuchsia.

Both Fuchsia City’s and Saffron City’s gym leaders have pokemon up to about level 43, leaving me severely underleveled. I decided before going in to get to about level 40 before challenging them, defeating any available trainers and minimizing wild exp grinding by flying back to Celadon and challenging people along Cycling Road, the alternate route from there to Fuchsia; this luckily meant a second attempt at catching a Snorlax, and Beach Bod eventually decided to stay put inside one of my fancy new ultra balls. Cycling Road is frickin annoying with its downward slope, but that didn’t stop me from adding Why the Doduo to the growing family.

Clearing that route, the only thing left to do before facing Koga in the Fuchsia gym was to liberate Saffron City and Sylph Company from the clutches of Team Rocket. Before engaging in that long campaign, I decided to use the opportunity to earn (what were supposed to be) easy levels for Birb, who had fallen behind, by facing the fighting “gym” in town. Everything went well, and the dojo was all but swept when a rolling kick from the dojo master’s Hitmonlee connected with a critical hit, knocking out Birb from full health.



Nuffle giveth, and Nuffle taketh away.