How an Epic Beedrill Strategy Saved My Nuzlocke
This is the story of how my first ever nuzlocke, seemingly doomed to failure, was saved by the most beautiful bee you've ever seen.
I've arrived at goldenrod city. While this is my first nuzlocke, I'm an experienced pokemon battler so I'm doing a hardcore nuzlocke. For me this means:
- If a pokemon faints, it's dead forever
- Only catch first pokemon on each route, no duplicates
- Level caps: my pokemon cannot be higher level than the strongest of the next gym leader.
- No items in battle (held items allowed)
- Extra personal rule: no in-game trade pokemon.
So far I'm deathless, everything has gone well, with great help from the geodude I caught on route 46. But the next big challenge is whitney, maybe the most menacing gym leader of all time, and I have a big problem. I just accidentally overlevelled my geodude, so I can't use it against whitney who has a cap of level 19.
| Trainer | Team |
|---|---|
| Whitney |   |
| Me |       |
So I employ my naive plan of action, paralyze miltank with ekans glare. How foolish I was not to look at the team sheet, as miltank immediately heals the paralysis with its lum berry and now my ekans is almost dead and I have no safe switch-in. I try hopelessy to yawn with slowpoke, I try to reduce the miltank's accuracy with smokescreen so I have enough opportunities to chip away at the enormous health of this behemoth while it constantly heals with milk drink, but it's not enough, and I wipe. Quilava, ekans, bellsprout, slowpoke, hoothoot and ratatta all dead.
I severely underestimated Whitney and learned the hard way, now it's time to go back to the drawing board and see if we can salvage this run.
My first idea is to catch a heracross. By using headbutt you can encounter a heracross in several locations at this point, and its fighting type attacks will hopefully be enough to defeat miltank. Unfortunately the game has different ideas, as my headbutt encounter in azalea town is an aipom. To get another opportunity at heracross at this point I would have needed to avoid encounters on earlier routes, which I did not. So there's one idea down the drain.
The only idea I have left to get something that has an advantage against miltank is Onix in union cave, an encounter which I skipped earlier. With high defence, and resistance to both of miltank's attacks, onix might be able to get the job done. So I head to union cave with Drowzee ready to weaken and sleep the onix, and plenty of pokeballs. Or so I thought. Once again the game had different ideas, as the 30% sleeping onix fails to be caught by any of my 20 pokeballs.
This was devestating, and at this point my nuzlocke looked truly doomed. I'd exhausted all of the options surely?
But I can't give up, not yet. I scroll through my remaining pokemon and encounters. I pick up a nidoran-female and pidgey from the routes north of goldenrod. Nidorina seems promising, a second stage with a fighting type move in double kick.
So this is it, pretty much all the pokemon I have left:
With little confidence. I commit to training up these pokemon to the level cap, expecting that this is probably the end. But while doing so I notice something interesting. Beedrill, who I initially dismissed as useless, learns some moves that might just help us defeat miltank.
The first move I notice is string shot. If beedrill can survive and get off a string shot, then the rest of my team can 1. Avoid flinches from stomp, 2. Get off two attacks even if they get 2hkod. Unlike paralysis, this can't be stopped by the lum berry.
Move number 2, harden. Reminding me of the strategy I was planning for onix, could beedrill pull it off? My concern is that I'll take too much damage from clefairy while setting up the defence boosts.
My last bit of preparation is checking if anyone learns any of the TMs I have. This is where I find the final puzzle piece, Beedrill learns roost. With a healing move, beedrill can easily set up +6 defence on clefairy ready to take on miltank!
There's nothing left to do but put my plan into action and pray to the RNG gods I don't get crit.
Beedrill leads into clefairy, harden quickly makes me take hardly any damage from clefairy, but there's still some spooky metronome calls including magma storm. Beedrill manages to get past clefairy with almost full hp and +6 defence. Next is the cow. First beedrill gets off the important string shot to support the rest of the team, then we proceed to spam twinneedle. Many twinneedles later and miltank's lum berry is burnt and it is getting slowly chipped away at by poison. With a body of steel, and fortune on its side, beedrill resists the attacks of miltank and keeps on the pressure, expending all of miltanks milk drinks. Miltank is weakened, but beedrill is extremely low and out of roosts. But I see an opportunity to save our hero. Thanks to the string shots I can safely pivot to nidorina who lives any attack and outspeeds to finish the battle deathless with a double kick.
It was at this moment I finally understood what people love about nuzlockes.