Hello one and all, and welcome back to the return of my Pokémon FireRed Nuzlocke Challenge blog series. I've taken a month-long break from adventuring in Kanto (mainly to spend more time in Kalos), but I'm now back and braced to endure once more! It's been a little while since the last instalment in this series, so here are some handy links if you need to get caught up on proceedings thus far. If you're new to the whole Nuzlocke concept, your best starting point is probably the aptly-named Part Zero, which explains what a Nuzlocke challenge is, and how I'll be applying its conventions to this playthrough of Pokémon FireRed Version. If you've missed any other episodes, you can use the convenient navigation bars at the top and bottom of this blog to move back and forth between entries. Once you're all caught up, join us back here for the next chapter in the thrilling adventures of Judi Drench and co.!

Part Seven - The End Of The Road...?

We pick up our journey where we left off, in the quiet little burg of Lavender Town. Still understandably shaken from the beating our team took in the dark, twisting caverns of the evil Rock Tunnel, we recommence our adventure through Kanto with equal measures of trepidation and sorrow weighing heavy on our hearts. We may be a skeleton crew at this point, but we still have a fair few bases covered - Bird Jesus the Pidgeotto and Clownbat the Zubat fulfil our need for speed, while the ubiquitous Judi Drench can effectively wall almost anything thrown at him. Daniel-San the Machop packs a mighty punch that's sure to only get more powerful as he grows, and SparkyBall the Voltorb has the makings of a reliable special attacker. We just need to keep the dream (and the team) alive.

To the west lies Route 8, our next destination and the home of our next potential capture. I make for the patch of tall grass in the centre of the route and--

I'm reminded that since the loss of The Mole, our Diglett, we don't have a Pokémon that knows Cut on our team. The reminder cuts like a knife. No sweat, I think to myself, opening the TM case and selecting HM01 from within. It's then that it becomes apparent that none of the Pokémon on the team have the ability to learn Cut. A quick sprint back to the Pokémon Center in Lavender Town to check our PC confirms my worst fears - we don't own a single Pokémon that can learn this crucial HM. Looks like no capture for Route 8, then.

Disheartened, I start taking on the various trainers inhabiting the route. Our team is bouncing back after a painful setback, and the only way it's going to do that successfully is by gaining more experience, particularly in the case of new recruits Daniel-San and SparkyBall. I decide to lead with the former - given the abundance of Normal-types being used by trainers in the area, his Fighting-type attacks should give him a definite edge. He does well, a solid combination of Focus Energy and Karate Chop making short work of the resident trainers. In fact, it's going a little too well. So well that we don't even see the critical hit Quick Attack coming:

Daniel-San, our promising young Machop, has been ended by a Rattata of all things. Once again, our time spent training has resulted in yet another trip to the Graveyard to bury one of our rising stars too soon. We mourn Daniel-San's loss for as long as we can afford to, before leaping straight back into the fold. As if seeking vengeance for their fallen comrade, the team battle with a renewed vigour. It's around this time, just before venturing into the Underground Passage, that Clownbat hits level 22, resulting in another exciting evolution for the team:

After defeating all the trainers on Route 8, we take the nearby Underground Passage that runs beneath Saffron City, emerging on Route 7, next to Celadon City. There's a small patch of grass here, one which isn't fenced off by Cut-able trees, so we seize the opportunity for another potential new capture. Our first new encounter is this little guy:

Not bad! Not bad at all! Growlithe's evolution, Arcanine, is a pretty damn powerful Fire-type. It'll give our team some much-needed type diversity, and be a real asset in the upcoming Grass-type gym. I really hope we ca--

Yep, you're reading that picture right - our potential capture for Route 7 just Roared us away. So no captures for Route 7 or Route 8. What a wonderful episode this is turning out to be.

We arrive in Celadon City a little beaten up, but with our four remaining party members still intact. There's a lot of stuff I want to get done in this city before wrapping up today's episode, all of which I've decided to throw into a handy-dandy bullet-point list for easy reference:

• Pick up the Eevee in the secret area of the Celadon Mansion
• Do some shopping in the Celadon Department Store
• Pick up some Tea for the thirsty guards currently blocking all routes to Saffron City
• Infiltrate Team Rocket's HQ and nab the Silph Scope
• Finally, battle the Celadon Gym Leader Erika for our fourth badge

First up is the free Eevee that's sitting at the top of the Celadon Mansion. I thought long and hard about what I wanted my Celadon City 'capture' to be, because there's quite a bit of choice. It's possible to 'buy' a few different Pokémon from the Game Corner, including the awesome Scyther and the eventually-awesome Dratini, but doing so involves either buying a ton of Game Coins to exchange for them, or spending a lot of time on the slot machines in the Game Corner to win those Game Coins, and frankly I had neither the money or the patience to do either. Eevee is the safe and easy option, not to mention the most versatile. Getting it involves walking around to the back of the Mansion and taking a staircase up to a semi-secret room on the top floor. Sure enough, the Poké Ball is there. We grab it, adding the cute little genetic abomination to our roster.

Our next decision to make is what to evolve this little gal into. FireRed presents us with only the three original Eeveelutions as options - the Water-type Vaporeon, the Fire-type Flareon, or the Electric-type Jolteon. The presence of Judi Drench and SparkyBall on our team, coupled with losing out on the potential Growlithe capture on Route 7, has effectively already made our decision for us - Aunt Sue is going to become a Flareon. We just need to hit up the Department Store to buy the relevant stone first.

At Celadon Department Store, our first port of call is to stock up on useful items and sell all the stuff we don't need. In exchange for our useless store of Revives and Nuggets, we end up sitting on a tidy pile of cash that should keep us comfortably in Great Balls and Super Potions for the foreseeable future. A couple of floors up we find the guy selling evolutionary stones. I buy a Fire Stone, and slap that shit on Aunt Sue post-haste:

Back downstairs I pick up another TM for Dig and teach it to the newly-evolved Aunt Sue. It should help her out against threatening Rock-types, as well as playing to her physical strengths.

After our little shopping trip we head back to the Celadon Mansion. Going in through the front door this time, we meet an old lady who's brewed a spot of tea and seems more than happy to share it with us:

This Tea can be palmed off to the thirsty guards blocking passage into Saffron City, giving us access to another of Kanto's main cities and eliminating the need to keep using the underground passages to get around. I'll drop it in to the guards later though, as a more pressing matter requires my attention - getting the Silph Scope back from Team Rocket!

The entrance to Team Rocket's HQ is hidden beneath the Game Corner, which is apparently just a front for their nefarious Pokémon-stealing operations. The hidden entrance is triggered by a switch, behind a poster, being guarded by a Rocket Grunt. He battles us to try and dissuade us from investigating the suspicious poster, but his team is no match for the strength of ours, who with the exception of SparkyBall are all now well clear of level 25. The grunt flees, leaving us free to enter the hidden HQ of Team Rocket...

The Team Rocket HQ is a dungeon that I always think is much harder than it actually is - no doubt a hold-over memory from childhood, perhaps made worse by watching hours of the original TwitchPlaysPokémon stream where 70,000 people were all trying (and failing) to navigate the floor tile puzzle simultaneously. It's actually a pretty straightforward dungeon with a surprisingly small number of dead ends. Even the heinous floor tile puzzles aren't that difficult providing the player stops once in a while to actually take note of where the tiles around them will lead them to. The biggest threat to Team Judi Drench comes from the squad of Rocket Grunts that are based here, scattered throughout the base and packing some serious Poké-heat in a lot of cases. Aunt Sue comes into her own here, her newly-acquired Dig making short work of a lot of the Poison types that the Rocket Grunts like to use. Unfortunately though, it's not all sugar and rainbows...

SparkyBall's tenure in the team was short and largely uneventful, but that doesn't make its loss any easier to bear. Once again our party is back down to just four Pokémon, and with only Howard the Beedrill, Boris the Spearow and Splosh Boy the Magikarp sitting in the box, these are exceedingly worrying times for the future of the Nuzlocke.

Eventually we make our way down the bottom floor of the basement hideout, where we come face to face with Giovanni, leader of Team Rocket, for the first time. He's got the Silph Scope we're after, but he's not going to give it up without a fight.

Giovanni leads with a powerful Onix. I decide to switch straight into Judi Drench, knowing Giovanni's Rock/Ground type will suffer a double weakness to his Water-type attacks. Sure enough, Water Pulse puts the Onix down in one hit. Next up is a Rhyhorn, which suffers a similar fate. His third and final Pokémon, a powerful Kangaskhan, proves tougher to deal with. Judi Drench and Aunt Sue manage to double-team it, dancing between its bevy of Mega Punches and Bites to deal the finishing blow with Aunt Sue's HP dangerously in the red. Shocked to be defeated by a mere kid, the Team Rocket boss flees, leaving behind the all-important Silph Scope. I grab it and use one of my Escape Ropes to zip straight out of the lair.

With Silph Co.'s ghost-viewing device now safely in our possession, the only thing left to be done in Celadon City is to take on the resident gym leader, the Grass-type trainer Erika. While our team isn't exactly the strongest it's ever been, the combination two reliable Flying types and a newly-gained Fire type should stand us in good stead. I heal the team up at the Pokémon Center, make my way south towards the city's gym, and--

Ah. Shit. In all the excitement, I've completely forgotten that we need Cut to get into the gym. And since Aunt Sue can't learn it, we're still in a position where none of our surviving Pokémon can help us progress. With no available captures remaining on nearby routes, and no means of getting into the gym to earn our fourth badge, has the journey of Team Judi Drench imitated the lives of most of its members by coming to a painfully premature demise? It looks like we're going to need a miracle to move on past this impasse...

Progress Report:

Gallery

I have to admit, I never thought the Nuzlocke would be threatening to end on such a frustrating technicality. I was pretty sure the team would crash out somewhere around badge six (I've never liked battling Sabrina, and having to do so under the conditions of a Nuzlocke is a terrifying prospect). To be in this position, where the game may end just because we can't do something as simple as using Cut to clear a damned tree, is pretty annoying to say the least.

This isn't an eventuality I was prepared for. The rules outlined in Part Zero don't account for this happening. As a result, I've been forced to look deeper into the workings of other players' Nuzlockes to see how they've dealt with similar occurrences. To add to the existing frustrations, there doesn't seem to be a clear consensus on this front - some players consider it to be a 'Game Over' scenario, while others permit the catching of an HM slave to allow progress to continue, with the proviso they're never used in battle. Personally, I'm finding myself leaning more towards the former - it may well bring our adventures in Kanto to a premature close, but the latter seems too much like a lenient work-around that doesn't match up with the core 'no do-overs' spirit of the Nuzlocke challenge.

Thankfully, all isn't lost just yet. With the Silph Scope in our possession, we can head back to Lavender Town and scale the Pokémon Tower. Doing so will net us a Poké Flute, which will let us wake up the sleeping Snorlax on Routes 12 and 16 and give us access to more areas for potential captures. If we're really lucky, we'll be able to catch something capable of using Cut on one of those routes, which will put us right back into the game. Part Eight will see us embarking on this new leg of the journey, in search of a new Cut-master, and should be up some time next week. Until then, thanks very much for reading, take care, and I'll see you around.

Dan

---

Currently playing - Pokémon FireRed Version (GBA)

I wish I could say I've ever played Pokemon enough to really appreciate this

but I can say that fuckbiscuits is a fantastic word!

Man, things are just not going your way, are they? As someone who uses Crobat in most of my pokemon teams, I'm not sure how useful a Golbat will be, especially before the flexibility offered in later generations. Fast, if nothing else.

If you wanted a reason why all non-Surf/Waterfall HMs should just be replaced with key items, this wouldn't be a terrible example either. It's one of those things in Pokemon that would've been replaced years ago if they weren't so conservative with their design.

Tough episode, Dan. I don't remember Red/Blue well enough to know how likely you are to find a Cut user, but here's hoping it works out! That would be an unfortunate way for this to end...

Despite losing a fair number of members recently, the ones who are surviving seem to be getting quite strong. If you can get by this Cut technically, I'm eager to see how the team might continue to grow!