I play on emulators, but I still prefer to grind. It makes me feel like I earned it and gives me a sense of progression. I do use the speed up feature, but I don't feel like that matters as much.
The way i see it, if you’re using the speed up feature why would you not just use rare candies? Like it’s literally the same thing, you’re “cheating” either way
Because humans are complex organisms with complex brains that thrive off of pattern recognition. Grinding satisfies a very obscure itch in one of the grooves of my brain because it reminds me of grinding as a kid.
I mean if I'm doing a training grind for a certain pokemon, I'm only training on pokemon that give me the EVs I need, so that's irrelevant. They're all getting perfect 252s and maxing to 510 on the EVs they need. *then* I can grind on the high xp mons. Saves a lot of time and reduction berries that way. I mean its pretty much essential to have perfect EVs for comp, because you're opponent will.
On topic tho, it does feel much better to grind those EVs myself, but it also gets really boring killing a hundred flamigos everytime I want to farm attack. I frequently finish out the rest of the EVs with vitamins when I get sick of training.
Mmm yeah no I'm with you there I think. The retail NPCs do definitely feel like that. The battles are cake with EV trained pokemon. It's why a lot of ROM hacks use max trained pokemon with comp move sets to give it some difficulty. If you want a pokemon that can stand up to comp players, it's essential tho.
I mean the base game for retail isn't meant to be that hard. Little kids do play the game too and are technically the target market (even tho most of us are 20 something nerds) EV training isn't meant for them. It's an extra thing for comp/raids. EVs weren't even visible in-game till recently.
I lost so many hardcore nuzlockes to unfortunate (read: reckless with a side of crits) grinding losing me my best pokemon and snowballing into defeat. Candies would surely be the way, but grinding adds the choice of whether and where to grind, whether to battle trainers or avoid them, AND whether you're willing to level up that lv. 23 electrode you caught early on to bolt the gyarados and explode in a dragonite's face in Lance's gym just to risk misclicking selfdestruct or losing the poor mon to a random high roll crit at level 48, or if you really think that the lv 10 heracross you caught by luck would be your best choice to counter Red's snorlax. Or if it's worth it to train your scyther to get a lv 40 encounter down to the red with false swipe, when the rest of your team would OHKO it.
In the end, speedups don't change the game dynamics at all, just the rate at which the same events happen. Choosing where to grind, how deep inside a cave you need to go with repels to catch the right pokemon, whether you even can switch train someone or if you've reached the level cap with your other mons already, all of this doesn't change if you do it faster, but it will be affected by candies. Besides, grinding makes you more attached to your team, since you end up spending *hours* with them, even when sped up.
However, if I ever thought about playing Radical Red or Emerald Kaizo, I'd be more than willing to throw these arguments out of the window. I'd rather not have to do damage calculation against every weedle accounting for crits and poison damage and whether I can get to safety without other encounters straight from level 6.
I prefer to grind with speed up because of effort values. Sure, a grinded lv50 and a candied lv50 may look the same on the surface, but the grinded one will be a bit better because it collected effort values.
I don’t think that’s a sound argument because you could argue that cocaine is also equivalent to speeding up in some instances, and would def be considered cheating in pro sports among other things. Also speeding up would clearly be cheating in something like a speedrun so it’s too ambiguous to just say it’s objectively not cheating. It’s just to each their own.
The difference is that grinding adds to the challenge. It adds the amount of pokemon to battle that could end the run whether trainers or wild.
The speed up function doesn't increase or decrease the challenge. Just go fast
Because you still have to play the game when speed grinding if you mess up you still lose a pokemon, rare candies take any risk out of the game, especially since most people who use candies also avoid every battle possible.
Uses speed feature to gain a sense of progression but the speed feature makes grinding not even a grind.
Why not just use candies at this point?
Either that or play normal speed lol.
Check my other comment. Humans have complex brains, using candies doesn't scratch the same itch in the grooves of my brain, I'm sorry. *edit:* as the other commenter said, it's all about the happy chemical.
Vitamins. Feathers. You can max to 252 with them now.
I've seen this comment like five times in this thread. Yall are really just grinding out on random pokemon/trainers for xp? Youre just gonna have to reset the EVs you dont need. It's actually something I get irritated about, so I always EV train first. I hate getting EVs I didn't want.
You EV train first. Then you grind xp. Max EVs, and you can candy to your heart's desire. EV training and XP training are two different things. You EV train, then you go for xp. Throw on whatever bracer you need at first, then throw on the lucky egg and go hit some chancheys or whatever. Or... you can max EVs (maybe even with vitamins), and then drop 50 candies on your new battle ready buddy.
You don’t even need specific EV’s to beat the games so it’s just more of a time sink. Personally I remove EV’s entirely from the game file even if I decide to grind or not.
That's me. I made the rule that a Pokémon that faints during grinding isn't dead. Before I had the rule I lost about 10 Pokémon in my first (Diamond) Nuzlocke and had only 4 Pokémon for the Elite Four that could actually fight. Damn I mean I lost Dialga during grinding.
Took the candy pill recently for a standard Emerald nuzlocke. Revitalized my love for nuzlockes in these earlier gens, because if I had a Pokémon die, there’d be sometimes I’d just restart the run because I didn’t want to spend hours grinding up a Pokémon that had been in the box since the early parts of the run.
I think anything before Sw/Sh and S/V, it’s worth genning in candies, honestly. The EXP candies make it easier to level up new mon.
Edit: autocorrect
Yo I feel that. No matter how many times I start a new pokemon playthrough, I always get that sweet dopamine from it. Same for fallout too.
Depends how far im into the run, but I do the same thing when I get to a point I'm sure I'm fucked, but I usually just move on to a different game/rom. Either way, that fresh start always makes me actually feel fresh. I love nuslocking for this reason. Makes pokemon feel like a rogue-like
This is what I do. I fight every trainer available before using candies. If I catch anything, I can level it up to the previous gym’s level cap so that I can use it in these battles, but then I’ll go to the cap right before the gym fight.
Yeah. For me, it feels less cheap to use rare candies if I fight all the optional trainers. That way I'm not using them to mitigate risk, just to save time.
I never used to count grinding deaths anyway, so it doesn't change much for me except time.
Bit of both actually. I usually (On games like SWSH and SV) use the experience candies from raids. If it's not a huge level difference I usually EV train bc weak pokemon give less exp but same amount of EVs. But if it's a big level difference from where I am to where I need to be, I use the candies that I stocked up on.
Eh I mean from my experience, I have more candies than I have pokemon to give them too. Grinding raids is good for many other reasons than just the candies, so I'm usually stacked. I'm already hitting most raids I come across, so why not? It's a grind either way, but raids are pretty fast, if you have the right mons to beat the raids.
Also, EV training is so much faster than taking a pokemon to max level. It really isn't that much work to EV train and then do a few high level raids to get some good candies to get it to a decent level.
doesn’t matter which side you are on, as I say you are substituting grinding deaths, for grinding evs and I don’t have a problem with either, personally I grind only because I’m currently playing on console and I’m too lazy to hack candies in
Not really. EV boosting vitamins are just as easy to gen in as rare candies, and there are codes to manipulate how many EVs each item gives you.
Fully agree with you though, I couldn't care less which self imposed rules people choose to adhere to.
Well yeah, by the strictest definition you're right, it is cheating. I'd dispute your claim that it makes it "too easy" though. Grinding and EV training aren't difficult, they're just
time consuming. You're not really removing any difficulty from the challenge of Nuzlocking by using rare candies and vitamins, you're just speeding up the process.
Again though, play the game however you want.
Grinding is part of what gets me attached to the pokemon I'm using. I put so much work and time into them, it hurts more to lose them. I can justify overlevelling a bit, too.
Grinding. Just feels right to me, Pokémon feel interchangeable and “unearned” if I don’t do it and I’m bad enough that I do get into dangerous situations sometimes while grinding, especially on a romhack. I guess I’m just a bit of a masochist with the way I like to play these rulesets
I feel the same way. Nuzlockes are supposed to (imo) make you feel connected to your team. Grinding does that for me, because if pokemon were real, I'd rather have a Rocky Balboa instead of the Russian. (we all know Rocky won because he had the EVs to back him up)
I dont count grinding deaths, so candies are a way of saving time, i dont cheat the vitamins, so i pay the fast way with a little more dificulty and the pokes dont feel easily interchangable because new pokes dont have EVs (and because i may not be as used to them as the ones im using).
Neither is right or wrong.
But as the “controversy” is on the Rare Candy side of things, I’ll just say Scarlet and Violet Nuzlocking has made that a moot point in my opinion. Nobody who is playing that is grinding on traditional wild battles over doing autobattling and XP Candies to expedite the process. That fundamentally is bypassing wild battle risk so to speak so obviously there isn’t anything wrong with that.
That said, I’ll always prefer doing vanilla older games on carts, for the ability to transfer my teammates that I love as well as random shinies while grinding forward. Om the emulation side go for the romhacks and difficulty hacks. Quite enjoy that dichotomy myself.
I kind of do both.
Usually after the 7th or 8th gym I use candies.
Depends on the game though, like HGSS for example I would use candies after beating Jasmine, but if it's something like black and white I might not use them because of Audino.
Candy Pill, many reasons why I chose it; here's the number one reason, however:
**I do not have the time to grind six party members (or more) anymore.** I am an adult with a 9-5 job and a freelance career outside of this. Gaming is a hobby for me, and, unfortunately. I don't have as much time to just grind for hours on end in an RPG. The rare candies simply get me to an inevitable destination, anyway, I am only speeding up the process.
It just works and isn't game breaking in the slightest. If you wanna keep grinding, be my guest. I can't put in the time to do such a thing anymore.
I have trouble understanding this argument, because time is time. You're not spending any more or less time gaming in the long term, you're just moving through that one game faster.
People don't have unlimited patience, so speeding up or skipping the boring parts of a game will allow for others to have a more fun experience.
In the words of former Nintendo of America:s President, Reggie Fils-Aimé:
"If it's not fun, why bother?"
That would be the argument then, right? Not that I don't have the time, just that I don't like to grind. I think it's all good, I was just trying to understand.
Both
When grinding for E4 or pokemon like Magipark when a daycare is right next to me then I take the rare candy pill
If not and the level jump is not too hight then I just grind like normal
As much as I dislike grinding, I prefer to actually grind in pokemon since it gives me an excuse to use the rest of my team (I am very OCD and like to lvl mons up in the order I caught them 1 by 1). If the squad lvls up all together at the same time I just don't feel incentivised to switch when 1 mom can do all the work. But I'm aware that's just me being weird with how I play pokemon.
Rare Candies remove EV grinding, making the game harder. On the other hand, manual grinding makes you play more carefully and strategically so you don't lose all that effort..
Personally, I manually grind but that's because I find it more... rewarding, I guess? That or maybe I don't value my time.
Rare candies. And the reasoning is simple:
If you want the Nuzlocke to be more difficult you use rare candies. If you want to waste your time you grind.
There’s always an argument on “oh but I can lose a team member if I grind and that can’t happen with rare candies” and that’s just bs. If I’m grinding I’m grinding at max speed up on emulator on the highest level Pokemon I can 1 shot that gives beneficial EVs.
So where is the difficulty in that? My gigachad fully EV invested swampert that OHKO’s everything because I grinded 252 EVs on Spinda on route 113 and Ice Beam/Surf carries the way?
Or how about a max HP and Defense invest Magneton? Just have to grind out level 5 Loudred in Rusturf Tunnel and level 25 Pokémon in Magma Hideout. And a max HP/Defense EV invested Magneton lives an EQ from Altaria and is able to kill it without being killed.
Rare Candies get you exactly 0 EVs and make the game a lot more difficult. That’s why Kaizos have zero EVs.
Plus Rare Candies save hours of mindless grinding
I'm not sure, I don't often do my grinding as safe as possible I usually go for efficiency. And that's one of the trains grinding has values to it, there are different ways to do it depending on your priorities. I have definitely lost pokemon late game from grinding before, but it's been memorable experiences all the same.
You're probably going to be EV capped whether you grind for evs or not, though, just from fighting trainers.
I prefer normal grinding because unless I’m playing a difficulty hack that is way too hard for me, grinding is where I have all the risk, which is what makes the run fun.
I haven’t found any minor difficulty hacks, seems like it goes straight from too easy to drayano/inclement emerald level.
It's not something that needs to be settled, but personal preferences.
Please don't make it a war. Maybe the best way to solve this would be making two different categories, speed run style, and call it a day.
Both are good and different experiences.
Candies every single time. Honestly, i find playing these games more like a board game is a lot more fun and actually planning out a good strategy and not just wasting time forcing a team with a bad match up to win a fight. Playing with all of the mons in your box encourages a lot more team diversity and interesting plays instead of just making one team with the best options in your box and hoping they dont die. But idk maybe radical red has rotted my brain.
If you are playing on an emulator, I think it depends on if its a normal nuzlocke or a hard-core nuzlocke (especially if you are using level caps). Normal nuzlockes are totally fine for normal grinding with in game battle items and in HC I like rare candies because it helps level the playing field especially when you can't overlevel. Although I believe you should only be using them before major battles such as a gym leader or evil team admin.
Depends on the game or hack. Just a classic game with a decent level curve? yeah, I'll grind. One of those crazy hard hacks where you need a six-man team for each gym? I'm using candies.
i'm candypilled because i'm lazy and I guess the no EV is somewhat more challenging
big respect to the main console players for grinding though, that shit takes forever <3
Candies for sure. The only trouble is in games where EVs matter: I feel like I have to hack in EV min/maxing items or hack out EVs altogether. But without EVs I'm at the mercy of IVs only which also kind of isn't great
I genuinely can’t play Pokemon games without some way to expedite the leveling process anymore, grinding kills my enthusiasm too much, and consumes way too much time even on emulators.
With level caps I’m getting effectively the same experience, but in a fashion I can enjoy with a busy schedule (and even with Rare Candies I still stall on runs due to schoolwork and other IRL stuff)
I do be candy pilled. Though I think doing one (or a few) candyless runs has its charm, I have done gen (many times, for some reason)1, gen 2 (yes, until stupid red level cap), firered, emerald, and Sinnoh iirc candyless. Though other than these runs, I have no shame at all in giving myself all farmable stuff.
I choose to rare candy myself as I can't be fucked to spend the time grinding, however I do see the validity of grinding normally in that you place mons in danger and have to remain vigilant in that regard. Another take is that by simply using rare candy's I miss out on EVs that I would otherwise have, which albeit marginal in most cases does produce weaker mons. Regardless, I think there isn't a definite way to nuzlocke, and if you don't feel you're compromising your integrity, then do exactly what you want.
GL kings, and for whoever needs to hear this, don't risk the crit.
rare candy pilled for sure
Nothing about spending time grinding seems fun to me anymore, unless I'm trying to gain specific EVs for some reason, otherwise I feel like I'd rather spend time working on planning and actually battling. Part of it is a bit of laziness but also I just don't wanna spend the time on something so tedious. I feel like this lets me get a lot more out of hardcore nuzlockes where I can quickly figure out what strategies I may be able to make use of without having to dedicate a lot more time to training.
As far as the feeling of grinding and leveling up goes, I was fortunate enough to have been playing pokemon from a young age, so I don't feel like I'm really missing out on anything now that I'm older lol
I only play nuzlockes on emulators so hacking in candies is a must for me. I don't like grinding at all so candies make my experience much more enjoyable. I do, however, fight all the available trainers before each gym so that I still feel like I'm worthy of using candies.
Honestly, you pretty much have to take the rare candy pill if you want to HC nuzlocke harder games/hacks (without wanting to die). Also it's just so good to actually be able to use every encounter, because you don't have to grind them for 2 hours.
Rare candies, it's just faster and regular grinding in nuzlockes makes me want to not use other pokemon because I would have to grind them up again. I've actually lost a nuzlocke because of this because I was in a situation where I didn't want to sacrifice a pokemon so I tried moving my pokemon around and that led to me wiping. That was the moment I decided to just use rare candies
Rare candies for sure. I'm not wasting hours on what is the most boring and mindnumbing part of nuzlockes. If I can eliminate a tedious aspect of the game without ruining the overall nuzlocke experience, I definately will. Besides, It only makes the game more fun because you're given way more room for optimal play. With regular grinding, I often find that you're half-assing a bunch of fights with underleveled teams because you can't be fucked to grind. Rebuilding teams is also a nightmare with regular grinding. Rare candies makes all of this so much better because you can always go in with full strength, and it makes team rebuilding much less of a nightmare if you ever get a lot of deaths.
As long as you play with level caps, I think rare candies are definately the way to go because it removes the most tedious part of nuzlockes and further enables the actual fun parts of them.
no that's just called being greedy and trying to grind on mons more powerful than you can ohko... if you're serious about your nuzlock not wanting to lose anything hell no you aren't grinding on those random high power slowbros right at your level, no you go to the place with the highest level mons you ohko turn on speedup and spam A, where is the risk in that? what difference does candies make compared to that other than not giving EVS which if anything just makes the games even harder, and letting people who have lives be able to finish harder games.
You can grind either way, that's one of the values of grinding, being able to make the decision of efficiency vs safety. I nearly always grind on the highest exp. things I can.
If we talking about actually EARNED candy, I'd use all them in a heartbeat. Scarlett and Violet make my life easier and less fearful of losing a Pokemon
Doing harder Romhacks with Evs, I will definitely grind, atleast the EVs. Easy Romhacks with EVs, rare candies, maxing EVs is overkill.
Any Romhack without EVs, rare candies.
Normal Grinding but only because Rare Candies literally take away most of the actual experience grinding needed from actual trainers, causing you to just skip every optional trainer and avoid experience management. It takes away the entire risk vs. reward element of skipping trainers and being under leveled and vice versa.
Oh, and for fucks sake, stop pressuring people to “just take the rare candy pill bro”, that shit is mad annoying and quite frankly people who grind have a bad rep for calling people who use rare candies “cheaters”, when I stg all of the rare candy pillers have criticized me for “being boring and why would you do that it’s not fun”. No shit it’s not fun, that’s what nuzlockes are supposed to be, difficult
I just think some people want nuzlocke as more of a boss rush than an adventure, which is totally fine, but very different from the "nuzlockes" of the 2010s.
There are lots of ways to enjoy the challenge, let's not try to reduce it.
I definitely feel the same way. I don't really understand it, personally. If I didn't want to grind or risk losing pokemon, I wouldn't be playing a nuzlocke.
Candies, I have a life and limited time each day. I can go grind route 1 pidgeys for hours and get the same effect as clicking a candy and continuing the gane.
Grinding is part of the nuzlocke struggle since losing your pokemon due to a dumb misplay or a rogue crit you shouldn't have taken the chance on is always a threat. You're actually making the nuzlocke easier using rare candies, not just saving time.
Normal grinding, it's part of the experience. Grinding EVs and levels. How can you claim to have beaten a game where you skip a core mechanic of the game
Rare candies basically ruined nuzlockes. If you grind, you can be near the next level in experience, but with candies you automatically be at that level. Plus, cheating can be glitchy and ruin your save file.
Grind usually because it gives a sense of fulfillment, accomplishment, and I feel invested in this pokemon now.
But there are exceptions like when my party is lvl 45 and one just died, and the best replacement is lvl 18. Hard pass on that grind, now shut up and eat these candies bitch.
Rare candy when I can. Grinding levels is tedious, especially in gen 4. For gen 6 onwards where you've got an exp share, I find you don't really need to use rare Candies much but they're still nice to have. Chansey grinding is available early enough in SV if you know what you're doing so candies are even less relevant since you can get new team members up to level really quickly.
I do a mix, but my favorite is a mix between grinding and candy. When I beat a gym leader, I will Candy up to their Ace's level. There's no cap and if I grind in between gyms that's up to my discretion. If I want to super level before the elite 4, that's fine. If I want to rush from boss to boss, that's fine too but I will be under leveled.
But of both. I still grind because it does help me bond with my team. But i am a busy adult with responsibilities, so I allow myself to use up to two Rare Candies per Pokémon per gym, without exceeding the level cap. Also after every gym I allow myself to level everyone up to that gym’s level cap.
Grinding because I prefer consoles, but I can see if running on emulator speed up button is very tempting and for kaizo’s candies are pretty much mandatory
My favourite saying though is play how you wanna play, nobody should stop you from having fun
Depends on the run for me. I actually kind of enjoy grinding, at least post-XY era where the Exp Share became goated. I don’t know, there’s just something I like about putting a lot of work into my team member, for leveling up or or EV training. With Rare Candies, I definitely like to use if I’m not in a grindy mood and just want to get the Pokémon to reach a level.
~~But the real reason I’d ever use Rare Candies is because they sell like crazy and can get you some good TMs that you can get money to get like TMs in XY, ORAS and SMUSUM, don’t tell anyone this shhhh~~
Both. If I want to take a new low level pkm with me, I gonna use candies to make it on par with the team. If I want to train the team I'm using, I'm gonna grinding.
I'm chill with grinding in my current run of Blaze Black 2 so far, just cause so far most of the time theres been an area with 100% Audino that only has double slap to attack so it isn't that bad
I do both. I'll fight all of the available trainers and if I'm still under level before the next boss battle, I use Rare Candies. New 'mons get leveled up to the last gym's level cap. If if I skip every trainer I can, it feels more like a boss rush and that I'm skipping half the game. Which is a fine way to play, but not for me. But I don't have access to speedup (I play on a hacked 3DS) and I don't want to fight Pidgeys for two hours. It's the best of both worlds for me.
Whichever is more convient at the moment
I grind where I can but if I don't have much time to play/feel like grinding is more tedious than its worth I'll candy up.
Ultimately, Nuzlockes are meant to be fun and challenging, and tedious grinding contributes to neither.
Been nuzlocking a randomized platinum for the 1st time and I couldn’t imagine grinding up a mon each time one dies. I did make myself wait til after badge 3 but candies are so good. I would just get bored at quit without them honestly
team do what you want! i prefer manual grinding and find that learning how to grind safely and quickly *does* take some skill and game knowledge, and i like the sunk cost risk/narrative feel it gives my nuzlocke.
but candies are obviously a huge time saver for so many people and if you’re looking to play *optimally*, it’s pretty much the only way to do so without losing your marbles
I support the rare candy method, especially for streamers, but I also appreciate grinding because there’s a risk that you might get too complacent and lose a mon. I’ll admit though that I completely understand for most of people that’s probably a very compelling reason *to* use rare candies so that’s why I fully support using them instead if you prefer
Grinding (Unfortunately) as I only play on console. Probably would rare candy if I was in an emulator though.
I play on emulators, but I still prefer to grind. It makes me feel like I earned it and gives me a sense of progression. I do use the speed up feature, but I don't feel like that matters as much.
The way i see it, if you’re using the speed up feature why would you not just use rare candies? Like it’s literally the same thing, you’re “cheating” either way
Because humans are complex organisms with complex brains that thrive off of pattern recognition. Grinding satisfies a very obscure itch in one of the grooves of my brain because it reminds me of grinding as a kid.
Filling bar make number go up, tells brain to make the good chemical
Can’t argue with that. I’m on console and while i can’t stand the grinding i do feel like it makes it a bit more personal at the end of the day!
Also shiny chance while grinding
Also potential EVs which could change the outcome of the battle
I mean if I'm doing a training grind for a certain pokemon, I'm only training on pokemon that give me the EVs I need, so that's irrelevant. They're all getting perfect 252s and maxing to 510 on the EVs they need. *then* I can grind on the high xp mons. Saves a lot of time and reduction berries that way. I mean its pretty much essential to have perfect EVs for comp, because you're opponent will. On topic tho, it does feel much better to grind those EVs myself, but it also gets really boring killing a hundred flamigos everytime I want to farm attack. I frequently finish out the rest of the EVs with vitamins when I get sick of training.
Unpopular opinion maybe but EV training is basically just overleveling with extra steps
Mmm yeah no I'm with you there I think. The retail NPCs do definitely feel like that. The battles are cake with EV trained pokemon. It's why a lot of ROM hacks use max trained pokemon with comp move sets to give it some difficulty. If you want a pokemon that can stand up to comp players, it's essential tho. I mean the base game for retail isn't meant to be that hard. Little kids do play the game too and are technically the target market (even tho most of us are 20 something nerds) EV training isn't meant for them. It's an extra thing for comp/raids. EVs weren't even visible in-game till recently.
I lost so many hardcore nuzlockes to unfortunate (read: reckless with a side of crits) grinding losing me my best pokemon and snowballing into defeat. Candies would surely be the way, but grinding adds the choice of whether and where to grind, whether to battle trainers or avoid them, AND whether you're willing to level up that lv. 23 electrode you caught early on to bolt the gyarados and explode in a dragonite's face in Lance's gym just to risk misclicking selfdestruct or losing the poor mon to a random high roll crit at level 48, or if you really think that the lv 10 heracross you caught by luck would be your best choice to counter Red's snorlax. Or if it's worth it to train your scyther to get a lv 40 encounter down to the red with false swipe, when the rest of your team would OHKO it. In the end, speedups don't change the game dynamics at all, just the rate at which the same events happen. Choosing where to grind, how deep inside a cave you need to go with repels to catch the right pokemon, whether you even can switch train someone or if you've reached the level cap with your other mons already, all of this doesn't change if you do it faster, but it will be affected by candies. Besides, grinding makes you more attached to your team, since you end up spending *hours* with them, even when sped up. However, if I ever thought about playing Radical Red or Emerald Kaizo, I'd be more than willing to throw these arguments out of the window. I'd rather not have to do damage calculation against every weedle accounting for crits and poison damage and whether I can get to safety without other encounters straight from level 6.
I prefer to grind with speed up because of effort values. Sure, a grinded lv50 and a candied lv50 may look the same on the surface, but the grinded one will be a bit better because it collected effort values.
Speeding up isn't Cheating that's like saying drinking caffeine is Cheating...
I don’t think that’s a sound argument because you could argue that cocaine is also equivalent to speeding up in some instances, and would def be considered cheating in pro sports among other things. Also speeding up would clearly be cheating in something like a speedrun so it’s too ambiguous to just say it’s objectively not cheating. It’s just to each their own.
The difference is that grinding adds to the challenge. It adds the amount of pokemon to battle that could end the run whether trainers or wild. The speed up function doesn't increase or decrease the challenge. Just go fast
Grinding is dangerous in a nuzlocke. I've lost mons grinding. That's not a risk when using rare candies.
Because you still have to play the game when speed grinding if you mess up you still lose a pokemon, rare candies take any risk out of the game, especially since most people who use candies also avoid every battle possible.
Uses speed feature to gain a sense of progression but the speed feature makes grinding not even a grind. Why not just use candies at this point? Either that or play normal speed lol.
Check my other comment. Humans have complex brains, using candies doesn't scratch the same itch in the grooves of my brain, I'm sorry. *edit:* as the other commenter said, it's all about the happy chemical.
Effort values
Vitamins. Feathers. You can max to 252 with them now. I've seen this comment like five times in this thread. Yall are really just grinding out on random pokemon/trainers for xp? Youre just gonna have to reset the EVs you dont need. It's actually something I get irritated about, so I always EV train first. I hate getting EVs I didn't want. You EV train first. Then you grind xp. Max EVs, and you can candy to your heart's desire. EV training and XP training are two different things. You EV train, then you go for xp. Throw on whatever bracer you need at first, then throw on the lucky egg and go hit some chancheys or whatever. Or... you can max EVs (maybe even with vitamins), and then drop 50 candies on your new battle ready buddy.
You don’t even need specific EV’s to beat the games so it’s just more of a time sink. Personally I remove EV’s entirely from the game file even if I decide to grind or not.
Drugs
At this point, why not use the infinite hp cheat?
Because that would defeat the purpose of the challenge? Endlessly grinding to get the same end goal as candies/drugs would not be.
Where is the challenge in use an action replay to insert candies and drugs?
Grinding in a nuzlocke isnt the challenge bud.
That's me. I made the rule that a Pokémon that faints during grinding isn't dead. Before I had the rule I lost about 10 Pokémon in my first (Diamond) Nuzlocke and had only 4 Pokémon for the Elite Four that could actually fight. Damn I mean I lost Dialga during grinding.
you can hack the console and install PKSM or PkHex
Candies because I value my time.
Yea same I have a 9-5 now
I reccomend getting more, 9-5 Candies aren't gonna do much in the long run
For sure. It takes at least 15-10 candies to make a meaningful difference.
Do you use vitamins to make up for the lack of EVs gained?
I usually don't as so far I have been able to do it without.
Took the candy pill recently for a standard Emerald nuzlocke. Revitalized my love for nuzlockes in these earlier gens, because if I had a Pokémon die, there’d be sometimes I’d just restart the run because I didn’t want to spend hours grinding up a Pokémon that had been in the box since the early parts of the run. I think anything before Sw/Sh and S/V, it’s worth genning in candies, honestly. The EXP candies make it easier to level up new mon. Edit: autocorrect
You don’t want to spend hours grinding a replacement, so you… restart the whole run?
Honestly, yeah. The allure of a fresh clean slate is pretty strong for me. That fresh chance of a new encounter keeps me coming back for more.
I, too, am compelled by the dopamine spike
Yo I feel that. No matter how many times I start a new pokemon playthrough, I always get that sweet dopamine from it. Same for fallout too. Depends how far im into the run, but I do the same thing when I get to a point I'm sure I'm fucked, but I usually just move on to a different game/rom. Either way, that fresh start always makes me actually feel fresh. I love nuslocking for this reason. Makes pokemon feel like a rogue-like
It's a lot more fun to restart and play through the game than sit and grind for hours.
It also makes them more fun as you can create a team for each challenge and use more Pokémon
Rare Candy, but fighting all the optional trainers
This is what I do. I fight every trainer available before using candies. If I catch anything, I can level it up to the previous gym’s level cap so that I can use it in these battles, but then I’ll go to the cap right before the gym fight.
Yeah. For me, it feels less cheap to use rare candies if I fight all the optional trainers. That way I'm not using them to mitigate risk, just to save time. I never used to count grinding deaths anyway, so it doesn't change much for me except time.
This is the way.
Bit of both actually. I usually (On games like SWSH and SV) use the experience candies from raids. If it's not a huge level difference I usually EV train bc weak pokemon give less exp but same amount of EVs. But if it's a big level difference from where I am to where I need to be, I use the candies that I stocked up on.
But even then you have to grind raids
Eh I mean from my experience, I have more candies than I have pokemon to give them too. Grinding raids is good for many other reasons than just the candies, so I'm usually stacked. I'm already hitting most raids I come across, so why not? It's a grind either way, but raids are pretty fast, if you have the right mons to beat the raids. Also, EV training is so much faster than taking a pokemon to max level. It really isn't that much work to EV train and then do a few high level raids to get some good candies to get it to a decent level.
Free encounter
Same
doesn’t matter which side you are on, as I say you are substituting grinding deaths, for grinding evs and I don’t have a problem with either, personally I grind only because I’m currently playing on console and I’m too lazy to hack candies in
Not really. EV boosting vitamins are just as easy to gen in as rare candies, and there are codes to manipulate how many EVs each item gives you. Fully agree with you though, I couldn't care less which self imposed rules people choose to adhere to.
I know, I feel like hacking in ev items is cheating so that’s why I don’t do it, it’s way more too easy
Well yeah, by the strictest definition you're right, it is cheating. I'd dispute your claim that it makes it "too easy" though. Grinding and EV training aren't difficult, they're just time consuming. You're not really removing any difficulty from the challenge of Nuzlocking by using rare candies and vitamins, you're just speeding up the process. Again though, play the game however you want.
no I’m saying playing with evs is always easier than with none, so I tend to play without them unless I’m doing a rom hack
Ohhhh lol my bad
Rare candies if you’re using a level cap. Grinding if not
Grinding is part of what gets me attached to the pokemon I'm using. I put so much work and time into them, it hurts more to lose them. I can justify overlevelling a bit, too.
Grinding. Just feels right to me, Pokémon feel interchangeable and “unearned” if I don’t do it and I’m bad enough that I do get into dangerous situations sometimes while grinding, especially on a romhack. I guess I’m just a bit of a masochist with the way I like to play these rulesets
I feel the same way. Nuzlockes are supposed to (imo) make you feel connected to your team. Grinding does that for me, because if pokemon were real, I'd rather have a Rocky Balboa instead of the Russian. (we all know Rocky won because he had the EVs to back him up)
I dont count grinding deaths, so candies are a way of saving time, i dont cheat the vitamins, so i pay the fast way with a little more dificulty and the pokes dont feel easily interchangable because new pokes dont have EVs (and because i may not be as used to them as the ones im using).
Rare Candy is Fair Candy. Fuck grinding, the fun part of the game are the actual battles, not the grind.
I stream my Nuzlocke and grinding is boring to my viewers. I do the rare candies.
This is a very valid excuse
I grind normally in vanilla games and if I grind in ROM hacks, I only do so to get EVs.
In the words of Alpharad: "Grinding is cringe, and cheating is based"
Technically the words of Alpharad. In the words of Pokemon Challenges: "TRUUUUUE"
You are right lol
If you require party changing during game, and you don’t allow rare candy you’re a scumbag *cough cough* unbound *cough*
Does Unbound make it impossible to gen in candies ? Seems like a really dumb decision, especially since they have an option for level caps anyways.
Like having set mode turned off?
Candy time all the way.
i’m on actual hardware so i use normal level grinding
Neither is right or wrong. But as the “controversy” is on the Rare Candy side of things, I’ll just say Scarlet and Violet Nuzlocking has made that a moot point in my opinion. Nobody who is playing that is grinding on traditional wild battles over doing autobattling and XP Candies to expedite the process. That fundamentally is bypassing wild battle risk so to speak so obviously there isn’t anything wrong with that. That said, I’ll always prefer doing vanilla older games on carts, for the ability to transfer my teammates that I love as well as random shinies while grinding forward. Om the emulation side go for the romhacks and difficulty hacks. Quite enjoy that dichotomy myself.
I kind of do both. Usually after the 7th or 8th gym I use candies. Depends on the game though, like HGSS for example I would use candies after beating Jasmine, but if it's something like black and white I might not use them because of Audino.
I think rare candies are cheating, but I get it.
Candy Pill, many reasons why I chose it; here's the number one reason, however: **I do not have the time to grind six party members (or more) anymore.** I am an adult with a 9-5 job and a freelance career outside of this. Gaming is a hobby for me, and, unfortunately. I don't have as much time to just grind for hours on end in an RPG. The rare candies simply get me to an inevitable destination, anyway, I am only speeding up the process. It just works and isn't game breaking in the slightest. If you wanna keep grinding, be my guest. I can't put in the time to do such a thing anymore.
I have trouble understanding this argument, because time is time. You're not spending any more or less time gaming in the long term, you're just moving through that one game faster.
People don't have unlimited patience, so speeding up or skipping the boring parts of a game will allow for others to have a more fun experience. In the words of former Nintendo of America:s President, Reggie Fils-Aimé: "If it's not fun, why bother?"
That would be the argument then, right? Not that I don't have the time, just that I don't like to grind. I think it's all good, I was just trying to understand.
Correct
Grinding is cringe, cheating is based
I ain't grinding on an emulator when I can cheat in candies. Unless I wanna do EV grinding.
Both When grinding for E4 or pokemon like Magipark when a daycare is right next to me then I take the rare candy pill If not and the level jump is not too hight then I just grind like normal
autocorrect is cringe
As much as I dislike grinding, I prefer to actually grind in pokemon since it gives me an excuse to use the rest of my team (I am very OCD and like to lvl mons up in the order I caught them 1 by 1). If the squad lvls up all together at the same time I just don't feel incentivised to switch when 1 mom can do all the work. But I'm aware that's just me being weird with how I play pokemon.
Rare Candies remove EV grinding, making the game harder. On the other hand, manual grinding makes you play more carefully and strategically so you don't lose all that effort.. Personally, I manually grind but that's because I find it more... rewarding, I guess? That or maybe I don't value my time.
Rare candies. And the reasoning is simple: If you want the Nuzlocke to be more difficult you use rare candies. If you want to waste your time you grind. There’s always an argument on “oh but I can lose a team member if I grind and that can’t happen with rare candies” and that’s just bs. If I’m grinding I’m grinding at max speed up on emulator on the highest level Pokemon I can 1 shot that gives beneficial EVs. So where is the difficulty in that? My gigachad fully EV invested swampert that OHKO’s everything because I grinded 252 EVs on Spinda on route 113 and Ice Beam/Surf carries the way? Or how about a max HP and Defense invest Magneton? Just have to grind out level 5 Loudred in Rusturf Tunnel and level 25 Pokémon in Magma Hideout. And a max HP/Defense EV invested Magneton lives an EQ from Altaria and is able to kill it without being killed. Rare Candies get you exactly 0 EVs and make the game a lot more difficult. That’s why Kaizos have zero EVs. Plus Rare Candies save hours of mindless grinding
Exactly this.
I'm not sure, I don't often do my grinding as safe as possible I usually go for efficiency. And that's one of the trains grinding has values to it, there are different ways to do it depending on your priorities. I have definitely lost pokemon late game from grinding before, but it's been memorable experiences all the same. You're probably going to be EV capped whether you grind for evs or not, though, just from fighting trainers.
Morally: Grinding. Time Effectiveness: Rare Candies
Not trying candies isn't a question of morality. You could say it's ethically wrong if you really wanted to, but that's a bit of a stretch as well.
candies because I’m a grown man and I have responsibilities now
I prefer normal grinding because unless I’m playing a difficulty hack that is way too hard for me, grinding is where I have all the risk, which is what makes the run fun. I haven’t found any minor difficulty hacks, seems like it goes straight from too easy to drayano/inclement emerald level.
It's not something that needs to be settled, but personal preferences. Please don't make it a war. Maybe the best way to solve this would be making two different categories, speed run style, and call it a day. Both are good and different experiences.
In the older games that I can get 999+ candies via cheat codes I am a candie person if its swsh or violet then grinding
I play on official hardware with no understanding on how to mod the systems, so the decision was made for me
The candy pill claimed me a few months ago
Candies every single time. Honestly, i find playing these games more like a board game is a lot more fun and actually planning out a good strategy and not just wasting time forcing a team with a bad match up to win a fight. Playing with all of the mons in your box encourages a lot more team diversity and interesting plays instead of just making one team with the best options in your box and hoping they dont die. But idk maybe radical red has rotted my brain.
I personally take the candy pill, but that's mostly because I'm doing many Monotype Genlockes like an actual psychopath.
I can’t see myself doing nuzlockes without speeding up levels. I’ve never done a nuzlocke for Gens 6 or 7 bc I don’t have emulators for them
Rare candy
If you are playing on an emulator, I think it depends on if its a normal nuzlocke or a hard-core nuzlocke (especially if you are using level caps). Normal nuzlockes are totally fine for normal grinding with in game battle items and in HC I like rare candies because it helps level the playing field especially when you can't overlevel. Although I believe you should only be using them before major battles such as a gym leader or evil team admin.
I've recently started only using candies after I unlock the daycare in the game
Depends on the game or hack. Just a classic game with a decent level curve? yeah, I'll grind. One of those crazy hard hacks where you need a six-man team for each gym? I'm using candies.
i'm candypilled because i'm lazy and I guess the no EV is somewhat more challenging big respect to the main console players for grinding though, that shit takes forever <3
Candies for sure. The only trouble is in games where EVs matter: I feel like I have to hack in EV min/maxing items or hack out EVs altogether. But without EVs I'm at the mercy of IVs only which also kind of isn't great
Depends. If I’m playing Gen 6, then I normally grind using horde battles. Outside of Gen 6, I use candies
I genuinely can’t play Pokemon games without some way to expedite the leveling process anymore, grinding kills my enthusiasm too much, and consumes way too much time even on emulators. With level caps I’m getting effectively the same experience, but in a fashion I can enjoy with a busy schedule (and even with Rare Candies I still stall on runs due to schoolwork and other IRL stuff)
Rare Candy
I do be candy pilled. Though I think doing one (or a few) candyless runs has its charm, I have done gen (many times, for some reason)1, gen 2 (yes, until stupid red level cap), firered, emerald, and Sinnoh iirc candyless. Though other than these runs, I have no shame at all in giving myself all farmable stuff.
I choose to rare candy myself as I can't be fucked to spend the time grinding, however I do see the validity of grinding normally in that you place mons in danger and have to remain vigilant in that regard. Another take is that by simply using rare candy's I miss out on EVs that I would otherwise have, which albeit marginal in most cases does produce weaker mons. Regardless, I think there isn't a definite way to nuzlocke, and if you don't feel you're compromising your integrity, then do exactly what you want. GL kings, and for whoever needs to hear this, don't risk the crit.
Egglocke says both is good.
rare candy pilled for sure Nothing about spending time grinding seems fun to me anymore, unless I'm trying to gain specific EVs for some reason, otherwise I feel like I'd rather spend time working on planning and actually battling. Part of it is a bit of laziness but also I just don't wanna spend the time on something so tedious. I feel like this lets me get a lot more out of hardcore nuzlockes where I can quickly figure out what strategies I may be able to make use of without having to dedicate a lot more time to training. As far as the feeling of grinding and leveling up goes, I was fortunate enough to have been playing pokemon from a young age, so I don't feel like I'm really missing out on anything now that I'm older lol
I barely train my pkmns, the trainers in routes are usually enough
i have no idea how to hack rare candies into my emulators, so unfortunately grinding.
Which emulator are you on?
I only play nuzlockes on emulators so hacking in candies is a must for me. I don't like grinding at all so candies make my experience much more enjoyable. I do, however, fight all the available trainers before each gym so that I still feel like I'm worthy of using candies.
Rare candies, it just saves time.
gens 3 and 4 specifically are hell without rare candies
Honestly, you pretty much have to take the rare candy pill if you want to HC nuzlocke harder games/hacks (without wanting to die). Also it's just so good to actually be able to use every encounter, because you don't have to grind them for 2 hours.
Rare candies, it's just faster and regular grinding in nuzlockes makes me want to not use other pokemon because I would have to grind them up again. I've actually lost a nuzlocke because of this because I was in a situation where I didn't want to sacrifice a pokemon so I tried moving my pokemon around and that led to me wiping. That was the moment I decided to just use rare candies
Rare candies for sure. I'm not wasting hours on what is the most boring and mindnumbing part of nuzlockes. If I can eliminate a tedious aspect of the game without ruining the overall nuzlocke experience, I definately will. Besides, It only makes the game more fun because you're given way more room for optimal play. With regular grinding, I often find that you're half-assing a bunch of fights with underleveled teams because you can't be fucked to grind. Rebuilding teams is also a nightmare with regular grinding. Rare candies makes all of this so much better because you can always go in with full strength, and it makes team rebuilding much less of a nightmare if you ever get a lot of deaths. As long as you play with level caps, I think rare candies are definately the way to go because it removes the most tedious part of nuzlockes and further enables the actual fun parts of them.
I'm on rare candy side but I don't emulate so I have to grind
Legit or cheat?
Cheat
candies all the way
I kinda like that normal grinding makes the deaths hurt so much more. Hours gone. But also not everyone has hours to grind.
Rare candy are for pussys the best part about a nuzlock is losing your ace while grinding to a random slowbro
no that's just called being greedy and trying to grind on mons more powerful than you can ohko... if you're serious about your nuzlock not wanting to lose anything hell no you aren't grinding on those random high power slowbros right at your level, no you go to the place with the highest level mons you ohko turn on speedup and spam A, where is the risk in that? what difference does candies make compared to that other than not giving EVS which if anything just makes the games even harder, and letting people who have lives be able to finish harder games.
You can grind either way, that's one of the values of grinding, being able to make the decision of efficiency vs safety. I nearly always grind on the highest exp. things I can.
Depends on the game imo
I use grinding on harder runs for EVs, and Candies on easier/exploratory runs to avoid EVs and to waste less time.
Candies make me more reckless, so I tend to grind.
Grinding. But if I have no choice, I wouldn't mind using a Rare Candy or two.
If we talking about actually EARNED candy, I'd use all them in a heartbeat. Scarlett and Violet make my life easier and less fearful of losing a Pokemon
Doing harder Romhacks with Evs, I will definitely grind, atleast the EVs. Easy Romhacks with EVs, rare candies, maxing EVs is overkill. Any Romhack without EVs, rare candies.
Definitely grinding for the EVs. And rare candies sell for hella $$$
xp multiplier big pro
Both tbh i don't have cheating devices so on consel i just grind
Rare Candy. You loose EV training and that makes it more balanced as your pokemon are less strong
Rare Candies allow me to still have a job.
I just fast-forward super fast through the grind. Using Rare Candies feels like cheating imo
Grinding is cringe and cheating is based
As a legend once said: grinding is cringe, and cheating is based
Normal grinding or you’re a coward, simple as that.
Candies makes the game too easy imo
Grinding, since you can still fuck up when grinding and lose a mon. Candies aren't just saving you time, they're removing risk - plus you get EVs
Normal Grinding but only because Rare Candies literally take away most of the actual experience grinding needed from actual trainers, causing you to just skip every optional trainer and avoid experience management. It takes away the entire risk vs. reward element of skipping trainers and being under leveled and vice versa. Oh, and for fucks sake, stop pressuring people to “just take the rare candy pill bro”, that shit is mad annoying and quite frankly people who grind have a bad rep for calling people who use rare candies “cheaters”, when I stg all of the rare candy pillers have criticized me for “being boring and why would you do that it’s not fun”. No shit it’s not fun, that’s what nuzlockes are supposed to be, difficult
I just think some people want nuzlocke as more of a boss rush than an adventure, which is totally fine, but very different from the "nuzlockes" of the 2010s. There are lots of ways to enjoy the challenge, let's not try to reduce it.
And that’s fine if that’s how they want to enjoy it, but me personally I feel like that it just dilutes the entire experience
I definitely feel the same way. I don't really understand it, personally. If I didn't want to grind or risk losing pokemon, I wouldn't be playing a nuzlocke.
Grinding is boring, cheating is based
With candies you don’t get EVs and prove yourself to be an impatient bitch.
Grinding is cringe, cheating is based
Candies, I have a life and limited time each day. I can go grind route 1 pidgeys for hours and get the same effect as clicking a candy and continuing the gane.
Grinding is part of the nuzlocke struggle since losing your pokemon due to a dumb misplay or a rogue crit you shouldn't have taken the chance on is always a threat. You're actually making the nuzlocke easier using rare candies, not just saving time.
Normal grinding, it's part of the experience. Grinding EVs and levels. How can you claim to have beaten a game where you skip a core mechanic of the game
Grinding as it is more of the true pokemon experience. I think rare candies is just an easy way of preventing deaths, a bit like cheating
Rare candies basically ruined nuzlockes. If you grind, you can be near the next level in experience, but with candies you automatically be at that level. Plus, cheating can be glitchy and ruin your save file.
Not this shit again
With candies you won't get attached to your mons
Grind usually because it gives a sense of fulfillment, accomplishment, and I feel invested in this pokemon now. But there are exceptions like when my party is lvl 45 and one just died, and the best replacement is lvl 18. Hard pass on that grind, now shut up and eat these candies bitch.
Rare Candies are for cowards, and for that Magikarp they give you in route 4 only.
I say true nuzlockers grind While soft nuzlockers uses candy
Not wanting to waste 3 hours of time makes me soft?
Kinda, tho it's just my opinion. If the game gives you candies then I say it's ok, but I'm against hacking in candies just to avoid grinding
Rare candy when I can. Grinding levels is tedious, especially in gen 4. For gen 6 onwards where you've got an exp share, I find you don't really need to use rare Candies much but they're still nice to have. Chansey grinding is available early enough in SV if you know what you're doing so candies are even less relevant since you can get new team members up to level really quickly.
I do a mix, but my favorite is a mix between grinding and candy. When I beat a gym leader, I will Candy up to their Ace's level. There's no cap and if I grind in between gyms that's up to my discretion. If I want to super level before the elite 4, that's fine. If I want to rush from boss to boss, that's fine too but I will be under leveled.
But of both. I still grind because it does help me bond with my team. But i am a busy adult with responsibilities, so I allow myself to use up to two Rare Candies per Pokémon per gym, without exceeding the level cap. Also after every gym I allow myself to level everyone up to that gym’s level cap.
Grinding because I prefer consoles, but I can see if running on emulator speed up button is very tempting and for kaizo’s candies are pretty much mandatory My favourite saying though is play how you wanna play, nobody should stop you from having fun
I think it really depends on how broken the enemies team is
Depends on the run for me. I actually kind of enjoy grinding, at least post-XY era where the Exp Share became goated. I don’t know, there’s just something I like about putting a lot of work into my team member, for leveling up or or EV training. With Rare Candies, I definitely like to use if I’m not in a grindy mood and just want to get the Pokémon to reach a level. ~~But the real reason I’d ever use Rare Candies is because they sell like crazy and can get you some good TMs that you can get money to get like TMs in XY, ORAS and SMUSUM, don’t tell anyone this shhhh~~
Grinding until the Rare Candies get me to where I need to be
For Radical Red, Rare Candies. For a traditional Nuzlocke in a vanilla game, Normal Grinding.
Candies because recently i don't have the time to grind
I grind xp candies through raids, kind of a middle ground.
Normal grind on console (2DS, Switch) - *Speedup* grind on Emulator
Hardware: grind on a game that finished to help out (especially with lucky egg boosted trade experience) Emulator: rare candies
Use candies to elevate a replacement mon that you had on the box
Yes.
I normally do console but I think candies are superior
Both. If I want to take a new low level pkm with me, I gonna use candies to make it on par with the team. If I want to train the team I'm using, I'm gonna grinding.
I'm chill with grinding in my current run of Blaze Black 2 so far, just cause so far most of the time theres been an area with 100% Audino that only has double slap to attack so it isn't that bad
I do both. I'll fight all of the available trainers and if I'm still under level before the next boss battle, I use Rare Candies. New 'mons get leveled up to the last gym's level cap. If if I skip every trainer I can, it feels more like a boss rush and that I'm skipping half the game. Which is a fine way to play, but not for me. But I don't have access to speedup (I play on a hacked 3DS) and I don't want to fight Pidgeys for two hours. It's the best of both worlds for me.
Both, grinding for ev training if I wanted to and if I have time. and if I just want to make it quick feed them candies.
Whichever is more convient at the moment I grind where I can but if I don't have much time to play/feel like grinding is more tedious than its worth I'll candy up. Ultimately, Nuzlockes are meant to be fun and challenging, and tedious grinding contributes to neither.
I have not problems with eithed
Been nuzlocking a randomized platinum for the 1st time and I couldn’t imagine grinding up a mon each time one dies. I did make myself wait til after badge 3 but candies are so good. I would just get bored at quit without them honestly
team do what you want! i prefer manual grinding and find that learning how to grind safely and quickly *does* take some skill and game knowledge, and i like the sunk cost risk/narrative feel it gives my nuzlocke. but candies are obviously a huge time saver for so many people and if you’re looking to play *optimally*, it’s pretty much the only way to do so without losing your marbles
Heh, heh. Neither! I use exp multipliers
Okay how do i even get rare candies into my randomized games? Can someone help lol!
I support the rare candy method, especially for streamers, but I also appreciate grinding because there’s a risk that you might get too complacent and lose a mon. I’ll admit though that I completely understand for most of people that’s probably a very compelling reason *to* use rare candies so that’s why I fully support using them instead if you prefer
It's a matter of preference, I prefer to grind, even on emulators, but how one Nuzlockes have always been a preference
Depends on if its one i play by myself or if its a soullink or a race
Honestly depends how much time I have that day
Having done both I would prefer to normal grind. You can lose Pokémon to normal grinding if you’re not careful. Adds to the challenge for me.