I Tried an all DOUBLE BATTLES Hardcore Nuzlocke 

"Don't let the mistakes stack" "Lombre's at low health, it should be fine" real subtle transition there

Jrose going from “I won’t abandon you no matter how many times you faint” to “if you fall once you’re dead to me” is an arc I didn’t know I needed but am here for

Watching him lose so many pokemon to being slightly impatient hurt me physically but was also so relatable.

This video is basically an advertisement to people doing nuzlockes. Use rare candies or have patience, but when you have neither it doesn’t go well.

Jrose: starts talking about random nameless trainer Me: Something’s wrong, I can feel it

Jrose: "Destiny bond is fine" Narrator: "Destiny bond was not fine."

Other nuzlockers: "So I'm about to challenge the champion, 0 deaths so far so pretty decent, let's see how this goes" Jrose: Loses pokemon to wild Shuppet

"I am deeply opposed to hacking in rare candies." "At 3x speed, it took me over an hour to level up my team to level 15."

Jrose going from niche gen1 challenge (i know he does others) to hitting as many buzzwords as possible in one title and I AM HERE FOR IT. Anything to get this incredible creator more views/money. And more content is always great.

The rare candy patches I've seen don't give access to them until after you've made it to the daycare. The logic is at that point you've always got the option to level up 100% safely by using the daycare and biking around for a few hours. The daycare is both the optimal play and soul-crushingly boring, and giving you rare candies for the price of the daycare provides no benefit other than to your own limited time on this earth.

"The HP of Pokémon is not displayed numerically on the player's side in Generation III and Generation IV handheld games-only the bar will be shown to save screen space. The numeric amount of HP can be toggled with the Start button." -Bulbapedia's double battle page

Jrose’s quality has really gone up recently, and the videos were already great. I’m glad to see the channel gaining traction. This dude works so hard and makes amazing videos and he deserves to make some bank

25:07 - that has nothing to do with rare candies, and everything to do with carelessness. You always gotta heal your mons after battles in a nuzlocke! Soda Pop is cheap from the beach house as soon as you get to Slateport, and given you have no items in battle you would have heaps of money to spend on healing items for outside of battle. Edit: moved the timestamp to the start of what I was referring to to avoid confusion.

Manectric was a borderline agent of death in this video. And after seeing so many Poketubers that release ONLY Hardcore Nuzlockes making me consider at least doing a normal one, it's nice to see how truly stressing this challenge can actually be when you're not the kind of person that calculates even the littlest detail to see the exact chance of surviving a critical hit.

I've watched a lot of Nuzlocke content lately from Pokémon Challenges' channel, and I guess it's paying off for me, because I saw most of the pitfalls here before they actually occurred. XD Nuzlockes really benefit from slow and careful play, so in a sense, your aggressive playstyle made it way closer (and thus more intense) than it needed to be. It definitely made for good content and I'd love to see more. =)

26:41 There seems to be a glitch with flannery's team. They should all be female, yet the camerupt and torkoal are male here. This was actually significant in this battle, as marshtomp, the much stronger pokemon, was made immune to the attract play.

Just as an heads up, you can see HP in double battles if you press select (I think). So whatever is the equivalent on the emulator should work

"A lot of other youtubers use rare candies which I am VERY opposed to" 5 seconds later "It took me over an hour to level up my pokemon to level 15"

Really love the guns blazing approach and subsequent disasters as a result. I was a bit skeptical about a nuzlocke but it was super entertaining, congrats my dude!

I just have to say, with Lanturn and Starmie being two of my favorite Pokemon, I really liked seeing how the two of them played such a key role in the tail end of this run.

Few things I want to point out: Crobat is INSANE. Incredible typing defensively, learns physical sludge bomb, and can even learn a physical shadow ball. Also, getting Gyarados as soon as possible via old rod is what you absolutely want to do; it's insideously powerful with intimidate, one of the best abilities for nuzlockes, and a great defensive typing to boot. Gyarados is one of the best (the best overall nuzlocke pokemon is Blissey) pokemon in the game for these, especially since intimidate works against both enemies. You can EXP share it to level 20 pretty easily. For Winona; teaching a pokemon Ice Beam like you did is good, but ideally you want one that isn't weak to earthquake, a good option is a strong normal type pokemon that can also potentially learn thunderbolt for Skarmory. Your Azumarill was a good candidate for it, too, because it's a bulky pokemon. Just thought I'd offer some advice from someone who regularly does nuzlockes. Hope this helped!

i used to be opposed to using rare candies in nuzlockes, but once i started doing them with some consistency i realized... i wasn't losing pokemon while grinding, but i was losing my mind. i was spending hours grinding and it just wasn't worth it. i do think new nuzlockers shouldn't use them, but once you know where to be careful it's just easier. but then again, this is jrose, so... i don't see that rule changing anytime soon.

I had seen many nuzlockes, but in each of them there was a third rule for the nuzlocke. That was to nickname each pokemon you obtain. I don't know if it is compulsory or optional, so if anyone knows about it, please let me know.

You were speaking my LANGUAGE here, Colosseum-style battles in an Emerald nuzlocke! Engaging, perfectly condensed run and you even gave us Steven. I learn so much about these games from your plays, even with all the time and love I've spent on them myself. Really cool, I appreciate the hell out of this! THANK YOU!

J-Reezy, Coming in clutch for my lunch break, take me away to min-max town, you masochist, you.

I have to agree with most of the comments. Rare candies just help speed up production of videos and make the game less grindy. Most hardcore nuzlockers grind on low route pokemon where there is no risk of losing pokemon but makes the run take hours so they use rare candies which just saves time. It doesn't reduce risk unless your playing in a already risky way.

Did the optional rules but forgot one of the biggest main rules of a Nuzlock: Nickname your pokemon to build investment in them

Great content Jrose, this was a really fun watch! Many Nuzlocke runs can be a lil boring to watch for me bc they're over-researched but your usual narration + your fun approach to trying stuff out was really interesting to watch. Keep it coming!

On the one hand I would like to see you reach half a million subscribers because your videos are super enjoyable and I want you to succeed immensely. On the other hand, I don't want you to go through creative burnout by having to do an entire month of hour long videos. EDIT: Gosh, Manectrics are Run Killers in this game.

I haven't watched a nozlocke in years but having the full run in 1 hour makes it more consumable

The narration is unmatched as always

Wow what a roller coaster of emotion that was!! Great job as always!!

Never was particularly interested in watching Nuzlockes but you've always got my view, always love your content and narration

The rare candies... You could 100% just go fight wild pokemon on the first route in the game, or only fight Magikarp, or something else with 0 risk, the rare candies just are meant to make it not take hours to level up your whole team before any major fight... which would have helped with all the "Well I got bored grinding and decided to fight the important trainer." There are already ways to make leveling up 100% safe, so with rare candies it just speeds it up massively.

JRose, I so appreciate this video 😂 I appreciate that you're so honest almost in doing this, that it can be really easy to lose Pokemon - because losing a pokemon to a random Shuppet is also the kind of thing that happens to me doing Nuzlockes! Much appreciation, keep at it 😊

Love the content, keep it up! Forever grateful you've started to upload frequently.

Grinding is tedious and the optimal way of leveling up is fighting route 1 for ages, so you have 0% risk of a pokemon fainting, which is why I like hacking rare candies.

36:07 Spread moves don't have their power reduced if they hit the ally as well in Gen 3. EQ and Self−destruct don't have their power reduced in double battles, but moves like Surf and Eruption do.

I really like how dedicated you are to your rules and your formats. This is new and fresh and I love it. Gamefreak failed you when they didn't make enough jrose challenge worthy Pokémon.

This might have been your best video yet. You sounds like a true play by play announcer in every battle, that made it so intense and interesting

I can’t lie, With Manectric being my absolute favourite pokemon of all time, I did feel a sense of pride seeing how many problems it gave you in this challenge…I mean, it ended your first run? My Boy should NEVER be underestimated! 😍😍😍

8:06 it's too late for this but I remember you could show the HP numbers by pressing select. Also, a mandatory nuzlocke rule are nicknames!

Nice to see you put that jrose spin on this challenge. Not really a nuzlocke watcher but I could listen to you for hours almost like a podcast.

As much as I love your traditional Kanto runs, I definitely need to see more of these videos. The constant threat of losing Pokémon and having a completely random team is amazing. Keep it up.

excellent content as always, love your style of narration! fwiw i don't interpret the rare candy debate as an argument for authenticity; i see it more as an argument for content. sure, it saves time, but for streamed runs it keeps viewers engaged. and even if not, it saves a hell of a lot if time. either way, love your vids!!!! keep em coming, i always put down what i'm doing asap and watch as soon as i see one :)

One of my favorite things about nuzlockes as a guy who found out about them from the source comics is how the rules get more and more interesting. Like the first guy had a bit about having many many Tentacool, and now we've all decided to do dupes/species clause. I also love how Nuzlocke is the name because it's John Locke (from Lost) and that's what he named his Nuzleaf (who was a pivotal death). I'm gonnna go re-read those lol, getting nostalgic for being 14, dear god

I just realized that Nuzlockes have a similar mentality to Paul from the anime. "If a Pokémon loses, they're weak. I'll release them and try to catch something usable next time."

This video was awesome! Keep it up jrose! I absolutely love your gen1 series but it's good to see you branching out to other gens occasionally

Double battles are so much more fun than singles, I wish they made a LOT more doubles in the story mode

Another "rule" is that you need to nickname your Pokemon. I was honestly looking forward to the nicknames man... Especially after how creative your nicknames are in your other challenges.

Gdamm. Clicked wanting a regular fun Jrose11 video. Didn't expect to pulled into a heart wrenching journey. Genuinely, bravo. You outdid yourself and created one hell of an experience.

Love your willingness to leave some awful mistakes in instead of giving us the "cleanest" run like most of the other dedicated nuzlocke youtubers I watch. They're all so experienced with the hardcore nuzlocke format that there's very little tension. Narration is A+ as always. I think dipping in to the nuzlocke trend is a good idea considering you're already quite popular and your refusal to use infinite rare candies (which I agree with as a spectator, makes it harder to just plan a route and stick to it verbatim) provides a good counterbalance against Pokemon Challenges.

“Feeling justified not hacking in the rare candies” I think you misunderstand how hardcore nuzlockers grind. When I was grinding before the rare candy meta, after raising the level cap I would fish up a ton of something I could oneshot (and had desirable EVs) to grind. So I would try to ride the upper limit of the level cap. I would never be battling trainer mons (or wild mons with high levels) with my underleveled mons that I was grinding. You have to think about grinding differently in a hardcore nuzlocke - your mons should be about 40 for Maxie 2. If you have fun with the risk of grinding the way you are on random trainers, that’s fine and it’s decent content! But it’s not what the rare candy meta nuzlockers did before rare candies - it was standing in front of a fishing spot or running in level 9 mon grass for 5 hours. Also, rare candies are way more fair when you remove EV gain from the game so you don’t gain extra advantages over the AI.

Love your stuff Jrose but I gotta echo the rest of the folks here when it comes to rare candies… the safest way to level would be to level back on the early routes to make sure you never lose a Pokemon. And that sucks , obviously. Rare Candies just save you time (though to each their own!)

Really love ur vids Jrose, been a fan since forever, love seeing you branch out!!

I actually had no idea what a Nuzlocke was. Despite it popping up in my recommended a lot, you're the person I click for Pokemon content, so it was a nice surprise and a good change of pace. Your narration is always on point and super entertaining, no matter what gen or kind of challenge you're playing. Please keep the videos coming ❤

I feel like Jrose was a little too hung up with the Rare candies rule in the video, there were a lot of mistakes that even without rare candies being implemented, could have been avoided through other means, such as; - looking up base stats and calcing your opponents potential speed to avoid speed ties or whether or not the pokemon would even outspeed, as well as possible damage ranges. - grinding on lower level pokemon for more safe EXP so that you don't risk losing pokemon to either wild mons of higher level/random trainers. - Looking up pokemon movesets (a little bit more difficult with Ace trainers, since they typically don't use level up movesets, so you would have to find a document or something similar to get that info) - Using TM's to give pokemon better moves (I'm surprised Jrose didn't abuse Guts swellow with Facade, as that mostly melts anything that doesn't resist normal type given it has a good nature/Attack IV/EV stat, but there was also other minor things) - Better teambuilding for the situation (Mostly in reference to 31:48, the 2nd slot was mostly useless other than a grovyle counter, and you already have swellow to deal with that, not that the fight was difficult by any means) - Threat assessment and stategic focus on which pokemon to take down in the double battles (generally, you want to leave out pokemon that are weak or that can't do much to your team, while entirely focusing the other side, just getting the 2v1 situation isn't always enough since if you end up leaving the trainer with two pokemon that can seriously hurt your team, you can end up unnecessarily risking pokemon) Most of the mistakes was due to being impatient, or just not properly analyzing the situation, which to be fair is a common mistake for newer nuzlockers (but also done by a lot of seasoned ones as well). Comment isn't meant to trash Jrose, mostly just a critical one, to maybe have him take a 2nd look at his run, and learn from his mistakes for future runs.

Damn, can't wait for Jan to completely go into the continuous anti rare candy opinion xD looking forward to that react

Awesome to see you do a Nuzlocke :D I've been watching all your uploads and this is a cool new type content. Keep up the good work my dude :)

thanks for putting out more content Jrose11... definitely my favourite youtuber concerning pokemon challenges, your commentary and humor are just right 😀

An entire month of JROSE videos sounds literally insane. Unfortunately I do not have 200,000 extra accounts to subscribe

I think that i could agree with you idea on rare candy but honestly the point is that you should train all of your pokemon on wild pokemon to avoid as many trainers as possible, at least that's what i do when i do my nuzlocke. It is by far better to beat the same old pokemon ( also to get tasty EVs) and then to go on trainers. I know you do yt videos so u can't waste too much time also cause you stream most of the training, but is obvious that 90% of the pokemon you lost were because of them not being trained enough! still love you and your content, thank you for everything Jrose :D

I randomly stumbled across you Jrose awhile back. I love your content and eagerly await your videos! Keep up the great work

I've honestly been binging these videos for the past few days, even the ones i've seen before. Something about it is just very relaxing? almost? I don't know if that's the right word, but theyre really entertaining

I will say, if you were leveling up in a much safer way, you wouldnt have lost SO many pokemon. You were kinda leveling in a risky fashion, which led to losing pokemon. Leveling at a slower but safer pace would lead to you essentially never losing one. And if there is no risk of doing so, rare candies only save time.

what a great video, literally everything went terrible and that’s what most of us will face in our first nuzz. Thanx for the content JRose

Man, your stuff is awesome. I hope you keep smashing out content because it’s all Gold.

I love your stuff JRose and i get it was a first nuzlock but boy was it stressful to watch some of those plays

Actually, route 101 having poocheyena and zigzagoon is great Linoone in single battles just solos the elite four and even in double battles it has good coverage Mightyena has intimidate, which is spectacular, nothing more to say

2:29 I've also seen a shiny clause where basically if you happen encounter a shiny you can temporarily break the the standard nuzlock rules in order to not lose a shiny

Awesome video! Thanks for letting us take part on the failed attempt. This kind of surprise is something I miss from other Nuzlockers.

This was very interesting nuzlocke to watch. Hope you make more of these!

Random nuzlocke tip: it's fine to rush the first gym early, if youre confident enough. cause if you lose it's really quick to just restart. You can level up a lot more after roxanne once you deliver the letter to stephen and can go over to Slateport

The reason why people hack in rare candies is simply to cut down time spent grinding. I don’t think it’s used to avoid loosing Pokémon during grinding because against wilds because that rarely happens. I understand wanting to keep the integrity of what Pokémon is but rare candies just make attempts so much faster to do.

Manectric: "That's a useful team member you got there, sure be a shame if I landed a crit thunder right about now"

This was such a great video. Really showing how much work goes into a nuzlocke absolutely fantastic.

a little hint for hardcore nuzlocke's: use edging, edging refers to gaining exp until you are close to level over the cap so you do within the fight so you can get a level lead withtin the fight

Here's the TLDR. "I could level up and prepare more, but I got impatient, jumped the gun, and lost a bunch of important pokemon. Oh, then I whine about Rare Candy users for some reason." Holy cow Jrose, you have no one to blame for all this crap than yourself.

Your content and narration is always 🔥🔥 I appreciate all of what you do. Thank you!

Hope to see more nuzlockes in future! I’ve been hoping for this for years now!

What a treat to have a full hour Jrose video. Interesting to hear your thoughts on the rare candies, I’m definitely in the camp of using them to the level cap, since like you said, it’s about trainer battles not monotonous grinding. I find it helps keep you fresher for the significant battles too, but if you *enjoy* the grind then that’s a whole other thing.

One thing I want to point about hacking rare candys, is that it makes most of the fights more dificult, because when you grind, you can fight only against certain pokemons to gain certain EVs, and get stronger pokemon, using rare candys you don't get so much EVs and it makes later fights more dificult. But each person chooses what considers better. For someone streaming rare candys are better so you can do most of the boss fights quickly. But really enjoyed the video! Keep doing the good work! Edit: came back with an idea. Because if you want, you can use a rule you must fight every single trainer before a gym leader and just before the gym leader you can use rare candys to miminize the EVs you gain from wild pokemons and keep the dificult, without getting underleveld.

4 months ago this man made a promise that felt unreal. And yet the madman really did do a month of jrose, what a legend

This was great! Very cool to see different types of challenge runs :)

A Jrose Nuzlocke? Man, I’m so excited

You probably won't believe me, but I've never even come close to completing a Pokemon game before, and yet I've seen almost all of your videos. Very recently I bought Sun & Moon and enjoying myself, I want to let you know that it's your videos that got me to try the game, thanks Jrose!

"I understand why people use rare candies, but I've said this now four times: this is the reason why you just can't" Except that, unless you add another rule like no backtracking or something, that's simply untrue. You can get XP from wild pokemon of a much lower level who pose no real threat to your pokemon, so the only thing stopping you from grinding with complete safety to a desired level is the patience and time investment involved. imo the former isn't an interesting skill to be testing in a nuzlocke for the player or the audience, and the latter is flat out something to be avoided. If you're concerned about RC spam negating the challenge of trainers in between gym leaders, you could add a rule restricting their usage similar to the "can't exceed the next gym leader's level" clause. For example: RCs can only be used to raise a pokemon's level up to the cap of the _previous_ gym leader, and once a gym leader is defeated, grinding in previous areas is banned. That way the candies only become a catchup mechanic for underleveled wild pokemon or those sitting in the box, and it forces the remaining levelling for the next gym leader to take place with riskier opponents. Of course, its fine to not hack in rare candies because you don't like playing that way, but its also fine for others to do exactly that because they prefer that to the grind. These are arbitrary challenges with made up rules done for fun, after all. Just be aware that the players who do choose to hack in RCs aren't skipping any challenges that can't equally trivially be skipped in your current ruleset by just spending way more time grinding encounters against weak pokemon, other than the challenge of overcoming the boredom involved.

Edge of my seat, thanks for the great content, keep ‘em coming!

Every day? That's insane man don't burn out! Happy to see a nuzlocke, love your content

Awesome challenge, JRose! Great vid too 🤘 I’m looking forward to this SV month of content

Loving the change up even though I love the Gen1 speed run series. Just as a heads up a rule that is observed in every Nuzlocke I've ever seen is, you must nickname your Pokémon so you become more attached to them or whatever, doesn't bother me as I hate nicknames lol

15:58 'the final rule of Nuzlockes' as you call it is an entirely optional rule. Most content creators do it, but that's not part of the core Nuzlocke rules. There's nothing stopping you from bootstrapping the B or C team from the box unless you decide not to

*PokemonChallenges swooping in for a reaction*

I would love to see more nuzlockes from you! The no rare candies rule makes the game so much more challenging and entertaining to watch

I must say I dont need to subscribe as I have already have been for months and months... your content is amazing and I literally am so captivated when you upload a new challenge keep it up Jrose 😁

I thought a rule of nuzlockes was nicknaming all of your Pokémon? Everyone else does lol so I thought it was a rule haha. Awesome video jrose, love every vid you make. Really cool to see you dipping your toes into the nuzlocke world! Thanks for the content as always.

This concept is very good and watching one of my favorite Pokémon related content creators do a Nuzlocke is amazing. However, I have to say that I disagree with your justification to not use rare candies and it's something that I think hurted a little bit my enjoyment, although that might be on me. While yes, a Pokémon can faint during grinding against a wild Pokémon or against an optional trainer that you battled for xp, there're ways around this: on first case, just fighting low level Pokémon that can only ko it if you let them, and for the second, avoid the trainer. There're benefits on using rare candies, and I believe that this run could've been ten times better if you used them. Still, if you're still convinced that it's better not using them, that's fine! It's your channel, your run, your rules. But this was something that really stood out for me in this video that I simply couldn't not comment it. Can't wait for your next video and keep going!

This was a super fun change to see from you, super entertaining

I personally really enjoy watching nuzlocke challenges, so I would love if you did more of those!

Adressing the not using rare candies thing You can still battle really weak pokemon and have no risk of death it just takes a long time. Rare candies are just used to make it not take as long. It removes almost no challenge and make it signifiantly faster to play and more interesting.