I'll admit I haven't run across this since I'm not playing said games with these forced fights. Nuzlocke is meant to bring out alternate strategies and teams, using mons you wouldn't expect. There's nothing 'special' about using a snorlax when it's handed to you, save for the relative difficulty it requires to catch one. Having these pokemon be hoisted on you forcefully would cheapen their value, especially over multiple runs. To me, a forced snorlax or pidgey/etc is illegal, plain and simple. These instances make the game homogenous and that's the last thing a nuzlocke needs, imagine if EVERY route contained a forced mon? You'd have no variety and your stories would wither and die for lack of spice. Well, aside from using a randomizer, I personally would just ignore these mons and not count them as the first catch. Whirlwind and Roar also gets you out and quite a few pokemon learn these too. There are several Ghost-types you can obtain before Reflection Cave as well and these bypass Shadow Tag. A lot of pokemon learn Shadow Claw + Hone Claws or Swords Dance allowing you to boost and OHKO them. On the topic of Reflection Cave Wobuffetts: Man up and use Cut on your Snivy if you have to. This is 'Nothing can actually learn this move'. Note this isn't 'I don't want to put Cut on a Bro'. In this case you should take the Lapras and use it as a slave even if you cannot use gifts normally. In X/Y it is entirely possible even pretty common to have nothing that can use Surf when you reach the required place. This is also a reason to break a gift clause if you have one. Cut Blocks are entirely possible and probobly the 2nd most common after Surf. Losing the game because you have nothing that can use Surf in Gen 3 to reach Fortree/Good Rod and the Magikarps you could catch died before they could evolve sucks. It's a Shiny it's like the game giving you a message. Shiny Pokemon are rare and special enough that it is alright to catch them if only as a trophy catch. Roamer encounters often outright deny a catch. These often completely remove potential catches from the pool for example without discounting Snorlax you can never use say Ducklett Spritzee/Swirlpuff Smeargle or Volbeat in an X/Y Nuzlocke. I counted both it and the Snorlax as my encounters, though I can definitely understand why many people wouldn't count either. I shouldn't have to take that crap, if I want to choose party members I'll not nuzlocke, or I'd set up long dupe clause chains (It's worse because Kalos has so much variety as well, and you lose potential team members if you take that.)I never even knew that Pidgey was forced till after I caught it in my game. Most of the time, if something is truly forced to be first, it will also be only.Д«ut in Kalos you literally get two forced firsts on you before the second gym. You can fish or go into grass before the one required Kecleon. You can get stuff behind the cut tree on the one Snorlax and walk from the other side of the other one. SilverStrangequark wrote:I personally count forced encounters as firsts (like the Snorlax in Kanto, and also the Kalos Pidgey), but I don't mind if other people prefer a completely random encounter.The thing about the lion's share of forced encounters is: THEY AREN'T FORCED FIRST. Of course good moves like Surf go on my main team anyway but there's no way in hell I'm wasting move space with drek like Cut and Flash. They'll never battle anyway and (especially in my Linoone only run) you can't phsically progress without catching a slave or two. HM Slaves, I get them as I need them, irrespective of weather they're first encounter or not. (if I come out of there with one catch I'm doing well anyway). Safari zone, I'm allowed one attempted catch per area given how things like to run away there. You can avoid going into the grass in the park until the contests are on anyway if you're hoping for something like a Syther instead of a Pidgey or a Metapod that you'd likely get outside of the competition. I'd settle for that rule for the Bug Contest. Might have also allowed myself to choose between the 'normal' catch and the contest catch (Or one catch and the sun stone, I don't remember) under those circumstances, but it never came up. SilverStrangequark wrote:What about, for example, the Johto National Park? Is it fair to attempt any catch in there if all you want is to win evolutionary Stones?I think the rule I used for that contest was that I could play it as normal for the purpose of winning a sun stone, but I couldn't use the winning catch unless it was first.

Infestation on teleport pokemon