The rules

The standard Nuzlocke rules, plus the soul-link rules for runs with friends.

Soullinked watches your game and enforces what it can: dead Pokémon are moved out of your party, and linked partners die together. What it can’t stop, like a catch you weren’t allowed, it writes on the run’s board, where everyone in the run can see it.

Core rules, for every run

1. A faint is a death. A Pokémon that drops to 0 HP is dead, with no revives. At the next quiet moment in the overworld, Soullinked moves it to a PC box named DEAD.

2. Only the first encounter counts. On each route, the first wild Pokémon you meet is your official encounter. Catch it, or that route’s chance is gone. A banner in the game tells you when an encounter is official, and when you shouldn’t catch. The whole Safari Zone counts as one route.

Statics are encounters of their own. A Pokémon waiting in one spot, like a legendary in its cave or chamber, is a static encounter. It never uses up the route’s encounter, and two in one place are two encounters. The same rules apply: your first battle with it is the official one, so catch it or lose it.

A roaming Pokémon counts only if you catch it. One that runs away costs you nothing, and doesn’t burn the route you met it on.

3. Come prepared. An encounter only counts if you could have caught it: you need at least one Poké Ball when the battle starts (the Safari Zone is the exception). Without one, the board notes that you came unprepared, and your next encounter on that route, with balls, is the official one.

4. No daycare. Official Pokémon don’t go to the daycare. Deposits go on the record, and experience a Pokémon earns there is never shared with its partners.

5. No rewinds. Loading an old save or savestate to undo a death goes on the record.

Soul-link rules, for runs with friends

In a soul link, each player plays their own randomized copy of the game at the same time, and Pokémon caught on the same route are linked.

6. Links form as you catch. The first official catch on a route starts that route’s link, and each partner’s official catch on the same route joins it. Your starters are linked automatically.

7. One falls, all fall. When any Pokémon in a link faints, every Pokémon in that link dies, in every player’s game. You can finish the battle you’re in; your linked Pokémon are boxed at your next quiet moment. The board records whose Pokémon fell first. Releasing a linked Pokémon, or trading it away, counts as a faint: its link dies with it.

8. Routes burn together. Every player has to catch their official encounter on a route. If anyone’s faints or flees, the route burns for everyone, and any link already formed there dies with it. (Hosts can soften this: see host settings.)

9. Shared experience, if the host turns it on. With shared EXP on, experience a linked Pokémon earns is copied to its partners, so a link levels up together. It’s off by default.

Gifts, facilities and story battles

Gifts count. A Pokémon you’re given, like an egg or a revived fossil, is part of your run: if it faints, it’s dead. In a soul link it’s linked with your partners’ same gift, and the board lists it as a gift from the place you got it. A gift never uses up a route’s encounter.

Battle facilities don’t count. In the Battle Tents, the Battle Frontier and Trainer Hill, a faint isn’t a death and nothing goes on the board: the game hands your team back when you leave.

Story battles don’t count. A battle the game plays out for you, like being shown how to catch a Pokémon, isn’t your encounter, whatever happens in it. Nor is the game’s very first battle, the tutorial right after you get your starter: a faint there isn’t a death.

A Pokémon nobody can catch isn’t an encounter. If the game won’t let you throw a ball at it, it doesn’t use up the area’s encounter. A faint in that battle still counts.

Finishing a run

A run is complete when every player has beaten the Champion. The board locks in the final numbers, and everyone gets the results. You can keep playing after that: the rules still apply, but the board won’t change. Until everyone has won, a player who keeps playing still counts, so a link they break still kills their partners’ Pokémon.

Solo runs

A solo run uses rules 1 to 5, gifts, facilities and story battles, and finishes when you beat the Champion, with the same referee and the same record. Start one with Play solo on your runs page. Solo runs count toward your career and your own row on the leaderboards.

Host settings

The host picks these when setting up the run. They’re fixed once the run launches, and everyone can see them on the run’s page:

• Version. Randomized, the default: every player gets their own shuffled game, built from their own file. Vanilla: everyone plays the game exactly as it ships. Under Advanced, the host can choose what the randomizer changes.
• Level caps. Off by default. With gym leader caps, no Pokémon can level past the next gym leader’s strongest (after the last badge, the Champion’s): EXP stops there, and Rare Candies won’t work. The run board shows each player’s cap.
• Shared EXP (runs with friends). Off by default. When it’s on, a linked Pokémon’s partners gain the same EXP it does.
• Route rule (runs with friends). Strict, the default: a missed catch burns the route for everyone. Accretive: once a link has formed on a route, a later miss only costs that player.
• Catches that don’t count. What happens to a catch you weren’t allowed. By default the game tells you to box it; the host can have Soullinked remove it automatically.

Coming later

• More ways to link: by the order Pokémon were caught, or picked by hand. Every run links by route for now.

More is on the roadmap.