Modern Emerald Nuzlocke Guide: Settings, Level Caps and Safety

Modern Emerald has a Nuzlocke page in the new-game menu with presets (Easy, Normal and Hardcore) plus granular options, so you do not need a separate ruleset document — but the settings you don't pick matter as much as the ones you do.

Set these before you start

• Difficulty — pick it at Birch's speech and turn on Lock difficulty if you want to be held to it; the lock releases after you beat the game, and Hard forces Set battle style.
• Level caps — this is the single most important Nuzlocke setting. Normal caps or Hard caps, and the cap applies per badge. Hard mode shifts every cap up if you are using the caps-and-Hard tables.
• Player items — controls whether you can use items in battle at all. Hardcore means off.
• Trainer items — whether enemy trainers get to heal.
• Party limit — one to five Pokémon if you want a restricted run.
• EXP multiplier — ×1, ×1.5, ×2 or ×0 (no EXP from battles, which turns the run into a pure level-cap puzzle).
• Catch rate — ×1, ×0.5, ×2 or ×3, handy when an encounter you need is a 1% roll.
• Less chance of running away — makes fleeing unreliable, so every wild encounter is a commitment.

Rules the hack enforces for you

• HM slots are Nuzlocke-safe: HM moves can be used from the menu without teaching them, as long as you hold the HM and have the badge, so you never have to burn a moveslot or a party slot on field progress.
• Level caps block progress when enabled — you cannot simply out-level a gym, and the cap rows are the gym leaders' ace levels.
• Dupe-free encounter mode matters. If you are using New encounters, routes have more species than vanilla, which changes encounter odds on every route. The encounters-by-route comparison shows where the tables differ.

Features that reduce cheap deaths

• Catching EXP is on, so catching for the run still pays you back.
• Trainer class-based Pokéballs and item drops from wild Pokémon give you a steady supply of healing without shopping.
• Rematches trigger 50% of the time after 10 wild or 5 trainer battles won — free level catch-up when you are under-levelled.
• The Chansey EXP trainer in Lilycove Gym (postgame) is the fastest recovery grind if you lose a party member late.
• The IV/EV editor the Oldale Town NPC gives you, and the IV maximizer in Lilycove (postgame, needs a level 100 Pokémon) can turn a late catch into a usable team member.

Hardcore, specifically

The Hardcore preset plus Hard caps, items off, Set style and less running away is the version most challenge runners use. Add Hard mode Experience only if you also want the 40% EXP cut reverted — the hack's notes say Hard mode's EXP was tuned by hand and reverting it makes the run easy.

Option names and preset behaviour from the hack's official documentation and feature list; cap numbers from the extracted src/caps.c tables.