❤️‍🔥 Soul Link (co-op)

The cooperative Nuzlocke: two to four players sign a contract, and from then on the Pokémon they caught in the same place are bound to each other. One dies, they all die.

The bind is where you caught it

Not a party slot, not the order you caught things in — the zone. You and your partner both catch something on Route 3, and those two Pokémon are soulmates for the rest of the run.

• 🔗 Bound

  Two or more members have caught in that zone. The Pokémon are tied together and free to battle.

• ⏳ Pending

  You caught somewhere your partner has not reached yet. It cannot battle until they catch there too — the chat tells you which zone it is waiting on.

• 💀 Orphaned

  Your partner failed that zone's encounter, so the other half is never coming. The Pokémon that was waiting dies.

Every Pokémon in a linked run must be bound; pending is the only legitimate exception. An unbound Pokémon is one whose death would cost the group nothing, which is the one thing a Soul Link is.

Your starter counts as its own shared zone, so starters bind to starters.

Signing

Right-click a player and pick Soul Link from Cobblemon's interaction wheel, next to Trade and Duel — or type /nuzlocke soullink link <player>.

Being offered a link is a screen you have to answer: Accept or Decline, no escape key, and it comes back if you die or log out while it is open. Agreeing to a Soul Link means agreeing that somebody else's mistakes can end your run, so it is not a line of chat that scrolls away.

Signing binds what you already own, matched up by zone on the spot. Anything caught somewhere your partner has not been simply waits.

Bringing in a third and a fourth

A contract can be extended at any time. Whoever joins binds into every zone they have already caught in, and the binds the others had already formed stay exactly as they were — nobody loses their team because somebody else signed.

When it goes wrong

• Shared death — a linked Pokémon dies and every soulmate dies with it, even if its owner is offline. They meet the news on their next login.
• No lone combat — a bound Pokémon stays in its ball unless its partners are in their owners' active parties.
• One last chance — being wiped out by your partner's loss is not instantly a Game Over. With zones still left to catch in, you may travel and try one more encounter. Land it and the run continues; fail it and it ends.

The Soul Link log

While you are in a link, the I key opens the link's log instead of your own. It is the same screen with the truth added:

It shows	Why it matters
Every member's zones, labelled with whose they are	one member spending a zone changes what the others can still do
Your partner's Pokémon in full	species, nickname, and whether it is alive, dead or gone
Which binds are waiting	those are the Pokémon that cannot battle yet
Who is on a Gym Leader Challenge, and on what type	what your partner is even allowed to use

Partners who are offline still appear, showing the last state the run recorded.

Settings

Option	Default	What it does
enable_soul_link	on	master toggle for the whole system
soul_link_max_players	4	how many players one contract may hold (2–4)
soul_link_request_seconds	120	how long an offer stays open
prevent_lone_combat	on	a bound Pokémon needs its partners active to be sent out

Soul Link sits on top of the Hardcore Nuzlocke rules — set both up from the same NUZLOCKE tab at world creation, or later with /nuzlocke set.