EV-training & IV-breeding
Alright, so I'm making this guide for anyone new to competitive battling, in the pokémon games.
I'll make sure to be as discriptive as possible, but also making sure that anyone will be able to have joy of this guide, being able to understand every single thing, perhabs after reading it a couple of times ^^
I'll be going over various topics, and to set up a bit of perspective I would like to make a list of contents:
.,~'*List Of Contents*'~,.
...EV-Training...
...Natures...
...IV-breeding...
...EV-Training...
...Natures...
...IV-breeding...
.,~'*EV-Training*'~,.
Effort Values, or for short; EV's, are points given to your pokémon when you defeat a particular species. For an example a Geudude with the known high Defence-stat, will give you 1 EV in defence. 4 EV's in a certain stat calculates the same as 1 stat-point. Say, your pokémon currently has 41 defence. Defeat 4 geududes, and it will get 1 additional defence stat, apart from the points it gets from ordinary growth. Meaning, if your pokémon was originally to gain 1 defence-point in it's next leveling up, it would in theory get 2 instead. All Pokémon give different EV's when defeated, and some even give 2 different types of EV's - for instance that could be Defence and also Special Defence.
Because EV's raise the pokémons stats, people like to "EV-train" their pokémon for maximum stats in one stat.
A pokémon can no longer recieve EV's when it has reached the maximum of 510 EV's. And also, only 255 EV's may be used for a single stat. For instance, let's go with Machop, which will give us 1 attack-EV when defeated. You can thus only defeat it 255 times, before it will then stop giving you EV's. Then, ultimately you will have to choose another stat to gain EV's in. You can recieve EV's in all stats: Health Points(HP), Attack(Atk.), Defence(Def.), Special Attack(Sp.Atk.), Special Defence(Sp.Def.) and Speed(Spd).
Doing a little math, by getting yourself 255 EV's in Attack, you will gain 63 points in Attack, and a 3/4. Since 3/4 isn't an entire stat, people refrain from using the last 3 EV's in that stat, and 'save it for later'. Thus you have 252 EV's in Attack equal to 63 points in Attack. Since the roof of one stat is 255, and we only make it 252 per stat, let's say we want EV's in another stat. Say, we want to make a physical sweeper out of our pokémon, so we'll ultimately need: Attack and Speed. So we must gain Speed, right? Magikarp is one pokémon that is easy to get to and gives 1 speed-EV. So let's say we will defeat 252 Magikarps, and now we have another 63 points of Speed added to our pokémon, but what about the last 6 EV-stats? These last stats, are pretty much not usefull, since they can maximum give us 1 stat in some third stat. So let's just say we want to put these last 6 EV's into our HP. Let's see, Bidoof is a pokémon that gives 1 HP-EV. So we'll just defeat 4 of those, and the last 2? They are a half stat, and doesn't help us any, so they don't matter. You can add them to HP as well, if you wish, but in the end, it doesn't make any difference to the pokémon.
Remember that ANY pokémon in the game gives you EV's. Also the ones in Trainer-battles, and even the legendary pokémon. So if you want to EV-train your pokémon, do it at the very beginning, so you don't waste any EV's on pokémon you don't want to get EV's from.
Also take notice that any pokémon that recieves experience from defeating a pokémon recieves the same EV's, meaning you can put your weak pokémon that needs to be EV-trained in the front, and then switch out to your stronger pokémon and defeat it. Thus both the strong pokémon and your weak pokémon will recieve both experience AND EV's. You can also just give an "Exp. Share" to the pokémon you want to EV-train, then it will also get the EV's, even though it hasn't been at the scene of battle.
Now, that we've fully EV-trained our pokémon, all we can do is to level it up, learn it some kick-ass moves, and defeat some opponents!
Making EV-training easier
If you are now thinking "Oh god! That is going to take a whole bunch of a long time!", then worry not, 'cause there are several ways to make it easier for you!
First, there is the Macho Brace. The Macho Brace is an item used for EV-training. You can get it in Pastoria City (In Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum), from a Bug Catcher, who is indeed very obsessed with the pokémon called "Burmy". What you need to do, to have the Macho Brace from him, is to show him the 3 different forms of Burmy. There is the Plant Cloak, the Sandy Cloak and the Trash Cloak. First you must catch a Burmy.
In order to show it to the Bug Catcher in the Plant Cloak, you must level it up in some of the tall grass in, for example, a forest, then go show it to him.
For Sandy Cloak, you must level it up while on a beach. Just fight any eventual trainers that are on the beach. Then go show it to him.
For Trash Cloak, you must level it up, when inside a building. Just fight any eventual trainers that are inside the building. Go show it to him, and he will grant you the Macho Brace.
What the Macho Brace does is to double the amount of EV's you gain, every time you defeat a pokémon, as long as the pokémon you want it to happen to, is holding the Macho Brace.
So if your pokémon which you want to train in attack-EV's, is holding the Macho Brace, and defeats a Machop, then it will gain 2 attack-EV's, instead of just 1. This reduces your work by half, already! Which makes it, instead of defeating 252 Machops, you'll only have to defeat 126!
But it does still sound like a lot, doesn't it? If you have defeated the Pokémon League once, and made it to "Fight Area", then that is where you can get the ultimate EV-training items.These items are reffered to as "Power Items", as their names are as follows:
Power Weight(Raises Health Points)
Power Bracer(Raises Attack)
Power Belt(Raises Defence)
Power Lens(Raises Special Attack)
Power Band(Raises Special Defence)
Power Anklet(Raises Speed)
What these Power Items do, is to raise the amount of EV's you gain from defeating a foe, as long as the item represents the same EV(s) you gain from the pokémon.
Basically they add 4 EV's to the EV-point they represent as and only if the pokémon you defeat give any of these EV's when defeated.
Let's put up an example, to make it easier to understand, and why don't we stick to Machop?
Machop normally gives you 1 attack-EV when you defeat it. Give the pokémon you are EV-training the Power Bracer, and a simple equation comes up: 1 + 4 = 5
This means that while holding the Power Bracer, you gain 5 EV-points from defeating 1 Machop. Now, you're EV-training grew a lot faster, don't you think?
There is a hunch, though. The Power Items drastically lowers the speed of the pokémon holding it. In fact, it halves the speed of that pokémon, but then again, that doesn't matter if your pokémon is already lvl 25 and you start EV-training with Magikarps :]
If you want to know how to actually get these Power Items in details, I'll just explain that.
When you are in the Fight Area, you are able to enter a big place called the "Battle Frontier", where you can take part in 5 differet 'games', of a sort. For instance, your rival's father is the "Frontier Brain" of the tower just up in the top of the place. By winning in any of these five places that put you up to different challenges, you gain something called "Battle Points". If you made it to the tower already, you may have noticed the little market in the middle of it all. Here you can buy various items for these Battle Points. You can get nasty TMs, for no money at all! All it costs, is time ;] But also, in one of these stalls, you can buy the Power Items. They Cost 32 Battle Points EACH, so it'll probably take you some time to be able to afford them all.
But there is a smart thing about this place, if you battle long enough, you will at one point meet the leader, the Frontier Brain, and if you can defeat this person, you get a number of battle points, way out of what you have recieved from winning battles before.
However, these Frontier Brains can be tricky, so for you to be tricky, you could always check their team out by searching on google, and prepare your team for being able to counter the Frontier Brain's team.
Now then, there is another thing that can be a crucial factor to EV-training. It is something called "PokéRus". It is something that doubles the amount of EV's you gain when you defeat a pokémon - yes, just like the Macho Brace does. However, the PokéRus, isn't an item. It's a condition.
You are able of being lucky enough to catch a pokémon having this PokéRus, and the thing about PokéRus is: It infects other pokémon in your party, however! It is only temporary, so if you just caught a pokémon with PokéRus, you should put it in your box emidiately, for future use of PokéRus. The thing about PokéRus is, that it goes away by time, and the only way you can store it, is to put the infected pokémon inside one of your boxes on your PC.(In-game, naturally)
You can eventually check through your box to see if any of your pokémon have PokéRus.
How do you see if a pokémon has PokéRus? It's simple, go to their status screen, and look for the gray thing that says: "PKRS".
To make it easier on you, here is a picture taken by a pokémon with PokéRus:
- POKERUS.jpg (113.59 KiB) Viewed 3734 times
So, let's make an example out of PokéRus, before we move on:
Our pokémon, whom we want to train in attack-EV's, is now infected with PokéRus(x2), AND is holding the Power Bracer(+4), has just defeated a Machop:
1 + 4 * 2 = 10
Our pokémon, will now gain 10 attack EV's for defeating one Machop.
Say it is a Machamp we are facing, which normally gives 3 attack EV's(Machoke gives 2), would end up like this:
3 + 4 * 2 = 14
This is the absolute maximum of EV's you can gain by defeating a pokémon. There is not any way to gain any more than this per defeated pokémon, since there isn't one pokémon in the entire game that gives above 3 EV's in a stat.
The very last thing that is possible to do in EV-training, is to feed your pokémon any of the following items:
HP UP (Raises HP)
Protein (Raises Attack)
Iron (Raises Defence)
Calcium (Raises Special Attack)
Zinc (Raises Special Defence)
Carbos (Raises Speed)
These 'pills' raises your pokémons EV's by 10, each. A pokémon can eat a maximum of 10 pills in each stat, leaving them having gained 100 EV's in a stat. For example, let's say we gave our pokémon who still needs attack-EVs 10 Proteins, and it would instantly have 100 EV's in Attack. That would leave only 152 EV's left to train. However, if you try to give it the 11th Protein, you will simply recieve the message: "It wont have any effect".
As the last thing to include, here are some hotspots for EV-training:
Diamond:
Cool Ivysaur wrote:HP: Route 209.(Vs Seeker)That cowgirl near the Lost Tower Has 6 bidoofs , 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Attack: Route 209.Bibarel,(common),2 evs without or 12evs with Pkrs+P.item,Ninjomewtwo wrote:fish with Super Rod in Twinleaf town only nets you Seaking and Gyrados - gives +2 Attack EVs both.
Defense: Oreburg Mine.Geodude and Onix(very common),both 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Sp.Attack: Eterna Forest,Old Chateau.Gastly(100%), 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Sp.Defense: Route 223.Tentacruel(common) ,2 evs without or 12evs with Pkrs+P.item
0r Mantyke(rare), 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Speed: Route 204-Inside the cave.Zubat, 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item,Ninjomewtwo wrote:in Victory Road, when Surfing in the only room with water, you only fight Golbat and (in Platinum) Floatzel, both giving +2 Speed EVs.
Platinum:
Cool Ivysaur wrote:HP: Verity Lakefront.Bidoof(common) , 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Attack: Route 222.(Vs Seeker)The Rich boy near the big patch of grass has Luxray,3 evs without or 14evs with Pkrs+P.item and The Fisherman closest to the Rich boy has 2 Gyarados,2 evs without or 12evs with Pkrs+P.item (x2),or Route 209.Bibarel,(not common),2 evs without or 12evs with Pkrs+P.itemNinjomewtwo wrote:fish with Super Rod in Twinleaf town only nets you Seaking and Gyrados - gives +2 Attack EVs both.
Defense: Oreburg Mine.Geodude and Onix(very common),both 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Sp.Attack: Eterna Forest,Old Chateau.Gastly(100%), 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Sp.Defense: Route 223.Tentacruel(common) ,2 evs without or 12evs with Pkrs+P.item
0r Mantyke(rare), 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item
Speed: Route 204-Inside the cave.Zubat, 1ev without or 10evs with Pkrs+P.item,Ninjomewtwo wrote:in Victory Road, when Surfing in the only room with water, you only fight Golbat and (in Platinum) Floatzel, both giving +2 Speed EVs.
HeartGold/SoulSilver:
Cool Ivysaur wrote:HP: Slowpoke's Well (Surf): Slowpoke(1)
Attack:route 42 (Surf): Goldeen (1) and Seeking (2)
Defense:
route 45 : Graveler(2), Geodude(1), HG-Gligar(1)/SS-Skarmory(2)
SpAttack:
Tin tower (Night): Ghastly(1)
route 6 (Surf): Psyduck(1) and Golduck(1)
SpDefense:
Surf in sea: Tentacool(1),Tentacruel (2)
Speed:
Bell tower: Rattata(Morning,Day) speed(1)
Diglett's cave: Digglett(1),Dugtrio (2)
And that concludes EV-training, have fun!
.,~'*Natures*'~,.
Natures are something that every pokémon possesses one of. If you enter one of your pokémon's stats-screens, (Summary) and then go one page to the right, you will be able to see what nature that pokémon possesses.
A nature is something that boosts a sertain stat of your pokémon by 10 %, but hinders another stat by also 10 %.
Meaning that getting sertain natures for your pokémon can be crucial to how your pokémon will grow up.
There are in all 25 natures, that each raise or lower different stats.
Here is a list of all the natures in the Pokémon games, that shows which stat they phraise and hinder, in alphabetical order:
- Made by Kirluu - credits for psypokes.com
- PokemonNatures.png (19.14 KiB) Viewed 3725 times
(Home-made product - All rights reserved - Kirluu)
The two most popular natures for people to want in offensive strategies, is Adamant and Modest.
Adamant raises Attack, while it lowers Special Attack, which is good for any Attack-based pokémon. Since you must have a stat hindered as well as one boosted, it is perfect to hinder a stat that you wont be using anyway. Modest is the same, just the other way around - It boosts Special Attack, while it hinders Attack, meaning this one is perfect for pokémon that are mostly based on Special Attack.
People who want fast pokémon usually takes either Jolly or Timid. They both raise Speed, however Jolly hinders Special Attack(Good for Attack-based pokémon), while Timid hinders Attack(Good for Special Attack-based pokémon).
Now, I believe you to be with me so far.
It is commonly done amongst competitive battlers to breed for a certain nature, to make their pokémon strong in the way the want it. There are in fact few things needed to breed for a certain nature, but you can by maximum only achieve a 50 % chance that you will get the nature you want, which is a lot, compared to you previous chances of mere 4 % (1/25).
In order to reach the 50 % chance, the first thing you will need is a male-gendered pokémon of the pokémon you wish a certain nature for.
Next thing you need, will be a Ditto with the exact same nature as the one you wish for. For example, if you wanted to nature-breed a machop, you would for maximized Attacking-capabilities, want the Adamant-nature. So you would need to get a male Machop/Machoke/Machamp(It doesn't matter which), and a Ditto with the nature Adamant. To get an Adamant Ditto, trade for one, or catch Dittos until you catch an Adamant one. (This can take some time, but then you will always have it).
The next thing you need, is an Everstone. An Everstone is an item to be held by a pokémon, to keep them from evolving, however it has another function as well.
You need to give the Everstone to the Ditto, so that it holds it, and go to Solaceon Town.
Put the Machop and the Ditto in the Daycare, and when they make an Egg, for each Egg, there will be a chance of 50 % that the pokémon that hatches from the Egg(Machop), will have the Adamant nature.
That's more or less all there is about natures...!
.,~'*IV-breeding*'~,.
Yeah, so. IV is short for "Individual Values". It almost says itself, but it's pretty much how strong the individual pokémon is, based on certain values.
Your pokémon has IV's in all stats. That is: Health Points, Attack, Defence, Special Attack, Special Defence and Speed.
The IV's of a pokémon is so to speak, the thing that determins how strong it is. The Individual Values is known in a scale from 1 to 31, where 31 is being the best possible for that pokémon. If you go in under a random pokémon in serebii.net's pokédex[Remember to open the link in a new tab], on the bottom of the page, you will find that pokémon's "base stats". These base stats basically shows you approximately how strong that kind of pokémon is, however, you will also see that under each stat, there is a number that goes from 1 point to another. The lowest number is if your pokémon has 1 IV's in that stat, and thus your pokémon would have the higher number if it had 31 in that stat.
Let's make an example, to make it easier to understand. We'll go with Rattata [Remember to open the link in a new tab]:
If we look at Rattata's Attack-stat for instance, you will see following the box-setup in the bottom of the page that Rattata has 56 base Attack. This means that if Rattata has 31 IVs in Attack it will at lvl. 100 have 211 in attack, with a nature that does not benefit the stat. If it had for example Adamant nature and 31 IV's in Attack, that would make it 264 in lvl. 100. If you look at the HP part, you will see that it doesn't change from beneficial, neutral and hindering, and that is because there isn't any natures that hinder or benefits the HP-stat, however you can still have different IV's in it, and in Rattata's case, that means at lvl. 100, it will have from 170 to 264 HP.
Assuming you understand, we will now move on.
You might have noticed, and you might not have noticed, but your Pokémon in D/P/Pt/HG/SS has a personality(Or Characteristic). You can find this under one of the Summary-screens, when you enter you pokémon's Summary. These characteristics are in fact something that is with you to determine your Pokémon's IV's.
I'll make a list of all the personalities, and what kinds of IVs they can promise.
- Made by Kirluu - credits for serebii.net
- Characteristics.png (66.32 KiB) Viewed 3687 times
(Home-made product - All rights reserved - Kirluu)
A pokémon's characteristic is thus not something that says "Your pokémon has 31 IV's in Attack!" (Assuming it has 'Likes to trash about'), but more like something that says: "Your pokémon has 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, 26 or 31 IV's in Attack!" (Still assuming it has 'Likes to trash about'). So basically, this Characteristic is kind of useless, since it only shows the interval of one stat. Besides, it doesn't have to be 31 because it's one of the characteristics that makes that possible, it might as well be 1.
Let's go through how you breed for certain IVs:
First like with nature-breeding, you need a male of a species, and either a Ditto with the nature you want, or a female of the species you want to hatch from the Egg. Give the female species/Ditto with the wanted nature an Everstone, and start breeding Eggs. To quicken up the hatching keep a Pokémon with the ability "Flame Body" in your party. You need 6 Eggs. If you don't want to daycare/Rare Candy each species to high levels in order to check IVs, get a friend to help you. Have all your 6 hatched species in your party, and enter a single- or doublebattle with your friend, and make the levels level 100. Now use one of the many IV-calculators available on the internet to calculate each of the 6 species. To do this, first enter the first of the species' Summary-screen in-battle. Go to the page where you can see it's stats, and then enter an IV-calculator. [url=http://old.veekun.com/dex/calculators/iv[Veekun's IV Calculator[/url] [Remember to open the link in a new tab] is recommended. Now enter the following things without forgetting anything as they are all of vital importance: Species of pokémon, level of pokémon, Nature of pokémon, stats of pokémon at given level. After this, press the "Calculate Individual Values"-button, and it should show you the IV's of that pokémon.
The pokémon with the best IV's in the stats you need the most, you must use. If for instance you were breeding Rattatas, who would need most of Attack and Speed, and you bred one that had something like 27 Attack-IVs and 28 Speed-IVs, which was male, then that would be a good one to replace the other male Rattata that you had already used. The same with the female. The better the IVs the parents of the Eggs have, the better IVs the hatched pokémon will get. It is best recommended to use a male and a female species of the pokémon you want rather than using a Ditto, since you can't just breed for a new Ditto to get better IVs, which you can with all other female pokémon. So unless you have a Ditto with IVs perfect for the pokémon to be breeded, then it would be stupid to keep using the same Ditto again and again.
The reason of all this exchanging the parents lie in one fact. That is that when you breed a pokémon, that pokémon inherits 3 IV-stats from it's parents. This is random and cannot be manipulated into inheriting only certain stats. So even if the parents of our Rattata has 31 in Attack and Speed, it doesn't necessarily mean that the hatched Rattata will get the same IVs in those exact two stats. All the IVs that are inherited are inherited by either the father or mother, meaning it might inherit only from the mom or dad, or from part one and part the other. Another sad thing about this is that even if you have two parents to your pokémon that have 31 IVs in all stats(This is outrageously rare), it doesn't ensure 3 stats with 31 IVs, because of the fact that the 3 IV-inheritations can overlap eachother.
We'll make an example: Our Rattata has two Raticates as mom and dad. The dad Raticate has 31 IVs in all stats, and the mom has 1 IV in all it's stats. Our little Rattata is in the midst of being hatched, and now it inherits it's dad's Attack-IVs, which makes it 31 at present being. Now Rattata randomly inherits something from it's mom. Rattata inherits it's mom's Speed-IVs, which makes it 1! That's not so good... Now Rattata is to inherit IV's from either it's dad or mom again. It'll be from it's mom. Oh no! Rattata inheritted it's mom's Attack-IVs, which now overlaps the Attack-IVs it already inherited from it's father!
This scenario makes Rattata hatch with the following IVs:
| HP: ?? | Attack: 1 | Defence: ?? | Special Attack: ?? | Special Defence: ?? | Speed: 1 |
That doesn't quite look too good even with a parent with 31 in all IVs, does it?
For instance if both Rattata's mom and dad had 31 in all their stats, it could either get 31 in 3 different stats (For example Speed, Attack and Defence), or it could end up with just 1 stat with 31 IVs, since there is a chance that it might overlap 3 times on fx. something bad like Special Defence. (Sp.Def. doesn't really help a Rattata much)
[credits for Ninjomewtwo]
To put the inheriting of IVs into steps, these following steps occour:
1. An IV is passed at random from any of the two parents to the baby.
2. A second IV of any stat other than HP is passed from any of the parents to the baby. It can overlap the previous one.
3. A third IV of any stat other than HP or Defense is passed from any of the parents to the baby. Again, it can overlap the previous ones.
4. The remaining IVs (ranging from 3 to 5) are set at random.
And that's why HP is the hardest stat to breed for. So, if A is an IV from the male parent, B one from the female parent and X an IV at random, X/A/A/A/X/X, X/A/X/X/X/X and A/B/X/X/X/X are all possible results.[/credits]
This guide was made entirely by Kirluu, however with edited sections by other users on the http://www.uepc.eu. Credits are given to www.serebii.net, www.veekun.com ,www.psypokes.com, www.google.com, Cool Ivysaur, Ninjomewtwo
Any feedback on this guide is well accepted, also, please tend to my request of further knowledge on the Wi-Fi section.(The line marked in BOLD) Also if you feel after reading this through, that something is missing, please do say so, and I will look into it ASAP.
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