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marchionessofmustacheSo, it's that time again. The time where I try to force everyone into playing Pokémon competitively, now with Sword and Shield! The catching and breeding game is actually really fun this time around with Max Raid Battles and stuff.
So let's talk about how to make your pokes into the best pokes they can possibly poke.
This assumes you already understand the basics of what each stat (HP, Attack, Defense, etc.) does.
First, you need to understand how stats are calculated. Stats are not "gained" but are rather just recalculated every time you do something that would change them (level up, eat a mint, use a bottlecap, etc.) so you don't have to worry about 'missing out' if you just caught a Pokémon at level 65. It can grow in stats just as well as a fresh-born hatchling at level 1.
Stats are a combination of a bunch of things.
Firstly, your level. The higher the level of the Pokémon, the better their stats. Competitive battling happens at Lv50, but you can also use your competitive mons for Max Raid Battles, which can be any level, so level up to your heart's content!
Next there are various types of stats and modifiers. There are THREE functional "types" of "base stats" in Pokémon, though we'll only refer to the first one as base stats. The other are like secondary base stats. And then there's nature which gives you a boost to one stat and a hurt to another.
The first is your species base stat. These are generally referred to as "base stats." For example, all Rapidash have a base Speed stat of 105. Every single Rapidash in the game has this same base stat, no matter what.
These cannot change no matter what, and all Pokémon share them. They're a good way to easily compare two Pokémon, for example, to see who is generally faster. Usually these stats are what you want to consider when you decide how to build your Pokey.
Then there is an additional type of "base stat" (though no one calls it that) for each stat called Potential (or by the more common fan name, "Individual Values" or "IVs"). Each stat has a Potential/IV between 0 and 31, and these can drastically affect your stat. 0 is the worst and you will have a low stat, and 31 is the highest and you will have a high stat. So a Rapidash with 0 Potential Speed will still have a much lower speed than a Rapidash with 31 Potential Speed, even though they both have the same base stat of 105. Because the 0 and 31 are also base stats on top of base stats.
Potential is decided at "birth" for a Pokémon. For hatched Pokémon, the Potential is determined at the time the egg is generated (so you can't reroll by hatching the egg over and over again). For a wild Pokémon, the Potential is determined at the start of battle.
Potential can not change exactly, but once you get your Pokémon to Level 100, you can use Bottlecaps to "modify" the Potential so it acts as if it were 31 instead of whatever it actually is. Bottlecaps are wasteful and cumbersome, though, so it's better to try to catch and breed for Potential. Catching Pokémon with an aura or in Max Raid Battles guarantees some of their stats' Potentials will be the max of 31. And then parents can breed down their Potentials to their children, so you can combine sets of parents to get hatchlings with all of their Potentials you want at max 31.
Also, a Potential at 31 is called "Best."
While Potential and base stats are pre-determined values for each Pokémon, Effort is gained through training. Every time a Pokémon gains EXP through a battle, it also gains hidden values called Effort Values (EVs). These modify your stat further, making them like a third type of "base stat" for the Pokémon, but this one you get to control however you like.
You can only get a total of 510 EVs, and you can only have up to 252 EVs in a single stat. So you want to plan your distribution of them wisely and make sure you only fight Pokémon that will gain you the right EVs (until they are maxed at 510, then it doesn't matter what you fight).
It's also important to note that EVs only work in fours. Like, getting 1, 2, or 3 EVs will not change your stat at all, but 4 EVs in a stat will change it. So always divide your EVs into multiples of four. Generally, you dump 252 into 2 stats and throw the other 6 into something else (yes, 2 of those go wasted because 510 is not divisible by 4). For example, with my Rapidash, I put 252 into Speed, 252 into Attack, and the last 4 into HP.
Basically every Pokémon you battle will give you 1 to 3 EVs in a certain stat. To know what these are, you'll just have to look them up, but I'll discuss some 'hot spots' later to easily gain them. So for example, whenever you fight Rookidee, you get 1 EV in Speed. So if you fight 252 Rookidees with your Pokémon, it will have the absolute max Speed it could possibly have from EVs. Don't worry, you don't have to actually fight 252 of them. We'll talk more about how to gain them more easily later.
Each Pokémon has a nature. There are 25 different natures a Pokémon can have, and it's randomly generated at birth. 5 of the natures do nothing, and the other 20 will raise one stat while lowering another. (Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, or Speed -- Natures don't affect HP) Basically this is just a 10% bonus and detriment to the two affected stats. You can easily see what stats your nature affects by looking at the stats on the sub-summary page while in the box. The stat listed in pink is boosted by 10% and the stat listed in blue is lowered by 10%.
While you can't change your nature, you can feed your Pokémon a Mint that will make it act like it has a different nature. So if you give your Pokémon a Jolly Mint, the effect of their current nature disappears and their bonus applies as if it were Jolly nature (+Speed -Special).
Natures are also passed down through parents through use of the Everstone. Once you have a Pokémon of the nature you want, you can make sure all eggs get that same nature, so it's a lot less cumbersome than using Mints which are stupid expensive and only work on one Pokémon one time.
So in the end, it's your Species base stats, Potential, Effort, Nature, and of course, Level that all determine what your stats are at any given time. Outside of Effort, these are all things that are determined when your Pokémon is born, so you will mostly breed and catch for those. Effort is all in how you train them, and it maxes out, so once you finish Effort Training, your Pokémon is "done" and its stats are set in stone (besides, of course, your current level, until that hits 100).
So now that you understand how your Pokémon's stats are generated, you're going to want to maximize them as much as you can. You can't just maximize everything, but rather have to focus in certain places. Your Nature is going to hurt one of your stats, it's extremely difficult to get more than 5 Potentials as 31/Best, and you only get 510 EVs to divide amongst your stats. In general, focusing on trying to 'well-round' your Pokémon will just make it bad at everything. You want to focus on its strengths.
Oh, and it's not a stat, but you want to pay attention to your Pokémon's ability, too.
So for example, looking at Rapidash again. The species has high base Attack and Speed, so we're going to want to use it as a fast Pokémon that hits hard with physical attacks. So we're going to focus completely on Attack and Speed. Before you start catching and breeding, you need to know what you're looking for. You want to look at your Pokémon, what its strengths are, what kind of moves you'll use, and how those work along with their ability, so you can decide ahead of time what nature and Potential and stuff you're going to look for.
So let's talk about how to get the various values that you want.
Level is obvious. You just level up. You want this to be as high as possible. Since gaining EXP means also gaining EVs, though, you want to wait and level up after you have maxed out your EVs. Now for the harder stuff...
Most of what we're going to talk about in the next parts are about breeding, so let's talk a little about how it works. If you put two compatible Pokémon into the daycare together, they will regularly lay eggs, from which a new Pokémon will be born.
Hatched eggs are ALWAYS the same species of the mother, at the un-evolved state. So breeding Arcanine (male) and Rapidash (female) will always produce Ponyta.
WITHOUT USING ANY SPECIAL METHODS:
- Gender will be chosen just as it is in the wild (different rates for different species).
- Nature is chosen completely at random from the 25 possible natures.
- 3 Potentials will be passed from the parents (for example, the game will choose three stats, then choose one parent for each stat)
- The other 3 Potentials will be generated completely randomly from 0-31 for the stats.
- The ability of the baby will be 70% chance of having the same ability as the mother, 30% chance of having the other possible ability. If the mother or father has a hidden ability, the baby has 50% chance of having hidden ability, and 25% chance of having each of the other two abilities.
However we can use different strategies to make these chances a lot better. For example, in the next section, I'll tell you how to make 100% of the babies the right nature, rather than just 1/25.
First, look at a table of natures to see which nature you want. Once you do this enough, you'll memorize some of the most common ones.
For example with Rapidash, we are focusing on Attack and Speed, so we want something that raises either or those two things. But we have to sacrifice a stat, too. That's fine, because we won't be using Special Attack at all, since we're using Attack. Rapidash already has a pretty high base speed (105) so we're going to count on it being fast enough most of the time, and choose a nature that boosts Attack and lowers Special Attack. This is Adamant nature.
Normally it's a 1/25 chance to get the nature you want, but if one of the parents is holding an Everstone, it will ALWAYS pass that nature on to every egg. So just get a parent with the right nature and give it an Everstone, and you'll guarantee you always get the nature you want.
If you don't have a parent with the right nature, you just have to breed the Pokémon again and again until one hatches that is the nature you want. You can also try catching again and again until you catch one with the nature you want. Do whichever is easier. Once you have it, you can force breed it.
Catching can be easier if you have a Pokémon that has the ability Synchronize. If you have a Pokémon with Synchronize in your first slot, every wild Pokémon you encounter has a 50% chance of being the same nature as your Pokémon with Synchronize. You can set up a whole army of Synchronize Pokémon for the sake of catching Pokémon with the natures you want. This is pretty easy -- just grab a female Natu with Synchronize and breed her over and over and 70% of the babies will have Synchronize. Just keep going til you get one of every nature. You can even ignore certain natures (like you don't ever need natures that lower Defense or Special Defense, as you always want your defenses to be as high as possible). Once you have this army, you can just go out and catch the nature that you want.
Another possibility is to catch a harem of Ditto. Ditto can breed with ANY Pokémon (because it transforms into it, I guess) of any gender and even Pokémon with no gender. So if you catch Dittos over and over until you have one of every nature, you can always just throw one in with an Everstone and breed the Pokémon you want with the right nature. You can even get Dittos that have Best Potentials, too!
This is the hard one. Normally three stats' Potentials are chosen to be inherited from the parents, but if one of the parents is holding the item called Destiny Knot, five will be inherited instead of three. Basically the game will choose one of the stats and generate it at random from Potential 0-31, and then the other five stats it will choose one of the parents each to pass down that Potential. So you want to get parents with the best Potentials you can and try to pass them down.
For example, let's say I have a father with Best HP, Attack, and Defense, and a mother with Best Special Defense and Speed. We want our Pokémon to have all five. So we put these two in the daycare, and then hope that the RNG chooses Special Attack as the one to randomly generate, and then the other 5 will come from the parents. Then we have to hope the RNG chooses the father for HP, Attack, and Defense, and the mother for Special Defense and Speed.
Of course, it won't always work out so easily. But if we get a new female baby with HP, Special Attack, and Speed, for example, we'll now have a better chance of getting the stats we need when both parents have 3 stats instead of one having 2. So we'll take the daughter and put her in daycare to fuck her dad. Yeah there's lots of Pokémon inbreeding.
Basically you keep getting better and better parents, replacing them in the daycare, until eventually you have one that has Best of all 5 stats you want. You can try to go for 6, but you have a 1/192 chance of hatching a Best in all 6 stats if you have two parents with 5 Bests. So good luck. But usually you will not use Attack or Special Attack, so you can just sacrifice that one.
But how do you get parents with Best Potential to begin with? And how do you even know what the Potential is?
Potential is hidden until you've gone to the Battle Tower and reached Poke Ball Rank (Rank 4). You'll have to win at least 6 battles in the Battle Tower to reach this rank. Then you'll get a "Judge" feature for your boxes. Head into your box and press the + button to change the information displayed about the Pokémon you're hovering over. Go to the judging page, and each stat will list its Potential, from stuff like "Decent" to "very Good" and of course, if you have the max of 31, "Best." You're looking for Bests!
Whenever you encounter a Pokémon in the wild, each stat is randomly generated Potential from 0 to 31. So each stat has a 1/32 chance of being Best. This is not very good, so you're probably not going to get very many Bests by catching random wild Pokémon.
However, in Sword and Shield there are some ways to guarantee some Bests. When you are battling a lot in an area, sometimes a Pokémon will have a mysterious aura surrounding them. Battling this Pokémon will give you Watts. If you catch this Pokémon, it is guaranteed to have at least 2 Bests.
The other method is even better -- Max Raid Battles. Max Raid Battles have a difficulty rating of 2 to 5 stars. For every star above 1, that many stats are guaranteed to be best. So if you fight a 5-star Pokémon, it is guaranteed to have FOUR stats at Best. So catch lots of aura Pokémon and raid Pokémon, and you'll build up a collection of Pokémon with Best stats.
I organize all my Pokémon into boxes so that all with 1 Best are in a box, all with 2 Bests are in a box, etc. So when I'm looking for parents, I can see if I already have them. Since there are new Max Raid Battles and stuff regularly, you can collect a lot of potential parents.
A valuable Pokémon to have with Bests is Ditto. There's a spot in the very northwest corner of the Wild Area where wild Ditto can appear with Auras, and even more rarely, Ditto can appear as a Max Raid Battle. Collect these whenever you can since they can breed with anyone.
Also note while it's not often you'll need to do it, you can also use Power Items to guarantee that parent passes down their Potential in that one stat only. You an read about Power Items in the EV Training section.
Ability is a lot easier. Pokémon have three ability slots: normal ability 1, normal ability 2, and hidden ability. Some Pokémon have the same ability for both normal ability 1 and 2 so it doesn't matter.
When a Pokémon appears in the wild, it will randomly have normal ability 1 or normal ability 2, each at 50% rate. However, in Max Raid Battles or Aura battles, there is also a chance (I think 40%, but I'm not sure) that it will have the hidden ability. Then the other 60% is again divided between normal 1 and 2.
When in the daycare, an egg has a 70% chance of getting the normal ability 1 or 2 slot that matches the mother. The other 30% is the other normal ability slot.
However, if the mother has a hidden ability, there's a 50% chance of getting the hidden ability, with the other 50% divided evenly among getting normal ability 1 or 2.
If you use an ability capsule, you can change your ability between normal 1 and 2. But this is really expensive and it's easier to just breed until you get the one you want.
Once you have hatched your perfect baby with the Nature, Potential, and Ability that you want, it's time to start training! Every Pokémon in the game gives you Effort Values when you gain EXP from it in battle. You don't have to have your Pokémon fight in the battle, just gain the EXP, so you can fight with a strong Pokémon and just let the other ones in your party soak up the delicious EXP and EVs.
Here are some hotspots for training each stat:
HP = Skwovet on Route 1
ATTACK = Chewtle on Route 2
DEFENSE = Rolycoly in Galar Mine (or probably in the route just outside of it)
SPECIAL ATTACK = Gastly in Watchtower Ruins (Wild Area)
SPECIAL DEFENSE = Gossifluer on Route 3
SPEED = Rookidee on Route 1
Each of these Pokémon gives ONE EV point in the corresponding stat. So if I put my Lv1 Ponyta in my party and then have my Sizzlipede take out 15 Rookidees on Route 1, my Ponyta will have 15 Speed EVs. If this was all you did, you'd have to battle 252 of them to get the amount of EVs you need. Thankfully, you don't have to do that.
In Hammerlocke's central PMC, there's a league dude who sells you things for BP. You have to battle in the Battle Tower to gain BP. It's annoying at first, but once you train up some competitive mons it gets very fun. Anyway, he sells items called "Power" items. Power Anklet, Power Weight, Power Bracer, etc. These will give you EIGHT EVs of their corresponding types every time you gain EXP from battle. So if you are wearing the Power Bracer, it will give you 8 Attack EVs every time you battle a Pokémon. So if I fought a Rookidee while having my Ponyta hold the Power Bracer, it would get 1 Speed EV (from the Rookidee) and 8 Attack EVs (from the Power Bracer).
So if you match them up, using the Power Anklet + fighting a Rookidee, you'll get 9 Speed EVs from one battle. Then you only have to battle 28 times to get all 252 EVs. 28 battles against Level 3 Rookidees goes VERY fast, especially if you turn off attack animations in the settings.
There's a few other ways to gain EVs, too.
If you have loads of money, you can buy Vitamins. You can buy them Wyndon and Hammerlock PMCs for 10k a piece. Very expensive. Each one will give you 10 EVs of the type it says (Carbos = Speed, etc.)
Once you get all the badges you unlock training camp things in the PokeJobs. These will give you 4 EVs for every hour you spend on the job. So spending a whole day will get you 96 EVs in a stat. What's even better is you get extra by holding a Power Item when you go on the job, so if you send Ponyta to the Attack seminar while holding Power Bracer, it'll get all 252 EVs in Attack after 24 hours at the seminar.
This is kind of a waste of time, though, when you can just battle 28 times and get 252 EVs in 10-20 minutes.
There are also these wings you pick up on the ground especially on bridges. They give 1 EV each. If for some reason you don't feel like battling for your last 4 EVs, you can use wings I guess.
If you want to see how far you are along in EV training, go to your Pokémon's summary. Press X on the stats chart page to go between different types of stats. The yellow chart shows your EVs on top as an orangeish yellow chart. It will "point" out toward the stats as you train them, and when one maxes out, that stat will get sparkly. Once all 510 EVs have been obtained, the orange-yellow graph becomes a blue-grey color instead.
There's also a thing called Pokerus that doubles the EVs you get from any source. It's a "virus" that is given from Pokémon to Pokémon. There's an extremely rare chance (it's like 1 in 20000 or something) that a wild Pokémon will have it, then you can "contract" the virus by hitting it with a move that makes contact with it or by catching it. There's no way to know the Pokémon even has the virus until you've caught it or contracted it and then gone to a Pokémon center, where the attendant will tell you you have it.
As long as you have the virus on your Pokémon, you'll get double EVs. The virus can either be active or passed. If it's active, it can infect other Pokémon in your party as you battle with it in your party. Once it's passed, you still get the EV bonus on that Pokémon, but it can't pass it on to other Pokémon anymore.
The virus passes after so many hours. Putting a Pokémon with the virus into a box will 'freeze' the virus so you don't have to worry about it running out.
So with all of that, you should be able to train competitive-level mons with max stats! The Pokémon you fight in Battle Tower will all be fully competitively trained with good natures, IVs, and EVs. And if you want to battle in the online tournaments, you can be sure that your opponents will be using maxed out Pokémon, too.
But it's kind of a lot of information, so let's consolidate.
Before you start anything, you'll want to have cleared the game and gotten access to Battle Tower. Go to Battle Tower and win 6 matches in a row to get the Judge feature for your Pokémon Boxes. Use the BP you gained to buy Power Items (you can only afford two at first; I suggest the Anklet for speed and either the Bracer or Lens for one of the attacks, then battle a little more to get the other attack one).
You'll also need to get Destiny Knot and Everstone.
You can get Everstone as part of the story, or catch wild Boldore or Roggenrola. They have a 50% chance of holding an Everstone when you catch them.
Destiny Knot you can probably buy with BP; I haven't checked yet. But the easiest way to get it is with Pickup. Make a team of all Zigzagoon and Meowth with the ability Pickup and then go fight battles. After winning a battle by defeating or catching the Pokémon, there's a chance that each Pokémon with Pickup will gain a random item after battle if they're not holding anything. There's a set list of items and chances, and Destiny Knot is kinda rare, so just do it for a while until someone gets one.
If you really want to, breed a bunch of Natu with Synchronize or catch a bunch of Ditto until you have all the natures of them. I haven't bothered to do this yet, but will probably make a Synchronize flock soon once Natus actually appear in my Wild Area.
It also helps to have the Oval Charm and a Pokémon with Flame Body or Magma Armor ability to make breeding go faster.
Oval Charm you can get from Circhester hotel (the left one, not the right one) by battling a policeman in one of the rooms. It's a double battle against 6 Pokémon around levels 60-65 so be prepared.
Use Serebii's Abilitydex to find Pokémon with Flame Body or Magma Armor. Personally I had a Litwick in my box that already had it, so I didn't have to go look for one.
The first thing you need to do is actually plan out your Pokémon. Go look it up on Serebii's gen 8 Pokedex (I usually just do a Bing search for Pokémon name + Serebii) and look at everything. Check out its possible abilities, all the moves it can learn, and its base stats. Decide exactly how you want to build the Pokémon. This will let you know which nature you need to try for and what you're going to dump your EVs into and when Potential you can ignore. Write it all down if you have to.
Now you need some parents. Look through your boxes and start finding Pokémon from the same Egg Group as your Pokémon (again, you can find this on Serebii, just click the name of the Egg Group on the Pokedex page to see all the Pokémon in that group). You're going to want to get a group of parents that has, combined, all 5 of the Best Potentials that you're looking for. Then you have to figure out how to breed them until you have all 5 on one Pokémon. Don't worry about the species so much for now; as long as you have a male from the right egg group with the 5 stats, you're good to go. If you don't have enough, you're going to have to either chain breed using Pokémon that are in more than 1 Egg Group (I never do this) or go out and catch more Pokémon with auras and Max Raid Battles, or trade with friends.
While you're doing this, check the natures of the hatched Pokémon as well. If you get one of the nature you need, keep it and work it into the breeding when you can. At worst, you'll have to breed for natures later.
Make sure one of the parents always has Destiny Knot! And make sure when you get the nature, you always have Everstone on the Pokémon with the right nature in the Daycare!
To breed just dump 2 Pokémon at the daycare. Then run around until the daycare attendant folds their arms with one hand up to their head. That means they have an egg. Talk to them and they'll give you the egg. Then run around to hatch it. If you have a Pokémon with Flame Body or Magma Armor as the first Pokémon in your party, they will hatch twice as fast. Also if you have the Oval Charm, you'll get eggs more frequently. I'd dump all your other Pokémon in the box to make space in your party for all the eggs. For slower-hatching eggs you'll fill up your party quickly.
Once you have your perfect baby, it should have the right Nature and Ability, and five of its stats should be Best (with the one you're not using being whatever). Or all six will be Best if you're crazy like that. Anyway, you have your perfect baby and it needs EVs. Either send it off to a seminar and forget about it, or use the EV training guide above. I've already gone over this pretty exhaustively.
This is the last thing you need to do. Send your Pokémon on jobs, feed it level candies, or just battle with it a lot until it's at least Lv 50. Then you can use it for the Battle Tower and for Online play. If you want to use it in Max Raid Battles and for battling wild stuff in the Wild Area, I recommend leveling it up as high as you can.
And that's about it. I know it's a lot and kind of confusing, but once you get the hang of it it's actually quite simple. It's just a lot of random stuff to know at once.
So let's talk about how to make your pokes into the best pokes they can possibly poke.
This assumes you already understand the basics of what each stat (HP, Attack, Defense, etc.) does.
How stats work
First, you need to understand how stats are calculated. Stats are not "gained" but are rather just recalculated every time you do something that would change them (level up, eat a mint, use a bottlecap, etc.) so you don't have to worry about 'missing out' if you just caught a Pokémon at level 65. It can grow in stats just as well as a fresh-born hatchling at level 1.
Stats are a combination of a bunch of things.
Firstly, your level. The higher the level of the Pokémon, the better their stats. Competitive battling happens at Lv50, but you can also use your competitive mons for Max Raid Battles, which can be any level, so level up to your heart's content!
Next there are various types of stats and modifiers. There are THREE functional "types" of "base stats" in Pokémon, though we'll only refer to the first one as base stats. The other are like secondary base stats. And then there's nature which gives you a boost to one stat and a hurt to another.
Base Stats
The first is your species base stat. These are generally referred to as "base stats." For example, all Rapidash have a base Speed stat of 105. Every single Rapidash in the game has this same base stat, no matter what.
These cannot change no matter what, and all Pokémon share them. They're a good way to easily compare two Pokémon, for example, to see who is generally faster. Usually these stats are what you want to consider when you decide how to build your Pokey.
Potential (IVs)
Then there is an additional type of "base stat" (though no one calls it that) for each stat called Potential (or by the more common fan name, "Individual Values" or "IVs"). Each stat has a Potential/IV between 0 and 31, and these can drastically affect your stat. 0 is the worst and you will have a low stat, and 31 is the highest and you will have a high stat. So a Rapidash with 0 Potential Speed will still have a much lower speed than a Rapidash with 31 Potential Speed, even though they both have the same base stat of 105. Because the 0 and 31 are also base stats on top of base stats.
Potential is decided at "birth" for a Pokémon. For hatched Pokémon, the Potential is determined at the time the egg is generated (so you can't reroll by hatching the egg over and over again). For a wild Pokémon, the Potential is determined at the start of battle.
Potential can not change exactly, but once you get your Pokémon to Level 100, you can use Bottlecaps to "modify" the Potential so it acts as if it were 31 instead of whatever it actually is. Bottlecaps are wasteful and cumbersome, though, so it's better to try to catch and breed for Potential. Catching Pokémon with an aura or in Max Raid Battles guarantees some of their stats' Potentials will be the max of 31. And then parents can breed down their Potentials to their children, so you can combine sets of parents to get hatchlings with all of their Potentials you want at max 31.
Also, a Potential at 31 is called "Best."
Effort Values (EVs)
While Potential and base stats are pre-determined values for each Pokémon, Effort is gained through training. Every time a Pokémon gains EXP through a battle, it also gains hidden values called Effort Values (EVs). These modify your stat further, making them like a third type of "base stat" for the Pokémon, but this one you get to control however you like.
You can only get a total of 510 EVs, and you can only have up to 252 EVs in a single stat. So you want to plan your distribution of them wisely and make sure you only fight Pokémon that will gain you the right EVs (until they are maxed at 510, then it doesn't matter what you fight).
It's also important to note that EVs only work in fours. Like, getting 1, 2, or 3 EVs will not change your stat at all, but 4 EVs in a stat will change it. So always divide your EVs into multiples of four. Generally, you dump 252 into 2 stats and throw the other 6 into something else (yes, 2 of those go wasted because 510 is not divisible by 4). For example, with my Rapidash, I put 252 into Speed, 252 into Attack, and the last 4 into HP.
Basically every Pokémon you battle will give you 1 to 3 EVs in a certain stat. To know what these are, you'll just have to look them up, but I'll discuss some 'hot spots' later to easily gain them. So for example, whenever you fight Rookidee, you get 1 EV in Speed. So if you fight 252 Rookidees with your Pokémon, it will have the absolute max Speed it could possibly have from EVs. Don't worry, you don't have to actually fight 252 of them. We'll talk more about how to gain them more easily later.
Natures
Each Pokémon has a nature. There are 25 different natures a Pokémon can have, and it's randomly generated at birth. 5 of the natures do nothing, and the other 20 will raise one stat while lowering another. (Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, or Speed -- Natures don't affect HP) Basically this is just a 10% bonus and detriment to the two affected stats. You can easily see what stats your nature affects by looking at the stats on the sub-summary page while in the box. The stat listed in pink is boosted by 10% and the stat listed in blue is lowered by 10%.
While you can't change your nature, you can feed your Pokémon a Mint that will make it act like it has a different nature. So if you give your Pokémon a Jolly Mint, the effect of their current nature disappears and their bonus applies as if it were Jolly nature (+Speed -Special).
Natures are also passed down through parents through use of the Everstone. Once you have a Pokémon of the nature you want, you can make sure all eggs get that same nature, so it's a lot less cumbersome than using Mints which are stupid expensive and only work on one Pokémon one time.
Stats Conclusion
So in the end, it's your Species base stats, Potential, Effort, Nature, and of course, Level that all determine what your stats are at any given time. Outside of Effort, these are all things that are determined when your Pokémon is born, so you will mostly breed and catch for those. Effort is all in how you train them, and it maxes out, so once you finish Effort Training, your Pokémon is "done" and its stats are set in stone (besides, of course, your current level, until that hits 100).
How to Actually Use This Shit
So now that you understand how your Pokémon's stats are generated, you're going to want to maximize them as much as you can. You can't just maximize everything, but rather have to focus in certain places. Your Nature is going to hurt one of your stats, it's extremely difficult to get more than 5 Potentials as 31/Best, and you only get 510 EVs to divide amongst your stats. In general, focusing on trying to 'well-round' your Pokémon will just make it bad at everything. You want to focus on its strengths.
Oh, and it's not a stat, but you want to pay attention to your Pokémon's ability, too.
So for example, looking at Rapidash again. The species has high base Attack and Speed, so we're going to want to use it as a fast Pokémon that hits hard with physical attacks. So we're going to focus completely on Attack and Speed. Before you start catching and breeding, you need to know what you're looking for. You want to look at your Pokémon, what its strengths are, what kind of moves you'll use, and how those work along with their ability, so you can decide ahead of time what nature and Potential and stuff you're going to look for.
So let's talk about how to get the various values that you want.
Level is obvious. You just level up. You want this to be as high as possible. Since gaining EXP means also gaining EVs, though, you want to wait and level up after you have maxed out your EVs. Now for the harder stuff...
Breeding basics
Most of what we're going to talk about in the next parts are about breeding, so let's talk a little about how it works. If you put two compatible Pokémon into the daycare together, they will regularly lay eggs, from which a new Pokémon will be born.
Hatched eggs are ALWAYS the same species of the mother, at the un-evolved state. So breeding Arcanine (male) and Rapidash (female) will always produce Ponyta.
WITHOUT USING ANY SPECIAL METHODS:
- Gender will be chosen just as it is in the wild (different rates for different species).
- Nature is chosen completely at random from the 25 possible natures.
- 3 Potentials will be passed from the parents (for example, the game will choose three stats, then choose one parent for each stat)
- The other 3 Potentials will be generated completely randomly from 0-31 for the stats.
- The ability of the baby will be 70% chance of having the same ability as the mother, 30% chance of having the other possible ability. If the mother or father has a hidden ability, the baby has 50% chance of having hidden ability, and 25% chance of having each of the other two abilities.
However we can use different strategies to make these chances a lot better. For example, in the next section, I'll tell you how to make 100% of the babies the right nature, rather than just 1/25.
How to get the right Nature
First, look at a table of natures to see which nature you want. Once you do this enough, you'll memorize some of the most common ones.
For example with Rapidash, we are focusing on Attack and Speed, so we want something that raises either or those two things. But we have to sacrifice a stat, too. That's fine, because we won't be using Special Attack at all, since we're using Attack. Rapidash already has a pretty high base speed (105) so we're going to count on it being fast enough most of the time, and choose a nature that boosts Attack and lowers Special Attack. This is Adamant nature.
Normally it's a 1/25 chance to get the nature you want, but if one of the parents is holding an Everstone, it will ALWAYS pass that nature on to every egg. So just get a parent with the right nature and give it an Everstone, and you'll guarantee you always get the nature you want.
If you don't have a parent with the right nature, you just have to breed the Pokémon again and again until one hatches that is the nature you want. You can also try catching again and again until you catch one with the nature you want. Do whichever is easier. Once you have it, you can force breed it.
Catching can be easier if you have a Pokémon that has the ability Synchronize. If you have a Pokémon with Synchronize in your first slot, every wild Pokémon you encounter has a 50% chance of being the same nature as your Pokémon with Synchronize. You can set up a whole army of Synchronize Pokémon for the sake of catching Pokémon with the natures you want. This is pretty easy -- just grab a female Natu with Synchronize and breed her over and over and 70% of the babies will have Synchronize. Just keep going til you get one of every nature. You can even ignore certain natures (like you don't ever need natures that lower Defense or Special Defense, as you always want your defenses to be as high as possible). Once you have this army, you can just go out and catch the nature that you want.
Another possibility is to catch a harem of Ditto. Ditto can breed with ANY Pokémon (because it transforms into it, I guess) of any gender and even Pokémon with no gender. So if you catch Dittos over and over until you have one of every nature, you can always just throw one in with an Everstone and breed the Pokémon you want with the right nature. You can even get Dittos that have Best Potentials, too!
How to get the Potentials you want
This is the hard one. Normally three stats' Potentials are chosen to be inherited from the parents, but if one of the parents is holding the item called Destiny Knot, five will be inherited instead of three. Basically the game will choose one of the stats and generate it at random from Potential 0-31, and then the other five stats it will choose one of the parents each to pass down that Potential. So you want to get parents with the best Potentials you can and try to pass them down.
For example, let's say I have a father with Best HP, Attack, and Defense, and a mother with Best Special Defense and Speed. We want our Pokémon to have all five. So we put these two in the daycare, and then hope that the RNG chooses Special Attack as the one to randomly generate, and then the other 5 will come from the parents. Then we have to hope the RNG chooses the father for HP, Attack, and Defense, and the mother for Special Defense and Speed.
Of course, it won't always work out so easily. But if we get a new female baby with HP, Special Attack, and Speed, for example, we'll now have a better chance of getting the stats we need when both parents have 3 stats instead of one having 2. So we'll take the daughter and put her in daycare to fuck her dad. Yeah there's lots of Pokémon inbreeding.
Basically you keep getting better and better parents, replacing them in the daycare, until eventually you have one that has Best of all 5 stats you want. You can try to go for 6, but you have a 1/192 chance of hatching a Best in all 6 stats if you have two parents with 5 Bests. So good luck. But usually you will not use Attack or Special Attack, so you can just sacrifice that one.
But how do you get parents with Best Potential to begin with? And how do you even know what the Potential is?
Potential is hidden until you've gone to the Battle Tower and reached Poke Ball Rank (Rank 4). You'll have to win at least 6 battles in the Battle Tower to reach this rank. Then you'll get a "Judge" feature for your boxes. Head into your box and press the + button to change the information displayed about the Pokémon you're hovering over. Go to the judging page, and each stat will list its Potential, from stuff like "Decent" to "very Good" and of course, if you have the max of 31, "Best." You're looking for Bests!
Whenever you encounter a Pokémon in the wild, each stat is randomly generated Potential from 0 to 31. So each stat has a 1/32 chance of being Best. This is not very good, so you're probably not going to get very many Bests by catching random wild Pokémon.
However, in Sword and Shield there are some ways to guarantee some Bests. When you are battling a lot in an area, sometimes a Pokémon will have a mysterious aura surrounding them. Battling this Pokémon will give you Watts. If you catch this Pokémon, it is guaranteed to have at least 2 Bests.
The other method is even better -- Max Raid Battles. Max Raid Battles have a difficulty rating of 2 to 5 stars. For every star above 1, that many stats are guaranteed to be best. So if you fight a 5-star Pokémon, it is guaranteed to have FOUR stats at Best. So catch lots of aura Pokémon and raid Pokémon, and you'll build up a collection of Pokémon with Best stats.
I organize all my Pokémon into boxes so that all with 1 Best are in a box, all with 2 Bests are in a box, etc. So when I'm looking for parents, I can see if I already have them. Since there are new Max Raid Battles and stuff regularly, you can collect a lot of potential parents.
A valuable Pokémon to have with Bests is Ditto. There's a spot in the very northwest corner of the Wild Area where wild Ditto can appear with Auras, and even more rarely, Ditto can appear as a Max Raid Battle. Collect these whenever you can since they can breed with anyone.
Also note while it's not often you'll need to do it, you can also use Power Items to guarantee that parent passes down their Potential in that one stat only. You an read about Power Items in the EV Training section.
Getting the Ability you want
Ability is a lot easier. Pokémon have three ability slots: normal ability 1, normal ability 2, and hidden ability. Some Pokémon have the same ability for both normal ability 1 and 2 so it doesn't matter.
When a Pokémon appears in the wild, it will randomly have normal ability 1 or normal ability 2, each at 50% rate. However, in Max Raid Battles or Aura battles, there is also a chance (I think 40%, but I'm not sure) that it will have the hidden ability. Then the other 60% is again divided between normal 1 and 2.
When in the daycare, an egg has a 70% chance of getting the normal ability 1 or 2 slot that matches the mother. The other 30% is the other normal ability slot.
However, if the mother has a hidden ability, there's a 50% chance of getting the hidden ability, with the other 50% divided evenly among getting normal ability 1 or 2.
If you use an ability capsule, you can change your ability between normal 1 and 2. But this is really expensive and it's easier to just breed until you get the one you want.
Effort Training
Once you have hatched your perfect baby with the Nature, Potential, and Ability that you want, it's time to start training! Every Pokémon in the game gives you Effort Values when you gain EXP from it in battle. You don't have to have your Pokémon fight in the battle, just gain the EXP, so you can fight with a strong Pokémon and just let the other ones in your party soak up the delicious EXP and EVs.
Here are some hotspots for training each stat:
HP = Skwovet on Route 1
ATTACK = Chewtle on Route 2
DEFENSE = Rolycoly in Galar Mine (or probably in the route just outside of it)
SPECIAL ATTACK = Gastly in Watchtower Ruins (Wild Area)
SPECIAL DEFENSE = Gossifluer on Route 3
SPEED = Rookidee on Route 1
Each of these Pokémon gives ONE EV point in the corresponding stat. So if I put my Lv1 Ponyta in my party and then have my Sizzlipede take out 15 Rookidees on Route 1, my Ponyta will have 15 Speed EVs. If this was all you did, you'd have to battle 252 of them to get the amount of EVs you need. Thankfully, you don't have to do that.
In Hammerlocke's central PMC, there's a league dude who sells you things for BP. You have to battle in the Battle Tower to gain BP. It's annoying at first, but once you train up some competitive mons it gets very fun. Anyway, he sells items called "Power" items. Power Anklet, Power Weight, Power Bracer, etc. These will give you EIGHT EVs of their corresponding types every time you gain EXP from battle. So if you are wearing the Power Bracer, it will give you 8 Attack EVs every time you battle a Pokémon. So if I fought a Rookidee while having my Ponyta hold the Power Bracer, it would get 1 Speed EV (from the Rookidee) and 8 Attack EVs (from the Power Bracer).
So if you match them up, using the Power Anklet + fighting a Rookidee, you'll get 9 Speed EVs from one battle. Then you only have to battle 28 times to get all 252 EVs. 28 battles against Level 3 Rookidees goes VERY fast, especially if you turn off attack animations in the settings.
There's a few other ways to gain EVs, too.
If you have loads of money, you can buy Vitamins. You can buy them Wyndon and Hammerlock PMCs for 10k a piece. Very expensive. Each one will give you 10 EVs of the type it says (Carbos = Speed, etc.)
Once you get all the badges you unlock training camp things in the PokeJobs. These will give you 4 EVs for every hour you spend on the job. So spending a whole day will get you 96 EVs in a stat. What's even better is you get extra by holding a Power Item when you go on the job, so if you send Ponyta to the Attack seminar while holding Power Bracer, it'll get all 252 EVs in Attack after 24 hours at the seminar.
This is kind of a waste of time, though, when you can just battle 28 times and get 252 EVs in 10-20 minutes.
There are also these wings you pick up on the ground especially on bridges. They give 1 EV each. If for some reason you don't feel like battling for your last 4 EVs, you can use wings I guess.
If you want to see how far you are along in EV training, go to your Pokémon's summary. Press X on the stats chart page to go between different types of stats. The yellow chart shows your EVs on top as an orangeish yellow chart. It will "point" out toward the stats as you train them, and when one maxes out, that stat will get sparkly. Once all 510 EVs have been obtained, the orange-yellow graph becomes a blue-grey color instead.
There's also a thing called Pokerus that doubles the EVs you get from any source. It's a "virus" that is given from Pokémon to Pokémon. There's an extremely rare chance (it's like 1 in 20000 or something) that a wild Pokémon will have it, then you can "contract" the virus by hitting it with a move that makes contact with it or by catching it. There's no way to know the Pokémon even has the virus until you've caught it or contracted it and then gone to a Pokémon center, where the attendant will tell you you have it.
As long as you have the virus on your Pokémon, you'll get double EVs. The virus can either be active or passed. If it's active, it can infect other Pokémon in your party as you battle with it in your party. Once it's passed, you still get the EV bonus on that Pokémon, but it can't pass it on to other Pokémon anymore.
The virus passes after so many hours. Putting a Pokémon with the virus into a box will 'freeze' the virus so you don't have to worry about it running out.
Putting it all together
So with all of that, you should be able to train competitive-level mons with max stats! The Pokémon you fight in Battle Tower will all be fully competitively trained with good natures, IVs, and EVs. And if you want to battle in the online tournaments, you can be sure that your opponents will be using maxed out Pokémon, too.
But it's kind of a lot of information, so let's consolidate.
Before You Start
Before you start anything, you'll want to have cleared the game and gotten access to Battle Tower. Go to Battle Tower and win 6 matches in a row to get the Judge feature for your Pokémon Boxes. Use the BP you gained to buy Power Items (you can only afford two at first; I suggest the Anklet for speed and either the Bracer or Lens for one of the attacks, then battle a little more to get the other attack one).
You'll also need to get Destiny Knot and Everstone.
You can get Everstone as part of the story, or catch wild Boldore or Roggenrola. They have a 50% chance of holding an Everstone when you catch them.
Destiny Knot you can probably buy with BP; I haven't checked yet. But the easiest way to get it is with Pickup. Make a team of all Zigzagoon and Meowth with the ability Pickup and then go fight battles. After winning a battle by defeating or catching the Pokémon, there's a chance that each Pokémon with Pickup will gain a random item after battle if they're not holding anything. There's a set list of items and chances, and Destiny Knot is kinda rare, so just do it for a while until someone gets one.
If you really want to, breed a bunch of Natu with Synchronize or catch a bunch of Ditto until you have all the natures of them. I haven't bothered to do this yet, but will probably make a Synchronize flock soon once Natus actually appear in my Wild Area.
It also helps to have the Oval Charm and a Pokémon with Flame Body or Magma Armor ability to make breeding go faster.
Oval Charm you can get from Circhester hotel (the left one, not the right one) by battling a policeman in one of the rooms. It's a double battle against 6 Pokémon around levels 60-65 so be prepared.
Use Serebii's Abilitydex to find Pokémon with Flame Body or Magma Armor. Personally I had a Litwick in my box that already had it, so I didn't have to go look for one.
Step 1 - Plan
The first thing you need to do is actually plan out your Pokémon. Go look it up on Serebii's gen 8 Pokedex (I usually just do a Bing search for Pokémon name + Serebii) and look at everything. Check out its possible abilities, all the moves it can learn, and its base stats. Decide exactly how you want to build the Pokémon. This will let you know which nature you need to try for and what you're going to dump your EVs into and when Potential you can ignore. Write it all down if you have to.
Step 2 - Get Parents and BREED
Now you need some parents. Look through your boxes and start finding Pokémon from the same Egg Group as your Pokémon (again, you can find this on Serebii, just click the name of the Egg Group on the Pokedex page to see all the Pokémon in that group). You're going to want to get a group of parents that has, combined, all 5 of the Best Potentials that you're looking for. Then you have to figure out how to breed them until you have all 5 on one Pokémon. Don't worry about the species so much for now; as long as you have a male from the right egg group with the 5 stats, you're good to go. If you don't have enough, you're going to have to either chain breed using Pokémon that are in more than 1 Egg Group (I never do this) or go out and catch more Pokémon with auras and Max Raid Battles, or trade with friends.
While you're doing this, check the natures of the hatched Pokémon as well. If you get one of the nature you need, keep it and work it into the breeding when you can. At worst, you'll have to breed for natures later.
Make sure one of the parents always has Destiny Knot! And make sure when you get the nature, you always have Everstone on the Pokémon with the right nature in the Daycare!
To breed just dump 2 Pokémon at the daycare. Then run around until the daycare attendant folds their arms with one hand up to their head. That means they have an egg. Talk to them and they'll give you the egg. Then run around to hatch it. If you have a Pokémon with Flame Body or Magma Armor as the first Pokémon in your party, they will hatch twice as fast. Also if you have the Oval Charm, you'll get eggs more frequently. I'd dump all your other Pokémon in the box to make space in your party for all the eggs. For slower-hatching eggs you'll fill up your party quickly.
Step 3 - EV Train
Once you have your perfect baby, it should have the right Nature and Ability, and five of its stats should be Best (with the one you're not using being whatever). Or all six will be Best if you're crazy like that. Anyway, you have your perfect baby and it needs EVs. Either send it off to a seminar and forget about it, or use the EV training guide above. I've already gone over this pretty exhaustively.
Step 4 - Level Up
This is the last thing you need to do. Send your Pokémon on jobs, feed it level candies, or just battle with it a lot until it's at least Lv 50. Then you can use it for the Battle Tower and for Online play. If you want to use it in Max Raid Battles and for battling wild stuff in the Wild Area, I recommend leveling it up as high as you can.
And that's about it. I know it's a lot and kind of confusing, but once you get the hang of it it's actually quite simple. It's just a lot of random stuff to know at once.
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Date: 2019-12-03 04:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-05 01:29 am (UTC)