Iâm going to start EV training my PokĂ©mon the old-fashioned way, for the very first time, because SWISHâs replacement for Core/Super Training disgusts me.Â
And, since at least one (1) person has shown like the mildest breeze of an interest in perhaps maybe possibly EV training their favorite mon? Where there was no interest before... I decided Iâd share the experience for those of you whoâve never tried it, to encourage you all to do so, because itâs a great experience (well, like I said, Iâve never done it the oooold-fashioned way, but working together with my monster babies in Core/Super Training is always a great experience, and I have no doubt this will be as well). Keep in mind that in Gen VIII, you can completely EV train your mons with just vitamins. This is not what weâre about to do. If youâd rather take the expensive and easy route, be my guest.
Just in case youâve HEARD about EV training, and have been intimidated/irritated by all the STUFF that goes into it, let me assure you that I wonât be doing most of that STUFF. Iâm not worrying about IVâs, I donât have the Power Items, & Iâm going to try to make this as not-info-dumpy as possible. If you WANT to know about all those things, Iâll put info/resources at the bottom of this post. But weâre keeping it super-simple today. All you need is the game, a pen and paper, and an internet connection (which if youâre reading this, yeah).
And before you say anything, YES, I know that PokĂ©mon SWSH is a poorly-designed mediocrity dressed up like a beautiful triple-A video game. You donât have to tell me. I am well aware of its shortcomings, I know itâs not an open world even though it would like to think it is, I know itâs irritating to bike for an extra three minutes instead of just sliding down a slope, I know itâs dumb that PokĂ©mon pop into existence two feet in front of you, I know walking into a town you can see through its gate does not merit a loading screen... I KNOW. There are so many things they couldâve done better, and I honestly feel they chose not to. But hereâs the thing: It has monster babies I can raise, so Iâm gonna play it. No, I canât pet them (for no effing reason like you already have it programmed from previous games ffffff) but I love them just the same. I look at this disturbingly bad game, and... I still have fun. So... If itâs really frustrating you that badly, maybe you should stay away from it for a while. Go back to older gens. Thereâs nothing I can do for you, honeybun, itâs just gonna stay bad. So... for all the rest of you who still want to play this glorious trash fire, follow me~
Step 1: Go catch (or hatch) a Rookidee
This is super easy, theyâre right there on Route 1 (and 2 and 3 if Iâm not mistaken). For this little experiment, Iâm going to be using a newly-hatched offspring of my Corviknight, Morrigan (Iâm gonna name her Adair ^__^ ). You donât have to do the same, because if you catch a PokĂ©mon and donât battle with them in your party, they still have no EVs yet - If a PokĂ©mon receives EXP, they also receive EVs. Unfortunately, you canât turn EXP Share off in these games, so youâll want to make sure not to get into any battles until you know youâre ready.Â
Step 2: Look at base stats & choose 2
Rookideeâs Bulbapedia page clearly shows that their highest base stats (thereâs some confusion here, Iâll explain later) are Speed, Attack, and HP. If you click the little forward arrow at the top of the page, you can see that Corvisquireâs base stats are Speed, HP, then Attack (but thereâs barely a difference between the latter two). Then, thereâs Corviknight, where it upends into Defense being the highest, followed by HP, then Attack, with Speed getting kinda left behind. You have lots of options here. But as for me, Iâm going to go with Speed and Attack - this decision is partly helped along because Adairâs lowered stat (more on that later) is Defense, and partly because I plan to keep her as a Corvisquire. For those of you wanting to let your fast baby birb become the impenetrable tank they were made to be, by all means, go with Defense and HP, or Defense and Attack, or something like that. It doesnât really matter, because either way, your Rookidee is going to be - dare I say it - within the top percentage of Rookidee!
Now, what does this mean?Â
Every Pokémon has the same maximum amount of Effort Values: 510.
Most people divide these into 252, 252, and put the last 4 into HP (or maybe something else of HP is one of their chosen stats)
âBut Magi,â I hear you laugh, âthat doesnât add up to 510, it adds up to 508!â
Correct you are, my intelligent honeycomb! Thereâs one more thing though:
Every four (4) Effort Values your PokĂ©mon receives in a stat, equals up to one (1) extra point in that stat they will have at Level 100. Thatâs literally what EVs are. Which, sadly, means the last two EVs count for nothing. Which... I feel they couldâve corrected this many generations ago, but they just... donât?
So, pick two stats you want to be totally OP (as far as in-game PokĂ©mon go), and go for it! Itâs also possible to split your EVs 3 ways instead of 2, but letâs keep it simple for now.
Before you begin, you should start a split tally list on your paper - one for Speed, one for Attack (or whichever other stats youâre going for).
Like I said before, a Pokémon that gains EXP, gains EVs. But different mons give different kinds of EVs. Throughout the course of your adventure, you likely battle everything that comes your way, right? Well, those are random Pokémon, which makes you end up with a random EV spread, so your stats are going to be pretty much evenly spread out, which is nice, but none of them reach their full potential. All EV training is, is fighting the right Pokémon for the right stats.
Serebii, helpful as always, has a list of which mons give which EVs. If you want to be sure of how many EVs any PokĂ©mon in the game gives you, you can click on their PokĂ©dex, use the Galar Dex scroll-down to select the mon, then look in the Effort Values Earned section. Itâs easy!
The first stat weâre training is Speed, so weâre going to be looking for, funnily enough, Rookidee. They give you 1 Speed EV each. Put a mon youâre sure can 1-hit KO those teeny birbs at the head of your party (for me itâs the Sliggoo thatâs one evo away from filling my dex), and go to Route 1 or wherever you want to go.Â
Now... Run away from every encounter thatâs not a Rookidee! Haha. Take down those birbs and, every time you do, put a tally mark on the Speed list on your paper. Thatâs one EV. Great job! Now just keep doing that and make sure to count them up every now and then. You want 252. Yes, I know, itâs a lot of work, but... thatâs the point. Youâre working together with your PokĂ©mon to make them the very best they can be.Â
Once you have 252 EVs in Speed, move on to Attack, for which your target should be Chewtle, found on Route 2. They give you 1 Attack EV each, so again, one tally mark per Chewtle defeated, until you have 252. Yes, there are mons who give you more than 1 EV, but those tend to be rarer and/or more trouble to bump into than theyâre worth, so itâs best to stick to Rookidee and Chewtle. The last four (or six, if you want to bother with the other 2, I mean itâs not much more work, so might as well) can go into HP, which youâll gain from Skwovet, who Iâm sure youâve had no trouble finding.
And... There you go! Once you complete your tally, your Rookidee is officially EV trained! At level 100, theyâre going to be, as an old friend of mine used to say, a beast on stilts!
But, hold on there a minute, honeybun! Whatâs the rush? Arenât you forgetting something? You still have 5 more team slots to fill in! If you still want to after all this, anyway. XD Every PokĂ©mon has the potential to shine - yes, EVERY PokĂ©mon - so pick your faves, one at a time. Pick which stats you want to train in, and do what we just did! You can do it yourself this time, now that you have experience. Remember, Bulbapedia and Serebii and sites like that are always there for you!Â
If your headâs not aching yet, hereâs a lot of info I threw in at the very end so that it wouldnât be a headache during the training process:
Whatâs that complicated thing about base stats you mentioned before?
Okay, so the games (starting in HGSS I think) started calling Effort Values, Base Stats. For... some reason. What I - and a lot of fans - mean when I say âBase Statsâ, are species-specific stats. When you click or scroll down to âStatsâ in a PokĂ©monâs Bulbapedia page, and see the graph of Base Stats, theyâre not talking about EVs, theyâre talking about those species-specific base stats. Sorry for any confusion~
And that âlowered-statâ thing?
Ah, thatâs in regards to Natures. Every PokĂ©mon has a Nature, which determines which of their stats (if any) get a 10% increase and 10% decrease. Those stats are shown in red and blue, respectively, in your PokĂ©monâs status screen/summary/whatever you wanna call it. Different mons of the same species can have different Natures, which makes them unique, just like you and I! Nature also determines which flavor is their favorite, and which they dislike (tied to the increased and decreased stat).
Bulbapedia has two nice charts showing all this stuff better than I can say it. I prefer the stat-focused chart, which looks like a round robin tournament with the Natures that have no changed stats going in a diagonal line down the graph.
(If you were wondering, Adairâs Nature is Mild, which means she has increased Special Attack, lowered Defense, loves Dry flavors, and dislikes Sour flavors! Theyâre just a couple tiny details, but they go a long way to helping me flesh out her personality in my imagination! =^__^= )
Power Items are six hold items you can usually get during post-game stuff, like Battle Towers, for BP. They double the amount of EVs earned in whichever stat specified in the itemâs description, making this whole process go by quicker. PokĂ©rus also does that, making the process breeze by. If you want to EV train loads of mons, these are things you definitely want.
As for Vitamins, in previous generations, one vitamin increased a stat by 10 EVs - but only for the first 100. So if youâd have to give them the 10 Vitamins per stat first to really save more time. Gen VIII really does believe in taking the work out of everything, so now they made it so that you can completely EV train your mons with just vitamins. Just like with the âseminarsâ, I find this disgusting. But if you prefer it to the more tedious process you just went through, by all means, no judgment. Everyone is different and likes to do different things. Iâm just glad I could share the old-fashioned way with yâall and (hopefully) bring more people around to it who were intimidated/not interested before. Thatâs really the only point of this.
What are IVs, and why are they âso importantâ?
IVs are permanent numbers that help shape a monâs stats. Every stat has an IV, and theyâre always different, even among the same species, meaning that every PokĂ©mon is unique! ...Again! XD Basically, for every 1 IV your mon has in a stat, thatâs another 1 point in that stat theyâll have at level 100 (kinda like how EVs work, but IVs donât grow like EVs, they are permanent). They range from 0 to 31. There is a (very, very complicated) way of knowing EXACTLY what your PokĂ©monâs IVs are, but I suggest looking that up because like I know the gist of it but am not confident I can properly explain it. I donât need to know the exact IVs though, because we have Characteristics.
Bulbapedia has a List of Characteristics that show what stat your monâs highest IV will be in. There are five rows, each with a pool of possible IVs. If you want to make sure your PokĂ©monâs highest IVs will be at least 2, 3, or 4, you could try to use mons with Characteristics only from the bottom three rows. Or, from just the bottom row, whatever works for you. Or you could go for that 31 and breed 200 mons from the second row until the Stats Judge tells you at least one of their stats is perfect, whatever, you do you. I think the bottom three pools are just fine, and try to stick to EV training mons with those Characteristics. Then again, my Duraludon, Alexandria, Likes to thrash about, so her highest IV could be as low as 1. But... I donât care. I love her. 30 extra stat points canât hold a candle to love. See what I mean?
If you want to make it big in the competitive scene, you absolutely should do your best to get 31 in all the important stats to each monâs build. But it takes a lot of time and hard work, and there are no shortcuts, and I canât help you, other than directing you to videos like this:
Should I even bother with mons that donât have a âgoodâ Nature/Characteristic/etc.?
Thatâs up to you, but I would 100% say Yes. If you EV train a PokĂ©mon, they will have great stats they wouldnât otherwise have, because of you, no matter what their IVs are. This is why they âwill always come to usâ. This is why they let us catch them. We can help them grow to their best potential. Yeah, maybe someone elseâs mon with perfect IVs can annihilate yours... But maybe they wonât. Maybe you can find the right strategy to take them down. Get to know your monster babies. Examine their moves. Study your fights, see what works and what doesnât work when and where. And if you still lose... Well, so does everyone else. Despite what that English theme song might tell you, PokĂ©mon isnât about âbeing the very best, like no one ever wasâ or âcatching them allâ. Itâs about the journey, about discovering the world, yourself, and your monster friends.
Are you sure EVERY PokĂ©mon has the âpotential to shineâ?
...Oh, you want like, an actual answer?
Well... Itâs like I just said, get to know your PokĂ©mon. You might think some of them are useless, but spend some one on one time with them. They might surprise you.
Myself, I never use PokĂ©mon I donât think are attractive. They have to be cute or beautiful or endearing in some way. Granted, my definition of cute might differ from others - thatâs only natural - and I have a long list of cute mons that consists of... most of them. XD But just because I (or anyone else) donât use them, doesnât mean they donât have worth. They totally do, and you never know, you might get a new favorite if you take the time to check them out.Â
And... Thatâs all I can think of. If you have questions, please feel free to ask me, and Iâll try to explain or give you resources that can explain better than me.
I hope my explanation of stuff was more digestible than other places you mightâve tried to learn about EV training before. Either way, I hope less people will be put off by the prospect of EV training. Thatâs my one goal with this post. Because I really love it, itâs given me a stronger bond with a few specific PokĂ©mon in the past, and it really makes me happy seeing my babies growing into their fullest potential. As always, I hope you all have fun. PACE~
