My Breeding Guide (Revised Nov. 2022)

[concernedcitizen]

My Breeding Guide (Updated Nov. 2022)

I have completed over 100 5x31 and 6x31 breeds, now I shall pass my knowledge on to you.

 

This guide is for newbies and those who still want to further their understanding of breeding. I will be sharing information for beginners, how I conceptualize breeding, and the specific steps I take during the process. For a quick rundown of how breeding works, you can check out The Breeding Guide

 

Guide Contents

The absolute basics (beginner information)

--- Intro

--- Breeder locations

--- Braces and Everstones

--- Gender and Egg Groups

 

Now we're cookin (intermediate strategy)

--- Using a breed template

--- The Cost of Breeding

 

Time to breed (My breeding guide)

--- STEP 1 Make a plan

--- STEP 2 OT

--- STEP 3 Egg moves/Nature

--- STEP 4 IVs

--- STEP 5 Finishing touches

 

NEW! Regarding Alphas and Hidden Abilities

--- How does Alpha breeding work?

--- What about Hidden Abilities?

 

 

The absolute basics (Beginner Information)

Spoiler

Intro

Breeding is the easiest way to create a pokemon with your chosen attributes. In order to do this, you must have two parents who possess desired attributes and trade them to a breeder NPC in exchange for an egg. You will lose both parents, but the resulting pokemon will inherit properties from them, namely those IVs or natures which are guaranteed to be passed down by a brace or everstone. If two parents share the same value in an IV, it will be passed down regardless of the item held. If nature is not passed down by an everstone, the child will have a random nature. There's no way to randomly upgrade IVs through breeding, though any egg can potentially turn into a shiny (.000033 chance determined upon egg creation)

 

Breeder locations

Spoiler

Based on which regions you have unlocked/completed, you may or may not have access to a breeder yet. Kanto is the longest wait as the breeder is located on sevii isles post elite 4, and Unova is the earliest being available just after the first gym. The locations will be listed from earliest available to latest.

 

Unova: Route 3

 

Hoenn: Route 117

 

Sinnoh: Solaceon Town

 

Kanto: Four Island

 

 

Braces and Everstones

Braces are sold by an NPC at each breeding location for $10,000 or in exchange for 750 battle points at PvP vendor locations. Everstones are found in the wild but more easily purchased for around $5,000 from the gtl. There are six separate braces for each of the six IVs of a pokemon. If a brace is held by a parent during breeding, then the IV indicated by that brace will be passed onto the child. Using an everstone instead will guarantee that the nature of that parent will be passed down. Braces and everstones must be held while they are traded to the breeder and will not be returned.

 

 

 

Egg Groups and Gender

In order to breed, you need a male and female of the same egg group. Let's say you want to breed a ralts, your first instinct might be to breed a bunch of ralts together, but the thing is you don't need to use ralts exclusively. You can use any pokemon within the same egg group(s) along with a female ralts. You can easily sort by egg groups in the PC or gtl on the advanced search page.

 

Ralts is a chaos and human egg group so it could breed with any pokemon from those two groups, so long as the female is ralts then the resulting egg will hatch into ralts. The female pokemon always determines the species of the egg. Except in the case of genderless mons which only breed with their own species or ditto. There is no way to breed a ditto egg. You could also breed a ralts using only a male ralts and a ditto. When you trade the parents to the breeder, you can choose to pay extra to guarantee a certain gender, enabling you to gender swap and/or chain breed many pokemon into one.

 

Check this page for information on egg groups, especially useful for chain breeding particles across incompatible groups.

 

 

Now we're cookin (Intermediate Strategy)

 

Spoiler

Using a breed template

Given the information above, it is possible to breed a pokemon with any attributes you want, though it can be rather confusing. To better understand, I use a template which lays out all the pokemon I need to create my final result. 

The table represents 64 pokemon each having 1x31 in an IV or the desired nature. They are split into pairs which will breed and then the resulting children will breed in a repeating pattern implied by the symmetry of the table. The contents of each colored box mirrors the next, indicating the breed path, as well as the number of pokemon required for each result. If you can understand this table and use your own template during breeding, the whole process will become much easier.

 

Let's look at the first row of 8 pokemon (4 pairs)  hp at   hp de   at de   at sd  breeding the first set of parents (hp at) using braces will result in a single mon with 2x31 health and attack. When we do the same thing with the next pair (hp de), we will end up with another mon with 2x31 health and defense. Since both mons now have 2x31 with one IV in common (health) we can breed those together (assuming we made one male and one female) using braces to hold the two IVs that aren't shared (attack and defense) resulting in a mon with 3x31 health, attack, and defense. We have just turned four 1x31 mons into a 3x31 mon. This pattern repeats with all pairings until all mons have bred together into one final result.

 

If you still don't understand, here's a finger painting:

Spoiler

 

Each colored tier is essentially a breed step, if you spent extra money to ensure the correct gender every time, you could breed every pair at the same time. I prefer to save some money, breeding one half of each future pairing, letting it hatch to check its gender, then paying for the required gender on the latter half. This method causes little hinderance as you can only hatch 5 eggs at a time anyway.

 

You don't have to use the exact IV pairings I have listed here, they can be easily adjusted so long as you satisfy the shared/ unshared IV principles. If you're already starting with a 3x31 write it down and fit the table around it. Writing out your own breed path in notepad and using it as a template will help maximize your resources while avoiding costly mistakes, I highly recommend it!! 

 

Copy/paste template:

ATTACK 5x31 natured
hp at	hp de	at de	at sd		at de	at sd	de sd	de sp


na at	at de	at de	at sd		at de	at sd	de sd	de sp

SPECIAL ATTACK 5x31 natured
hp de	hp sa	de sa	sa sd		de sa	sa sd	de sd	de sp


na sa	de sa	de sa	sa sd		sa de	sa sd	de sd	de sp

These are two separate tables for either Attack or Special Attack 5x31 natured. 6IV natured is the equivalent of doubling the table and swapping the duplicate nature for the last remaining IV. A 5x31 non natured can be made by using only the top half of the table.

 

The Cost of Breeding

Breeding probably accounts for the most money a typical player will spend, which makes sense because raising better pokemon is what the game is all about. Each step will cost at least a pokeball ($200) at least $5,000 if selecting gender, and $10,000 per bracer. In order to satisfy a 5x31 natured build, that is at least 570k for bracers, 30k for everstones, 95k for genders, and 6.2k for pokeballs or 701.2k total breeding cost. This is not factoring pre-breed steps for nature and eggmoves, nor does it include money for buying pokemon off gtl, both of which will be common practices that add to the expense. Pokemon with skewed gender ratios will cost a lot more to make female ($21,000) which can significantly increase breeding expenses. I would assess how much money you can afford to spend before breeding and ideally have at least 2-4x that amount before committing to a breed.

 

There are several tricks to make breeding less damaging to your wallet. You could use BP instead of cash to buy braces, although you could also be making money off the BP instead so it's almost equivalent to spending cash. Only pay for gender on one half of a pair by breeding the first half with random gender, letting it hatch, and then paying for gender on the second half. Some people like to breed a 4xIV first to see if they might get lucky and roll the desired nature, potentially eliminating some steps and saving money. Catching all your own breeders can save money but the viability of this option is questionable given the time you would spend farming vs the current price of breeders on the gtl. The best way to save money is to settle for less, 5IV isn't always necessary and is often overkill. Just making a natured mon with above 15 in it's main stats can be dirt cheap and just as effective for your needs. Competitive mons can get by with 30 in an IV since PvP is scaled to level 50. It's probably best to make an easier breed of a mon and see if you like it before you commit to a perfect IV version. While perfect IVs do grant better stats, those increases don't hold as much weight as a pokemon's base stats, typing, and move pool.

 

Shopping List

Items needed for a 5x31 natured according to the template I use, amounts will fluctuate based on your own template.

Bracers	57		570k/42,750 BP
HP		x5
AT/SA		x14
DE		x16
SD		x14
SP		x8

Everstones 6		30k
ES		x6

Pokeballs 31 		6.2k

Total 606.2k

 

 

Time to breed (My breeding guide)

 

Spoiler

There are many different ways you can complete a breed depending on what you have available. You should customize your own template based on any 2-3IV or natured pokemon you already have. I'm going to outline the way I've bred most of my pokemon which I think is the quickest, easiest, and most efficient way no matter what you have (assuming you have the funds)

 

NOTE ON HIDDEN ABILITIES: Since this guide was written before hidden abilities were accessible, it doesn't take into account the decision to use them or alpha traits. You should consider the last section of this guide and factor adding hidden ability or alphas into your breeding plan should you wish to use them.

 

STEP 1 Make a plan

What are you breeding, what are it's IVs and nature, why? Do your research, the pokedex is your friend, search the bulpapedia listing, look at smogon. Whatever you do, make sure you take your time on this step to understand what you're breeding and why you're breeding it.

 

The first thing I will do is look at the pokedex entry. If you don't have the pokedex entry, you can buy the mon off of the gtl temporarily and sell it back at a slight loss. Check out the base stats, check out its ability, check out its moves, compare it to other popular pokemon. You can check out the PvP statistics menu to see the most popular competitive builds. What ever you decide, there should be some thought behind it. Write out a template so that you can easily review it.

 

Dragonite 5x31 Adamant | Life Orb | EVs: 150 HP 252 AT 108 SP
Mist
Haze
Extreme Speed
Aqua Jet

Dragon Claw
Fire Punch
Super Power
Dragon Dance

 

This was a Dragonite I bred recently, the build is based around Dragon Dance + Life Orb. Since Dragonite is relatively slow, he counts on switching into a non threat like chansey and getting off a dragon dance before the opponent can react or after other primary threats have been eliminated. If I wanted to use him as an all out attacker, I probably would've gone jolly + choice scarf giving him more speed than most non choice users while still hitting hard with physical coverage moves or STAB dragon claw. I've given him an EV spread of 150 hp to help him soak a hit while he's dragon dancing and 108 speed which after a dragon dance makes him 1 point faster than jolly Garchomp. The top list of moves are the egg moves I will breed onto him, and the bottom list is my ideal endgame move set. 

 

STEP 2 OT

This step might not be as important to some people, but it's technically the first thing you should do for a new breed. Go out and actually catch the pokemon. If you've never caught the pokemon before, the OT will have an asterisk permanently attached to it and it will be ineligible for trade bonus Exp. It's a small detail that doesn't matter too much, but you might as well get rid of it while you're taking time to make a good breed. Once you have caught just one of that pokemon, you're free to use as many non OT versions as you want without fear of the dreaded asterisk. Note that shiny pokemon OTs work differently, one of the parents must have your OT while the resulting baby is of the same species or else OT will not be transferred. 

 

STEP 3 Egg Moves/Nature

Under the pokedex entry for your mon, go to moves, scroll all the way to the bottom and look at those moves which say EGG. These moves can only be learned by the pokemon through breeding and once your breed is finished, you will never be able to learn them again. There are some exceptions, but those moves will usually say Special and Egg meaning you can buy them from a special tutor later on as well. Breeding egg moves is an optional step in most cases, if you're not going to use any of the moves then you don't have to breed them onto your poke.

 

I personally like to breed as many egg moves as I can just because you never know what you might want to try out later, plus I feel it adds to the value and prestige of my breed. If a pokemon is born with an egg move, it can always be relearned at tutors just like any other move. Generally, egg moves and TM moves will be passed onto the offspring- so pay attention that your desired moves are not being overwritten during a breed step. Check the summary before you hand over the pokemon and make sure everything is in order, otherwise you can go to the pokemon center and delete intruding moves for $1,000 using the move deleter NPC.

 

 

These are the egg moves for Dratini and I have decided I want Mist, Haze, Extreme Speed, and Aqua Jet. Notice that Extreme Speed is also available as a special tutor move, so I didn't have to put it as an egg move, but doing so allows me to forget and relearn extreme speed for just 4 heart scales instead of paying 9,000 BP every time. Not all moves are like this, it must say EGG or TM to be transferable during breeding.

 

By this point in the breeding process, you should have a female version of the mon you're wanting to breed, it doesn't need any IVs or nature yet, in fact it's better if it has neither. Search the bulbapedia listing for the pokemon and scroll down to moves learned through breeding, you may need to check earlier gens for accurate results. This table should show you which pokemon learn the moves you want to breed onto your target. You will have to obtain these pokes and sometimes level them up or even chain breed them with other pokes in order to access the move you want. Again, use the pokedex to figure out at what level the move is learned and either buy or catch one close to that level, train it yourself, or spend heartscales to relearn the move.

 

For Dratini, I bought the cheapest female on the gtl. Using this table and the pokedex, I determined that both mist and haze are available from Wooper at level 12. So, I scan the gtl ideally for a male Wooper that already knows those two moves, then I breed them together into a female Dratini now with 2/4 egg moves. Extreme speed is from the special tutor so, to learn that, I just need to go and fork over the BP at battle frontier or other similar vendor. Last, I've determined the cheapest way to get aqua jet is through Seel/Dewgong at level 31, and since this is my last egg move I will get a male Seel with adamant nature and use an everstone to simultaneously set me up with the last egg move and nature for the rest of my breed.

 

If you are not using Egg Moves then you should just breed any male holding an everstone with your desired nature onto your female.

 

STEP 3 IVs

Now you are set with a female of the desired poke with the desired nature and egg moves. You should now fill out all your breeders, if not you can generally buy them for fairly cheap ~5k each depending. Be careful not to use breeders who can only be female like Petlil or Miltank! Avoid using breeders who hatch into babies like Jigglypuff or Pikachu! Babies won't ruin your breed like female only pokes will, but you will need to feed them berries and level them up before they can breed again. If your breed has multiple egg groups, I highly recommend choosing one or the other for your breeders unless you are extremely careful! 

 

Once I have my breeders, I like to line everything up in my first computer box exactly like my template:

 

 

This is for a Venusaur I bred recently, I've overlaid the 31IV of each pokemon in this screenshot to illustrate the connection between your template and the in-game layout. I've found this setup makes breeding incredibly fast and immune to mistakes. When you're all setup and ready to breed, you should have an empty party except for your party lead with flame body or similar ability that will hatch your eggs faster.

 

Once I have everything lined up like this, and double or triple checked that it matches my template, I will add all the braces and then take them out two couples (4) at a time to start speed breeding. I skip every other couple so that I can save money on genders, meaning I would take out HP DE and DE SA from the top row, have them bred with random gender, and replace the resulting eggs in the same PC spot I took their parents from. Then, I would take DE SA and DE SD from the second row and do the same thing. Once I get to NA SA, I would have to be a little more careful since this is my target species and I need to make sure I'm picking female gender and that my egg moves aren't being overwritten.

 

Once you have your first set of eggs back in the computer, take out five in reading order (from left to right, top to bottom) into your party and wait for them to hatch. Once these eggs hatch, you can replace them back in their PC slot and start breeding their partners next to them into the opposite gender. This way you save money on genders, hatch 5 eggs at a time, and the layout makes it hard to get lost or forget where you were. Even if you have to go AFK for a while, the order of your party and the layout of the PC should remind you where you were.

 

Short video showing this breed in action: https://youtu.be/aKdXWjT98pY

 

Finishing Touches

If your breed turned out to have the wrong ability, you can change it by using an ability pill found at breeding vendors. Normal pokemon can't access their hidden ability unless 

 

On your final breed step, you could pick something other than pokeball when accepting the egg. It's just for looks and can be changed later at anytime, so no worries if you forget.

 

I also like to make sure I find a nice place for hatching my egg, for example Bulbasaur I hatched in Viridian Forest. Again, not a big deal but I like to customize any detail I can.

 

The rest is fairly straightforward, train your EVs or use vitamins and wings to fine tune your EVs. If you're using a breed for a clearing a new region, it might be best to use vitamins instead of EV training so that you don't level over the obedience cap.

 

If you plan on STEP 1 Make a planto 100 right away, you'll want to use hordes with exp share at first and then if it has access to AoE moves, learn one and use it to clear hordes alone which will grant x2 exp compared to exp share. If you have an alt character- you could trade your non asterik OT mon to them and level even faster with trade bonus Exp. Exp charm +100% below level 80 or lucky egg(small) at or above level 80 isn't a bad value if you can afford it.

 

Upon completing these steps, or utilizing these concepts, you should have a pretty sweet custom pokemon, grats.  

 

 

Regarding Alphas and Hidden Abilities (Nov. 2022)

 

Spoiler

How does alpha breeding work?

Alphas are rare pokemon which only occur under certain circumstances, usually alpha hordes which occur once per in-game day. Effectively, the only difference between an Alpha and non-alpha is rarity and aesthetic. Alphas have larger overworld sprites, a red glow, and a special icon in their summary page. They are rarer and will be more expensive to breed due to this scarcity.

 

Alphas usually have their hidden ability unlocked unless a prismatic pearl has been used to transfer its hidden ability potential to a different pokemon. You don't need alpha to have a hidden ability, and you don't need to use hidden ability on an alpha.

 

In order to breed an alpha egg, both parents must have the alpha trait. Otherwise, the normal rules of breeding are the same. This means if you want to do a full 5IV alpha breed, every single pokemon used will need to be alpha. Though, since alphas tend to have multiple 31IVs, you will generally need fewer of them but it becomes more complicated to figure out which ones are compatible in creating your desired result.

 

Alpha Crobat with no HA potential (indicated by red alpha icon)

 

 

 What about Hidden Abilities?

Hidden abilities are much easier to manage than alpha, any one parent must have hidden ability potential and share the same species with the egg in order for it to pass on. This means it's very cheap to simply add into your eggmove or nature step and it will easily carry on to your final result. If you won't use hidden ability, then you don't need to worry about adding it, but even if you don't want the hidden ability- you can still breed your mon with HA potential and use ability pill to change abilities later whenever you want. 

 

HA pokemon are generally only found in alpha swarms, making them technically rarer than non HA versions though their gtl pricing often doesn't reflect that scarcity.

 

Espeon with HA (indicated by diamond icon)

 

 

Edited November 3, 2022 by concernedcitizen
Added Alpha and HA info

[MMOcritic]

If I can add on one more tip, 1x31 speed IVs is by far the most expensive IV to buy in the GTL. So if you want to breed 5x31 natured with 31 speed, recommend not having breeding the speed together with the natured Mon, otherwise you have to keep matching speed with the natured mon for all the other branches.

 

Keeping the speed IV on the non natured branch might save half a tree worth of speed IV costs. In the middle of trying this out myself.

[Poufilou]

If you want to save money on breeds, drop the idea of a IV table that every guide seems to like. Some IVs are more or less expensive depending the egg group. Pick the cheapest one as the one IV that will overlap everytime, and the most expensive ones as the ones that will be the added ones. 

 

If you also want to save time (aka money), you can just buy breeders that give you your egg moves during the breeding process. It's fairly easy. 

 

You seem to forgot to talk about nature at the end. Just remember to never buy anything until your female is done, because there is a small chance you can roll the nature. Same the for 4xIV mon male that can roll nature on the natured male branch. 

 

Pro tip here : use dittos. They're the cheapest most of the time. 

[EricRasp]

46 minutes ago, Poufilou said:

If you want to save money on breeds, drop the idea of a IV table that every guide seems to like. Some IVs are more or less expensive depending the egg group. Pick the cheapest one as the one IV that will overlap everytime, and the most expensive ones as the ones that will be the added ones. 

 

If you also want to save time (aka money), you can just buy breeders that give you your egg moves during the breeding process. It's fairly easy. 

 

You seem to forgot to talk about nature at the end. Just remember to never buy anything until your female is done, because there is a small chance you can roll the nature. Same the for 4xIV mon male that can roll nature on the natured male branch. 

 

Pro tip here : use dittos. They're the cheapest most of the time. 

This ^

Also, Step 2 has been redundant for a while now. You don't have bother catching mons for OT. 

[MMOcritic]

42 minutes ago, EricRasp said:

This ^

Also, Step 2 has been redundant for a while now. You don't have bother catching mons for OT. 

Is it? I thought to make the child OT at least one of the parents you have to catch naturally?