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[Breed Guide] Breeder Catching


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Introduction

 

When breeding, you will have to catch the pokemon that you want to breed in the wild. However, many pokemon are not easy to find, and even more difficult to catch. These include rare safari zone pokemon such as chansey and miltank, or the starter pokemon such as bulbasaur and torchic. The best way to go about with breeding these pokemon is to catch a few, keep one that is decent, and then start catching pokemon of the same egg group that is easier to find and catch. This makes breeding much quicker and cheaper. The purpose of this guide is to show you where you can find these easy-to-encounter, easy-to-catch pokemon. The guide will contain two parts - the first part is a general breeding guide (for gendered pokemon), while the second part is a list of locations that contains the best easy-to-encounter, easy-to-catch pokemon.

 

Example:

Say you want competetive blissey. First you need to catch a chansey - they are rare to encounter, and incredibly hard to catch. When you finally get one, it turns out it has terrible IVs and a bad nature. Rather than going through the pain of trying to catch a new one, you should turn to breeding, the most useful tool in the game. Chansey is in the fairy egg group, so it can breed with any pokemon from that egg group. Hoppip is another pokemon that happens to be in the fairy egg group, and unlike chansey, it has a 100% encounter rate south of island 5, and a catch rate of 255 (33,3%). The best way to go about making a good blissey is therefore to catch hoppips, and then breed them together with each other/chansey while using braces to get a nice competetive pokemon.
 

 

Part one: Breeding

 

The current breeding system for allows us to completely manipulate the IVs of our offspring, or let luck decide for us. I prefer the former, so I put a lot of effort into breeding to get what I want. Manipulating the offspring requires braces and everstones, so it’s a costly business. However, if you are content with a pokemon with 25+ IVs instead of perfect 31s, the time and money spent on breeding can be drastically reduced. This section is a deviation of Gilan’s breeding guide, to teach you how to breed (imo) as efficient as possible. I will not consider how to breed genderless pokemon - see Gilan’s guide to breeding on a budget for the general way to go about this.

 

First let’s agree on some terminology. When I talk about a trait of a pokemon, I talk about its IVs and nature. A pokemon has exactly seven traits - the nature, the hp IV, the atk IV, the def IV, the spatk IV, the spdef IV and the speed IV. Now, in order to guarantee that the offspring has n+1 good traits, you will have to have two parents with n good traits, of which n-1 non-nature traits are overlapping. The parents are given braces/everstone to make sure that the non-overlapping stats are passed. In general, you will need 2^(n-1) pokemon with one good trait in order to make a pokemon with n good traits, and this process takes 2^(n-1) - 1 breeds and 2^n - 2 braces/everstones in total. The most common thing to make is a pokemon with six good traits (five good IVs and a good nature), which would require 32 pokemon with one good trait, 31 breeds and 62 total braces/everstones. The braces/everstones alone will account for 930k if we assume that everstones are 15k a piece - this is not accounting for the pokeballs needed or price for gender selection. As you can see, this form of breeding is extremely expensive and time consuming - however, it can easily be cut by 75%, as I will show.

 

So far, I have not defined the term “good”. If you define it to be 31 in all the relevant IVs, the method mentioned above is hard to improve. If, on the other hand, you define it to be 25+ in each relevant IV, it can be vastly improved upon. This is simply because pokemon with several “good” traits are now very common - the chance of a wild pokemon having at least three IVs above 25 is ~12.33%. If you want to improve on the method above, you can simply skip the part where you breed pokemon with one good trait together to get a pokemon with two good traits, since you can just catch pokemon with three good traits in the wild. To get a pokemon with 6 good traits now, you only need eight pokemon with three good traits each, you only need to breed seven times, which means that the 14 braces/everstones you need will be only 210k! Once again I have ignored the cost of pokeballs and gender selection, not to mention that I did not consider the fact that good natured pokemon with good IVs are rarer to find, but the point here is that the amount of time and money required is just a fraction of what it used to be. Now, you might question the amount of time spent on cathing the pokemon with three good traits - the interesting thing is that you are expected to spend less time catching eight pokemon with at least three IVs at 25+ than 32 pokemon with at least one IV at 31 - thus, you will save time here as well.

 

As mentioned, the chance of a wild pokemon having at least three IVs at 25+ is about 12.33%, meaning that about one in eight pokemon will have this property. You will need eight pokemon like this, which means that you should expect to catch about 64 pokemon. However, some of these poekmon will have stats that you don’t need - since the 12.33% chance is that any three stats are 25+, you might get a few with the one stat that doesn’t have to be 25+. I generally recommend catching about 60-120 pokemon (one to two boxes in your pc), which should be sufficient for this breeding method.

 

For those of you who have not yet figured out how to breed after this discussion, here is a list to sum it up:

 

1. Get a decent (one or more good traits) pokemon of the spieces you want to breed. If the pokemon is gendered, get one that is female (if it is not female, you can breed with ditto to change the gender).
2. If you want any egg moves on your pokemon, make sure to breed this onto it first (keep the offspring female, if gendered).
3. Catch one to two boxes (60 to 120 pokemon) of a compatible pokemon from the list in this guide. If needed, narrow the IVs of the ones that look good, release the ones that are bad. Remember to keep at least one pokemon with the nature you want on your competetive pokemon.
4. Figure out a way to breed the pokemon you cought in step 3 with the pokemon you cought in step 1 (or bred in step 2, if it has egg moves) to make its IVs better. If the  pokemon you cought in step 1 has n good IVs, you pair it with another pokemon with n good IVs, of which n-1 are overlapping. You repeat this process until you have reached the desired amount of good IVs. When you have reached the point where you have 4 good IVs on your pokemon, you will have to combine the pokemon from step 3 together to make a male with 4 good IVs as well. You might have to turn back to step 3 in case you did not catch enough good pokemon.
5. If the final pokemon has the correct nature, you're done. Otherwise, make a male pokemon with the desired nature based on the pokemon you kept in step 3 and breed for nature.
 
Sometimes, you will catch a lot of good pokemon in step 3 that you do not use to breed the specific pokemon you want. These can either be sold, or kept for later breeding. For this reason, it is a good idea to catch pokemon that belongs to multiple egg groups, as they will be more valuable when breeding.

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Part two: Catching pokemon

 

The catch rate in this game is a/255, where a is approximately

a = ((3*HPmax - 2*HPcurrent)*rate*bonusball*bonusstatus)/3*HPmax

The value a/255 is however calculated by a completely different formula in the game (it actually calculates the chance of a ball shaking four times). The in-game formula has a major rounding error, so in reality every value of a larger than 200 gives a 100% catch rate. Furthermore, the formula for a has some rounding errors, so here is what I have found is required to have a 100% catch rate out:

 

-For pokemon with a catch rate larger than 200, you need to reduce their hp to 1.

-For pokemon with a catch rate between 75 and 200, you need to reduce their hp to 1 and put them to sleep.

-For pokemon with a catch rate between 35 and 75, you need to reduce their hp to 1, put them to sleep and use an ultra ball.

 

The list of easy-to-catch pokemon will be sorted by egg groups, and then by what I think is the best area. Each area on the list will be on the following format:
 

Area (Collective Encounter rate): Pokemon 1's name (encounter rate, catch rate), Pokemon 2's name (encounter rate, catch rate), and so on

Comment: comment

 
A pokemon's name will appear in boldface if it belongs to more than one egg group - these are the most desired pokemon to catch. Furthermore, several areas will be listed together if they have exactly the same encounters. Here is an example from the human-like group:
 

Human-like

Mt. Ember (50%): Machop (50%, 180)

Comment: This area also contains 50% geodudes

 

Generally, what you are looking for are high level pokemon that have a 100% encounter rate and 100+ catch rate. The high levels help you narrow IVs. For genderless pokemon, you will have to simply catch dittos.
 

 

The list

 

Field

I might have missed a place or two, but field pokemon are generally easy to come by. Whismur is nice because it’s also the best monster breeder.

 

Rusturf tunnel (100%): Whismur (100%, 190)

 

Diglett's cave (100%): Diglett (95%, 255), Dugtrio (5%, 50)

 

Super rod in Slateport (100%): Wailmer (100%, 125)

 

 

Monster

 

Rusturf tunnel (100%): Whismur (100%, 190)

Comment: Whismur in this area are level 5-8, which means you have to do some leveling to narrow their IVs.

 

 

Human-like

Human-like pokemon are unfortunately one of the few types of which you can’t find 100% of the time. Spinda is arguably the best pokemon due to its secondary egg group, field, while also having the highest encounter rate. If you are however breeding machamp/hariyama, you might as well just catch machop/makuhita.

 

Route 113 (70%): Spinda (70%, 255)

 

Mt. Ember (50%): Machop (50%, 180)

 

 

Water 1

There are a ton of places where you can farm only water 1 pokemon, these are just a few possibilities that are out there.

 

Super rod in Petalburg city (100%): Corphish (100%, 205)

 

Surfing in Route 104 (100%): Wingull (95%, 190), Pelipper(5%, 45)

 

Surfing in Route 6, 22, 23, 25, Viridian City, Fuchsia City (100%): Slowpoke (50%, 190), Psyduck (50%, 190)

 

Surfing on Island 4 (100%): Wooper (35%, 255), Marill (35%, 190), Psyduck (15%, 190), Slowpoke (15%, 190)

 

Surfing in Ruin valley (100%): Wooper (50%, 255), Marill (50%, 190)

 

Surfing in Route 120 (~95%): Azumarill (~66%, 75), Surskit (?%, 200), Mudkip (?%, 45)

Comment: Exact encounter rates not known.

 

 

Fairy

 

Memorial pillar (100%): Hoppip (100%, 255)

 

Surfing in Route 114 (100%): Azumarill/Marill (100%, 190/75)

 

 

Flying

 

Surfing in Route 104 (100%): Wingull (95%, 255), Pelipper (5%, 45)

 

Route 103 (Altering cave) (100%): Zubat (100%, 255)

(Depending on the cycle)

 

Bug

 

Mt. Moon (100%): Paras (100%, 190)

 

Pattern bush (100%): Various

Comment: This place has a lot of different pokemon, all in the bug group. The encounters vary by night/day cycles. I just put this here because the pokemon here are higher level than the paras.

 

 

Grass

 

Memorial pillar (100%): Hoppip (100%, 255)

 

Mt. Moon (100%): Paras (100%, 190)

 

 

Water 2

Depending on what second egg group you want, you should catch either Wailmer (field) or Magikarp (dragon).

 

Super rod in Slateport (100%): Wailmer (100%, 125)

 

Surfing in Sootopolis (100%): Magikarp (100%, 255)

 

Super rod in Route 118 (100%): Carvanha (95%, 225), Sharpedo (5%, 60)

 

 

Mineral

Mineral pokemon are another unfortunate example of which there is no 100% spot. The vast majority of mineral pokem are admittedly genderless, so you will not need these too often. You can also hunt them while hunting human-likes.

 

Team magma hideout (70%): Geodude (55%, 255), Graveler (15%, 120)

Comment: This place contains 30% torkoal, which are not very useful since they are only field and has a catch rate of 90.

 

Mt. Ember (50%): Geodude (50%, 255)

Comment: This place contains 50% machop.

 

Also, Rock Smash in many places (Island 1) may be a way to have a 100% spot.

 

 

Amorphus

Most of the amorphous pokemon are ghosts, which means they are not affected by false swipe. To make matters worse, shuppet is immune to sleep, making it fairly hard to catch. Although slugma is far away from a pokemon center, so is Mt. Pyre, and Pokemon tower has a very low encounter rate overall, so slugma is arguably your best option. (Note that you can use foresight to bypass the false swipe immunity.)

 

Mt. Ember (Ruby path) (100%): Slugma (100%, 190)

 

Pokemon tower (91%): Gastly (90%, 190), Haunter (1%, 11.8%)

 

Mt. Pyre (100%): Shuppet (50%, 190), Duskull (50%, 190)

 

 

Water 3

 

Super rod in Petalburg city (100%): Corphish (100%, 205)

 

Surfing in Kanto (100%): Tentacool (100%, 190)

 

 

Dragon

 

Surfing in Sootopolis (100%): Magikarp (100%, 255)

 

Old Rod in Vermillon (100%): Magikarp (100%, 255)

 

Ditto

Dittos are hard to come by, but I don’t think there is any other place than the mentioned tone worth mentioning.

 

Desert underpass (50%): Ditto (50%, 35)

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According to bulbapedia diglett is only field egg group.

 

Thanks! It was an overlook, since I used the field group as a template, I simply copied it all the way down. I forgot to remove the one in monster.

 

Edit: I also noticed that I had written Mt. Pyre instead of Mt. Ember several places.

 

I am planning to write down at least all the places with 100% encounter rates, but I'm also considering of expanding the breeding section to contain my version of economic breeding. Anybody interested in this?

Edited by PandaJJ
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your explanation of catch rates is a bit confusing. Your description leads the reader to believe that they multiply said percents by 3, 2, and or 2 based on certain conditions. However, I am pretty sure that is not exactly how catch rates work.

The formula for catching a pokemon is as follows (from Bulbapedia):

 

Catch_formula_1.png

 

Where the maximum value of a is 255 (if greater round down to 255) and the minimum is 1 (can't be 0 or else the pokemon would be uncatchable).

The chance that the pokemon will be caught is approximately a/255  (however it is a little different if a<201 as the "shake probability" also plays a factor).

 

 

I say this, because our explanation leads to believe that you take Diglett's 33% and multiply it by "3" due to 1 hp and then you get 100%.

 

What really happens is:

 

a = ((3x32 - 2x1)x255x1x1)/(3x32) = 249.6875

a/255 = 249.6875/255 = 97.92%

 

so the correct value is 97.92% not 100%.

 

For a more detailed explanation refer to http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate#Capture_method_.28Generation_II.29

 

Otherwise, good work. I really like this guide!

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your explanation of catch rates is a bit confusing. Your description leads the reader to believe that they multiply said percents by 3, 2, and or 2 based on certain conditions. However, I am pretty sure that is not exactly how catch rates work.
The formula for catching a pokemon is as follows (from Bulbapedia):
 
Catch_formula_1.png
 
Where the maximum value of a is 255 (if greater round down to 255) and the minimum is 1 (can't be 0 or else the pokemon would be uncatchable).
The chance that the pokemon will be caught is approximately a/255  (however it is a little different if a<201 as the "shake probability" also plays a factor).

 
 
I say this, because our explanation leads to believe that you take Diglett's 33% and multiply it by "3" due to 1 hp and then you get 100%.
 
What really happens is:
 
a = ((3x32 - 2x1)x255x1x1)/(3x32) = 249.6875
a/255 = 249.6875/255 = 97.92%
 
so the correct value is 97.92% not 100%.
 
For a more detailed explanation refer to http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate#Capture_method_.28Generation_II.29
 
Otherwise, good work. I really like this guide!


Thank you for pointing that out. I did not pay attention to the formula, so I thought that's how it actually works. As for the diglett example, I believe that the a in your example might be rounded up before divising by 255, giving a 100% catch rate still (considering that I have cought houndreds of digletts without ever one of them breaking out) I will take a look at it and rewrite the section when I'm back home (on my phone atm)

why did you use that font


Woah, that font looks hideous now- I wonder if it changed when I edited the post last time or if it's because I'm on my phone. In any case I will fix that aswell when I return home (I don't want it to be unreadable)
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your explanation of catch rates is a bit confusing. Your description leads the reader to believe that they multiply said percents by 3, 2, and or 2 based on certain conditions. However, I am pretty sure that is not exactly how catch rates work.

The formula for catching a pokemon is as follows (from Bulbapedia):

 

Catch_formula_1.png

 

Where the maximum value of a is 255 (if greater round down to 255) and the minimum is 1 (can't be 0 or else the pokemon would be uncatchable).

The chance that the pokemon will be caught is approximately a/255  (however it is a little different if a<201 as the "shake probability" also plays a factor).

 

 

I say this, because our explanation leads to believe that you take Diglett's 33% and multiply it by "3" due to 1 hp and then you get 100%.

 

What really happens is:

 

a = ((3x32 - 2x1)x255x1x1)/(3x32) = 249.6875

a/255 = 249.6875/255 = 97.92%

 

so the correct value is 97.92% not 100%.

 

For a more detailed explanation refer to http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate#Capture_method_.28Generation_II.29

 

Otherwise, good work. I really like this guide!

Tl;DR ...Nerd. :')

 

Woah, that font looks hideous now- I wonder if it changed when I edited the post last time or if it's because I'm on my phone. In any case I will fix that aswell when I return home (I don't want it to be unreadable)

Nah, it's just that it's Comic Sans...and people really hate that....And therefore i love it <3

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Okay, just did an experiment, and I must say that the catch rate is totally confusing. The formula used in 3rd gives the probability P = B^4 of cathing a pokemon, where

 

B = 1048560/(sqrt(sqrt(16711680/A)))

 

and

 

A = ((3*HPmax - 2*HPcurrent)*rate*bonusball*bonusstatus)/3*HPmax

 

which approximates to

 

P = ((rate*bonusball*bonusstatus)/255)^4

 

for a pokemon with 1 hp left. However, according to bulbapedia there occours a rounding error in the games, such that if A > 200, then the catch rate is virtually 100% (the chance of not cathing is less than that of encoutnering a shiny). To test this, I was trying to catch corphish, which has a cath rate of 205. If the game had no rounding error, there should be around 80% chance to catch a corphish at 1 hp. If the roudning error was the same as the original games, it should be about 100% chance to catch it at 1 hp. After 16 catches in a row, I concluded that the game does have the same rounding error. (The chance of getting 16 catches in a row with no rounding error would be about 2.8%.) To test the rate further, I tried to catch corphish without depleting it's hp - after 50 pokeballs, I had managed to catch 20 corphish. The chance of catching a corphish should be around 27-28% (regardless of the rounding error). I might have been lucky with my catches, but the thing that bothers me is that it is a well-known fact that there is a 100% chance to catch a sleeping ditto at 1 hp with an ultra ball - it should be no more than 60% (even with the rounding error).

 

I can only conclude that I'm clueless about how the catch rates in this game works - either they have been increases (maybe just for ditto), or maybe ultra ball has a higher multiplier than in the handhelds. What seems to hold true is that pokemon will be caught 100% of the time if the value of A is larger than 200, meaning that any pokemon with catch rates of 100 or more can be cought using only false swipe and spore.

 

As for the guide, I will try to work on it this week, but I will probably be busy with school.

Edited by PandaJJ
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Okay, did a major overhauling of the breeding section. and I will consider this guide finished for now. Feedback is much appreciated, and please point out any mistakes that you find. I hope this guide will be found useful by at least some people. (The title might be changed to better reflect the topic, but I'm not sure how to do that, or what to call it.)

Edited by PandaJJ
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Whismurs spawn at very low level in the Rusturf Tunnel. What about to look for something like Slowpokes as they spawn with more level and you won't have more work as you have to train the whismurs a bit to know if their IV's are good? Just got one Whismur with 21-31 in 4 stats, rolling me crazy. 

 

Talking about Monster egg group.

Edited by Alys
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Whismurs spawn at very low level in the Rusturf Tunnel. What about to look for something like Slowpokes as they spawn with more level and you won't have more work as you have to train the whismurs a bit to know if their IV's are good? Just got one Whismur with 21-31 in 4 stats, rolling me crazy. 

 

Talking about Monster egg group.

 

The only other options are places with 50% encounter rate of monster pokemon - either you can hunt for whismur/loudred in the desert underpass where you find ditto, or you can go to various places in Kanto where slowpoke is 50% encounter rate. In pokemon leafgreen you could find slowpoke 100% of the time in these places, but in firered they were crowded with psyduck, so pokemmo has a 50/50 split. I added the possibilites to the list, in case somebody is content with a 50% encounter rate.

 

Edit: Also, if the exact IVs are implemented, the level ranges won't matter anymore.

Edited by PandaJJ
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Shout out to Panda for this guide.  Helps when you don't have farm the same poke for hours.

Panda, this is so helpful you don't even begin to understand. (Especially with that Wingull spot)

 

ilyilyilyilyilyily

 

The flattery is real. I'm happy that people use this guide though, makes me feel less useless.

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Since when do you have to evolve magikarp to breed? Been breeding them for a while now and didn't have to evolve.

 

Are you telling me magikarp is not a legendary? O.O

 

[spoiler]

My bad, I actually thought it was like the baby pokemon. Thank you for pointing it out, fixed now.

[/spoiler]

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