I don't want to go into horrible detail about what an IV is and how exactly they affect your Pokemon, but I'll give a very very short summary. Each Pokemon has an IV for each of their stats, ranging between 0 and 31, which affects how high that stat goes. At level 100, each IV is worth 1 point in that stat. each IV is worth 0.5 in that stat, with the total rounded down. So at level 100 an IV of 30 gives a lower stat than one of 31, but at level 50, an IV of 30 or 31 is exactly the same unless you have EVs invested. In general an IV of 31 is superior though.
I will also assume you're familiar with how egg groups work and whatnot. This is intended as a more technical guide, so I suppose if you want to know more about that then go here: http://bulbapedia.bu.../wiki/Egg_Group
Same deal with passing down moves.
And naturally, I will assume that you are aware that if you are breeding a male and female Pokemon together, the baby will be the same species as the mother.
You will need
- A perfect Ditto (What if I don't have a perfect Ditto?)
- A parent with the nature you want
- An Everstone
- A Destiny Knot
First things first, an explanation of the items. The Everstone will pass down the nature of whoever it is equipped to. Equip the Everstone to your parent.
The Destiny Knot was introduced in Gen IV with a completely useless in-battle effect. It was largely ignored by competitive players until XY, where it was given a fantastic out-of-battle effect. Normally, when breeding, your baby will be born with 3 stats inherited from either parent. Now, in XY and ORAS, if you have Destiny Knot equipped to a Pokemon in the day care then the child will inherit 5 stats from either of its parents. The way to think about it is that it ensures only one of the baby's stats will be randomly generated.
Some subtleties
Hidden Abilities
You might want your Pokemon to have a specific ability. If one of the parents is Ditto, and the other parent has its Hidden Ability, there is a chance that the baby born will have the Hidden Ability (I'm not sure on the exact percentages but I think it's about 60%). Note that if you're breeding without Ditto, the Hidden Ability will only be passed down if the mother has it.
Also, if you're breeding without a Ditto then the mother has a chance of passing down her ability regardless of whether it's the Hidden Ability or not.
Egg Moves
Egg moves behave differently in XY onwards. Now, an egg move can be inherited from either parent. Previously they would only be passed down by the father.
Speeding up hatching
If you have a Pokemon with Flame Body or Magma Armor in your party then the number of steps required to hatch your Pokemon is halved. This is a vital time saver and highly recommended. You can also use the Hatching O-Power.
In addition to that, once you've completed the Kalos/Hoenn Pokedex by speaking to the professor from the game, he will give you the Oval Charm which doubles the odds of the parents producing an egg.
Power Items
They are largely redundant with the Destiny Knot for breeding purposes.The Power Weight/Bracer/Belt/Lens/Band/Anklet each increase HP/Atk/Def/SpA/SpDef/Speed EVs respectively when equipped to a Pokemon during battle. But they also will guarantee that their respective stat is passed down by the parent. When breeding for 5/6IV Pokemon you either lose the Destiny Knot or Everstone, so they're impractical, but they do come in handy in the What if I don't have a Ditto? section.
IV Checking
Since here we are only caring about perfect stats, I will not go into any detail about calculating stats specifically. All you need to know is that there is an in-game person you can talk to and he will tell you the highest stat your Pokemon has, and how high it is.
In Pokemon X&Y, he can be found in the Kiloude Pokemon Center.
In Pokemon Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire, he can be found in the Battle Resort Pokemon Center.
If your Pokemon has an IV of 31 in a given stat, then he will say something along the lines of "Stats like those simply can't be beat!" and list all the perfect stats.
How stats are passed down
Notation
First things first, the standard way of writing down a Pokemon's stats is like this:
HP/Atk/Def/SpA/SpDef/Speed
For instance, if I write this:
Pikachu: 26/2/31/31/31/17
Then that means Pikachu has the following IV spread
HP: 26
Attack: 2
Defense: 31
Special Attack: 31
Special Defense: 31
Speed: 17
If I write an "x" in any of the stats it means "this stat is either unknown or doesn't matter".
The Setup
Let's say here that we're breeding for an Abomasnow (so, a baby Snover) with emphasis on Special Attack. Our desired IV spread is then
Snover: 31/x/31/31/31/31
Since it's a special attacker, we will give it a Modest nature.
Obtaining the right nature
It's vital to do this first. It would suck to get your perfect Pokemon and find out that it doesn't have the nature you want. At this point, we don't care about the Pokemon's stats. It's just going to be the great-great-great-great-great-(...) grandparent of your final baby, so this one will eventually just be released into the wild.
You might already have the right Pokemon with the right nature. If that's the case, you can skip this step. If not, then there are two ways to achieve it.
1) Have a Ditto with the nature you want. In fact, if you have a perfect Ditto with the right nature then that's even better because you can combine the two steps.
2) Chain-breed natures. Find something in the egg group with the same nature that is a male and breed it with a female version of your desired baby. For instance, if I only have a male Snover and its nature is Brave, the first thing I need to do is get a female Snover by either catching another one or breeding this one with a Ditto. After I have a female Snover of arbitrary nature, I find, say, a Modest male Squirtle (which is in the same egg group), equip it with the Everstone and hatch just one single egg. It will come out with the right nature, and we can proceed.
The dirty work
This is now my setup
Ditto: 31/31/31/31/31/31, equipped with Destiny Knot
Snover: x/x/x/x/x/x, Modest and equipped with the Everstone
Throw them into the daycare center and run around until you have 5 eggs in your party, and then hatch them. Chances are you won't get your perfect baby yet. Go and talk to the IV Judge and make note of which of your babies has the highest number of perfect stats. For example, if my babies have the following spreads
1: 31/31/x/x/x/x
2: x/x/31/31/31/x
3: x/31/31/31/x/x
4: x/x/31/x/x/x
5: x/x/31/31/x/x
I would pick number 2, since it has 3 perfect stats. Note that number 3 also has 3 perfect stats, but one if them is in Attack, which in this case is a stat I don't care about! So he really counts as a 2 in terms of quality.
Keep the most useful baby and release/wonder trade the rest. Then take the former parent out of the Daycare and swap the Everstone to the new baby, then throw it back in. You now have this in the daycare
Ditto: 31/31/31/31/31/31
Snover: x/x/31/31/31/x
What now?
Well, you haven't got your perfect baby yet. What you do now is get another 5 eggs, hatch them, and check their IVs again. If any of them have more perfect IVs than the current parent, swap them out. So if I hatched a 31/x/x/31/31/31 Snover, even though it's missing Def which the previous one has, it has 4 perfect IVs vs. 3 perfect IVs, which increases the odds of hatching what we want.
Just keep repeating this process until you get a 31/x/31/31/31/31 Snover.
I want a 31/31/31/31/31/31 baby...
This can be done, but it takes much longer than getting one with 5 IVs. With the Destiny Knot you can guarantee a 5IV baby within 30-60 minutes. But going for more than that, well, let's calculate the odds. Assume we have a parent with x/31/31/31/31/31 and a perfect Ditto.
There's a 1/12 chance it picks the "x" in HP to inherit. In the other 11/12 cases we have to generate an IV of 31 in the non-inherited stat, which is a chance of 1/32. Multiplying we have 11/12 x 1/31 = 11/384, which comes out to be a 2% chance of getting a perfect child with a 6IV and 5IV parent. It's much worse if you have two 5IV parents, but to maximise your odds in that case, make sure they are both missing the same stat.
What if I don't have a perfect Ditto?
Find someone to trade you one. Seriously. The process is so much harder if you don't have one.
If you don't want to do that, then, well, you're in it for the long haul.
You'll need at least 6 parents with IVs of 31 in at least one stat. Say you have
1: 31/31/x/x/x/x
2: x/x/31/x/x/x
3: x/x/x/31/x/x
4: x/x/x/x/31/x
5: x/x/x/x/x/31
First thing I'd do is breed 1 & 2 together until I get a 31/31/31/x/x/x baby. This will already take a while. Then take that one, breed it with number 3 until I get a 31/31/31/31/x/x baby, and so on until I have all of the stats I want.
You can make this a lot easier on yourself by equipping Power Items to your Pokemon. Since in this case we don't care about the nature of the Pokemon, we can ditch the Everstone. For example you could equip Destiny Knot to #1 here and Power Belt (Defence) to #2, meaning your baby definitely comes out with 31 in Def and will inherit the other 4 at random from the two parents.
Don't do this though. Get a perfect Ditto.
Edited by fluppy, 21 December 2014 - 11:07 PM.
