Competitive battling has appealed to Pokemon players since the beginning, but for many years, the barrier to entry was simply too high for many. Acquiring Pokemon with high enough stats to have the edge in battle was borderline impossible, not countꦜing hacking them in — which is a grey area at best.
Fortunately, Sword & Shield changed all that. As well as introducing other ways to get Pokemon with maxed-out stats, they made breeding far easier than it had previously been, so getting your own legitimate 5IV Pokemon is now a simple — and fairly enjoyable — process. Here's everything you need to know.
What You'll Need
The breeding process requires a few things. You'll need an Everstone, which you can pick up as a hidden item in Turrfield, and a Destiny Knot, which you can buy for 10BP in Hammerlocke's Pokemon Center. On top of those, you'll need a Pokemon of the species you want (consider its ability — if you don't want it to have its Hidden Ability, make sure your breeding Pokemon doesn't have it), and a 5IV Ditto. You'll also need the IV checker, which is obtained by battling Leon when you hit level 5 in the Battle Tower.
Getting a 5IV Ditto
"5IV" refers to the number of perfect IVs a Pokemon has, in this case, five of a possible six. IVs were previously hidden values that affected a Pokemon's stats, but in more recent games they've become visible. For competitive battling, you want your Pokemon's stats to be as high as they possibly can be, so perfect IVs are a must. Getting 6IV is considerably harder, but for most Pokemon, 5 is fine since there will be a stat that isn't used — either Attack (for a special attacker) or Special Attack (for a physical attacker). From now on, we'll refer to this unimportant imperfect IV as the "irrelevant IV".
IVs can be passed on through breeding, so we just need a 5IV Pokemon we can use to pass along IVs while the other key attributes come from elsewhere. Ditto is the perfect candidate, since it can breed with (almost) anything, meaning you can use it for other Pokemon. Fortunately, getting a 5IV Ditto is pretty simple thanks to Raid dens. One Den on a small island off the Isle of Armor has exclusively Ditto, so doing enough 5-Star Raids by spamming Wishing Pieces will eventually net you a 5IV Ditto. Ideally, it'll have the right irrelevant IV to make the other five perfect. It's not the end of the world if it doesn't, but if you're a perfectionist, you might want to keep trying. If you don't have the Isle of Armor DLC, there's a Den in the Wild Area that can have 5-Star Ditto — just be prepared to deal with other Pokemon too.
Starting the Breeding Process
The first thing to do is get a Pokemon of your desired species with the correct nature. You can also do this just by catching the Pokemon in the wild until you find one, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:or using Synchronize, but we're going to use breeding. The Destiny Knot gives bred Pokemon 5 out of their 6 IVs from their parents, so give it to the Ditto now to start getting some better IV target Pokemon, and put the Ditto and your chosen species (not holding anything) into the Nursery, which can be found either on Route 5 or in the Wild Area's Bridge Field.
Natures boost one stat at the cost of lowering another, so the correct nature is key to having the highest possible value for a stat without letting the drawback impact you. For example, on a Pokemon whose Attack stat you wanted to max, you'd want an Adamant nature, since that boosts Attack while lowering irrelevant Special Attack.
Start hatching the eggs they produce by cycling around; this can be sped up with the Oval Charm, which increases the rate at which eggs are produced. It is acquired by defeating Morimoto in Circhester. Additionally, place a Flame Body Pokemon in your party, which halves the time eggs take to hatch. Once you have a Pokemon of your chosen species with the desired nature, give it the Everstone and swap it into the Nursery. The Everstone passes a parent Pokemon's nature down to bred Pokemon, so this will mean all bred Pokemon from this point have your desired nature.
The Breeding Process Itself
From here, it's a largely luck-based process. You need the Destiny Knot to select the 5 IVs it passes down to be the correct five from the Ditto, which is a slim chance. To speed things up, you can swap in bred Pokemon with better IVs to the Nursery as they hatch (remembering to give them the Everstone). This will🏅 boost the overall chances of a 5IV egg — there are better odds of 5 perfect IVs coming from 5IV and 4IV parents than ones with 5IV and 0IV.
Eventually, you'll get a 5IV Pokemon with the correct irrelevant IV, and then the breeding process is over. There are only a couple of things left to do, but before we get to those, if all of this sounded like a bit too much work, you might be interested to learn that there's another way.
The Alternative Method - Bottle Caps and Nature Mints
Sword & Shield didn't just make the breeding process easier — they made obtaining competitively viable Pokemon in general easier, thanks to the introduction of Nature Mints and the return of Bottle Caps. Bottle Caps can be obtained in a few ways (primarily from Battle Tower wins) and allow you to pay for Hyper Training in the Battle Tower's reception area, which "Hyper Trains" a chosen IV (or all IVs, if you're using a Golden Bottle Cap). To be eligible for Hyper Training, a Pokemon must be level 100, so keep that in mind.
A Hyper Trained IV is functionally identical to a perfect one, so a Hyper Trained Pokemon will perform just as well as a naturally perfect one. A good tip to help you use Bo💧ttle Caps economically is that the Cramorant crafting machine in the Isle of Armor Dojo can create a Gold Bottle Cap out of just three Bottle Caps, potentially saving you three 💦Bottle Caps if you need to max all 6 IVs.
Nature Mints allow for a similar level of player control. These can be purchased in the Battle Tower's reception too, and when used on a Pokemon, essentially give it the nature of the chosen Mint (ie. a Jolly Mint gives Pokemon a Jolly nature). The Pokemon's nature won't change on its summary screens, but the stats changed by nature will reflect the new nature of the mint.
Using these methods, you can end up with a Pokemon functionally identical to one that was competitively bred. Having a nature show up that's essentially untrue, and having the IVs read "Hyper Trained" as opposed to "Perfect" might bother some players, and the breeding process can be a lot of fun, but if you need a competitive Pokemon fast, this is the way to do it.
Maxing EVs
The last factor that affects a Pokemon's stats along with IVs and nature is its EVs. While in past games, this required grinding against specific wild Pokemon, Sword & Shield removed the cap on Vitamins, meaning this part of the process is also much easier than it used to be.
Simply pick the EVs you want (you can max two and put a tiny amount into a third), and buy the relevant Vitamins. For example, if you wanted to max a Pokemon's Attack and Speed, and put the remaining points into Defence, you'd buy 26 Protein, 26 Carbos, and 1 Iron, then use them all on the Pokemon. Vitamins can be bought half price in bulk from the Isle of Armor Dojo's vending machine, so if you used the Ditto den in the Isle of Armor earlier, give all your Armorite Ore to Honey to unlock it if you haven't already, as it'll save you cash.
With that, your stats are finished. All that's left to do is get to level 100, which you can do the old-fashioned way, or by just using a bunch of XP Candy. You should have plenty from the Ditto Dens, and you can always buy more from the Crown Tundra's Max Lair if you have access to it. Once it hits level 100, your Pokemon should have the highest possible stats a Pokemon could possibly have — a powerful ally well worth the effort you've put in. You might be finished at this point, but depending on your Pokemon's ability, there might be one more thing to do.
Sorting Abilities
Abilities can be a little messy, but if you made the right choice at the start, you should be fine. Many Pokemon have two regular abilities, with the one that a Pokemon has being selected at random. This means there's likely a 50% chance your Pokemon has an ability you don't want. Fortunately, changing the ability to the desired one is simple. Just use an Ability Capsule (which can be bought from the Battle Tower with BP or the Max Lair with Dynite Ore) to swap to the desired ability.
Hidden Abilities complicate things slightly, but shouldn't pose an issue. Hidden Abilities are additional abilities that are much harder to obtain, but can be passed down genetically. If you wanted the Hidden Ability for your Pokemon, then using a parent with the Hidden Ability would have been fine. If you want the Hidden Ability, but didn't have a parent with it, don't worry — you can use an Ability Patch (purchased for a higher price from the same places as Capsules) to switch a regular ability for the Hidden Ability. The problems arise when you have a Pokemon with a Hidden Ability, but want a regular ability. There's currently no way to make this swap, so to avoid becoming stuck like this, it's always better to just breed with regular abilities and sort things out afterward if you want the Hidden Ability.
At this point, things really are done. Everything you need for your Pokemon has been sorted: it has every stat possible maxed, and the right ability it needs to dominate foes, so all that's left to do is pick some killer moves and jump into competitive battles and show off your hard-earned stats.