Effort Values

Effort Values are gained from battling wild Pokemon and they boost your Pokemon’s statistics much like IVs. The main difference being that you have far more control over EVs. Each Pokemon you battle in the wild gives you between 1 and 3 EVs in a specific stat.

A Pokemon can have a maximum of 510 EVs in total split amongst it’s stats with a maximum of 255 in each stat. This obviously means you can only get 2 stats to maximum.

But what do EVs do? Well, at level 100, 4 EVs in a stat equates to an increase of 1 point in that stat. Clearly 255 isn’t divisible by 4 so you only need 252 to hit the maximum benefit. Which is, for those following along, a massive 63 stat points at level 100.

So you can get a massive 63 point boost to two stats, leaving 6 points spare. You can throw 4 of those points at another stat giving you a single point increase leaving 2 EVs totally redundant.

Note: Before Pokemon Black and White, Pokemon Stats only adjusted to EVs during a level-up, so you wouldn’t be able to see your efforts until you levelled it up (also, you couldn’t give a Level 100 Pokemon different EVs because of it)

However, Pokemon Black and White adjusts Pokemon Stats after each battle, which removes the above limitations.

EV Affecting Items (and Statuses)

I know I said above you get EVs from battling wild Pokemon (which I will get onto, I promise!) but there are some important items which come into play when dealing with EVs.

Vitamins

Okay, first up are Vitamins. You can purchase these across all Generations from the following places:

Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Lilycove Department Store ($9800), Battle Frontier (1BP, Emerald Only)
FireRed, LeafGreen: Celadon Department Store ($9800)
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Veilstone Department Store ($9800), Battle Park (1BP, Diamond/Pearl),
Battle Frontier (1BP, Platinum Only)
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Celadon Department Store, Goldenrod Department Store, Safari Zone Gate ($9800),
Battle Frontier (1BP)
Black, White: Shopping Mall 9 ($9800), Battle Subway (1BP)

What do Vitamins do? Each stat has a Vitamin associated with it, HP Up (HP), Protein (Attack), Iron (Defence), Calcium (Special Attack), Zinc (Special Defence), Carbos (Speed).

Each use of a Vitamin adds 10 EVs to that stat until the stat has 100 EVs or more. As you’ve no doubt worked out, this can give you a good chunk of your initial EVs giving you 25 (100/4) of those potential 63 stat points from the off.

Wings

Okay, that’s Vitamins done with, however in Generation 5 (Black and White) there is a new addition to the EV-altering item family, Wings.

Wings are new to Black and White and are found in two places, Driftveil Drawbridge and Marvellous Bridge. When you see a flying Pokemon’s shadow, you have a chance of grabbing a wing.

Wings are essentially mini-Vitamins but with one important difference. They aren’t subject to the 100 EV cap so you can use them at any time during EV training. But sadly they only give 1 EV in the appropriate stat.

Much like Vitamins there is a Wing per stat, as follows: Health Wing (HP), Muscle Wing (Attack),
Resist Wing (Defence), Genius Wing (Special Attack), Clever (Special Defence), Swift Wing (Speed).

Berries

Now Wings are out the way, let’s move onto EV-related Berries…

Berries were added in Ruby and Sapphire and opened up a new strategic option to battling as each berry had a specific use your Pokemon could automatically use in battle, such as holding an Oran Berry to get health back or a Cheri Berry to cure paralysis.

Alongside berries that aid in battle there are 6 berries that aid us when EV training, these berries reduce EVs in the associated stat by 10 except if that stat has more than 100 EVs in which case the first berry used will reduce the stats EVs to 100, with every berry after that reducing by 10 as expected. In other words, no stat will ever take more than 11 of a particular berry to have its EVs reduced to 0.

Here is a list complete with where to get them:

Pomeg Berry – Lower HP EVs
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Route 119, Berry Master
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Route 214, Berry Master
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Juggler (Fuchsia City, Red Shard)

Pokewalker: Found in Hoenn Field, Beyond the Sea – Rare 1000+ Steps
Held by Happiny – Amity Meadow – Common 2000+ Steps

Kelpsey Berry – Lower Attack EVs
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Berry Master
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Berry Master
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Juggler (Fuchsia City, Blue Shard)

Qualot Berry – Lower Defence EVs
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Berry Master
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Berry Master
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Not Available

Pokewalker: Found in Hoenn Field – Rare 2000+
Found in Big Forest – Very Rare 4500+ Steps
Held by Cleffa – Amity Meadow – V. Common 0+ Steps

Hondew Berry – Lower Special Attack EVs
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Route 119, Berry Master
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Fight Area, Berry Master
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Juggler (Fuchsia City, Green Shard)

Pokewalker: Found in Big Forest – V. Rare 5000+
Held by Smoochum – Amity Meadow – Common 2000+ Steps

Grepa Berry – Lower Special Defence EVs
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Berry Master
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Berry Master
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Juggler (Fuchsia City, Yellow Shard)

Pokewalker: Found in Big Forest – Rare 500+
Held by Igglybuff – Amity Meadow – V. Common 0+ Steps

Tamato Berry – Lower Speed EVs
Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Berry Master
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Route 212, Berry Master
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Scratch Cards in Battle Frontier

Pokewalker: Found in Big Forest – Rare 1000+
Beyond the Sea – Rare 2500+ Steps
Held by Elekid – Amity Meadow – Rare 5000+ Steps

As you can see, I haven’t listed any locations for Pokemon Black and White, this is because at the moment berries are unobtainable except through the Dream World. The Dream World becomes accessible in Europe and the US on March 30th 2011 via the Global Link website.

I’ll update this article with any relevant post-Global Link info as it becomes available.

Power Items and other EV-related items

As well as Berries and Vitamins, there are a variety of other Hold Items that can affect EV training.

Macho Brace – Doubles any EVs the Pokemon holding it gets.

Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald: Gift after defeating the Winstrate Family on Route 111
Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Gift in Pastoria City after showing a boy all forms of Burmy (Diamond/Pearl) or Combee (Platinum)
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Held by the Traded Machop in Goldenrod in exchange for Drowsee
Black, White: Obtained from a Man in the Eastern Gate from Nimbasa City

Power Weight, Power Bracer, Power Belt – Adds 4 EVs to HP, Attack, Defence after battle.

Power Lens, Power Band, Power Anklet – Adds 4 EVs to Sp. Attack, Sp. Defence and Speed after battle:

Diamond, Pearl, Platinum: Battle Park/Tower (16BP Diamond/Pearl), Battle Frontier (16BP Platinum)
HeartGold, SoulSilver: Battle Frontier (16BP)
Black, White: Battle Subway (16BP)

As you can see, using these items can speed up EV gain quite considerably. Also worth noting is that a Pokemon holding an Exp. Share will also gain EVs from a battle, the downside being as they are holding the Exp. Share they can’t benefit from the above items.

Finally there is one more topic to touch on before getting to actually laying the smackdown on Pokemon to actually EV train, and that is Pokerus.

Pokerus

Pokerus (Pokemon Virus) is an affliction Pokemon can get randomly after battling, but rather than being a bad thing (as suggested by it’s name) it is actually beneficial. A Pokemon with Pokerus gets double EVs from battle, just like the Macho Brace, even better though is that it stacks with the above items.

You can’t really plan to obtain Pokerus, as it’s an ultra-rare occurence (something like a 1 in 21,000 chance), but if you do spot a Pokemon with an odd status effect labelled PKRS, bung it in a Box so as to have a permanent source. Pokerus infects Pokemon in your party, but it has a lifespan of 24 hours. This lifespan is paused if the infected Pokemon is stuck in a Box.

Even if a once infected Pokemon loses it’s infection, it will forever be stuck with the boosting effects as indicated by a smiley on it’s summary page. Just to let you know it was once a carrier.

Obtaining EVs from Wild Pokemon

So now you know what EVs are and what items influence what you get, what Pokemon do you need to knock out to gain specific EVs?

Well, the games now have 649 Pokemon and clearly I’m nowhere near masochistic enough to do a full list of Pokemon and what EVs they give, so instead I’ll provide an example location for Generation 4 and 5 titles.
(Thanks to the wonderful folks over at Smogon and Bulbapedia for the amazing abundance of information)

HP
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Bidoof (Levels 2 – 4, Route 201, 1 EV)
HeartGold/SoulSilver: Slowpoke (Levels 5 – 25, Slowpoke Well, 1 EV)
Black/White: Stunfisk (Levels 15 – 35, Route 8 *Surfing*, 2 EV)

Attack
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Shinx (Levels 3 – 4, Route 202, 1 EV)
HeartGold/SoulSilver: Goldeen/Seaking (Levels 5 – 10, Route 25, 1 EV – Goldeen, 2 EV – Seaking)
Black/White: Patrat / Lillipup (Levels 2 – 4, Route 1, 1 EV)

Defence
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Geodude / Onix (Levels 5 – 10, Oreburgh Mine, 1 EV)
HeartGold/SoulSilver: Tangela (Levels 20 – 30, Route 21, 1EV)
Black/White: Roggenrola (Levels 10 – 13, Wellspring Cave, 1 EV) * 50% encounter rate *

Special Attack
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Gastly (Levels 12 – 16, Old Chateaux , 1 EV)
HeartGold/SoulSilver: Psyduck / Golduck (Levels 5 – 10, Route 6, 1 EV – Psyduck, 2 EV – Golduck)
Black/White: Litwick / Elgyem (Levels 26 – 29, Celestial Tower, 1 EV)

Special Defence
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Tentacool (Levels 20 – 30, Valley Windworks *Surfing*, 1 EV)
HeartGold/SoulSilver: Tentacool / Tentacruel (Levels 15 – 20, Route 27 *Surfing*, 1 EV – Tentacool, 2 EV – Tentacruel)
Black/White: Frillish (Levels 5 – 15, Route 4 / 17 / 18 *Surfing*, 1 EV)

Speed
Diamond/Pearl/Platinum: Starly (Levels 2 – 3, Route 201, 1 EV)
HeartGold/SoulSilver: Rattata (Levels 3 – 6, Sprout Tower, 1 EV)
Black/White: Basculin (Levels 5 – 15, Route 1 / 3 / 6 *Surfing*, 2 EV)

So, armed with this info, if you wanted those 63 points in Speed on for example a Starly in Black or White, you’d simply go to route 1, surf like your life depended on it and slaughter 126 Basculin with her. (Basculin gives 2 Speed EVs per battle, we need to get 252 EVs for those 63 points, 252 / 2 gives us 126)

To speed things up a bit, you could make our gorgeous Starly hold a Macho Brace which would halve the battles needed, down to 63 dead Basculin (As the Macho Brace doubles EV gain, each Basculin would be worth 4 instead of 2)

Alternatively you could make her hold a Power Anklet and kill 42 Basculin (Each Basculin is 2 Speed EVs + 4 Speed EVs from the Anklet, for a total of 6 Speed EVs per Basculin. 252 / 6 gives us 42 necessary deaths!)

As you can see, this is all pretty straightforward! The hard part is keeping track of how many battles you’ve fought in… good old paper and pen helps here, or use the Counter app in Pokemon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum!

Next time we’ll delve into Pokemon Eggs and how they work as well as the importance of good parents!

Last time I gave a brief overview of all the basic stats a Pokemon has along with how to tell the difference between a physical and special move. A Pokemon’s statistics and move information is easily visible from the in-game Summary screen for that Pokemon. There are a couple of other snippets of information that are useful there too but are never brought up in-game. Those are the Pokemon’s nature and their characteristic…

Here are the Summary screens from both Pokemon White (Top) and Pokemon HeartGold (Bottom), looking at the right hand side you can see the nature is quite prominent (Naughty for the Lv. 49 Serperior in White and Bold for the Lv. 66 Noctowl in HeartGold.)

At the bottom of the right-hand side screen you can see that Pokemon’s characteristic (Capable of taking hits. for the Serperior in White and Somewhat stubborn for the Noctowl in HeartGold)

Pokemon Natures

First let’s discuss a Pokemon’s nature. A nature basically enhances one stat by 10% whilst reducing another by 10%. Below is a table illustrating which nature affects which statistics, as you can see there are 25 natures, of which 5 are neutral, there is a combination for all stats, except for HP.

Since HeartGold and SoulSilver, the stats raised and lowered by a Pokemon’s nature is visible on it’s summary page via Red (Increased) and Blue (Decreased) shadows on the stat text as visible in the above screenshots. It can be a bit tricky to see, but I find that once you’ve seen it you spot it instantly from then on! I also think it’s easier to see in Pokemon Black/White than HeartGold/SoulSilver.

So how does this help us? Well, let’s take a typical favourite offensive Pokemon, our old friend, Charizard! Say hello Charizard!!!

Charizard is a Fire/Flying type, meaning any Fire or Flying moves will benefit from STAB (Same Type Attack Bonus) (I’ll go over STAB later on when we get onto talking about Movesets). Basically, those moves, because they match Charizard’s type will do more damage. So let’s have a look at Charizard’s statistics and what moves he’ll learn over at Veekun’s awesome Pokedex…

Okay, don’t freak out but here is your first glance at a Pokemon’s base statistics, these determine how large those stats will be when at Lv. 100. They can also be used as a decent gauge to determine what that Pokemon is good at. In MMO terms, is it a Tank, DPS or Healer?

Let’s look at Charizard’s base stats, HP: 78 Attack: 84 Defence: 78 Sp. Attack: 109 Sp. Defence: 85 and Speed: 100

Already you can see that his highest stats are Special Attack and Speed, so ideally we’d want to take advantage of that. On Veekun’s Pokedex we can input a level to see what the stats would be, so let’s do that now and see what Charizard would look like at Lv. 100. Type 100 in the Level box and place a 0 in the Effort box (as we’ll go over Effort Values later) and focus on the Min IVs column, this is what we end up with:

HP: 266 Attack: 173 Defence: 161 Sp. Attack: 223 Sp. Defence: 175 and Speed: 205

Okay, great, now let’s just flick back over to the Pokedex and have a look what moves Charizard can learn. We’ll keep it simple at this point and just look what he can learn from levelling up, ignoring moves from breeding and all that other good stuff.

Hopefully you’ll be noticing that the majority of the Fire/Flying type moves Charizard can learn are  Special type moves which means we can stand to lose 10% from it’s regular attack stat.

Logical choices here then are to choose natures (See, right back to the subject at hand!!!) which reduce regular Attack and boost Special Attack or Speed. That gives us TWO potential natures to aim at when breeding Charizards, referring back to the table above gives us Modest nature for reduced Attack but increased Special Attack or Timid nature for reduced Attack but increased Speed.

How would they affect Charizards stats? Something like this, again at level 100 with 0 EVs and 0 IVs:

As you can see, at level 100 that 10% boost roughly equates to 20 stat points for Charizard, obviously this is different for each Pokemon. But giving your Pokemon an edge by getting an advantageous nature could easily be the difference between winning and losing.

Now, as another quick example, Chansey, our wonderful egg-loving cutey has one of the highest HP stats in the game, combined with a pretty high Special Defence stat, Both her Attack and Special Attack stats are poor, clearly showing she is intended as a Tank/Healer. Her stats at level 100 with 0 EVs and 0 IVs are:

HP: 610 Attack: 15 Defence: 15 Sp. Attack: 75 Sp. Defence: 215 and Speed: 105

This generally leads people to choose a Calm ( ↑Sp. Def, ↓Attack ) nature for their Chansey’s to take advantage of her strengths.

Phew, that section turned out longer than I expected… Let’s move onto characteristics!

Characteristics are intrinsically linked to IVs, so buckle up as we delve into the first of the hidden Pokemon statistics…

Pokemon IVs (Individual Values)

Each main Pokemon stat, HP, Attack, etc. have an associated IV. An IV is simply a value between 0 and 31 which is part of your Pokemon when it is “born” by the game, either when you see it in the wild or when it is hatched from an egg.

Think of IVs as your Pokemon’s DNA, IVs can be passed down onto babies via breeding and they ultimately dictate what that Pokemon’s stats will be at level 100. A Pokemon with an Attack IV of 31 will have 31 more in Attack at level 100 than the same Pokemon with an Attack IV of 0.

As you can see, much like natures, a Pokemon’s IVs can have a significant effect on it’s strengths and weaknesses. Unlike natures though, you don’t have a way of seeing exactly what IVs your Pokemon has in the game itself!

Okay, now you know what IVs are, let’s get back to characteristics…

Characteristics

Let’s open up our Pokemon summary page again!

Here we can see that my Serperior has a characteristic of Capable of taking hits. So what does that mean?

A characteristic informs you of what stat has the highest IV and gives you some clue as to what it might be.

So my Serperior’s highest IV is in it’s Defence stat, although it could still be any of those 7 possibilities, remembering that the characteristic identifies the stat with the highest IV it is unlikely that it is 1, 6 or 11 (although totally possible, it would mean it had TERRIBLE IVs across the board.)

This is the best you can get if you are playing Diamond and Pearl, in Platinum, HeartGold and SoulSilver however you can go a little better. If you head to the Battle Frontier (which you get access to after defeating the Elite 4) and go to the Battle Tower you will see a bespectacled chap near a PC (known as the Judge) as you can see below:

In Pokemon Black and White you can find the following gentleman (also known as the Judge) in the Battle Subway located in Nimbasa City:

These chaps will give you a bit more information about individual Pokemon, initially they’ll tell you your Pokemon’s Potential:

This is basically just a simple addition of all your Pokemon’s IVs so you can get an indication of how good or bad they are overall.

They’ll then single out the best individual stat as in the above pictures and rate it as follows:

Clearly these are more useful, but you are still only able to vaguely clarify your BEST statistic, what if you want to know EXACTLY what every statistics IV is.

Basically, in-game you can’t. The Judge is the only information you can get. Luckily for us there are a couple of ways outside the game to get that information.

Action Replay Codes
Option 1 is to use Action Replay codes, if you have an Action Replay or are playing the game off a flashcart then this is the easiest and most efficient way… otherwise…

Online IV Calculator
Option 2 is to use an online IV calculator such as the wonderful ones at LegendaryPokemon.net or MetalKids.

Simply hatch an egg or catch a Pokemon, give it some Rare Candies to get it to level 20+ (50+ recommended) and enter the info into one of the calculators and it’ll spit back the IVs.

So now we have ways of identifying Pokemon with potential high IVs using their characteristic and the Judge as a guide, you can see at a glance whether a Pokemon you’ve just caught or bred is worth keeping or whether you should ditch it.

Phew… I was going to lead onto talking about EVs (Effort Values) but this post is long enough, I’ll tackle EVs and talk a bit about Egg Groups as well as important items for breeding in the next instalment of Pokemon Statistics and You!

Oh and for those wondering, the High IVs on my example Pokemon Serperior were Defence and Special Attack of 31 and on my Noctowl it’s Special Defence IV was 29 (which had a characteristic of Somewhat Stubborn)

See you next time!

Each and every Pokemon has a bunch of statistics that describe how much damage they can dish out and take:

HP: Hit Points, commonly referred to as Health. This is simply how much damage a Pokemon can take before it faints.
Attack: This determines how strong any physical attacks performed by the Pokemon are.
Defence: This determines how much damage physical attacks do against the Pokemon.
Sp. Attack: Special Attack, determines how strong any “special” attacks performed by the Pokemon are.
Sp. Defence: Special Defence, determines how much damage “special” attacks do against the Pokemon.
Speed: Simply determines how fast the Pokemon is.

At a glance it’s pretty obvious how these interact, Attack is compared to Defence, Sp. Attack is compared to Sp. Defence and Speed determines who goes first.

Obviously the actual formula for deciding damage is far more complicated than that, different moves (and items) affect various stats for example, giving multipliers or affecting the precedence of stats. However, one thing might not be immediately apparent. What’s a physical and what’s a special attack and how are they different?

Let’s Get Physical

Physical and Special attacks have been defined differently throughout the various generations of games so I’ll quickly cover that here!

Generation 1 – 3 – Original Red and Blue (GB) – FireRed and LeafGreen (GBA)

Typically a moves type determined whether it was physical or special. If a move was Normal, Fighting, Flying, Ground, Rock, Bug, Ghost, Poison or Steel it was considered physical.

Whereas if a move was Water, Grass, Fire, Ice, Electric, Psychic, Dragon or Dark it was considered special.

In general, physical moves had the Pokemon make contact and special moves used a projectile or impacted the enemy in some non-physical way (psychically for example).

Generation 4 – 5 – Diamond and Pearl (DS) – Black and White (DS)

From generation 4 onwards the physical or special nature of a move became move specific, so you could have Ice attacks that were physical and not just lump every Ice move as special.

You can determine if a move is physical or special by looking at the move in-game. If it has a blue water-ripple like icon then it’s special, if it has a red starburst like icon, it’s physical. A grey circular icon with a blob indicates a status-affecting move, neither physical or special.

Next Time

That’ll do for this entry, these are the essential parts that make up how a Pokemon deals and takes damage. Following up this trail of understanding, next time I’ll cover Pokemon Natures and Characteristics which completes the information visible to you in-game along with a brief introduction to the hidden world of Individual Values (IVs), Effort Values (EVs) and Base Stats.

From there we’ll start exploring how to use this information to our advantage and start looking into breeding some competitive Pokemon!

With the release of Pokémon Black and White tomorrow I feel re-invigorated enough about it to devote some time to writing about this wonderful and often totally disregarded franchise.

Most people discount Pokémon on the grounds that it’s “for kids” or purely on it’s cutesy nature. These people are missing out on what makes the series so popular for so many people (even, *shock*, ADULTS), it’s deep strategic battle system and even deeper Pokémon breeding/raising systems. They alone are what make the series so fascinating but equally they are areas of the game that the games themselves never fully explain, the concepts of egg groups, egg moves, effort values (EVs) and individual values (IVs) for example are never even mentioned in-game yet can influence your killer pets abilities in massive ways.

Why they are kept so hidden and never talked about in-game apart from subtle suggestions and hints now and then is anyone’s guess. A subject for another entry perhaps…

Regardless, having a well balanced team, with an appropriate mix of defensive, offensive and support is a unique and interesting puzzle to solve. Using Pokémon you like, those weaker but often more interesting Pokémon, and through selective breeding, thought and training taking out Ubër Pokémon is rewarding in itself.

I’m planning on writing up my thoughts of Black and White whilst playing through the game as well as grapple with the deeper side of the game, perhaps with guides on breeding, EV training, RNG abuse and all that good stuff too. I won’t be focussing on just Black and White either as most of this stuff is relevant to all prior titles too. Pokémon is a pretty inclusive game, no matter which generation you are playing!

If you’ve never really played Pokémon because it’s too “kiddy” or “cutesy” I HOPE that I’ll show some depth to the game you never noticed or realised existed and start you off on that road to catching them all!

See you in Unova!