I’m going to start EV training my Pokémon the old-fashioned way, for the very first time, because SWISH’s replacement for Core/Super Training disgusts me.
And, since at least one (1) person has shown like the mildest breeze of an interest in perhaps maybe possibly EV training their favorite mon? Where there was no interest before... I decided I’d share the experience for those of you who’ve never tried it, to encourage you all to do so, because it’s a great experience (well, like I said, I’ve never done it the oooold-fashioned way, but working together with my monster babies in Core/Super Training is always a great experience, and I have no doubt this will be as well). Keep in mind that in Gen VIII, you can completely EV train your mons with just vitamins. This is not what we’re about to do. If you’d rather take the expensive and easy route, be my guest.
Just in case you’ve HEARD about EV training, and have been intimidated/irritated by all the STUFF that goes into it, let me assure you that I won’t be doing most of that STUFF. I’m not worrying about IV’s, I don’t have the Power Items, & I’m going to try to make this as not-info-dumpy as possible. If you WANT to know about all those things, I’ll put info/resources at the bottom of this post. But we’re keeping it super-simple today. All you need is the game, a pen and paper, and an internet connection (which if you’re reading this, yeah).
And before you say anything, YES, I know that Pokémon SWSH is a poorly-designed mediocrity dressed up like a beautiful triple-A video game. You don’t have to tell me. I am well aware of its shortcomings, I know it’s not an open world even though it would like to think it is, I know it’s irritating to bike for an extra three minutes instead of just sliding down a slope, I know it’s dumb that Pokémon pop into existence two feet in front of you, I know walking into a town you can see through its gate does not merit a loading screen... I KNOW. There are so many things they could’ve done better, and I honestly feel they chose not to. But here’s the thing: It has monster babies I can raise, so I’m gonna play it. No, I can’t pet them (for no effing reason like you already have it programmed from previous games ffffff) but I love them just the same. I look at this disturbingly bad game, and... I still have fun. So... If it’s really frustrating you that badly, maybe you should stay away from it for a while. Go back to older gens. There’s nothing I can do for you, honeybun, it’s just gonna stay bad. So... for all the rest of you who still want to play this glorious trash fire, follow me~
Step 1: Go catch (or hatch) a Rookidee
This is super easy, they’re right there on Route 1 (and 2 and 3 if I’m not mistaken). For this little experiment, I’m going to be using a newly-hatched offspring of my Corviknight, Morrigan (I’m gonna name her Adair ^__^ ). You don’t have to do the same, because if you catch a Pokémon and don’t battle with them in your party, they still have no EVs yet - If a Pokémon receives EXP, they also receive EVs. Unfortunately, you can’t turn EXP Share off in these games, so you’ll want to make sure not to get into any battles until you know you’re ready.
Step 2: Look at base stats & choose 2
Rookidee’s Bulbapedia page clearly shows that their highest base stats (there’s some confusion here, I’ll explain later) are Speed, Attack, and HP. If you click the little forward arrow at the top of the page, you can see that Corvisquire’s base stats are Speed, HP, then Attack (but there’s barely a difference between the latter two). Then, there’s Corviknight, where it upends into Defense being the highest, followed by HP, then Attack, with Speed getting kinda left behind. You have lots of options here. But as for me, I’m going to go with Speed and Attack - this decision is partly helped along because Adair’s lowered stat (more on that later) is Defense, and partly because I plan to keep her as a Corvisquire. For those of you wanting to let your fast baby birb become the impenetrable tank they were made to be, by all means, go with Defense and HP, or Defense and Attack, or something like that. It doesn’t really matter, because either way, your Rookidee is going to be - dare I say it - within the top percentage of Rookidee!
Now, what does this mean?
Every Pokémon has the same maximum amount of Effort Values: 510.
Most people divide these into 252, 252, and put the last 4 into HP (or maybe something else of HP is one of their chosen stats)
“But Magi,” I hear you laugh, “that doesn’t add up to 510, it adds up to 508!”
Correct you are, my intelligent honeycomb! There’s one more thing though:
Every four (4) Effort Values your Pokémon receives in a stat, equals up to one (1) extra point in that stat they will have at Level 100. That’s literally what EVs are. Which, sadly, means the last two EVs count for nothing. Which... I feel they could’ve corrected this many generations ago, but they just... don’t?
So, pick two stats you want to be totally OP (as far as in-game Pokémon go), and go for it! It’s also possible to split your EVs 3 ways instead of 2, but let’s keep it simple for now.
Before you begin, you should start a split tally list on your paper - one for Speed, one for Attack (or whichever other stats you’re going for).
Like I said before, a Pokémon that gains EXP, gains EVs. But different mons give different kinds of EVs. Throughout the course of your adventure, you likely battle everything that comes your way, right? Well, those are random Pokémon, which makes you end up with a random EV spread, so your stats are going to be pretty much evenly spread out, which is nice, but none of them reach their full potential. All EV training is, is fighting the right Pokémon for the right stats.
Serebii, helpful as always, has a list of which mons give which EVs. If you want to be sure of how many EVs any Pokémon in the game gives you, you can click on their Pokédex, use the Galar Dex scroll-down to select the mon, then look in the Effort Values Earned section. It’s easy!
The first stat we’re training is Speed, so we’re going to be looking for, funnily enough, Rookidee. They give you 1 Speed EV each. Put a mon you’re sure can 1-hit KO those teeny birbs at the head of your party (for me it’s the Sliggoo that’s one evo away from filling my dex), and go to Route 1 or wherever you want to go.
Now... Run away from every encounter that’s not a Rookidee! Haha. Take down those birbs and, every time you do, put a tally mark on the Speed list on your paper. That’s one EV. Great job! Now just keep doing that and make sure to count them up every now and then. You want 252. Yes, I know, it’s a lot of work, but... that’s the point. You’re working together with your Pokémon to make them the very best they can be.
Once you have 252 EVs in Speed, move on to Attack, for which your target should be Chewtle, found on Route 2. They give you 1 Attack EV each, so again, one tally mark per Chewtle defeated, until you have 252. Yes, there are mons who give you more than 1 EV, but those tend to be rarer and/or more trouble to bump into than they’re worth, so it’s best to stick to Rookidee and Chewtle. The last four (or six, if you want to bother with the other 2, I mean it’s not much more work, so might as well) can go into HP, which you’ll gain from Skwovet, who I’m sure you’ve had no trouble finding.
And... There you go! Once you complete your tally, your Rookidee is officially EV trained! At level 100, they’re going to be, as an old friend of mine used to say, a beast on stilts!
But, hold on there a minute, honeybun! What’s the rush? Aren’t you forgetting something? You still have 5 more team slots to fill in! If you still want to after all this, anyway. XD Every Pokémon has the potential to shine - yes, EVERY Pokémon - so pick your faves, one at a time. Pick which stats you want to train in, and do what we just did! You can do it yourself this time, now that you have experience. Remember, Bulbapedia and Serebii and sites like that are always there for you!
If your head’s not aching yet, here’s a lot of info I threw in at the very end so that it wouldn’t be a headache during the training process:
What’s that complicated thing about base stats you mentioned before?
Okay, so the games (starting in HGSS I think) started calling Effort Values, Base Stats. For... some reason. What I - and a lot of fans - mean when I say “Base Stats”, are species-specific stats. When you click or scroll down to “Stats” in a Pokémon’s Bulbapedia page, and see the graph of Base Stats, they’re not talking about EVs, they’re talking about those species-specific base stats. Sorry for any confusion~
And that “lowered-stat” thing?
Ah, that’s in regards to Natures. Every Pokémon has a Nature, which determines which of their stats (if any) get a 10% increase and 10% decrease. Those stats are shown in red and blue, respectively, in your Pokémon’s status screen/summary/whatever you wanna call it. Different mons of the same species can have different Natures, which makes them unique, just like you and I! Nature also determines which flavor is their favorite, and which they dislike (tied to the increased and decreased stat).
Bulbapedia has two nice charts showing all this stuff better than I can say it. I prefer the stat-focused chart, which looks like a round robin tournament with the Natures that have no changed stats going in a diagonal line down the graph.
(If you were wondering, Adair’s Nature is Mild, which means she has increased Special Attack, lowered Defense, loves Dry flavors, and dislikes Sour flavors! They’re just a couple tiny details, but they go a long way to helping me flesh out her personality in my imagination! =^__^= )
Power Items are six hold items you can usually get during post-game stuff, like Battle Towers, for BP. They double the amount of EVs earned in whichever stat specified in the item’s description, making this whole process go by quicker. Pokérus also does that, making the process breeze by. If you want to EV train loads of mons, these are things you definitely want.
As for Vitamins, in previous generations, one vitamin increased a stat by 10 EVs - but only for the first 100. So if you’d have to give them the 10 Vitamins per stat first to really save more time. Gen VIII really does believe in taking the work out of everything, so now they made it so that you can completely EV train your mons with just vitamins. Just like with the “seminars”, I find this disgusting. But if you prefer it to the more tedious process you just went through, by all means, no judgment. Everyone is different and likes to do different things. I’m just glad I could share the old-fashioned way with y’all and (hopefully) bring more people around to it who were intimidated/not interested before. That’s really the only point of this.
What are IVs, and why are they “so important”?
IVs are permanent numbers that help shape a mon’s stats. Every stat has an IV, and they’re always different, even among the same species, meaning that every Pokémon is unique! ...Again! XD Basically, for every 1 IV your mon has in a stat, that’s another 1 point in that stat they’ll have at level 100 (kinda like how EVs work, but IVs don’t grow like EVs, they are permanent). They range from 0 to 31. There is a (very, very complicated) way of knowing EXACTLY what your Pokémon’s IVs are, but I suggest looking that up because like I know the gist of it but am not confident I can properly explain it. I don’t need to know the exact IVs though, because we have Characteristics.
Bulbapedia has a List of Characteristics that show what stat your mon’s highest IV will be in. There are five rows, each with a pool of possible IVs. If you want to make sure your Pokémon’s highest IVs will be at least 2, 3, or 4, you could try to use mons with Characteristics only from the bottom three rows. Or, from just the bottom row, whatever works for you. Or you could go for that 31 and breed 200 mons from the second row until the Stats Judge tells you at least one of their stats is perfect, whatever, you do you. I think the bottom three pools are just fine, and try to stick to EV training mons with those Characteristics. Then again, my Duraludon, Alexandria, Likes to thrash about, so her highest IV could be as low as 1. But... I don’t care. I love her. 30 extra stat points can’t hold a candle to love. See what I mean?
If you want to make it big in the competitive scene, you absolutely should do your best to get 31 in all the important stats to each mon’s build. But it takes a lot of time and hard work, and there are no shortcuts, and I can’t help you, other than directing you to videos like this:
Should I even bother with mons that don’t have a “good” Nature/Characteristic/etc.?
That’s up to you, but I would 100% say Yes. If you EV train a Pokémon, they will have great stats they wouldn’t otherwise have, because of you, no matter what their IVs are. This is why they “will always come to us”. This is why they let us catch them. We can help them grow to their best potential. Yeah, maybe someone else’s mon with perfect IVs can annihilate yours... But maybe they won’t. Maybe you can find the right strategy to take them down. Get to know your monster babies. Examine their moves. Study your fights, see what works and what doesn’t work when and where. And if you still lose... Well, so does everyone else. Despite what that English theme song might tell you, Pokémon isn’t about “being the very best, like no one ever was” or “catching them all”. It’s about the journey, about discovering the world, yourself, and your monster friends.
Are you sure EVERY Pokémon has the “potential to shine”?
...Oh, you want like, an actual answer?
Well... It’s like I just said, get to know your Pokémon. You might think some of them are useless, but spend some one on one time with them. They might surprise you.
Myself, I never use Pokémon I don’t think are attractive. They have to be cute or beautiful or endearing in some way. Granted, my definition of cute might differ from others - that’s only natural - and I have a long list of cute mons that consists of... most of them. XD But just because I (or anyone else) don’t use them, doesn’t mean they don’t have worth. They totally do, and you never know, you might get a new favorite if you take the time to check them out.
And... That’s all I can think of. If you have questions, please feel free to ask me, and I’ll try to explain or give you resources that can explain better than me.
I hope my explanation of stuff was more digestible than other places you might’ve tried to learn about EV training before. Either way, I hope less people will be put off by the prospect of EV training. That’s my one goal with this post. Because I really love it, it’s given me a stronger bond with a few specific Pokémon in the past, and it really makes me happy seeing my babies growing into their fullest potential. As always, I hope you all have fun. PACE~
