Propriety here! In the spirit of this year’s Pokemon Advancement eXpo, where we’ll all hopefully be learning lots of great things about Pokemon, Volaro (the Elusive Rose, PPL East 2013) prepared a mini-course for you on EV Training! If you’ve never EV trained your Pokemon before, this post may be helpful!
Take it away, Volaro!
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Greetings, challengers of the PPL.
While I, Volaro, may not be personally making the trip to Boston this year, I believe that with the discovery of the Kalos region, many trainers may be stepping up their game, so to speak, and growing significantly stronger with new training tactics. As such, my Roselia and I plan to spend a year training in solitude in preparation for next year’s Pokemon League. As such, I find it only fair to share with you, dear challengers, my findings as we grow together in the Kalos region.
The first thing of note that must be discussed is the basics of training. Whenever a Pokemon beats another in battle, they are awarded with EV points, or Effort Value. Depending on the type of Pokemon beaten, these EVs can be given into any number of stats, such as HP or Special Attack. For example, winning against a Zubat can give you one EV in Speed. You may ask yourself, what good do these EV points do for me? Well, friend, they simply allow you to specialize the Pokemon you train to perform their specific job better. If you wanted to raise a Pyroar to use special attacks and do lots of damage, investing EVs into physical Attack may not be the way to go, as you only have a limited amount of EVs to spend. Each Pokemon can gain 510 EVs total, with a max of 252 EVs into any one stat. The big thing to remember about EVs is that for every 4 EVs in a stat your Pokemon has, the stat is increased by 1. So fully investing your EVs in speed can boost your Pokemon’s speed by 63 (at lev 100)! That’s enough to outspeed certain Pokemon that it normally wouldn’t be able to and could easily turn a match in your favor. Through proper EV training, even normally weaker Pokemon like my Kecleon can get some use and flex their muscle.
In the Kalos region, there are many ways to get EVs. The first thing of note is to take care when you plan to EV train a Pokemon. Anything that gives a Pokemon experience will give it EVs, so unless you’re sure you want to give all the Pokemon in your party EVs in a certain stat, its best to keep Exp. Share off while training (Alternative, you could just remove the members of your party that still need EV training. The ones you used to play through the story may already be maxxed out and thus are safe).
The first way to boost your EVs is through vitamins, which can be bought from Lavarre City’s Pokemart for $9800. These items boost your Pokemon’s EVs by 10 per use. Pretty handy! However, only ten can be used on a Pokemon at once, so you’ll only be able to get a maximum of 100 EVs through vitamins [Propriety: note that this is per stat! You could get up to 100 EV in Speed and 100 in Attack through vitamins, for example]. Its best to use your vitamins first, before any other EV training, as that 100 starts counting from the first EV you get, no matter the type of training. For example, if you started giving Speed-Related Vitamins (Carbos) to a Piplup who already had 50 Speed EVs invested, you’d only be able to use 5 Carbos on it.
The Pokemart in Lavarre carries the following:
- Protein: Gives 10 Attack EVs
- HP Up: Gives 10 HP EVs
- Carbos: Gives 10 Speed EVs
- Calcium: Gives 10 Special Attack EVs
- Iron: Gives 10 Defense EVs
- Zinc: Gives 10 Special Defense EVs
To keep track of your stat gains, you can tap the arrows on the bottom screen of your game until you arrive at the Super Training window. Your Pokemon’s base stats are shown by the dark green hexagram, while their EVs are displayed as a growing yellow hexagram outside of it. In this screen, you’ll also notice the soccer ball on the bottom left, beneath the punching bag. You’ll know when your Pokemon has maxxed their EVs by the glowing muscle-man in the top left corner of the screen, to the left of their name. This’ll take you into Super Training itself, a series of mini-games that will give your Pokemon EVs and items (such as Punching bags to further boost EVs or evolution stones). I think we’ll go into detail more on Super Training next time.
-Volaro the Elusive Rose
Good article, though it’s a bit misleading when it comes to vitamins. When it says “For example, if you started giving vitamins to a Piplup who already had 50 Speed EVs invested, you’d only be able to use 5 vitamins on it”, what it OUGHT to say is something like, “You’d only be able to use 5 Speed-related vitamins (Carbos) on it”. A Pokemon is not limited to only 10 total vitamins, it’s just that vitamins cannot be used to give a Pokemon more than 100 EVs in a particular stat and they cannot be used if a Pokemon has no more EVs to grant. If you don’t want to give a Pokemon more than 100 EVs in a particular stat and you didn’t EV train it at all, you could theoretically use as many as 51 total vitamins and it wouldn’t stop you.
I’ve added a note to clarify this. Thanks!
Lovely article, hope it helps new challengers do better than I did last year!
One small note: In Gen 6, a few people have confirmed that EVs per stat are capped at 252. So you don’t have to remember to avoid those extra three points 😀 So that section isn’t as important now.
Oh goodness, really?! This is news to me! Thanks for the heads up!
I can also confirm this. The way i usually check is by giving the pokemon a punching bag, and i always get the stat cant go any higher message, so this gen is definitely more forgiving in that aspect(i hated give my pokemon the dreaded 255 ev)
Thanks! I was originally going to omit the whole 252 / 255 thing entirely, as its not super necessary for the basic primer thing I was going for with this, but I figured I’d include for completionist’s sake. Turns out it wasn’t necessary after all! I appreciate it.