Pokémon: Effort Value Training. By Gaspar Lesznik, English 202c, Section 023

Transcription

1 Pokémon: Effort Value Training By Gaspar Lesznik, English 202c, Section 023 The audience of this document is both people who take games seriously and people aspiring to be Pokémon masters. Introduction Effort value training (EV training) is a training method in the game Pokémon that utilizes game mechanics so that the player can decide what stats are buffed every time they level up. This game mechanic has existed since generation three, and is still used in the current generations of the game today. Most pro players of the game use this method in order to create the strongest team of Pokémon and become the true Pokémon master they were always meant to be. This document will explain EV training specifically in generation three (Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald versions). This decision was made because this was not the first appearance of this mechanic, but when the mechanic was fully developed. The reason a later generation isn t used is because as the mechanic developed, items become more involved and items are outside of the scope of this document. What are Effort Values? Effort values are a boost to a specific stat that is gained upon killing an enemy. The idea of effort value training is rather complex, but completing the training itself is simple. The first step of understanding effort values is to understand the different stats that a Pokémon has. These are health, attack, special attack, defense, special defense, and speed (a table of how the stats effect a pokemon is listed below). When you level up a Pokémon these stats will increase, in turn making your Pokémon a little stronger. The idea of EV training is that in killing a certain number of specific enemies, you can control what stat is being leveled up, and by how much. Health Attack Special attack Defence This determines your pokemon s hit points This determines the power of physical attack (this is moves like tackle) This determines the power of special attacks (this includes moves like confusi This determines damage taken by physical attacks Special Defence This determines damage taken by special attacks Speed This determines the turn order of battle (also affects the damage of speed base moves)

2 This is where the complexity of this mechanic comes into play. Each Pokémon has a specific effort value, for example a Ghastly has an effort value of one in special attack. This means that every time a Ghastly is defeated, any Pokémon that participates in the battle gets +1 EV for special attack. This point is not only awarded to the Pokémon that lands the final blow, but everyone who contributed or put in an effort in the battle, hence the name effort value (unless a pokemon dies in battle, if they are used they will receive the EV for the defeated opponent). The more EVs in a single stat the more that stat will increase upon leveling up. For every 4 EV points in a stat, that stats level will increase by 1 upon leveling up. This gives the false idea that if you only kill Ghastlys for the rest of the game you will eventually get a super powerful Pikachu with an insanely high special attack, but unfortunately this is not true. Every Pokémon has a maximum of 510 EV points and only 252 can be on one stat (the actual value is 255, but that would grant.75 of a stat and stats must be whole numbers). This means that it is only possible to get special attack EVs from 252 Ghastlys then defeating more will be meaningless. Creating a Perfect Pokémon In the games code every Pokémon has maximum stats that once they reach a certain limit, they will not go any higher. For this example let s look at an Absol.

3 Below is an image depicting the stats that this Pokémon can have at level 100. In the picture you can see where each stat gets maxed out. You might also notice the labels, with beneficial nature, with hindering nature, and neutral nature. A Pokémon s nature will determine which stats will start out naturally high, and which ones start out naturally low. There are a total of 25 different natures that a Pokémon can have. Of these natures there are five natures that offer no stat boost or hindrance. This leaves 20 other natures that can affect the final stats of a Pokémon. Each nature in this remaining will be beneficial to one stat (increase stat by 10%), but will hinder another (decrease stat by 10%). The only stat not affected by nature is the Pokémon s health. This chart highlights the adamant nature that will be referred to below. It also shows two columns about pokeblocks. These are affected by nature, but are not relevant to the topic of this document. Let us look at the process of creating an Absol with the maximum stats of attack and speed. First we will want to find out what nature would be best. We decided adamant nature would be best because we want a high attack, and since attack is most important to use we could care less about special attack (this is because it is bad to make hybrids, Pokémon using both special attack and regular attack. Making a hybrid will mean that its more balanced so it will have 50% attack and 50% special attack potential instead of 100% attack. This makes it weaker since moves will scale only off one or the other, so it is best to make sure you have 100% attack potential and only use moves that scale off attack).

4 We would now keep breeding Absols until we get one of the desired natures. Both breeding and catching an Absol are valid ways to get the desired nature, and both are time consuming, but breeding is more efficient. When breeding, if a Pokémon like Ditto is used, every egg you will get from the Absol and Ditto pair is guaranteed to be an Absol when it hatches. This is a higher rate of getting Absols compared to its 8% appearance rate (how often one is found in the wild) and its 3.9% catch rate (this is based off of the Pokémon having full health and a normal Pokéball is used). Hours after we started breeding we have the desired nature and now we can begin the process of grinding up attack EVs. Since we are a small level 1 Absol it is impossible for us to actually win any battles so as stated before, we will start with Absol and then switch it out because it participated in battle it will gain the EV we want. After we defeated 252 attack EV enemies we can now move onto speed. Assuming now Absol can fight on its own; we will use it to kill 252 speed EV enemies. Since the remaining EVs are irrelevant, unless you want that last stat point to go somewhere specific, (only 6 EVs remain so its only possible to add 1 full point to another stat, but 1 extra point in a stat doesn t do much) it is time to start leveling to 100 so we can have the ultimate Absol. IVs, The Last Step Now we can look at our fully leveled Absol s stats, and upon close examination we see that our attack is slacking and is only at 388 instead of the desired 394. This is because of the last game mechanic called Individual Values (IV). The IVs of a Pokémon are completely random and it changes from Pokémon to Pokémon. These values are decided upon owning the Pokémon by catching or hatching it. These values unlike EVs cannot be changed at all. This is what gives randomness to the game, and proves that you can only get the ultimate Pokémon if you dedicates hours to getting a Pokémon with perfect IVs (this being said, it is only possible to truly calculate a Pokémon s IVs at level 50 and even then it is still an estimated value). That being said, the highest IV value a stat can have is 31, so at level 50 a player can find out if their Pokémon has the max IV for any desired stat. Above is the calculation to find out an IV level (does not work for health). Math.Ceiling means to round up and Math.Floor means to round down. The first time stat appears it refers to the stat value that the Pokémon has. The second stat refers to the multiplier given by nature (beneficial is 1.1, neutral is 1, and hindering is.9) Using this formula on our Absol we find that it has 25 IVs in attack, so we are close to perfect but not quite there.

5 Conclusion From reading above it is very difficult to create a Pokémon with the maximum stats. Through the process of EV leveling it is possible to get a Pokémon very close to this value. If enough time is invested (I recommend not doing this) it is possible to keep attempting until a Pokémon with perfect stats is achieved. Most people who are obsessed with getting perfect IVs and EVs are usually players who are involved with the competitive scene of the game. For more casual gamers who want the strongest party, just trying to get good EVs is ideal, and also a way to better understand the way the leveling system of Pokémon works. From reading this article any casual player can now EV train their way to Pokémon master, and aspiring pros can now do their best to create an ultimate party of maxed EV and IV Pokémon.