Need some help with basic pokemon questions

[Luffylike]

Hello guys,

 

I have played every pokemon game until the ones you needed a nintendo 3ds for, so as of now only half of them.

 

I am almost done with the current version of the game yet i feel like i am missing out on a lot... 

 

Can someone explain to me the concepts of stats, abilities ( what are ability capsules for?), ev's (what does this even stand for ^^),  or items that have an effect at the beginning of switching them in? I encountered a couple of trainers with pokemons that have big dark eyes over themselves and were very strong - how can that be?

 

Also i have once fished a charizard out of a lava lake and somehow it is really weak. Are wildly caught starters actually weaker? What do i have to look at when i catch a pokemon to see if it is powerful? Are there huge differences? 

 

Do opponents in reborn always have a stat advantage? 

 

Thank you so much for your answers! I love this game, thank you so much for developing it

Edited September 24, 2019 by Luffylike

[Des Teto]

So, you want a presentation about pokemon basic mechanics ? I think you will find a clear explanation in some websites such as Bulbapedia. There are articles about everything you asked, just look it up! But if you manage to finish the game without knowing all that, I think you will understand everything easily.

 

I tried to explain each point myself but I realized I always missed important things. I can try to answer more specifics questions later if you have some.

[Autumn Zephyr]

Okay, so let's go through these one at a time, all right

 

>A pokemon's stats are a combination of a collection of mechanics: Base Stats, Nature Modifiers, Individual Values (IVs), and Effort Values (EVs). The latter three mechanics are complex enough to get their own tab, but base stats are pretty important on their own, since these are what shape a pokemon species' intended purpose in battle. For example, charizard's base Special Attack is 109, while chansey's is at a much smaller base 35, so charizard is much better suited at spewing out Flamethrowers all over the place. Chansey, however, does have base 250 HP, compared to charizard's base 78, so it's better at surviving said Flamethrowers.

 

>Abilities are one of the more substantial parts of the game, since they are almost as varied as the attacks themselves. Most Abilities do very different things, ranging from granting immunities (Levitate, Motor Drive, etc.), raising the user's stats under certain circumstances (Moxie, Moodie, etc.), or inflicting status effects when touched (Effect Spore, Flame Body, etc.). Every species of pokemon only has a small list of specific Abilities they can potentially have, however; charizard, for example, can only choose between Blaze (increases the power of its Fire-Typed attacks by 1.5x when at low HP) and Solar Power (raises the power of all Special Attacks by 1.5x while Sunny Day is active, at the cost of some HP). The Ability Capsule lets you change the pokemon's Ability from this list in case you don't like its current one.

 

>As mentioned earlier, the term "EV" is short for "Effort Value". These are a collection of points toward specific stats a pokemon earns when defeating another in battle, with the type and number of EVs being determined by the enemy defeated. Chansey and audino, for example, will always give 2 HP EVs each on defeat. Collecting 4 EVs in a particular stat gives an actual point in that stat. As such, if you had two otherwise identical pokemon whose only difference was that one had earned 12 EVs in Attack, the one with the EVs would have 3 more Attack than the other. A pokemon can earn up to 252 EVs in a particular stat, for a total of 42 additional points in that stat, and can achieve this number in two different stats; it's highly recommended that one focuses on two stats like this when dealing with EVs, as the game's major opponents do the same thing.

 

>The items giving enemies stat increases upon entry are Seeds, a collection of four items that are all tied to a particular list of Field Effects. The Synthetic Seed, for example, will activate in the Factory, Short-Circuit, and Glitch Fields, but will be completely useless if you attempt to use it on the Fairy Tale, Desert, or Forest Fields. Using these properly requires extensive understanding of the Field Effect system, which is much more complex in Reborn than it is in the main games, so I wouldn't worry about these too much quite yet.

 

>...I'm gonna assume that by "pokemon with big, dark eyes", you mean the PULSE Pokemon. These are basically artificial Mega Evolutions (temporary super forms introduced in Gen. 6) that, in Reborn's case, act more like raid bosses than standard enemies; as such, we don't get them.

 

>Since I mentioned them before, I should go ahead and explain Natures and IVs as well.

A pokemon's Nature is a modifier the pokemon's base stats, usually adding 10% to one stat at the cost of 10% to another. The ideal way to use these is to have increase go to a stat you really want more of, and the decrease to a stat that's... completely useless to the pokemon (pinsir's base 55 Sp. Attack isn't exactly doing much compared to its base 125 Attack, ya know?). Note that unlike EVs and IVs, a pokemon's Nature will never affect its HP. This can be changed by an NPC on 7th Street for 3 Hear Scales, so don't worry if your pokemon don't have great ones at the moment. Here's a list of every Nature and what stats they affect.

IVs, or Individual Values, are a bit more straightforward than EVs and Natures, but in return aren't changeable in Reborn (and are notably invisible in the main games for some reason). In short, when a pokemon is generated by the game, a random number between 0 and 31 is generated for every single one of its stats. As the pokemon levels up, it slowly gains more and more actual points in its stats until it's gotten to the generated number at Lv. 100. As such, a pokemon with 0 IVs in a given stat would be substantially weaker in that stat than an otherwise identical one with 31 IVs. As IVs are completely random in most cases, there isn't a reasonable difference between wild pokemon and those obtained from in-game events (like picking the starter, in charizard's case).

 

The following is an image of the the EV/IV page in the pokemon's summary:

Spoiler

Notice that there are two numbers by each of the stats.

>The number on the left is dedicated to the pokemon's earned EVs; in this case, I've chosen to put as many points as possible into Wayfinder's Special Attack and Speed, while slipping the leftover points into Defense. This means that he gets a total of +1 Defense, +63 Sp. Attack, and +63 Speed. Not a bad buff to a Special Sweeper, no?

>The number on the right is dedicated to the pokemon's IVs; I wasn't fortunate enough to net any stats at 31, but +26 Special Attack is close enough to improve his offensive capabilities by a solid margin. Everything else bar Attack being at 14+ means that Wayfinder's on the upper end of an espeon's potential power level, while the low Attack doesn't affect him negatively at all (since espeon's below-average base 65 Attack stat isn't worth investing in compared to its impressive base 130 Special Attack.

>You may have noticed that two of the stat names have been color coded; these are the ones that have been affected by Wayfinder's Timid Nature. The stat in blue is the one that's taken a 10% decrease, while the one in red has received a 10% increase (in this case, I chose to patch up my Speed stat while driving my Attack stat even further into the ground). 

 

>The enemies in Reborn are indeed on the upper ends of power. In most cases, they have 31 IVs across the board, ideal Natures, and from Shade onward, full EV focused allotments (and even the, the bosses before that still have some assigned). There's even a boss towards the end of the current build that

Spoiler

breaks the rules by having a full 252 EVs in every stat on all of their pokemon,

but the game is at least kind enough to warn you when that's about to come up. This game is designed to be harder than the main games, and maximizing stats is one of the ways they go about doing it (I mentioned elsewhere that Reborn's Fire Gym Leader would utterly wreck Kalos' Fire Elite Four Member -even if she lost access to her ace- despite being slightly lower leveled, and I honestly don't think that's an exaggeration). 

 

Hopefully, this will have helped clear some things up a bit without making you even more confused than before. Feel free to ask if you have any more questions!

[zaqrwe]

This is very complex and simple explanation, nothing more to do but upvote   I'd really wish for somebody to explain it for me when I first started playing Reborn. I had absolutelly no idea how challenging it would be and how much knowing all of these things will make a difference Also I think this is one ot the topics that should be pinned up, so every new member could spot it and read before starting play

[Luffylike]

Wow you can't imagine how thankful i am for this detailed explanation. Thank you very much!

It really is complex and now i finally understand that there is a lot of potential to get more out of my pokemons! 

 

I have a couple of questions left:

 

Am i right in the assumption that my charizard caught at level 84 and trained to lvl 90 is so weak because it is missing ev's? Is it an option to get it's EVs up through defeating enemies in the main hall and levelling it down with common candies? 

 

Common candies lead me to the next basic question... Is it recommended to not use too many of them? Somehow i found out that my pokemons are pretty "unhappy" due to me levelling them down all the time and using items like the revival herb or root... or is the only downside something like not being able to evolve into milotic or having a weak return move?

 

Did i understand it right, that it is possible to cover all of the EVs through defeating the right enemies? A further question is, does my pokemon have to defeat it "alone" or can I switch it out at the start of the fight? Can I still train EVs after level 100?

 

Last question: do you recommend having a look at the IVs of a pokemon once you caught it and maybe even restart to catch it once again until the IVs are "good"?

 

Thank you once again. By the way the big dark eyes I talked about were the synthetic seeds I guess :).

[zaqrwe]

Okay, yes, Your Charizard is weak because of EV, BUT if it's so weak you can see it probably it's IV stats are also bad.

 

Common candies, when used, lower your friendship with pokemon. Friendship value is used to determine a few special attacks power(Return and Frustration), and some pokemon types evolve only if your friendship wit it is high enough. About how to make them happy/unhappy you should look into the friendship tables in bulbapedia or some similar site. If I'm correct, Reborn uses firendship values the same as in Pokemon Ultra Sun a Moon.

 

Every Pokemon has assigned value between 1 and 3 on certain EV points, which your Pokemon gains after defeating it. EV points are gained by any Pokemon which earns exp for a fight, so that means also Pokemon which holds EXP SHARE will gain it. To gain EV faster you should use Power items(you can buy it in one floor at the Department Store), or have your Pokemon catch Pokerus. Or both

 

If you really are interested with perfect IVs Pokemon, you have two ways - catching a ton of mons and hoping you'll get some strong ones, or breed the perfect ones by yourself. There is a mod for Pokemon Reborn, which makes breeding faster(basically allows you to generate and hatch eggs whenever you want if the Pokemons in Day Care are compatibile). It is somewhere here in the Mod Market forum.

[Autumn Zephyr]

Okay, let's see what I can do for this...

 

>Lacking EVs is definitely a major restriction on a pokemon's power, but it's also possible that it doesn't have spectacular IVs+Nature as well. It's a bit difficult for to gauge this particular case without seeing the charizard itself, admittedly. Charizard's a bit of an interesting case among pokemon, since it's mechanically opposite (and similarly powerful) Mega Evolutions means that it could run either offense.

 

>Common Candies exist primarily to give players a way to work around Reborn's level cap system, and really don't have much use beyond that. As for the Friendship system, the mechanics behind it don't actually matter for the vast majority of pokemon, so I wouldn't worry about it too much unless you really want to use Mega Pinsir or raise a budew.

 

>A pokemon does indeed get EVs just for participating in the fight; and unlike Exp., it isn't split between all participating pokemon, so if three pokemon help take down a blissey without fainting, they'd all earn 3 HP Evs.

EV training without assistance of any kind is extremely tedious, however, so I'd recommend earning enough Department Store stickers to unlock the 4th floor. This will let you buy the Power Items, which add an additional 8 EVs to their related stat for each foe the holder participates against (so if a pokemon holding the Power Anklet were to take down a machamp, it would get both +3 Attack EVs and +8 Speed EVs). The second floor also happens to carry the "Friendship Berries", which have a "side effect" of removing 10 EVs from their respective stat, which is handy for doing stuff like getting rid of useless Sp. Attack EVs from a scizor.

If you haven't done any of the Department Store Sticker Quests yet, this guide should prove most helpful here~

 

>It's not possible for us players to get a full 252 EVs in every single stat, sadly, which is why it's recommended to focus on just two. In Reborn, however, you don't need to level up in order to have your earned EVs take effect- they just do so automatically. This does mean that even pokemon obtained at Lv. 100 can gain benefits from them, so save your Common Candies!

 

>I personally soft reset for event pokemons' IVs to be good, and would suggest doing that yourself when dealing with them due to the relative ease of doing so. Getting the most important stats at a minimum of 14 is a pretty reasonable goal, I feel, since trying get everything at their maximum value is ridiculously tedious and uses up a lot of extra time that could've been used EV training the pokemon, or continuing the story, or doing sidequests, etc. Of course, keeping one that did manage to get absolutely amazing IVs is an ideal you should definitely take advantage of if given the opportunity.

Randomly encountered pokemon, on the other hand, are... a lot more difficult to work with here, since they aren't guaranteed encounters. If it's a common species, catching a few specimens and taking the best among them is certainly a fine strategy, but you're hunting for a pokemon with 5% or lower encounter rate (I'm looking at you, dunsparce), then... Well, I hear that the Daycare couple could still use some assistance repairing their financial situation after what Team Meteor did to them.

[Luffylike]

Thank you very much once again.

Maybe it would really be a great idea to make your answers a "beginner's guide" or something. I basically played through the game withouth knowledge of this. still managed to beat it until including ep17 but yeah, it would have helped or made the game even more interesting...

 

thank you too @zaqrwe, I just checked my charizard and it doesn't really look bad except the untrained EV's. What is your opinion on it? I will add a screenshot. The iv's actually look pretty darn good, don't they? Did i understand it right, that the closer the IV's are to 32 the better?

 

@autumn zephyr, do you have discord or anything?

 

 

[zaqrwe]

Hm, it has increased Special Attack and Decreased Defense. Not the worst Nature   And both Attacks IVs are pretty good. Actually all IVs are suprisingly good   Couple advices if you want to maximize its potential: you can think about changing nature to Adamant or Modest(depends if you want to use special attacks or physical attacks). There are few good builds, everything depends of what you want him to do on your team. I would go with Modest nature, because Special Attack is its best stat. Next, make sure you're using special moves, I definitelly recommend to teach him Flamethrower, something to counter his weakness water type (Solar Beam?), Roost and maybe Focus Punch. He can also learn some powerful dragon type moves, but only through breeding(or using mod). If you want EV training, focus on Sp. Atak and Speed. Oh, and most builds recommend Blaze ability instead of Solar Power

(You can use Ability Capsules to change Pokemons abilities, and there is a Pokemon Psychologist who can change their natures).