Build your perfect Pokémon!

In old Pokémon games, building the perfect Pokémon for competitive battling used to be a process that necessarily started from breeding, in order to obtain an individual with the desired IVs, ability and nature. Starting from gen 7, Game Freak started giving players more options, so that they could actually transform any pokémon in a competitive ready one, and it's never been easier as it is in the new entries, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. I will now try my best to guide you through all steps towards the creation of your perfect creatures!

A Tinkafull Raid.

The Starting Point

Of course, the first thing you need to do is choose the Pokémon you want to train to perfection, and the purpose you need that Pokémon for. Is it for raids or competitive battling? And if it's for battling, is it for singles or doubles? Is it going to be part of a Trick Room team? Is it a Special Attacker? In the last two cases, you can't just start with any Pokèmon, since a Special Attacker (or support) kind of Pokémon might benefit from having 0 IVs in Physical Attack, so that they do as little damage as possible to themselves if they're hit with the Confusion status, while a Trick Room setter/team member might enjoy having 0 IVs in Speed. In that case, you will need to find the right Pokémon for this purpose by catching (or breeding, in some cases) as many as you can of that species in order to obtain a creature with 0 IVs in that specific stat.

If you want a shiny Pokémon to be your starting point, you need to determine whether your desired Pokémon is shiny locked or not (as I'm writing, the Ruinous Quartet, Gimmighoul, Koraidon and Miraidon are shiny locked), and whether you can obtain the shiny you desire through Isolated Encounter shiny hunting, Outbreak shiny hunting, or if you will need to breed for it (such is the case for the starters, Charmander, and Scorbunny, for example).

If the Pokémon you want to train to perfection is one you used to beat the main campaign with, or you already battled against trainers/wild Pokémon with, it will have its EVs messed up. You will need to reset them with the help of specific berries!

If you don't care very much about the origin of your Pokémon, an optimal starting point can be a mon caught in a 5 or 6 star raid. Pokémon caught in 5 star raids will have 4 perfect IVs, those caught in 6 star raids will have 5 perfect IVs; Pokémon caught in 7 star raids, instead, will have perfect IVs across the board!

Breeding

If you are familiar with breeding from gen 6+, not much has changed since then. You might want to start from here if you want a shiny that can only be obtained via breeding, or if you just want to go the traditional way.

The main thing that changed from previous generations is that the Pokémon Daycare we were used to since gen 2 is no more, replaced by the Picnic feature, which you can access to wherever you want. Open the menu pressing X, and access the Picnic feature.

A table will spawn from nowhere (where does the player character keep it?!), and you will be ready to start.

You will need two compatible Pokémon, one male, one female from the same species or egg group, or a Pokémon of any gender (even genderless, unless sterile) with a Ditto. Assuming you have both parents in your party, you will just need to wait; eventually, eggs will appear in your picnic basket, ready to be hatched by placing them in your team and walking/riding your koraidon or miraidon.

Useful items for breeding are:

• Everstone - the parent holding an Everstone will pass its Nature to the child.
• Destiny Knot - if held by either parent, the child will randomly inherit 5 out of the total 12 IVs from the parents. The 6th will be randomized.

The resulting Pokémon will:

• Be the same species as the female or non-Ditto parent;
• Have random nature, unless Everstone is used;
• Have random IVs, unless Destiny Knot is used;
• Inherit Egg Moves, if any are present in the parents' movesets.

As for the Ability:

• If the female parent has Hidden Ability, and the male parent is from a different but compatible species and has a Regular Ability, OR if the female/male parent has Hidden Ability and the other parent is a Ditto, OR if both parents from the same species have Hidden Ability, there is a 60% chance the offspring will have Hidden Ability, 40% it has a random Standard Ability.
• If the female parent has Hidden Ability, and the male parent is from the same species and has Standard Ability, there is... 0% chance the offspring will inherit the Hidden Ability! I have no clue why this happens but keep that in mind, be careful!

Regarding the Pokéball inherited, it will be either the non-Ditto parent's, female's if the parents are from different species, 50/50 possibility it's the male or female parent's if they're from the same species. Master ball and Cherish Ball cannot be inherited.

If you want a Shiny, your best bet is to breed two Pokémon that come from different language games, bonus if you already completed your Pokédex and own the Shiny Charm. If both criteria are met, you should have a 1/512 chance to obtain a shiny from your egg!

In order to obtain eggs faster, it's highly advised to make an Egg Power sandwich. Here is our convenient full list of Egg Power-giving sandwiches! You can also purchase ready-made meals like Hot and Sour Soup for ₽ 3200 at Kofu's Lounge (Cascarrafa) or Compote du Fils for ₽ 2800 at Gastronomie en Famille (Cascarrafa, Levincia, Alfornada, Medali). Both will give you Egg Power lv.2.

Once you're done with your egg batch, it's preferrable to have in your party a Pokèmon that will halve the egg cycle (making the eggs hatch way faster), like a Fletchinder/Talonflame with Flame Body Ability.

This breeding guide is in no way exhaustive, but it should contain every information you may need for the purpose of creating a good starting Pokémon for your objective.

One last note: if all you need is an Egg Move, you won't need to breed! All you need is a Mirror Herb, which can be bought for ₽ 30000 in Cascarrafa's Delibird Presents. The Pokèmon you want to teach the Egg Move to should hold the Mirror Herb and have one move slot open. Having a Picnic with this Pokémon and another one that actually knows the Egg Move you want to teach will do the trick. The Mirror Herb doesn't get consumed.

EV Removal

If the Pokémon you want to train is one you fought trainers or wild Pokémon with already (or caught them), it will have earned random EVs. You obviously don't want that, since you want to go for a specialized spread! All you need is these specific berries that lower by 10 the desired EVs, and even make your Pokémon frendlier!

• Pomeg Berry for HP
• Kelpsy Berry for Atk
• Qualot Berry for Def
• Hondew Berry for Sp.Atk
• Grepa Berry for Sp.Def
• Tamato Berry for Speed

You can obtain them in various ways:

• Raids
• Emotional Spectrum Practice in Alfornada
• Auctions in Marinada
• Some can be collected on the ground in various areas.

Let's Start Training!

If you followed the guide so far, you should have your Pokémon ready to start! I will accompany you in this journey with my buddy Camarillo, which, as you can see, is a shiny Marill I found randomly while roaming through the region from raid den to raid den. So, obviously, he will be less than perfect.

First thing to do: let's bring him to level 100! If you regularly do raids, you'll be swimming in Exp Candies of every kind, so it's the easiest part. Of course, that also includes evolving our little buddy. I'm sorry if my screenshots are in Italian, but Game Freak doesn't let us change language mid-save...

Next, you will need to research. What I want this Azumarill to become is a raid friend, so I will need to plan accordingly. The best build for it seems to be...

Azumarill

Sitrus Berry

ABILITY

Huge Power

Huge Power

---

Doubles the Pokémon’s Attack stat.

MOVES

Belly Drum

Belly Drum

---

Power: 0
Acc: 0%
PP: 10

Liquidation

Liquidation

---

Power: 85
Acc: 100%
PP: 10

Rain Dance

Rain Dance

---

Power: 0
Acc: 0%
PP: 5

Play Rough

Play Rough

---

Power: 90
Acc: 90%
PP: 10

Nature

The first thing you may want to check, now that your creature is max level, is its Nature. Natures offer a 10% bonus on one stat, and a 10% malus (except from the five Neutral Natures, which don't affect stats at all). Obviously, you will want to raise an important stat, and lower one you don't care about; in the case of our Azumarill, all of its best moves are Physical; so, what we want is an Adamant Nature, which raises Physical Attack, and lowers Special Attack, which we don't care about.

Changing a Pokémon Nature is piece of cake; you just need to buy the appropriate Mint for ₽ 20000 at your nearest Chansey Supply store (in Mesagoza, Levincia, Cascarrafa, or Montenevera), and use it on your Pokémon. Chances are, if you are a raid habituèe, you might already have one or more mints of the type you need! Check your inventory.

Ability

Ability is crucial, especially in this specific case: Azumarill REALLY wants Huge Power, an ability which doubles the Physical Attack stat of the user passively. We can change Abilities easily, again, with items, called Ability Capsule and Ability Patch. Both drop from raids, with Capsule actually being buyable from Chansey Supply for a steep price (₽ 100000), while the Patch is only a pretty rare high level raid drop (some Event Raids might have it as a guaranteed drop, so keep your eyes peeled). It makes sense that the latter is rarer, since it's used to swicth from the regular ability of a Pokémon to its rare, and often sought after, Hidden Ability; while the Capsule can only switch from a regular ability to the alternate one.

Thankfully, in this case, Huge Power is not a Hidden Ability, so I will just need a simple Ability Capsule to switch from Thick Fat to just that.

Tera Type

You might be familiar with the place you need to be at to change your Pokémon's Tera Type... it's the Treasure Eatery in Medali, the same place in which you fought Larry as a Gym Leader. All you need is 50 Tera Shards of the desired type, and you're set. Those are dropped by beating raids of the same type. In this case, I got lucky, because Camarillo already has the Fairy Tera Type, which is what I want here.

IV Training

Perfecting IVs is also easy: you need either Silver Bottle Caps, or a Gold Bottle Cap. Silver Bottle Caps drop from raids, or can be bought for ₽ 20000 at Delibird Presents in Mesagoza, Cascarrafa or Levincia. Gold Bottle Caps can be dropped very, very rarely from the post-game Academy Ace Tournament, or even more rarely found at Marinada in auctions. In either case, you will want to fly to Montenevera's Pokémon Center, and talk to a guy immediately close to it, whom you will recognize by his partner Abomasnow. Talk to him, and tell him which stats you want to bring to a perfect value of 31! It will consume as many Silver Caps as the stats you will raise (or a single Gold Cap if you want to raise all in one go). You can of course ignore the Attack stat you aren't interested in (in this case, the Special Attack stat).

EV Training

Every Pokémon needs a specific EV distribution, especially for competitive battling. For Raid Pokémon, the advised EV spread is usually a simple max HP, max relevant Attack stat. In our case, it's obviously the Physical Attack stat we need to max out; you may also want to shave some points off HP/Atk to give it more Defense or Special Defense, it's up to you; but of course we will go for an easy distribution for this.

You can train the Effort Values of your Pokèmon in two different ways: with items, or with regular Pokémon Battles.

In the case you want to use items, all you need to do is buy as many HP-UP, Protein, Iron, Calcium, Zinc, Carbos you need (Chansey Supply, ₽ 10000 each) and just use them on your Pokémon. You may also use any Health/Muscle/Resist/Genius/Clever/Swift Feathers you may have in your inventory; the difference between the two is that, while the former ones add 10 EVs, the latter ones add only 1 EV each. They can be useful when you want to add those last spare points.

If you want to "manually" train your Pokémon like the old days... no one is going to stop you! You will actually get to save a lot of money this way. I might want to dedicate a separate article to this, though. It's pretty fast anyway, so if you need to train many different Pokémon you might start to appreciate this alternative.

I went the easy way this time, and just bought 26 HP-Ups and 26 Proteins.

Last Touches

We're close to being done! All we need now is to change its moveset, which is incredibly easy in Scarlet and Violet. All you need to do is open the Pokémon Status Screen, reach the second tab, press A, and choose whether you want the Pokémon to remember moves it naturally learned by leveling up, or if you want to teach it moves via TM. In my case, it already knew Rain Dance; so I had to "remind" him of Play Rough and teach it Liquidation via TM. What remains is Belly Drum... which it only learns via Picnic holding a Mirror Herb, from a Hariyama that knows it. Let me take care of that...

Now, I'll just give it a Sitrus Berry and... ready! A useful and very cute raid Pokémon. Hope this guide was easy to follow, goodbye for now from me and Camarillo and... until next time!