Breeding Guide updates for HG/SS

[Sprocket]

The Breeding Guide has proven to be very useful for my breeding efforts. However there's a few quirks in it that don't seem to apply in HeartGold and SoulSilver. Here's a small list of those quirks and their corrections as they relate to HG/SS:

Part 1 - Section 2 - The Battle Frontier IV Guy

In HG and SS you can find the IV guy in the Battle Frontier's Battle Tower, which opens up after receiving the National Pokedex. He's at the far upper right of the Tower, next to the glass elevator thingy.

Part 1 - Section 2 - WiFi Battles

WiFi battles are also possible in HG/SS and Platinum.

Part 1 - Section 2 - Pokemon Characteristics

Pokemon Characteristics are part of HG/SS as well as Platinum.

Part 1 - Section 3 - How the game provides IVs to an egg

HG/SS uses the R/S/FR/LG method for IV distribution.

Part 1 - Section 3 - Power Items

A new mechanic in HG/SS is the ability to choose which IVs to pass down using the Power items (which are bought in the Battle Frontier). Whichever parent is wearing the Power item will pass down their IV to the offspring (ie: a Male Pokemon wearing a Power Anklet will always pass down its Speed IV, even if bred with a Ditto).

If both parents are wearing a Power item, the game will randomly choose which parent passes down their IV via the Power item For example, if a Male pokemon wears the Power Anklet, and a Female wears the Power Band, you have a 50% chance of guaranteeing the Male's Speed is passed down, and a 50% chance of guaranteeing the Female's Special Defense is passed down. There is still a chance that you will pass down both the Male and Female IVs anyway; the Power items just guarantee one or the other will be passed down.

(further research is required to determine how many more IVs are passed down when using the Power items. Near as I can tell, using a Power item guarantees the chosen IV is passed down, with two more from either parent being passed down at random, with the remaining 3 randomly generated).

The Power items are as follows.

Power Anklet - Passes down Speed
Power Band - Passes down Special Defense
Power Belt - Passes down Defense
Power Bracer - Passes down Attack
Power Lens - Passes down Special Attack
Power Weight - Passes down HP

Part 2 - Section 1 - Magma Armor / Flame Body

In HG and SS, you can find the Pokemon with these effects at these locations:

Magby - Pokewalker (Rugged Road, Amity Meadow)
Magmar - Burned Tower and Safari Zone (Peak area)
Slugma - Route 16, 17, 18, and Pokewalker (Volcano Path)

Part 2 - Section 1 - Everstone

In HeartGold and SoulSilver, the Everstone works by passing down the nature of whoever holds the Everstone, regardless of Gender or Ditto usage. If both parents hold an Everstone, you have a roughly equal chance of passing down the first parent's nature, the second parent's nature, or generating a random nature.

Both parents need to have the same owner for this to work. Otherwise the Everstone will fail.

Part 2 - Section 1 - Ditto

Abras are very available in HG/SS. You can find them in Routes 5, 6, 8, 24, 25, 34, 35, the Safari Zone, the Pokewalker (Town Outskirts), and as a Goldenrod Game Corner prize for 200 coin.

Wild Dittos are found in routes 34, 35, 47, the Cerulean Cave, and the Safari Zone. I've had the best luck with Dittos in Route 47 (requires Surf and Waterfall to reach). Dittos will also occasionally swarm in Route 47.

The Magikarp technique works flawlessly, but Repeat Balls in HG/SS are fairly rare. Ultra Balls work almost as well, though occasionally you will need to throw two UBs (and rarely three UBs). You could also try Net Balls and Dusk Balls (at night).

Part 2 - Section 1 - Level 5 Stats

This chart doesn't work so well for HG/SS, because Pokemon are born at level 1 and not level 5. However near as far as I can tell, beneficial natures and negative natures still seem to follow the +/- 1 stat rule.

Part 2 - Section 2 - Day Care Location

For HG/SS, the Day Care is found in Route 34, just south of Goldenrod City.

Part 2 - Section 2 - Breeding Roads

In HG/SS, you can either use Route 17, which requires either Fly or the Magnetic Train to reach, or you can run between Route 34 and the north end of Goldenrod.

From the water edge near the old man to the north end of Goldenrod (next to the gate), it's exactly 85 steps. Which is convenient because every round trip and a half is approximately one egg cycle (to be precise it's 255 out of the necessary 256).

Part 3 & Part 4

Near as I can tell, no change to these are really necessary for HG/SS compatibility.

[macle]

You need to include what the power items do.

[Sprocket]

Good point. Incoming.

[mingot**]

Part 1 - Section 3 - How the game provides IVs to an egg
As near as I can tell, HG/SS uses the EDP method.

It doesn't.

There is no longer overlapping inheritance and no individual stat is favored.

This means all of the charts showing probabilities are incorrect.

This is a return to the Ruby/Sapphire way (and likely a bug fix).

[macle]

Can you confirm the everstone part?

[Sprocket]

I can only confirm it with anecdotal evidence:

I breed a Female Pokemon with a Ditto, the Female is holding the Everstone while the Ditto is holding a Power item (to influence whatever stat I was passing down at the time). 50% of the babies that I hatch (out of 10 babies) has the same nature as the Female. None of the babies have the same nature as the Ditto.

Further testing is required, but it seems like a reasonably safe bet.

Also the official Nintendo guide says it has a 50% chance to pass down the nature of whoever uses it.

[thelaytonmobile]

I thought males can now pass down natures using everstone?
It certainly worked that way for me.

[Sprocket]

Originally Posted by Fat thelaytonmobile

I thought males can now pass down natures using everstone?

This is true.

I'm going to do some testing to see if the Ditto rule still holds true.

[MegaAwesomazing]

Originally Posted by Fat Sprocket

I can only confirm it with anecdotal evidence:

I breed a Female Pokemon with a Ditto, the Female is holding the Everstone while the Ditto is holding a Power item (to influence whatever stat I was passing down at the time). 50% of the babies that I hatch (out of 10 babies) has the same nature as the Female. None of the babies have the same nature as the Ditto.

Further testing is required, but it seems like a reasonably safe bet.

Also the official Nintendo guide says it has a 50% chance to pass down the nature of whoever uses it.

Don't forget to add that you have to be the owner of both the female and male (or Ditto) poke so that the Everstone method can work...

I tried it before and it didn't work out because I wasn't the owner of both pokes...

[Sprocket]

Originally Posted by Fat Pokedude34

Don't forget to add that you have to be the owner of both the female and male (or Ditto) poke so that the Everstone method can work...

I tried it before and it didn't work out because I wasn't the owner of both pokes...

Really? I did not know that.

I do know that the Everstone method does not work if you use foreign language Pokemon (like mixing a Japanese Ditto with an English Magikarp).

[Sprocket]

I tested Everstone usage, you can see my tests here and here. And I can conclude based on my tests that it's whoever holds the Everstone that passes down their nature 50% of the time in HGSS (my tests show higher numbers likely due to a small sample size). Gender and Dittos in this case does not matter in any way.

If both parents happen to hold an everstone, you have a roughly equal chance of passing down the Mother's nature, the father's nature, or a random nature (roughly 33% either way). If both parents have the same nature and both hold Everstones, you have a roughly 66% chance of passing down the nature.

[macle]

Just a fyi the guide also needs to be updated with stuff from platinum so if you could put stuff for it, that would be great.

[Sprocket]

Originally Posted by Fat macle

Just a fyi the guide also needs to be updated with stuff from platinum so if you could put stuff for it, that would be great.

Sure, I'll take a look.

[tuwan]

can somebody make a guide for HG and SS or update the existing one? or post a link if it already exists?

[Alexa888]

Not sure if this deserves a mention, but it should be noted that unlike previous games, the IV man cycles through each IV of the highest value, i.e. if all Stats where Maxed, he would cycle through them all, which makes checking IVs of RNG'd Pokemon very simple.

[macle]

can you find what the iv man says for hgss and platinum?

[Jiggy]

This seems like as good a place as I can find to post what I've been seeing in Pokemon White, so let's get this out of the way before the games are even released in English... I'll keep editing this post as I check more things (like if Everstones still work with males, if Power items still work as before, if we can still only pass down three stats, etc.), but I'll avoid posting anything that involves English Pokemon/location/item name we don't know yet.




1) B/W, like HG/SS, seems to be using the R/S/FR/LG system of passing IVs. I'm glad I found this thread--the rate my eggs were inheriting HP (11/31 eggs got perfect HP when only one parent had it and 15/30 when both had it) was way off skew compared to D/P/P and I wasn't sure why until I read about the HG/SS change here. That would definitely explain it. (I never got into breeding in HG/SS because we found out about B/W so quickly afterward that I basically dropped fourth-gen on the spot.)


2) In B/W, all egg counters in the team can be decreased to zero at the same time. Two or more eggs can't hatch simultaneously on the same step, but if their counters are equal, they'll hatch one step apart from each other. So this section of part 2 will need to be changed to reflect B/W in the future:

This means that you cannot hatch two or more eggs simultaneously, but you need to wait at least 256 steps (255 in DP) between a hatching egg and another.

3) The step counter in B/W appears to be 257. I have no explanation why in the world that would be, but my eggs consistently hatch either 257, 514, or 771 steps apart from each other (if they don't hatch 1 step apart from each other due to being in the same cycle).



Edit: Everstones still work with males (17/32 passed) and Power Anklet has given me a 100% success rate of passing Speed.

[pedrokabu]

Could I make a little, little suggestion?

Part 2 - Section 1 - Magma Armor / Flame Body

In HG and SS, you can find the Pokemon with these effects at these locations:

Magby - Pokewalker (Rugged Road, Amity Meadow)
Magmar - Burned Tower and Safari Zone (Peak area)
Slugma - Route 16, 17, 18, and Pokewalker (Volcano Path)

It is about Slugma - you can find one of it early ingame, in Violet City. In the Pokémon Center, near the PC and the right-to-up stairs (not those who lead to the WiFi Room and the WiFi Plaza), there is a guy called Primo. If you talk to him, and answer four correct words, he gives to you one and only one Pokémon Egg containing a Slugma - as soon as you reach the city, you can receive this egg. The words are generated according to your ID (the public one, not the secret ID).

The Primo guy can also give Pokémon Eggs containing a Mareep and a Wooper, and new wallpapers for the storage system.

Source: Bulbapedia (article about Primo), Filb.de (word generator based on ID).