That being said, I'd like to talk a bit today about Pokemon. And, specifically, how Pokemon level up in the main-series games (especially the more recent ones, such as Black/White, X/Y, and Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire.
Yep, the games with this little guy. Who I don't like very much.
I won't get into it now.
Now, if you're familiar with Pokemon, you might know that each Pokemon has several stats that determine their general effectiveness in a battle. If you're more familiar with Pokemon, you might know that these stats are HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. (In the original games - Red, Blue, and Yellow - Special Attack and Special Defense were lumped together into a "Special" stat, which... doesn't make much sense to me. I'm not exactly sure how it worked.) They're pretty self-explanatory - HP determines a Pokemon's health total, Attack determines damage dealt with physical moves, Defense determines damage taken from opponents' physical moves, Special Attack determines damage dealt with special moves, Special Defense determines damage taken from opponents' special moves, and Speed determines which Pokemon goes first in a battle.
In earlier games, whether a move was physical or special depended
on its type - Normal was physical, Fire was special, and so on.
More recently, it's determined on a move-by-move basis, and is
denoted by the above symbols (left being physical, right being special).
If you're just a casual Pokemon player, you probably won't need to pay too much attention to your Pokemon's stats. So maybe your Dodrio isn't dealing much damage with Tri Attack. But what's the difference? You'll be able to play through the game, and likely beat the Elite Four, possibly without recognizing that the reason your Dodrio isn't dealing damage is because it has a higher Attack than Special Attack, and Tri Attack is a special move. But it's not a huge deal, in the grand scheme of things.
But if you intend to play Pokemon competitively, or even if you're just a sucker for number crunching, it becomes more important to look at stats, and how the stats of different Pokemon compare. Each species of Pokemon has certain base stats that determine its relative effectiveness with each stat. For instance, Scyther has very high base Attack and Speed stats, but relatively low base HP, Defense, and Special Defense, meaning that it'll hit hard and fast with physical moves, but it generally can't take as much of a hit. Meanwhile, Shuckle has extraordinarily high Defense and Special Defense, but poor totals in each other stat, so it is more suited to taking the brunt of an opponent's attacks and using debilitating status moves rather than offensive attacks.
Scyther (pictured left) is my all-time favorite Pokemon.
Shuckle (pictured right)... well, not so much.
That's a whole lot of background on the subject. I know. So how do you actually train Pokemon to be good in the stats that you want? Even if you pick a Scyther, there's no guarantee that it will end up being a particularly fast or strong Scyther. So how can you guide that process?
There are four main things that influence a Pokemon's stats (not their base stat totals - those are based on the species of Pokemon. I'm talking about the actual numerical stat of a given Pokemon). The first is their base stats, which I already touched on briefly. The second and third are the specific Pokemon's nature and Individual Values, or IVs. Those are specific to a given individual of a Pokemon species (that is to say, the Exeggutor you caught and named Benedict will likely have a different nature and set of IVs than the Exeggutor your friend caught and named Egghead. Keep in mind, though, that both Exeggutors will have the same base stats). I won't get into nature or IVs now, mostly because those can't be changed or influenced - I may make a later post going into more detail there.
The fourth, and arguably most important, thing that influences an individual Pokemon's stats is something called Effort Values, or EVs. Your Pokemon gains these by defeating another Pokemon in battle (or by gaining experience for defeating that Pokemon, whether through an EXP Share or some other means). Essentially, there are EVs for every stat, and each species of Pokemon gives a certain number of EVs - up to a total of 3 - to your Pokemon when it defeats them. As an example, Magikarp gives 1 Speed EV, while Gyarados gives 2 Attack EVs.
Whenever your Pokemon gains 4 EVs in a given stat, that translates to 1 additional point in that stat when your Pokemon reaches level 100. Any Pokemon can have up to 510 EVs, and no more than 252 in a given stat. So EVs can potentially give a swing of 60 or more points in a stat at level 100, assuming you put the maximum possible number of EVs into that stat. Of course, the effects of this can be felt at earlier levels, too - it's a gradual increase. But that's still a pretty big difference! So, if you're training up your Charizard to be a fast special attacker, you may consider making sure it gains 252 Special Attack EVs and 252 Speed EVs, putting the remaining 6 EVs into something like HP.
Giving your Pokemon 252 EVs doesn't necessarily mean defeating
252 Magikarps. The most recent games have introduced a minigame
to give Pokemon EVs. There are also medicines that grant EVs.
So that's the gist of it. If you want to pay attention to your Pokemon's stats, make sure you're wary of which Pokemon they're defeating in battle - or, if you like to be precise about it, you can specifically defeat only Pokemon that grant certain EVs until your Pokemon's EVs are capped out the way you want them to be.
One last point - I've heard that using Rare Candies to level up your Pokemon is a poor idea. In reality, it's not a huge deal - the only issue with using Rare Candies is that if you're leveling up with Rare Candies, you're not defeating Pokemon in battle. Which means you're not getting EVs. Which means your Pokemon's stats will be lower than a Pokemon who did level up by defeating opponents. So unless you've already fully capped out your Pokemon's EVs, or intend to do so soon by grinding for experience and EVs against a particular species of Pokemon, I would avoid using Rare Candy.
That's all, folks! Until next time!
