 | ||
| Main Menu | ||
| What's New? Attacks Pokédex Compendium Weird Science Forum Chat Contributors Links Founders | ||
| Articles | ||
| Catching Training Teaching Box Trick Battle Damage Type Chart Strategy Myths |
 Catching | Training Pokémon |  Teaching |
Training, as discussed in this document, refers to the variousstrategies you can employ to help your Pokémon grow in Levels and/orstatistics. The most obvious way to accomplish this is to have them fightand win battles against either wild Pokémon or game trainers. There arealternative (and complementary) strategies, however. Each is discussedbelow, following an introduction to the basic concepts of Experience andStat Experience.
Experience
When you win a battle against either a wild Pokémon or a game trainer,all of your Pokémon that participated in the fight (however briefly) earnExperience points. When a Pokémon earns sufficient EXP, it gains a Level.The exact amount of EXP needed to reach a given Level varies amongPokémon, but it has been determined that all Pokémon grow at one of fourdifferent rates.
| L15 | L50 | L100 | Rate | Equation |
| 2,700 | 100,000 | 800,000 | Fast | 0.8(L^3) |
| 3,375 | 125,000 | 1,000,000 | Medium | L^3 |
| 4,218 | 156,250 | 1,250,000 | Slow | 1.25(L^3) |
| 2,035 | 117,360 | 1,059,860 | Parabolic | 1.2(L^3) -15(L^2) + 100L -140 |
The amount of Experience points necessary to achieve Levels15, 50, and 100 are listed in the chart above. You can determine thenumber of EXP necessary to achieve other Levels by using the appropriateequation. The result of the equation is the amount of Experience pointsnecessary to gain the Level, L. (All decimal remainders are dropped.)
Note that, because Parabolic Pokémon do not have a consistentmultiplier throughout their growth, they start off gaining Levels fasterthan Fast Pokémon, but, by the time they are approaching L100, they aregaining Levels slower than Medium Pokémon.
All the Pokémon in a series have the same growth rate (eg, bothJigglypuff andWigglytuff will grow at the Fastrate, and all of the Eeveeevolutionswill grow at the Medium rate).
If you're using a Pokémon for which you are not the original trainer(ie, one that you obtained by trading), it receives a 50% bonus to theamount of EXP it earns. This will obviously help the Pokémon to gainLevels more quickly, but there are two potential drawbacks.
First, if you don't yet have all 8 Badges, the Pokémon may rapidlyreach a Level at which it no longer obeys your commands. Second, the EXPbonus means that the Pokémon won't have to fight as many battles in orderto gain Levels, and that means that it won't gain as much Stat Expas a similar Pokémon that doesn't have the EXP bonus.
Less Stat Exp means lower statistics, as explained in the next section.But don't worry: traded Pokémon can eventually earn all the Stat Exp theyneed for maximum stat growth. It's just that they'll tend not to reachtheir potential until they are at a very high Level.
Stat Experience
To appreciate the relative merits of the various trainingmethods, it is necessary to understand the concept of "Stat Exp". Someinformation about Stat Exp is provided on the BoxTrick page; the subject is covered in greater detail on Necrosaro's PokémonPage.
In brief, the five primary statistics (HP, Att, Def, Spd, Spc) of eachPokémon have independent experience values that are hidden from you duringgameplay. These values are similar to normal Experience (ie, the kind thatdetermines Level gains) in that they increase as your Pokémon winsbattles. When any statistic has accumulated sufficient experience, thatstatistic will increase by one or more points the next time that thePokémon gains a Level, is stored in a PC box, or consumes a relevant Statbooster item (see below). For each statistic, the amount of Stat Expgained from a given battle is equal to the corresponding base stat of thedefeated Pokémon. Thus, defeatingDigletts will earn you a lot of Speedand Attack exp, but not very much for HP or Defense. If you foughtDigletts exclusively for awhile, you would notice that your Speed andAttack were tending to grow more quickly than the other stats. The otherstats will grow, however: gaining Levels will increase a Pokémon'sstatistics even if no Stat Exp is earned at all.
Because a Pokémon's base stats remain the same regardless of Level,there's no extra credit for heroic battles against high Level opponents.Your Pokémon will obtain the same Stat Exp benefit from defeating a L22Level Ditto on Route 15 as fromdefeating a L50 Ditto in the Unknown Dungeon. Stat Exp is thereforeaccumulated most efficiently by fighting Pokémon with high base stats, atthe lowest Level you can find them.
Rare Candies
Feeding a Rare Candy to a Pokémon will cause it to gain oneLevel, up to the maximum of L100. Pokémon who evolve at a certain Levelwill do so normally if a Rare Candy was used to reach that Level. RareCandies provide no Stat Exp; Pokémon who are raised using this item willtherefore tend to be weaker than those who are trained in battle. Ifyou've used Rare Candies on some of your Pokémon, don't worry. Stat Expcan be accumulated at any time, even at L100 when normal EXP stopsincreasing.
Stat Boosters
These include HP UPs, and the food items you can purchase at theCeladon Dept. Store (and sometimes find lying around during youradventure): Protein, Iron, Carbos, and Calcium. Using these items providesan immediate stat boost, but really two things are happening. First, theStat Exp total for the relevant statistic is increased, and second, thevalue for that statistic is immediately recalculated according to the newStat Exp total.
There are at least two restrictions on how many stat boosters yourPokémon can consume. First, there is an absolute limit of 10 for eachitem. Second, even if your Pokémon has used less than 10 of a givenbooster, if the Stat Exp total for the relevant statistic reaches itsmaximum value (because the Pokémon has been doing lots of battling),further boosters will have no effect.
It is sometimes asked whether it is necessary to use these items tohelp a Pokémon reach its maximum stat potential. The answer is no. All ofthe Stat Exp required to reach maximum stats can be obtained by battling.However, if you have the booster items, use them! They're very expensive,but they provide Stat Exp much more quickly than battling. Consider thatat L100, a completely untrained Pokémon (ie, no Stat Exp at all) will havestats 63 points lower than if it were fully trained (ie, maximum Stat Expfor all statistics). If you could afford to give that Pokémon 10 of eachstat booster, each of its statistics would increase by 40 points! That'salmost 2/3 of its potential growth, without having to do anybattling.
Exp. All
The Exp. All item distributes any EXP earned in battle among thePokémon that you are currently carrying. Half of the earned EXP is dividedamong the Pokémon who actually participated in the battle. The remaininghalf is divided among all the Pokémon you are carrying (including thosewho fought).
Exp. All also divides Stat Exp among your Pokémon. At present it is notknown if the distribution algorithm is the same as the one used for normalEXP, but it seems highly likely.
Piggybacking
It's already been mentioned that all the Pokémon who participate in abattle receive both EXP and Stat Exp. This is true even if a Pokémon isswitched away before it attacks (or gets attacked), providing a convenientway of producing rapid Level gains for low Level Pokémon. When fightingthe Elite Four at the Pokémon League or the denizens of the UnknownDungeon, deploy your low Level Pokémon at the very start of the battle.Immediately switch away to a powerful Pokémon that can survive theimminent attack and then lay waste to the enemy.
Using this technique, a single run through the E4 can easily producegains of 15-20 Levels, or more. Unfortunately, your Pokémon will not havegained very much Stat Exp relative to its EXP gains, and thus itsstatistics will be tend to be poor. However, it is now more capable ofwinning battles on its own. The sooner that a Pokémon is able tosingle-handedly defeat opponents with high base stats, the more rapidly itwill reach its maximum stat potential.
A drawback to this method is that Pokémon who gain several Levels at atime while piggybacking will not learn the attacks they normally would onthe Levels that are skipped. If the Pokémon you're training learnsimportant attacks at relatively low Levels, you may want to put offpiggybacking against high Level foes until it would gain only a few Levelsat a time.
Day Care
A Pokémon left at the Day Care will gain experience at the rate of 1point per step that you take. The Day Care provides no Stat Exp, soPokémon raised by this method will tend to have poor stats (equal to whatthey would have if raised by Rare Candies).
Pokémon who evolve at a certain Level will not do so if they reach thatLevel while in the Day Care. However, evolution will take place normallyon the next Level gained outside the Day Care.
Pokémon will continue to learn moves at their normal Levels, however.If all four attack slots are filled, the old attacks will be overwrittenby the newer ones, starting at the top of the list. You can use this factto control the moves your Pokémon learns while in the Day Care: simplykeep an eye on what Level the Pokémon has achieved, and if a new attack isabout to be learned, re-order the old attacks so that the least desiredone is in the first slot.
Evolution
A question that is commonly raised is, "When should Ievolve my Pokémon?". The answer depends on the Pokémon you have.
Some Pokémon evolve on their own once they reach a certain Level. Youcan permit this to happen, or delay evolution by pressing the B buttonduring the evolution sequence. The option to evolve will be presentedagain the next time a Level is gained, unless your Pokémon has reachedL100, the highest Level attainable. L100 Pokémon cannot evolve unless theyare stone- or trade-evolved Pokémon.
You might choose to delay evolution simply because of personalpreference (is there any question thatPsyduck is cooler thanGolduck?), but there's another, lesssubjective reason: pre-evolved forms of Pokémon learn their attacks atlower Levels than evolved forms. For example, Psyduck ordinarily evolvesat L33. If evolution is delayed, he'll learn Hydro Pump at L52. However, ifPsyduck evolves at any point prior to L52, he won't learn Hydro Pump untilL59 (the Level at which Golduck learns it).
Be aware that delaying evolution comes at a cost: a Pokémon'spre-evolved form almost always has lower statistics than the evolved form.Not only do evolved forms tend to show greater stat gain from Level toLevel, but Pokémon receive a one-time "evolution bonus" to their stats.The longer evolution is delayed, the larger this bonus will be. However,it is not the case that Pokémon who put off evolution are stronger in thelong run. It's true that if you delay your Psyduck's evolution until L99,it will receive a very large statistic bonus upon evolving. However, thisstat boost will be exactly equal to the larger Level-by-Level gains thatGolduck would have been making if you had evolved at an earlier Level.
There's one additional consideration for stone-evolved Pokémon, likePikachu. You should delay evolutionuntil they learn all of the moves you want them to have. Once they evolve,some of them won't learn anything new; others will learn only one moveafter evolving. For example, the last move a Pikachu learns naturally inthe Red and Blue games is Thunderat L43. Once he learns this, it's safe to evolve him; but if you evolveprior to L43, Raichu will never learnThunder naturally! You'd have to use up a TM to teach him this move.
The exception to stone-evolved Pokémon is theEeveeevolutions. These you want to evolveASAP if you want to evolve them atall. As an Eevee,it learns a completely different set of attacks than do its evolutions:Vaporeon,Jolteon, andFlareon.
For trade-evolved Pokémon,evolve them ASAP. It gives them a quick stat boost and it has no impact onwhen they learn their moves.
Please ignore this subliminal message.Please ignore this subliminal message.Please ignore this subliminal message.DRINK co*kEPlease ignore this subliminal message.Please ignore this subliminal message.Please ignore this subliminal message.
