finished How to EV Train your Pokemon For Newbies! (And Safari EV Wald guide!)

[Bhimoso]

Welcome, everyone! I was asked a few times on how to exactly train a Pokemon and fix their EVs, how does EV training work and how much do EVs work to improve a pokemon. Everyone always wants to have their pokemon as strong as possible. EV training will max the capabilities of a pokemon: whether it's a tank, a fast pokemon, a sweeper, or just a garbage pokemon you want to train for fun (why, though?), EV training is a requirement for the PRO lategame. However, EV training can be done anywhere, as soon as you start the game, from any point. Even if you're a newbie and you're in the third badge, you can still EV train that Gastly you always wanted to use for the story because that random dude in help chat told you to do so.

 

Why should we EV train?

 

We EV train to improve our pokemon to their full capabilities. Pokemon's stats severely increase when they're EV trained, to points where fights go from being impossible (Giovanni's Mewtwo) to being an easy oneshot from Gastly. For example, imagine we have a Gastly at level 90, with a Modest Nature, that has 200 Speed and 200 Special Attack. It's slower than the Mewtwo and, even if he manages to Shadow Ball it somehow, Mewtwo still survives. However, if we EV train that Gastly, it will gain atleast 50 Speed and 50 Special Attack. Now, it will outspeed Mewtwo and oneshot it before he can react. A legendary pokemon powered by a machine fainted in a single hit by a ghostly poisonous fart. Imagine!

 

What are EVs and how do they work? How do we train them? What can we do with them? How do we modify them? What can I do if I trained EVs wrong? How can I fix this mess of a pokemon?

 

To understand how EVs work, we can read the other forum guide I did covering this topic, or we can copy paste it here. However, I'll do both:

 

https://pokemonrevolution.net/forum/topic/152671-natures-abilities-ev-iv-and-stats-for-newbies-the-guide/?tab=comments#comment-840375

 

In this guide, we cover the topic of EVs and how do they work and how do we train them. However, I didn't go in depth into it, since I wanted to make a guide on how to train them as I train one of my pokemon so you can see the progress and the ways we can use it. You can check the theory there, but I will copy the basic definitions we need to understand here.

 

EVs or Effort Values are the blue numbers in any pokemon you see. These values can be modified, increased, reset, reduced, fixed, changed... they're amazing. They work as a modifier for all of your pokemon in order to improve them as much as you want. You gain EVs for defeating wild pokemon, trainer pokemon, using proteins or vitamins in your pokemons. Every 4 EV in one stat, your stat will get increased by 1 at level 100.

 

You can have a max of 510 EV between all stats of your pokemon. In a single stat, the maximum amount of EV you can allocate is 252. Thus, at level 100, if you allocate 252 EV in that stat, it will increase by 63. (252 divided by 4). You can decide how to change these whenever you want. You can modify them as you wish by using EV Reducing berries. These can be found in any route, in Viridian Maze and in the Safari EV Zone. These are:

 

Pomeg Berry, which will reduce your HP EV by 10.

Qualot Berry, which will reduce your Defense EV by 10.

Kelpsy Berry, which will reduce your Atk EV by 10.

Grepa Berry, which will reduce your Spdef EV by 10.

Hondew Berry, which will reduce your Spatk EV by 10.

Tamato Berry, which will reduce your Speed EV by 10.

 

All wild Pokemon, once defeated, will grant you 1, 2 or 3 EV in one stat. Some grant 1 EV in 1 stat and another one in another. There are really weird combinations. They always give an EV of their highest overall Base Stat. For example, Snorlax gives HP EVs, while Gengar gives Spatk EVs. Evolved forms usually give more EVs than unevolved forms. As I said, these 2 give 3 HP EVs and 3 Spatk EVs, respectively. If you hold a Macho Brace, the EVs you gain will be doubled.

 

If the EV in one stat is 99 or below, you can use a vitamin to increase that stat's EVs by 10. However, if you try to use a vitamin once that stat's EV are atleast 100, or the Pokemon already has the maximum amount of EVs (510), you will not be able to. They can be purchased in department stores. These vitamins are:

 

HP UP, which will increase your HP EV by 10.

Protein, which will increase your Atk EV by 10.

Iron, which will increase your Def EV by 10.

Zinc, which will increase your Spdef EV by 10.

Calcium, which will increase your Spatk EV by 10.

Carbos, which will increase your Speed EV by 10.

 

First of all, we have to find a suitable pokemon to EV train. My personal recommendation is that you do not EV train anything that cannot be used in Bosses, low rating PVP (friendly pvp with friends, basically), or serious ranked PVP. Do not waste time, resources or money into training something that you will literally never use again, because it will mentally burn you out. For this guide, I'll train a pokemon that I believe is useless unless you equip it with a certain item. Pikachu with the Light Ball.

 

This is one of the Pikachus I hunted for a newbie who lost his, so I decided to use it as an example. As you can see, this Pikachu has some decent Spatk, Speed and a good nature. Its ability might not be the best, but I wanted to train this little guy for fun and he has good enough stats to be trained. We want to level our pokemon first from a low level to atleast 40-50 to do the EV training properly. So, since we see he has EVs under 100, we will try and using some leftover vitamins we have in our bag.

 

It does not increase its base Speed stat, but its Speed EVs. Pokemon's base stats cannot be changed, ever. Just to clear misunderstandings

 

We want to train this Pikachu with 252 Spatk EVs, and 252 Speed EVs. I will first check for vitamins in my bag. I see I have some, and the Speed EV of this pokemon is 0 (check the blue number next to Speed). Thus, I can use all of the 10 Carbos to increase it to 102. We can train it however we want: we could train 102 EV into each stat, but that's stupid. Pikachu does not need defenses, only offensive stats. Pokemon like Bronzong can be trained by splitting EVs into each defensive stat.

 

Now that we increased its Speed, we will use some Calcium to increase its Spatk stat. Since I have a lot of them, I'll use 10 of them to increase his Spatk EVs to 100.

 

Voilá! Now our pokemon has 100 EV in Spatk and Speed. However, we can't increase it with vitamins anymore, so we have to manually train them both. Now, we have to fight wild pokemon to gain EVs. Each pokemon gives a specific EV. We can check each pokemon in a website like bulbapedia to know what EV it gives once we defeat them. For example, I will train this Pikachu in Cerulean Cave. I will only fight Golbat because it gives 2 Speed EV and I will fight Golduck because it gives 2 Spatk EV. I will avoid everything else because Gravelers give Defense EVs, which I do not want (Because Pikachu is a sweeper that does not care about being tanky).

 

As you can see here, each Golduck will give us 2 Spatk EV once we defeat them. Let's get some!

 

We found a Golbat. Let's get some nice Speed EVs!

 

As expected, we got 2 EVs into Speed. Nice! We can keep fainting pokemon until we get some more levels. We will now fix the Def and HP EVs, since we do not want them.

 

We can obtain these berries in the EV Wald in Fuchsia Safari or inside the gigantic Viridian Maze. These respawn from every 24 to every 96 hours. Pick them up every single time you find them! We will now use a Pomeg Berry and a Qualot Berry to remove the Defense and HP EVs Pikachu has.

 

Berries in Viridian Maze.

 

Now it is cleared of all unwanted EVs. Since we want to train it 252 in Speed, 252 in Spatk and 6 in Atk, we are ready to now fully train it. We will avoid fighting any wild pokemon that gives undesired EVs so as to avoid training him in the wrong way. We can look up in the website mentioned above which pokemon gives each EV.

 

If you do not have money to use the Safari EV Wald, you can use the EV Zones spread around the regions. These are placed in specific routes and are amazing zones to EV train your pokemon for free. You'd only have to pay 5k to travel to each region or just use your legs and walk there!

 

 

Since I want to make the process faster and I can afford it, I will go and train him in the EV Wald in Fuchsia. Remember you can train EV anywhere, doesn't matter when, how or where. All pokemon you fight (including trainers) will give you EVs. Just remember to avoid fighting unneeded or unwanted pokemon or you'll have to fix the wrong EVs later using berries.

 

Safari EV Wald inside.

 

You can obtain a Macho Brace by trading a Drowzee for a Machop holding this item in Goldenrod. The NPC is in front of the Pokecenter. It's the Motorbiker dude. This Macho Brace will double all EV gains, but will make you slower in battle. However, this will make us gain EVs incredibly fast.

 

This dude will give us Macho Brace.

 

I will now choose EV Training Area. I will use the next 20 minutes before I'm forced to leave wisely and I will EV train it to its fullest potential.

 

You can pick up a Kelpsy Berry which reduces ATK EVs by 10 each time you use it. They're all in the Wald, in both zones.

 

Here we'll find fully evolved forms at very low levels. In this exact part, I fight wild Pidgeots which give me 3 Speed EVs per pokemon. Since I've equipped Macho Brace, I will gain 6 Speed EVs per pokemon.

 

Speed is now done. Now we're going for Spatk!

 

Here we find the Spatk berries in the Spatk training zone.

 

Vileplumes give each 3 Spatk EV, so we get 6 Spatk EV with Macho Brace equipped.

 

Our Pikachu is now fully trained and ready to be leveled up to 100. We've successfully EV trained our pokemon and now we only have to level it to 100. Yey!

 

If you want to make your training process faster, you should disable battle animations and increase Text Speed to the fastest so that you gain a few seconds each fight, which will add up quickly and allow you to fully train a pokemon in exactly 18 to 19 minutes, just shy of the 20 limit from Safari.

 

 

As you can see, I have animations toggled off and Dialogue Speed at the max.

 

I hope you have all enjoyed this quick guide on how to train any pokemon. I hope all doubts are cleared and you can check my other guide linked above to understand the theory better!

Edited November 29, 2020 by Bhimoso

[Bhimoso]

My next guide is going to be based on Abilities and how to properly hunt for them, how to look for them and how to try and get the best ones for each pokemon. Since I've worked a lot right now, I'm going to take a break and post it tomorrow :)

[Frackll]

Nice Guide! Thanks a lot! This wil be great once i finish the story.

[Norex]

Even though I dont need this guide I just wanted to leave a comment since you put so much work into that guide.

Very detailed and organized guide for the community, keep it up.

[Bhimoso]

Updated the guide with the free EV zones added in. Thanks to @lancerr11 for reminding me about it.

[Funklxrd]

Hey Bhimoso, if you forgot to mention or I didn't see, in the game settings there's an option that involves around the speed of the text and animations during battle, for beginners, they don't necessarily know that taking off animations and maxing out speed makes the battle faster, so it makes the training less draining and it gives us enough time to do both stats to 252 before the Safari Time runs out (based on my experience).

 

I'd love if you could mention that in the guide, if as I said I didn't notice that part, if not the guide is complete, 'grats!!

[Bhimoso]

Hey Bhimoso, if you forgot to mention or I didn't see, in the game settings there's an option that involves around the speed of the text and animations during battle, for beginners, they don't necessarily know that taking off animations and maxing out speed makes the battle faster, so it makes the training less draining and it gives us enough time to do both stats to 252 before the Safari Time runs out (based on my experience).

 

I'd love if you could mention that in the guide, if as I said I didn't notice that part, if not the guide is complete, 'grats!!

True, I'll add it in, I also use it to train faster. Thank you!

[Saintebaguette]

-1 Just to annoy bhimoso since he took 8hours to do it

+1 cause guide is good af !

[Bhimoso]

-1 Just to annoy bhimoso since he took 8hours to do it

+1 cause guide is good af !

Thanks for bumping this because I forgot to include the suggestion mentioned above since I was too busy doing the boss guide lol.

 

I'll be back on Friday to work on them. :)

[Bhimoso]

Guide has been fixed. It's now 100% done :)