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Suicune World

The Pokemon Lab

Training

This tutorial focuses on the various methodologies to train a Pokémon. The most obviuos way to accomplish this is to have them fight and win battles (either with wild pokémon or in a trainer match). However thaere are other stratagies ( some not without their merit) that can be employed to raise a pokémon's level and stat experience. I will discuss each method after a basic introduction to Experience and Stat Exp.

Experience:

When you defeat an opponent, (either against a wild pokémon or in a trainer battle) all pokémon who participated in that battle, no matter how brief, will earn Experience points. When a pokémon erarns enough Exp. it gains a level and so its statistics increase. The exact amount of Exp. needed for a pokémon to level-up varies from pokémon to pokémon but research has shown that pokémon grow at one of four different rates.

In the chart above are listed the amount of Exp. points necessary to achieve the levels 50 and 100. To work out the number of Exp. points to achieve other levels use the appropiate equation. The result of the equation is the number of Exp. points to gain that level, L (Note: all decimal remainders are dropped).

Also note that because parabolic pokémon do not have a consisten multiplyer throughout their growth they start off gaining levels faster than fast pokémon but by the time they are approaching L.100 they are actually gaining levels slower than medium pokémon.

All the pokémon in a series have the same growth rate ( eg, both jigglypuff and wiggltuff will grow at the fast rate and all the eveelutions will grow at the medium rate).

If you are using a traded pokémon to battle (or one which you are not the original trainer) it will receive a 50% bonus to the Exp. it earns. This will obviously help the pokémon to gain levels more quickly but there are two potential drawbacks. Firstly, if you don't yet have all eight badges the pokémon may rapidly grow to a level at which it will no longer obey you. Secondly, the Exp. bonus means that the pokémon doesn't have to fight as many battles to gain more levels and that means that it won't have as much stat Exp. as a similar pokémon that does not have the bonus.

Less stat Exp. means lower statistics, as explained in the box trick and pokémon genes section. But don't worry; traded pokémon can eventually earn all the stat Exp. the need for maximum stat growth. It's just that they'll tend not to reach their potential until they reach a very high level.

Stat Experience:

To appreciate the relative merits of the various training methods, it is necessary to understand the concept of "stat Exp".

In brief, the five primary statistics ( HP, Spd, Att, Def, Spc) of each pokémon have independant experience values which are hidden from you during gameplay. These values are similar to normal Exp. (the kind that determines level gains) in that they increase as your pokémon wins battles. When any statistic has accumulated enough experience that statistics will increase by one or more points the next time that that pokémon gains a level, is stored in the PC, or consumes a relevant stat-booster. For each statistic the amount of stat Exp. gained from a given battle is equal to the corresponding base stat of the defeated pokémon. Thus, defeating digletts will earn you alot of speed and attack exp, but not very much HP or defense. If you only fought digletts for awhile you would notice that your speed and attack were tending to grow more quickly than the other stats. The other stats will grow, however: gaining levels will increase a pokémon's statistics even if no stat Exp. is earned.

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 L22 Level ditto on Route 15 as from defeating a L50 Ditto in the Unknown Dungeon. Stat Exp is therefore accumulated most efficiently by fighting Pokémon with high base stats, at the lowest Level you can find them.

Rare candies:

Feeding a rare candy to a pokemon will cause it to gain one level, up to the maximum of L.100. Pokémon who evolve at a certain level will do so normally if a rare candy was used to reach that level. Rare candies provide no stat Exp; pokémon who are raised using this item will therefore tend to be weaker than those who were trained in battle. If you have used rare candies on some of your pokémon you can still accumulate that stat Exp. back via the box trick.

Stat boosters:

These include HP UPs, and the food items you can purchase at the Celadon Dept. Store (and sometimes find lying around during your adventure): Protein, Iron, Carbos, and Calcium. Using these items provides an immediate stat boost, but really two things are happening. First, the Stat Exp total for the relevant statistic is increased, and second, the value for that statistic is immediately recalculated according to the new stat Exp. total.

There are at least two restrictions on how many stat boosters your Pokémon can consume. Firstly, there is an absolute limit of 10 for each item. Secondly, even if your Pokémon has used less than 10 of a given booster, if the Stat Exp total for the relevant statistic reaches its maximum 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 to help a Pokémon reach its maximum stat potential. The answer is no. All of the 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 that at L100, a completely untrained Pokémon (ie, no stat Exp at all) will have stats 63 points lower than if it were fully trained (ie, maximum Stat Exp for all statistics). If you could afford to give that Pokémon 10 of each stat booster, each of its statistics would increase by 40 points! That's almost 2/3 of its potential growth, without having to do any battling.

Exp. All:

The Exp. All item distributes any experience earned in battle among those pokémon that you are currently carrying. Half of the earned Exp is divided among those who actually took part in the battle. The remaining half is divided among all of your carried pokémon, including the ones who fought.

Exp. All also divides stat Exp. among your pokémon. At present it is not known if the distribution algorithm is the same as the one used for normal Exp. but it seems likely.

Piggybacking:

It's already been mentioned that all the Pokémon who participate in a battle receive both Exp. and stat Exp. This is true even if a Pokémon is switched away before it attacks (or gets attacked), providing a convenient way of producing rapid Level gains for low Level Pokémon. When fighting the Elite Four at the Pokémon League or the denizens of the Unknown Dungeon, deploy your low Level Pokémon at the very start of the battle. Immediately switch away to a powerful Pokémon that can survive the imminent attack and then lay waste to the enemy.

Using this technique, a single run through the Elite Four can easily produce gains of 15-20 Levels, or more. Unfortunately, your Pokémon will not have gained very much stat Exp. relative to its Exp. gains, and thus its statistics will be tend to be poor. However, it is now more capable of winning battles on its own. The sooner that a Pokémon is able to single-handedly defeat opponents with high base stats, the more rapidly it will reach its maximum stat potential.

A drawback to this method is that Pokémon who gain several Levels at a time while piggybacking will not learn the attacks they normally would on the Levels that are skipped. If the Pokémon you're training learns important attacks at relatively low Levels, you may want to put off piggybacking against high Level foes until it would gain only a few Levels at a time.

Day care centre:

A pokémon that is left in day care will gain experience at the rate of one point per step you take. The day care provides no stat Exp. so pokémon raised by this method will tend to have poor stats (equal to the stats if it were rare candied)

Pokémon who evolve at a certain level will not do so if they reach that level in day care. However, evolution will take place normally on the next level gained outside the day care centre.

Pokémon will continue to learn moves at their normal levels, however. If all four attack slots are filled the old attacks will be overwritten by the new ones, starting at the top of the list. You can use this fact to control the moves your pokémon learns while in day care: simply keep an eye on what level your pokémon is and if a new attack is about to be learned, re-order the old attacks so that the least desired move is at the top of the list.

Evolution:

A question that is commonly raised is, "When should I evolve my Pokémon?". The answer depends on the Pokémon you have.

Some Pokémon evolve on their own once they reach a certain Level. You can permit this to happen, or delay evolution by pressing the B button during the evolution sequence. The option to evolve will be presented again the next time a Level is gained, unless your Pokémon has reached L100, the highest Level attainable. L100 Pokémon cannot evolve unless they are stone- or trade-evolved Pokémon.

You might choose to delay evolution simply because of personal preference (is there any question that psyduck is cooler than golduck?), but there's another, less subjective reason: pre-evolved forms of Pokémon learn their attacks at lower Levels than evolved forms. For example, Psyduck ordinarily evolves at L33. If evolution is delayed, he'll learn hydro-pump at L52. However, if Psyduck evolves at any point prior to L52, he won't learn Hydro Pump until L59 (the Level at which Golduck learns it).

Be aware that delaying evolution comes at a cost: a Pokémon's pre-evolved form almost always has lower statistics than the evolved form. Not only do evolved forms tend to show greater stat gain from Level to Level, 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 the long 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, this stat boost will be exactly equal to the larger Level-by-Level gains that Golduck would have been making if you had evolved at an earlier Level.

There's one additional consideration for stone-evolved Pokémon, like pikachu. You should delay evolution until 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 move after evolving. For example, the last move a Pikachu learns naturally in the Red and Blue games is thunder at L43. Once he learns this, it's safe to evolve him; but if you evolve prior to L43, raichu will never learn Thunder naturally! You'd have to use up a TM to teach him this move.

The exception to stone-evolved Pokémon is the eevee evolutions. These you want to evolve ASAP if you want to evolve them at all. As an eevee, it learns a completely different set of attacks than do its evolutions: vaporeon, jolteon, and flareon.

For trade-evolved Pokémon, evolve them ASAP. It gives them a quick stat boost and it has no impact on when they learn their moves.