Effort Values are one of the many aspects that affect how a Pokémon will grow stat-wise, and with the release of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, and the ease and accessibility of Competitive Battling to everyone: many people have begun to ask the question: “what is EV training, and how do I do it?” In this guide, I aim to answer, as simply as possible, both of these questions.
To answer these questions, I must first explain what Effort Values, or Evs are. Effort Values are the amount of Effort Points, or EPs, your Pokémon has acquired whilst defeating other Pokémon in the game. Every Pokémon you defeat will give your Pokémon a certain number of Effort Points, and the amount of Effort Points each Pokémon will award you is dependant entirely on which Pokémon it is, not on level, gender or any other statistic the Pokémon may have. Once acquired, Effort Points will improve the growth of the Stat in which they represent, however, it takes four Effort Points of the same stat, to increase the respective stat; for example, if your Pokémon acquired four Attack EPs, when it levels up, it will gain one more Attack stat point than it normally would have. It is important to remember that Effort Points are a hidden stat, and thus, it is impossible to know how many Effort Points your Pokémon has, unless you count how many you have obtained, whilst training it.
When you first catch a Pokémon, or hatch it from an egg, it will have acquired, obviously, 0 Effort Points, however each Pokémon can acquire a total of 510 Effort Points, but only a maximum of 255 in any one stat. This means that you have a total of 127 stat points, that you can dictate to increase whichever stats you want, with a maximum of 63 stat points in any one stat. Now that you know what you have to achieve by EV training, lets look at how its done.
Imagine you have just hatched level 1 Gible, and you want to raise into a Physical Sweeper (A Pokémon that hits fast and hard with Physical type moves), you would want to focus all of its Effort Points into physical Attack and Speed. You know that battling one Machop will give you one Attack Effort Point, so, to gain the maximum of an extra 63 Attack stat points, you will need to battle 252 Machops with your level 1 Gible. To boost Gible’s Speed stat, by the maximum 63 stat points, you would need to battle 252 Starlys which give your Gible one seed Effort Point. However, battling 252 of the same Pokémon would take a long time, so there are many items in the game, that you may or many not have used before, without really knowing what it was doing, that help speed up the process:
Vitamins, such as Protein and Iron each give your Pokémon 10 Effort Points in their respective stat, the list of all the vitamins and the stats they give Effort Points to are as follow:
HP Up - HP
Protein - Attack
Iron - Defence
Calcium - Sp. Attack
Zinc - Sp. Defence
Carbos - Speed
These can all be bought from the Veilstone Department store for $9800 each, however, the game is designed to stop you using vitamins to give your Pokémon all of its Effort Points, and thus, you may only give each Pokémon a maximum of 10 of a single vitamin, meaning you may only use vitamins to reach a total of 100 Effort Points in any one stat. The Macho Brace, previously seen in Ruby and Sapphire, is also useful when EV training your Pokémon, as it doubles the amount of Effort Points you gain from a battle whilst cutting your Pokémon’s speed in half whilst being held, meaning for every Machop you faint, you will gain 2 Attack Effort Points instead of the usual one. The Macho Brace can be found in Pastoria City, by showing a man the three variations of Burmy.
However, significantly more useful than the Macho Brace, are the new Power Items. The Power items cut your Pokémon’s speed in half whilst they hold the item, but they also give your Pokémon 4 Effort Points, a whole stat, for every Pokémon it faints. There are 6 Power Items, one for each stat, and what they are and which stat they increase are listed below:
Power Weight - HP
Power Bracer - Attack
Power Belt - Defence
Power Lens - Sp. Attack
Power Band - Sp. Defence
Power Anklet - Speed
The Power Items can be found in the Battle Tower store, and cost 16BP each. Now, with the Power Bracer attached, for every Machop you defeat, your Gible will gain 5 Attack Effort Points, which makes the process of EV training 5x quicker already! You may be wondering how you will be defeating all of these Machops and Starlys with a level one Gible, well, unlike EXP points, every Pokémon that enters a battle against a Pokémon, they will all receive the full amount of Effort Points, unless they have already obtained the maximum of 510. This means, you can send out your Gible, quickly switch it out for another Pokémon, that can easily faint the opposing Pokémon and both Pokémon will gain Effort Points. Although, please note, that only Pokémon with the Effort Point booster items will gain the boosted number of Effort Points; Pokémon not holding an Effort Point booster item will gain the normal amount of Effort Points given by the Pokémon you are battling.
EXP Share also passes on Effort Points, so if you give your Gible the EXP Share item, and stick a strong Pokémon up front, when the Machop has been K.O’d, your Gible will gain one attack Effort Point, again, you cannot pass boosted amounts of Effort Points onto Pokémon not holding an Effort Point booster item, so giving your Pokémon at the front of your Part a Power Bracer, does not mean that a Gible receiving Effort Points through the EXP Share will receive the 4 extra Effort Points. The EXP Share can be found in Eterna City, and as a lottery prize in the Jubilife TV station.
The Pokérus is the most useful way of increasing the amount of Effort Points gained by your Pokémon, as it works much like the Macho Brace, without the reduction in speed, and without taking up an item slot. This means that a Gible holding the Power Bracer, with the Pokérus, will gain a massive 10 Effort Points for every Machop it defeats, drastically speeding up the whole process of EV training. The Pokérus also doubles the amount of Effort Points received from the EXP Share. The Pokérus is very rare, and can only be obtained by catching it from a wild Pokémon, or being infected by another member of your team, and once obtained, your Pokémon will lose the Pokérus after 24 hours at midnight if it is in your party, and can never be infected again. However, it is possible to infect your other Pokémon with the Pokérus, by battling using the infected Pokémon, and walking around with the infected Pokémon in party. If you want to keep the Pokérus forever, so that you may infect other Pokémon you wish to EV train, then always keep an infected Pokémon in your PC at midnight, so that it is not lost. You will know if a Pokémon in your party has the Pokérus, as Nurse Joy will tell you when you next try and heal your infected Pokémon at a Pokécentre. Note that even after your Pokémon has lost the Pokérus status, that it is still under the effects of Pokérus, meaning that it will still gain double Effort Points after fainting a foe.
Now, back to training your Gible, you first give it 10 Proteins and 10 Carbos’ in give it 100 Attack Effort Points, and 100 Speed Effort Points, don’t worry if you do not see an immediate increase in stats, as you will only see an increase upon levelling, and you will only see the full effect of EV training at level 100. You now infect your Gible with the Pokérus, by placing an infected Pokémon at the front of your party and walking around until Gible is infected, you then give Gible the Power Brace as a hold item. Next you visit an area where you know you will find wild Machop, for example: Route 207. You now search until you find a Machop and switch Gible out for a high levelled Pokémon that is capable of taking the foe Machop’s hit, as well as easily K.Oing the Machop, your Gible will now have gained 10 Attack Effort Points, and will only need to battle another 14 (29 without the Pokérus) Machops before it has 250 Attack Effort Points. At this point, now that your Gible has 250 Attack Effort Points, you should take the Power Bracer away, and battle one (two without the Pokérus) more Machop, increasing Gibble’s Attack Effort Points to 252, at this point, Gible can no longer receive anymore Attack stat points through EV training. You should then repeat the process against Starly, using the Power Anklet, until your Gible has 252 Speed Effort Points, your Gible will now have obtained 504 Effort Points out of a total of 510, you can now chose to add one stat in either Defence, Sp. Defence or HP, instead of wasting the excess Effort Points. Note that there will always be two wasted Effort Points.
If you think that you may have lost count and given your Pokémon too many Effort Points, as you wish to EV train your Pokémon in more than just two stats, then there are certain berries that stop you having to retrain another Pokémon from scratch. These berries each reduce their respective stat by 10 Effort Points, and are as follow:
Pomeg Berry - HP
Kelpsy Berry - Attack
Qualot Berry - Defence
Hondew Berry - Sp. Attack
Grepa Berry - Sp. Defence
Tamato Berry - Speed
Once Gible has obtained the maximum amount of Effort Points it can, it is now ready to be levelled up normally, against any Pokémon that give high amounts of EXP. Items such as the Lucky Egg will increase the amount of EXP gained and can be found on Wild Chansey, with a 5% chance of being attached to a Wild Chansey.
Here are links to the Serebii pages which list the different Pokémon that give different Effort Points:
HP
Attack
Defence
Sp. Attack
Sp. Defence
Speed
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