Anjoola's Website Pokémon Guides Advanced Breeding Guide
 

Introduction

Sometimes, it seems that you never catch a Pokémon with your desired traits. It may take hundreds, or even thousands of tries to catch a perfect wild Pokémon. As a result, many trainers resort to breeding, which has a little more predictability than random Pokémon hunting.
 

Chain Breeding Back to Top
 
Basically, chain breeding is a process in which you breed many Pokémon together in order to get one Pokémon with the traits you want. For example, if you wanted a Plusle with Volt Tackle, you would have to chain breed, since Plusle can't learn Volt Tackle naturally.
 

So, you must first breed two Pikachu with a Light Ball, so an egg containing a Pichu with the move Volt Tackle will come out. Next, you raise that Pichu into a Pikachu so it can breed (since baby Pokémon can't be bred). Then, breed the new Pikachu and Plusle together, and if done correctly, you should have a baby Plusle with Volt Tackle!
 
If you aren't quite sure about the mechanics of breeding, read this guide first. You are on your way to become an advanced breeder!

 
The above example was actually one of the easier chain breedings. Chain breeding can be an extremely complicated method, as sometimes long chains must be formed simply for one egg to be hatched with a certain move. But, it can be quite useful, as you will find out next.

Breeding Movesets Back to Top
 
One of the main reasons the chain breeding procedure was developed was because it made it easier to change a Pokémon's moveset. Pokémon can naturally learn moves as they level up, but there are some moves that can only be gotten by breeding.
 
One type of move that can be passed down are moves learned by leveling up. If the offspring can learn a move by leveling up, and both its parents know that move, then the offspring will be born with that move, even if it isn't supposed to learn the move until later on.
 

 
Egg moves are one of the newer additions to Pokémon games, and some of those moves are actually pretty good. If the offspring can be bred to learn an egg move and that father knows that move, then it will be born knowing that move. Each Pokémon has a different set of egg moves that it can only learn by breeding, not by leveling up. You can find a list of these in one of the online Pokédexes.
 
Finally, moves learned from Move Tutors can also be passed down. These moves are similar to egg moves, because what move tutors really do is teach Pokémon moves they've forgotten or moves they can be bred with (egg moves).

Breeding Natures and IVs Back to Top