To some, training Pokémon involves nothing more than leveling up your
Pokémon to Lv.100 and customizing your Pokémon’s attacks. However, there’s more
to training than meets the eye. Want to maximize all of your Pokémon’s stats
(HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed?) Keep on
reading to find out how!
Calculating Damage
Let’s say you have a
Charizard and you’re battling another Charizard. Your Charizard uses Fire Blast and takes out 50% of your opponent’s HP. Your opponent’s Charizard also uses
Fire Blast and takes out 75% of your HP. What gives? Shouldn’t both Charizards inflict the same amount of damage on each other when using the same move? Not
quite. Your stats (Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense) determine how much damage your Pokémon inflicts and how much damage your Pokémon takes.
In the above example of the two Charizards fighting, your Charizard may have had a lower Attack or Defense, or your opponent’s Charizard may have had a higher Attack or Defense.
We all know that the stats of both your Pokémon and your opponent’s are taken into consideration when the computer calculates how much damage is dealt/received. But what we
don’t know is why when you reach Lv.100, your stats may be lower or higher than an opponent’s Pokémon of the same name and level. This is where Individual
Values come into play.
Beginning in Pokémon Gold and Pokémon Silver and continuing into all of the games that followed,
each Pokémon in the game you caught in the wild, or obtained through an event,
was given 6 Individual Values, corresponding to its 6 stats (HP, Attack,
Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed). When you encounter a Pokémon,
it’s randomly given a number from 0 to 31 in each of its 6 stats. This number
is unknown and can’t be determined without the use of an “Individual Value Calculator” (like this.) For example, if you have an Individual Value of 31 in your Charizard’s HP stat, it means that your Charizard has the maximum HP you can get for any Charizard in the entire game. Likewise, if your Charizard has an Individual Value of 0 in its HP stat, then it has the lowest HP you can get for any Charizard in the game.
Without the use of an “Individual Value Calculator”, there are only two ways to determine if the Pokémon you catch, or are given, has the highest Individual Value it can get for a particular stat.
Two Ways to Determine Individual Values
The first way is the time-consuming way. You’ll need to catch as many different kinds of Pokémon
with the same name and compare their stats with each other.
The second way, only available in Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, also doesn’t tell you what
Individual Value you have in each of your Pokémon’s stats, but it does show what stat your Pokémon has the highest Individual Value in. Look at the “Summary” screen of your Pokémon.
If in the Pokémon’s summary, it says the following descriptions, then that Pokémon’s stat with the
highest Individual Value would be the following:
"Loves to Eat” or
“Often Dozes Off”:Max.
HP
“Proud of its Power” or “Likes
to Thrash About”:Attack
“Sturdy Body” or “Capable of
Taking Hits”:Defense
“Highly Curious” or
“Mischievous”:Special
Attack
“Strong Willed” or “Somewhat
Vain”:Special
Defense
“Likes to Run” or “Alert to
Sounds”:Speed
Try to catch as many different kinds of Pokémon with the same name as possible and pick the one that has the highest Individual Value in the stat you want. For example, if you want
your Pokémon to be able to take lots of damage, try to get a high Individual Value in HP, Defense or Special Defense. Remember, the higher your Pokémon’s 6 stats are, the better your Pokémon is.
Individual Values only contribute to one part of getting the maximum stats for your Pokémon. Other factors concerning stats include Effort Values and Natures, but we’ll get into
that in another topic.
