Macho Brace:
This item, when held by your Pokémon, reduces its Speed stat by 50%, but like Pokérus, doubles the amount of Effort Values you gain. Note that your lowered Speed stat is only temporary – it only takes effect in battle. When you level up, your Pokémon’s Speed stat will not be affected by the Macho Brace.
Medicine Items:
The familiar items costing $9,800 known as HP Up (Max. HP), Protein (Attack), Iron (Defense), Calcium (Special Attack), Zinc (Special Defense) and Carbos (Speed) will increase the number of Effort Values in your Pokémon’s stats by 10 each. However, you can only give a maximum of 10 of any 1 of these medicines to one of your Pokémon’s stats (i.e. 10 HP Ups, 10 Proteins).
So based on this knowledge, since each medicine increases your Effort Values by 10 points, and you can have a maximum of 10 medicines per stat, you can obtain 100 Effort Values per stat this way. And due to the fact that the maximum number of Effort Values per Pokémon is 510, if you gave 51 medicines to your Pokémon, you would max. out its Effort Values.
However, remember that having your Effort Values evenly spread throughout all 6 of your stats is not as effective as maxing out the Effort Values of 2 of your stats. So, if you have a lot of money available in the game and use this method to gain 100 Effort Values in one of your Pokémon’s stats, you’d only need 155 more to max. that stat out, which means if holding the Macho Brace, I’d only need to battle 78 Magikarp instead of 128 or 255.
Power Items:
Only available in Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl, these items available for purchase at the Battle Tower are similar to Macho Brace. They don’t double the amount of Effort Values you gain, but rather add 4 Effort Values to the amount you would normally gain by defeating a Pokémon. Referring back to the Magikarp example, its 1 Speed Effort Value would turn into 5. Power Weight (HP), Power Bracer (Attack), Power Belt (Defense), Power Anklet (Speed), Power Lens (Special Attack) and Power Band (Special Defense) are all much more effective than Macho Brace alone. Make your Pokémon hold whichever one coincides with the stat you are Effort Value training.
Conclusion:
Effort Value training may be expensive and time-consuming, but it’s well worth the effort, no pun intended. Combine medicine items with power items (and if you can, Pokérus) to quickly train your Pokémon’s Effort Values and take down your opponents much faster and easier than ever before! Next, in Part 3 of my Pokémon Training Guide, we examine Natures & Base Values!
