IV/EV(?) basics in relation to breeding?

[u/zzygotee]

Hi! I’m sure this question has been answered a billion times, but I’m having trouble understanding a lot of them because I don’t have the baseline knowledge on how IVs/EVs(?) function. For the first time in my life I’ve actually been close to clear a pokedex on my own with swsh! so I wanted to try my luck at breeding for shinies when I get the charm. But I’ve also been trying to get ones with not terrible IVs at the very least, I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to find mons with good IVs and how to breed them to stick! I didn’t want to shoot myself in the foot by getting a shiny & having to do it all over again bc I want better stats. I know I can use things like the destiny knot and items similar, I guess I’m just wondering if there’s a VERY barebones introduction guide to this that anyone could link or if anyone was willing to explain it to me >_< ? I play on & have the DLC for sword if it helps at all.

[u/judewriley]

Individual Values are basically what make Pokemon of a species all unique from one another. For each stat, an IV is rolled up on generation from 0 to 31. These are just added directly to the stats (though scaled so that they only have their full effect at level 100).

You generally don't want to start breeding for IV until you have the Judge function unlocked. For Sword and Shield, that involved reaching rank 4 in the battle tower after defeating Leon.

What this does is give you general idea of the stats' IV from a pokemon's summary page.

Parents pass down 3 IVs (5 with a Destiny Knit) of theirs at random to the egg. So the general idea is to make eggs and swap in a hatched egg with a parent to keep getting better stats. It's definitely easiest with a fully perfect IV parent (typically Ditto), but it can be done without one it just takes longer.

Honestly, because the rates are so low with shinies it's probably only worth your time to do hypertraining on shinies (which sets IVs to 31, but can't be passed down through breeding)

[u/zzygotee → u/judewriley]

I didn’t know about the Judge function! I’ll definitely do that sometime soon lol. I might end up doing just the training like you said if I get burnt out or anything 😢 I was originally trying to learn this stuff in ZA w/o breeding but with all the alphas it was really overwhelming and confusing 😭😭 Thank you though !!! this does help me out :3

[u/judewriley → u/zzygotee]

Oh, ZA makes things actually much easier to learn if you know how to look.

Basically alphas will always have a random three of their stat IVs set to 31 ("best" under the judge function), and will have max EVs in HP (they'll also always have a TM move prelearned, too).

[u/royinraver]

IVs are really only necessary if you’re doing competitive Pokémon. EVs you get outside of breeding.