Pokemon ORAS Breeding Guide

Pokemon ORAS Breeding Guide by slowbro202

Breeding pokemon can help you complete your pokedex and create a competitive team. While it isn’t difficult, it can be a little complicated to understand at first, as it’s not quite as simple as “When a mommy pokemon and a daddy pokemon love each othervery much…”

General

• First of all, breeding happens at the daycare center. They are located on Route 7 in XY, and on Route 117 and at the Battle Resort in ORAS
• The general idea is that a male pokemon and a female pokemon can be put in the daycare center and produce an egg. But not just any male and any female. The parents must belong to the same egg group to make an egg. Every pokemon belongs to at least one egg group, and many belong to two. The full list of egg groups can be found here. There are 15 egg groups, including the Undiscovered egg group which consists of pokemon that cannot breed with anything.
• So let’s say I’m breeding a Pikachu and want to know what egg group it’s in. I would Google “pikachu serebii” and this page is the first result. Below the type advantages and above its evolutionary chain, there is a category called egg groups showing that Pikachu belongs to the Field and Fairy egg groups. On Serebii you can also click that egg group to see all its members.
• When breeding two different species of pokemon, the egg will always be the species of the female. So if you’re breeding a male Sandshrew with a female Pikachu, the eggs will all contain Pikachu.
• And we can’t forget about Ditto. Ditto can breed with any pokemon from any egg group, except those from the Undiscovered egg group. Ditto can breed with the many genderless pokemon, such as Staryu, to produce eggs of that pokemon. Ditto cannot breed with itself.

Ok, now what?

The three main reasons to breed pokemon are for the right nature, good IVs, and egg moves.

• Nature – Natures boost one stat by 10% and reduce another by 10%. There are also neutral natures that do nothing. To read more on natures you can check here and here. For example, if you want a fast Garchomp, Jolly (+Spe, -SpA) is better than Timid (+Spe, -Atk) because Garchomp is a physical attacker. Generally speaking, you don’t want natures that reduce your defenses. In order to guarantee that you will pass a nature from a parent to an egg, the parent with the nature you want must be holding an Everstone. So let’s breed a Jolly Gible. I have a female Garchomp that is Modest, which is no good. So I look up Garchomp’s egg groups to find it belongs to Monster and Dragon. I happen to have a male Jolly Bulbasaur, which is in the Monster egg group. So I give the Bulbasaur an Everstone and put it and the Garchomp in the daycare. All the resulting eggs will be Jolly Gibles.
• IVs – IV stands for Individual Values, which can be from 0 to 31, and have a much larger impact on a pokemon’s stats. I would strongly suggest reading more about IVs here and here. So for our hypothetical Jolly Garchomp, its speed at level 100 with a 0 speed IV is 229, while its speed at level 100 with a 31 speed IV (and 252 EVs) is 333. That’s a 45% increase, which is huge. There are two methods to pass IVs from parents to eggs. The first is with the Destiny Knot. When either parent, it doesn’t matter which one, is holding the Destiny Knot, 5 random IVs from either parent will be passed to the egg. While still a luck of the draw, your odds of good eggs go up with better parents. The second way is with a Power Item. These include the Power Weight, Bracer, Belt, Lens, Band, and Anklet, each of which correspond to a particular stat. When a parent is holding one of these items, it will pass down its IV for that particular stat. So if our mother Garchomp has a perfect 31 speed IV and we give her a Power Anklet to hold, our baby Gible will have that perfect 31 speed IV as well.
• Egg Moves – You can read more about egg moves here. Basically, an egg move is a move that a pokemon can learn, but does not learn by leveling up, TM, or tutor. The move must be bred onto the pokemon. So back to our Garchomp example, let’s teach it Twister. We google “garchomp serebii” to get to this page and scroll down to the egg moves section. Twister is listed as one of Garchomp’s egg moves, and to the right, there is a link that says Details, which takes us to this page. The Details page shows us which pokemon in Garchomp’s egg groups learn Twister by level up and breeding. Dragonite learns it by level up, so if we put a male Dragonite with Twister in the daycare with our female Garchomp, the baby Gibles will all know Twister.
• Ability – Abilities can also be passed to pokemon of the same species via breeding. A pokemon with only one ability will always pass that ability of course. A female pokemon with a hidden ability or one of two different abilities has a high chance of passing her ability to the egg. A male pokemon with a hidden ability that is bred with a Ditto has a chance of passing its ability. Back to our Garchomp example, if momma Chomp has Rough Skin, Garchomp’s hidden ability, the Gible eggs have a high chance (but not 100%) of having Rough Skin as well. You can read more on ability inheritance here.

Utilities

• Serebii – As you can tell, I make pretty extensive use of Serebii when breeding pokemon. It has a vast amount of useful information.
• Smogon – Smogon can be a great place to determine the moves and nature you want your pokemon to have. Googling “[pokemon name] smogon” helps me find everything I need (eg “garchomp smogon”).
• /r/breedingdittos – The generous people in that sub hand out 6 IV shiny Dittos with Destiny Knots. They’re hacked, but that’s ok. I highly recommend getting one.
• Flame Body/Magma Armor – Very important abilities that halve the number of steps for an egg to hatch. I always keep my Flame Body Talonflame in my party. This effect also stacks with the hatching O-Power.
• IV Checker – A guy in the Kiloude Pokemon Center (XY) and Battle Resort Pokemon Center (ORAS) will tell you about your pokemon’s IVs. “Simply can’t be beat!” means they’re 31.
• Oval Stone – Hoenn Dex completion reward. Increases the chances of getting an egg.
• Shiny Stone – National Dex completion reward. Increases chances of encountering shiny pokemon.
• Battle Resort – ORAS is great for breeding. It has two Daycares, and one is at the Battle Resort which has a nice loop, perfect for hatching eggs.

Example

Now we’re going to run through our Garchomp/Gible example. At the end, we want a Jolly Gible that knows Twister and has 31 IVs in HP, Atk, Def, SpDef, and Speed.

We’re starting with a female Garchomp with no good IVs, a bad nature, but it has the hidden ability Rough Skin. We happen to have a male pokemon in Garchomp’s egg group with the Jolly nature we want, in this case Bulbasaur. This Bulbasaur also happens to have some decent IVs. So we give the Bulbasaur an Everstone for its nature and Garchomp a Destiny Knot for the IVs and put them in the daycare. We bike around as they start popping out eggs. After a few eggs, we get a female Jolly Gible with two perfect IVs and Rough Skin.

We go back to the daycare and take Garchomp and Bulba out. Now we’re going to give our Gible Twister. We happen to have a male Dragonite with Twister that also has some good IVs. So we give our newly hatched female Gible an Everstone to keep its new Jolly nature, and Dragonite the Destiny Knot to pass on the IVs. After a little while we’re getting Jolly Gibles that know Twister. We get one that’s female and has three IVs, but oh no! It doesn’t have Rough Skin. But after a few more eggs, we have one that does.

So now we take Dragonite and our Gible without Twister out of the daycare. We give our newest female 3 IV Jolly Gible with Rough Skin and Twister an Everstone and our 6 IV Ditto from /r/breedingdittos a Destiny Knot and pop them in the daycare. After a little while we hatch a female 4 IV Jolly Gible with Rough Skin and Twister, give it an Everstone, and swap it with the 3 IV Gible currently in the daycare. This will improve our odds of getting the 5 IV Gible we want. After a few more eggs, we’re starting to get imperfect 5 IV Gibles. After a little while longer, we get our perfect 5 IV (31/31/31/x/31/31) Jolly Gible with Rough Skin and Twister.

Other Notes

• It’s always good to replace a parent in the daycare if you hatch a better one, as I showed in the example by replacing the 3 IV Gible with the 4 IV one.
• If you’re breeding for egg moves, put those moves at the bottom of your pokemon’s moveset. Select your pokemon, hit summary, and use your stylus to drag the moves you want to the bottom. When a pokemon levels up in the daycare, it willalways learn a new move if it gets one. On your pokemon’s moveset, it does this by deleting the top move, bumping up all the existing moves, then adding the new move at the bottom. If you have one pokemon with egg moves in the daycare for a prolonged amount of time, it can be good to occasionally take it out and drag the moves you want to keep back to the bottom of the list. Apparently I’m stuck in my old ways. Even if the daycare deletes the egg move, the move will be retained on the parent’s file and passed to the eggs. No need for extra shuffling to preserve egg moves.

Items

• Destiny Knot – Passes 5 random IVs from either parent to the egg. Obtained in Cyllage or Lumiose City (XY), or from Lois & Hal on the Sea Mauville (ORAS), or held by a Ditto from /u/breedingdittos.
• Everstone – Passes the nature of the pokemon holding it to the egg. Obtained in Geosenge Town (XY), and Granite Cave or from a Secret Base Pal via Pick Up Stones (ORAS).
• Power Items – Pass a specific IV from the parent holding it to the egg. Obtained at the Battle Maison for 16 BP each. If you’re having trouble getting BP, check out my Battle Maison Guide

Oddities

While I believe I’ve covered everything normal, there are a few more little quirks I want to mention.

• Nidoran – The Nidoran lines were Pokemon’s first attempt at gender. For some reason, Nidorina and Nidoqueen got put in the Undiscovered egg group and cannot breed. Female Nidoran can produce eggs of either gender, and male Nidoran/Nidorino/Nidoking can produce eggs of either gender when bred with Ditto.
• Volbeat/Illumise – Much like female Nidoran can have male or female Nidoran eggs, eggs from Volbeat and Illumise can contain either Volbeat or Illumise
• Manaphy/Phione – Legendaries can’t breed. However, Manaphy when bred with a Ditto produces Phione, which does not evolve into Manaphy.