Breeding 101: Natures

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Pokémon have distinct personalities.  Some are sassy, others are quite serious, and some are just plain rash.  To the untrained eye, these seem like mere personality traits, but to us, the Pokémon breeders, they mean so much more.  A Pokémon's nature determines which of its stats get a slight boost, and which take a slight decrease.  It also determines what flavor of Pokéblock and berry your Pokémon enjoy, but we will not be covering that in this article as it is not particularly pertinent to breeding.  If you want to know more about berries and flavors I suggest you take a look at Serebii's nature guide for that information.

Naughty by Nature

Every Pokémon in Generation IV has a Nature Value which can be found on its Summary screen.  Nature Values, or natures, adjust your Pokémon's stats by ten percent for two individual statistics.  There are exceptions to this in the form of Neutral Natures, which do not modify any stat.
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Breeding 101: Individual Values (The Final Conflict)

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Today is the day when things start coming together.  We have been on a magical journey, you and I.  From backpacking through the Alps to swimming the Nile while dragging a tugboat behind us via a rope in our teeth.  But nothing is more important than today's adventure.  This is the glue that will hold together everything we have been working toward.  Individual Value inheritance will give you a bit of control over your Pokémon's strongest stats.  Get on your trailblazing gear Pokémon breeders; today we enter the wilderness as children, and come back as children with more information on Pokémon breeding!

Inheriting IVs

When breeding, you are able to pass a maximum of three IVs down to your baby Pokémon.  That means that no matter how amazing your parent Pokémon are, in the best case scenario your baby has three IVs generated at random.  Here is a run-down on how IVs are inherited when breeding:

  1. The baby's IVs are randomly generated for all 6 statistics (HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed).  From here the baby will inherit IVs from its parents, which will overwrite some of these random values.
  2. One random IV value is inherited from either parent.
  3. A second random IV value is inherited from either parent.  This value will not be the HP IV.
  4. A third random IV is inherited from either parent.  This value will not be the HP or Defense IV.
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