Official Black & White Help thread (Ask your questions here)

[Larry]

Hey everyone, I just got Pokemon White and I was wondering which Fire-type Pokemon are the best ones to train/catch?

Darmanitan is really good in in-game and so is Chandelure.

[IHAVEAQUESTION]

I am not altogether sure if this belongs here, but I have a question about natures/stats. I have a timid Deino with an everstone breeding with a male Seviper right now. For the most part I get timid Deinos, but my problem is when I get a timid Deino, its speed stat is 5, while a serious Deino will have a speed stat of 6. Is this just terrible IV's or what?

[Dangertrout]

I am not altogether sure if this belongs here, but I have a question about natures/stats. I have a timid Deino with an everstone breeding with a male Seviper right now. For the most part I get timid Deinos, but my problem is when I get a timid Deino, its speed stat is 5, while a serious Deino will have a speed stat of 6. Is this just terrible IV's or what?

Any nature that does not hinder speed will be 5 or 6, and if you're breeding for speed, you want to keep the Timid ones with 6. Those should have over 24 Speed IVs

[varanus_komodoensis]

I am not altogether sure if this belongs here, but I have a question about natures/stats. I have a timid Deino with an everstone breeding with a male Seviper right now. For the most part I get timid Deinos, but my problem is when I get a timid Deino, its speed stat is 5, while a serious Deino will have a speed stat of 6. Is this just terrible IV's or what?

Any nature that does not hinder speed will be 5 or 6, and if you're breeding for speed, you want to keep the Timid ones with 6. Those should have over 24 Speed IVs

So essentially, you have a 7/31 chance of getting a Deino with >24 Speed IVs, and a 1/2 chance of getting a Timid Deino. So (1/2)*(7/31) = .112, or an 11% chance of getting the Deino you want. Essentially you're just having bad luck, so keep hatching eggs and you'll eventually get the one you want.

[davido88]

Like Varanus said, 30 is close enough if you want HP fighting. If you REALLY want to keep the max SpA, you could go for a different HP. This was for an eevee, right? What eeveelution were you going for?

It's for an Espeon. Guess I get to do some experimenting. This is only my fourth pokemon to IV breed and I have only breed for perfect IVs.

[TheOriginalOne]

Hi, right now I have 3 questions about the Dream World:

- Now I'm trying to get the Zekrom C-Gear skin, so I sent my SPR2012 Zekrom to pdw. Now, when I click on "special home", a text appears, saying "No special home is available at this time". Does that mean that the event is no longer available?

- Now the pgl website keeps saying that a major update is beggining on the 5th June, and I can read there "Remember to wake up any tucked in pokemon before the 5th June". Does that mean that my pokemon will get deleted if I don't do so, or is that sentence there just an advice to impatient people?

- Once there was a thread here explaining that, but now I think it's gone, so I forgot what to do: How can you visit the homes of other people? (I already know my ID and my world)

[Hydrohs]

- Now I'm trying to get the Zekrom C-Gear skin, so I sent my SPR2012 Zekrom to pdw. Now, when I click on "special home", a text appears, saying "No special home is available at this time". Does that mean that the event is no longer available?

Yes, the event ended.

- Now the pgl website keeps saying that a major update is beggining on the 5th June, and I can read there "Remember to wake up any tucked in pokemon before the 5th June". Does that mean that my pokemon will get deleted if I don't do so, or is that sentence there just an advice to impatient people?

It would be an advisory because you wont be able to wake up your Pokemon during the maintenance, which could last for quite a while.

[Dangertrout]

It's for an Espeon. Guess I get to do some experimenting. This is only my fourth pokemon to IV breed and I have only breed for perfect IVs.

hmmm, the only HP I like for Espeon that has 31 in SpA is HP Ground with this spread: 30/E/30/31/30/30, which is still a pain in the butt to breed for. >.<
Well, good luck in your experimenting! Hopefully the RNG will be nice and give you something workable early on =)

[doodlecloud]

So this may be a dumb couple of questions but.....is there a way to calculate IVs if you don't know EV values

If not, if you simply put the EV values as 0 each, is that likely to completely skew the results of will they be only a few digits off and still an okay indicator?

Also, as the pokemon I'm thinking of are only around level 28-30, are they likely to even have many EV values? They've obviously fought lots and so will have EV information in there somewhere but I was under the impression that it only starts actually affecting a Pokemons stats until they're a little older? If that makes sense.

[Dangertrout]

So this may be a dumb couple of questions but.....is there a way to calculate IVs if you don't know EV values

If not, if you simply put the EV values as 0 each, is that likely to completely skew the results of will they be only a few digits off and still an okay indicator?

Also, as the pokemon I'm thinking of are only around level 28-30, are they likely to even have many EV values? They've obviously fought lots and so will have EV information in there somewhere but I was under the impression that it only starts actually affecting a Pokemons stats until they're a little older? If that makes sense.

If you don't know the EVs of the pokemon, it will skew your results when you try to use the IV calculator. You won't see the full effect of the EVs at low level, but there will be enough effect to mess up your calculations. If you've been using the DW, you can get / farm EV reducing berries there and send them to your game. Then you can use them to bring the EVs to 0 so you can check the IVs.

[doodlecloud]

If you don't know the EVs of the pokemon, it will skew your results when you try to use the IV calculator. You won't see the full effect of the EVs at low level, but there will be enough effect to mess up your calculations. If you've been using the DW, you can get / farm EV reducing berries there and send them to your game. Then you can use them to bring the EVs to 0 so you can check the IVs.

Ahaha, thanks. I did try try to use an IV calculator after posting, just to see what would happen, and it was damn near impossible to use (kept saying impossible until I guessed random EV values lol) so I see how important it is to know EVs now.....

I'm not fussed enough to get EV reducing berries, I was just curious about the IVs of the Pokemon I'm currently training up (more for Pokedex than team). I think I may try and make an IV team afterwards though so I'll be sure to check stats before levelling up this time!

[Agonist]

alternately you can upload the pokemon to pokecheck, and find both EVs and IVs.

[doodlecloud]

alternately you can upload the pokemon to pokecheck, and find both EVs and IVs.

That looks....a bit dodgey. Is it actually commonly used within pokemon circles like Serebii/Smogon/etc?

[varanus_komodoensis]

That looks....a bit dodgey. Is it actually commonly used within pokemon circles like Serebii/Smogon/etc?

It is very commonly used by many people to check EVs and IVs of their Pokemon, and to check if something they were traded is hacked. If you use it to clone Pokemon, though, some people will claim that that is cheating and some people will not. Pokecheck itself isn't a dodgey website (like it won't give you viruses or anything); it's actually widely used, but there are a lot of differing opinions about it.

[doodlecloud]

Okay....that sounds okay (I wouldn't clone pokemon myself but I suppose if you're cloning a pokemon you've gained and trained fairly and don't intend to trade it then it's not terrible). Once you've uploaded it, does the Pokemon completely travel to pokecheck and like disappear from your game or does it more upload a copy and you can still use the pokemon in game?

Also, I believe that there are ways to find out IVs (IV calculator obviously) and how likely it is that certain IVs will crop up (that's what RNG is about, right?) but there's no way to actually alter IVs. Is that correct?

[varanus_komodoensis]

Okay....that sounds okay (I wouldn't clone pokemon myself but I suppose if you're cloning a pokemon you've gained and trained fairly and don't intend to trade it then it's not terrible). Once you've uploaded it, does the Pokemon completely travel to pokecheck and like disappear from your game or does it more upload a copy and you can still use the pokemon in game?

Also, I believe that there are ways to find out IVs (IV calculator obviously) and how likely it is that certain IVs will crop up (that's what RNG is about, right?) but there's no way to actually alter IVs. Is that correct?

I've never actually successfully used Pokecheck myself, but my understanding is that it's just like the GTS - you upload a Pokemon there, and you can't use it while it's in the "Pokecheck GTS". But you can see it on your computer screen. Someone who has actually successfully used it can tell you more about how it works.

IVs, though, I understand You can check your Pokemon's IVs using an IV Calculator, as you said. Metalkid's IV Calculator is the best one. You will need to know your Pokemon's EVs, its Hidden Power type, and what the Nimbasa Battle Subway "Judging" Guy says about it. To find the Hidden Power, you talk to the guy in the Mistralton Pokemon Center. If you don't know its EVs, you will need to get the EV-reducing berries from the Dream World and feed them to your Pokemon until the EVs won't go lower. I recommend that you save before you do this so you don't waste the berries.

The IVs that a wild Pokemon has are completely random. They range from 0 (really bad) to 31 (perfect). A "flawless" Pokemon has 31 IVs in every stat, or in every useful stat (like an Alakazam with 31s in everything but Attack is still considered flawless to many people, since you wouldn't use Attack on an Alakazam). You can somewhat control the IVs that a bred Pokemon has because it will inherit 1-3 IVs randomly from each of its parents. If you give the parents the Power item that corresponds with the IVs that you want to pass down, then those IVs are guaranteed to be on the offspring. But you can only control 2 of the IVs this way; the rest are random whether or not they will be passed down.

The IVs that a Pokemon has cannot be changed, that is correct.

Finally, RNG is "Random Number Generation". I only vaguely understand how to do this in B/W. In D/P/Pt it was easier. But basically - and someone who does this regularly can tell you how to do it - using a computer program, you can find out what date and time you need to set your DS to, and how many steps you need to take before encountering a Pokemon, to get the IVs that you want, and also the Hidden Power that you want, because Hidden Power is based on the IV spread.

[doodlecloud]

Thank you so much. that's really helpful. I get bits of information as I read other peoples comments but it's great for someone to just confirm it all.

Also, obivously you would aim for all 31s but what is the kind of cut off point for considering a Pokemon 'useful'. Like I imagine a lot of people wouldn't consider anything less than 30/31 for a Championship team but in general competitive battling, would 25-29 be acceptable (in at least the not so important stats)? Maybe even lower? Or is it really only around 29-31 that would be worth having?

[The Eleventh]

Pokémon never leave your game when uploaded to Pokécheck, so you'll be able to use them in your game freely, while still viewing detailed information online.

[Too Funk to Druck]

Finally, RNG is "Random Number Generation". I only vaguely understand how to do this in B/W. In D/P/Pt it was easier. But basically - and someone who does this regularly can tell you how to do it - using a computer program, you can find out what date and time you need to set your DS to, and how many steps you need to take before encountering a Pokemon, to get the IVs that you want, and also the Hidden Power that you want, because Hidden Power is based on the IV spread.

Only if you're comparing DW RNGing and DPPt RNGing. Otherwise, BW is much easier as you only have to hit a time at the second, with no worry about delays, like in DPPt.

[zandroas]

Landorus : To get him, do I have to be the Original Trainer of Thundurus (I have White) or both (Thundurus/Tornadus) can come from a different trainer than me?