Breeding Perfect Pokémon in Pokémon X&Y

Introduction

Breeding Pokémon in previous generations was an enormous pain. Even if you put a huge amount of effort into breeding a Pokémon, very little would come out, and you'd likely be stuck with a subpar Pokémon with flawed IVs. Generation VI, however, has made some major changes that make breeding much easier. Here, I will walk you through the important breeding mechanics and how to use these mechanics to breed a flawless Pokémon.

Do note that throughout this guide, I will speak assuming you know many of the fundamentals of breeding (for example, Male Species 1 + Female Species 2 will always breed Species 2) and cover competitively relevant and recently changed mechanics. This guide is mainly designed to get previous breeders up to speed.

Important Breeding Mechanics

These are the essential mechanics to be aware of when you set out to breed your flawless Pokémon. For veteran breeders, even if many of these mechanics seem familiar, be sure to glance through them as multiple mechanics have been changed over the last four generations.

Flame Body & Magma Armor

A mechanic that's been a mainstay since Pokémon Emerald, the abilities Flame Body & Magma Armor will cut the time it takes to hatch a Pokémon by half. You should always have a Pokémon with one of these abilities in your party whenever you breed. The easiest and far and away best Pokémon to use for this job is Fletchinder or Talonflame, as both are extremely easy to access and allow you to fly to the IV checker without wasting another Pokémon slot on a Fly user.

The Hatching O-Power

A new mechanic in Pokémon X&Y is the activation of O-Powers. O-Powers grant you a number of useful in-battle and overworld affects, including a power that temporarily speeds up Hatching rate. To find this O-Power, you must obtain every other O-Power in the game, then talk to Mr.Bonding in Café Introversion in Lumiose City once you have maximum style.

The IV Checker

In Kiloude City's Pokémon Center, you can find a purple-haired Ace Trainer that can tell you the potential (IVs) of your Pokémon. If any of its IVs are flawless, the trainer will list out your Pokémon's flawless IVs followed by a message that those stats "can't be beat!" Additionally, should one of your Pokémon have an IV of 0 in any stat, he will point it out to you with a negative mention of that stat. This is very useful for breeding Trick Room Pokémon.

Certain wild Pokémon will always have flawless IVs

The Friend Safari is a new feature in Pokémon X&Y that allows you to catch Pokémon not normally found over the course of the game. What's more notable is that every single Pokémon you catch in the Friend Safari will always have two flawless IVs. For passing down flawless IVs, the Pokémon here are an excellent place to start. Dittos can be caught here as well, if you have the right friends.

Additionally, there's a new mechanic to X&Y where Pokémon that cannot breed (not even with Ditto, so no Magnemites or Dittos) will always be granted three flawless IVs. This group mainly consists of legendary Pokémon, but it also includes baby Pokémon such as Azurill, Budew, and Mantyke that can eventually be made breedable. This is another excellent place to start passing down flawless IVs.

Both parents pass down egg moves

A huge change that effectively eliminates incompatible egg moves, parents of either sex pass down egg moves as of X&Y. This makes it possible to use parents with the best IVs, even if one would need to be a Ditto acting as a male Pokémon or another male without egg moves. Also note that for some reason, TM moves are no longer passed down at all.

Males pass on hidden abilities too, but only with Ditto

Forget the Entralink RNG from Generation V: Pokémon can now pass down that hidden ability even if you're male. This is the only situation where male Pokémon will pass on a hidden ability. Pairing an Impostor Ditto with a non-hidden ability Pokémon will not generate a child with a hidden ability. Similarly, a hidden ability male will not pass down its ability if it's paired with a non-hidden ability female of the same species.

Female non-Ditto Pokémon now pass along their Poké Balls

This is a pretty minor change, but if you enjoy having matching / contrasting Poké Balls, your bred Pokémon can have them too. All female Pokémon will pass down their Poké Balls, unless it's a Ditto acting as a female. I recommend that if you're breeding anything that will eventually use Return or Draco Meteor when fully trained, you breed it in a Luxury Ball to get the happiness up very quickly.

Everstone

This is actually a change that's been in effect for a while now, but a few of us might have been disconnected with traditional breeding for so long as to not have heard of this. The Everstone now always passes down the nature of the parent holding it. No longer will your perfect breeds be spoiled by a wrong nature. Additionally, unlike in DPP, it does not matter which parent holds the Everstone when breeding.

Power Items

Power Items will always pass down the parent's IV for the stat the Power Item grants EVs for. This is useful if you wish to pass down IVs for Hidden Power, for Trick Room Pokémon, or for specific situations listed further below. Note that using a Power Item on one parent and another Power Item on the other will cause either of their IVs to chain down, not both. Primarily though, for breeding, you'll want to rely on the Everstone and the...

Destiny Knot

And here we have by far the most wonderful and significant change to breeding with X&Y. If either of your parents holds the Destiny Knot, the parents will pass down a whopping five IVs to their children. With this item, it has become significantly easier to chain IVs onto Pokémon and easily receive a perfect Pokémon.

With our important new breeding mechanics out of the way, it's time to start breeding perfect Pokémon.

Breeding Perfect Pokémon

To start, catch whatever Pokémon you wish to breed. Then, head to the Friend Safari and catch several potential parents in compatible egg groups for your target bred Pokémon. If the Pokémon you wish to breed that you caught earlier does not already have the nature you want to pass down, I recommend leading with a Pokémon with the Synchronize ability when catching your Friend Safari parents to get your desired nature. For parents, Dittos are the most flexible option if you have access to them. Baby Pokémon are also an option for this part if you have any in the right egg group / limited Friend Safari access.

Now, with several parents on hand, develop a strategy for chaining down IVs. The general strategy is to breed two parents together until their child has all the relevant flawless IVs that a final parent lacks. Once that child is bred, breed the child with the final parent until you get your final target. Along the way, if a child is born that outclasses either of the parents, replace that child with the superior child to increase your chances of getting your desired final product. Remember to preserve your nature with either of your parents with the Everstone and to make sure that one of the parents is holding the Destiny Knot for the entire time.

Example

I want to breed a Timid, flawless in all stats but attack Charizard. To start, I caught a Charmeleon and two Dittos from the Friend Safari. One of the Dittos was Timid thanks to a Timid Pokémon with Synchronize I had at the front of my party. Charmeleon's IVs are 31 / x / x / x / 31 / x. The Timid Ditto’s IVs are x / x / x / x / 31 / 31. The non-Timid Ditto's IVs are x / x / 31 / 31 / x / x.

Now, to start breeding, I gave the Charmeleon a Destiny Knot and my Timid Ditto an Everstone. After several eggs, I want to get a Charmander with IVs of 31 / x / x / x / 31 / 31 or better. Both Pokémon were left in the day care and got busy.

A few eggs later, I received the 31 / x / x / x / 31 / 31 Charmander I wanted. Now, I just needed to pass down my final Ditto’s perfect IVs for my target flawless Charmander. The two are paired together again and start breeding.

Eventually, a male 31 / x / x / 31 / 31 / 31 Charmander was born. Since this Charmander was objectively better than my current parent Charmander and gives me a higher chance to pass down my wanted IV combination, I took my old Charmander out of the day-care and put the new Charmander in. Though it did not happen for me, if any children had spawned that were objectively better than their parents along the way, I would have replaced the parent with their superior child.

Once I start working with quad-flawless parents from this process, it’s only a matter of time until my 31 / x / 31 / 31 / 31 / 31 Charmander is bred!

Breeding more flawless Pokémon

Once you have a perfect Pokémon on hand, repeating this process is substantially easier. You already have a flawless parent to pass down IVs to new Pokémon if your final product was male. If your final product was female and can't pass down IVs to other species of Pokémon, you can still use any outstanding male parents that you may have bred along the way. Going back to my previous example, if I ever want to breed something in the Monster or Dragon egg groups, I have my Charizard to use as an awesome parent!

With this in mind, it might be best to think a little bit on what to breed first. Aim to get Pokémon with low Egg Cycles that are in multiple egg groups such as Gyarados or Azumarill. Other good candidates include Pokémon such as Smeargle, which can easily contribute to a huge array of breeding chains, both with IVs and with egg moves.

Extra Tips and Information

Finally, here are a few tips and tricks. If you're looking to make your breeding process more efficient after digesting the basic information above, some of the information here might help you get your final result quicker. Note that from here onwards, x2, x3, x4, and x5 refer to the number of relevant flawless IVs.

Use of the Power Items

Even though using the Destiny Knot and Everstone can easily net you a perfect Pokémon, there are certain situations where momentarily ignoring nature and focusing on IV inheritance with the Power items and Destiny Knot can make the breeding process quicker. Using Power Items + Destiny Knot is most useful when you want to pass down raw IVs. A few specific situations where this may prove useful or should be avoided are listed below, but this list is not all inclusive.

Situations in which you should consider Power Item + Destiny Knot + Everstone

Escaping the 1 / 24 plateau

The "1 / 24 plateau" refers to the usually frustratingly lengthy period of time before getting the final product once you have two x4 31 Pokémon of the correct nature in the daycare. Giving a power item to one parent (and the Destiny Knot to the other) so the flawless IV the other parent lacks is always inherited can modify this process to speed it up slightly. With a power item, you have a 1 / 10 chance (1 / 5 of all the right IVs being inherited, 1 / 2 of the other parents IV being inherited) of a receiving a x5 IV parent, albeit with the wrong nature. From here, you can substitute in the x5 IV wrong natured parent for either parent and continue breeding with the correct nature parent holding the Everstone. The chance of receiving a flawless egg is now 1 / 12. This doesn't save a great deal of effort, and will have you breeding an extra set of competitively useless parents in the process, but narrowing down your chances can prove useful if you're frustrated with your x4 IV parents taking too long. It's a case of whether you want to work with two higher chances or one lower one.

Situations in which you should avoid Power Item + Destiny Knot + Everstone

x5 IV wrong-natured parent + x3-4 IV right-natured parent

In this case, replacing either parent with one of their offspring later in the breeding process is not worth it. Any egg that hatches and is of the x5 parents gender will be worse than or equal to the x5 parent, while any egg that hatches of the x3 IV parent's gender will not preserve the nature.

x5 IV right-natured parent + x4 IV right-natured parent

The chances of getting a flawless final product with a correct nature in this case is 1 / 12. Should you use a Power Item, you lower this chance to 1 / 10 , but only for obtaining flawless IVs. Because of this, you need to do a second cycle with a 1 / 6 chance of generating your desired final product. The likelihood increase on the first cycle is easily not worth the entire extra cycle.

Breeding Likelyhoods

If you're curious about your chances of obtaining a certain offspring from your parents, check out the Pokémon X/Y - IV Breeding Probability Calculator by Agnaktor. The calculator currently works only with the Destiny Knot and Everstone, but it's an excellent way to gauge how long a particular breed will take.