Pokemon: Effort Values Explanation

-Updated on 25 Nov 2006

This is not a new guide per se, but an extension to the existing EV guide on the site. As such some of the content is the same.

EVs: An Outline

Effort Values, or simply EVs, are the RSE/FRLG equivalent of GSC's Stat Experience. Both are based on the same principles, with EVs being slightly more complicated.

Each Pokemon has six stats, namely HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Special Attack and Special Defense. Effort Values are points awarded for defeating other Pokemon. Each time you battle a wild Pokemon or Pokemon owned by in-game Trainers, it will increase the EV count of your Pokemon's stat(s) by a certain number of points. For instance, beating a wild Pidgey gives you one Speed EV. For every 4 EVs earned in one stat, the actual stat value increases by one. In other words, take the number of EVs gained, divide it by 4, and round it down to the nearest whole number. This will tell you the actual stat increase.

Each stat can have a maximum of 255 EVs technically. As such, if one were to battle a wild Gardevoir, which gives 3 Special Attack EVs, a total of 100 times, you will only gain 255 EVs instead of 300 (100 x 3). A Pokemon with 255 EVs for Defense (or 254, 253, 252 since they will give the same solution when divided by four and rounded down to the nearest whole number) will have 63 points more than a Pokemon with 0 EVs for Defense.

Just as you can only accumulate a total of 255 EVs for each stat, there exist a limit to the number of EVs you can accumulate in total (i.e. for all stats). That limit is 510. Putting it simply, the sum of the EVs for HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Special Attack and Special Defense must not exceed 510 EVs. Therefore, it is possible to max out two of a Pokemon's stats, whether it be Attack and Speed, or HP and Defense. Careful planning and training means that you can have 252 EVs for one stat, 252 for another, and 6 in a third stat. This means that you max out two stats, and increase the last by 1.


Planning EVs: A Basic Overview

From the above explanation, it is obvious that maxing out EVs is a powerful training method to make your Pokemon that much stronger. With 510 EVs to distribute between 6 stats, however, how should one go about gaining EVs?

The distribution of EVs on a Pokemon is more commonly known as its EV Spread. When planning what EV Spread should be used for a Pokemon, you have to consider the moves that the Pokemon knows.

Take a Latios which knows the moves Calm Mind, Dragonbreath, Ice Beam and Recover, for instance. As you can see this Latios is used as a Special Sweeper, with all its attacking moves being Special moves. As such, it would be pointless to gain EVs in Attack to raise its Attack stat, since Latios has no Physical moves to use. Instead, you should probably choose to max out Special Attack and Speed, since those help it do damage to the foe. What then, to do with the extra 6 EVs? Typically players place them in HP, but feel free to spend that extra one point in stat gain on any other stat.

Hence, a typical EV Spread for Latios would be: 252 Special Attack, 252 Speed, 6 HP. The 252-252-6 configuration is most commonly used, but also possible are more versatile EV Spreads of 252-129-129 or even 252-126-120-12. Experiment with EVs and find out which EV Spread suits you and your Pokemon best.


EV-Training/Checking EVs

[color=lightskyblue]As mentioned before, EVs are gained when you battle and defeat wild Pokemon or in-game Trainers, excluding the Trainers in the Battle Frontier and Battle Tower facilities. As a general rule of thumb, if you gain Experience in a battle, you are gaining EVs as well, just that EVs are hidden values and are not shown to you.

The fact that EVs are hidden means that there is no way for you to know how many EVs your Pokemon has accumulated. As such, you should manually keep track of the EVs that your Pokemon have gained, so as to avoid learning the wrong amount of EVs.

You can make use of Psypoke's online Stat Calculator tool to determine your Pokemon's stats, if you know your Pokemon's DVs, EVs, Level and Species. Access the tool here: The Stat Calculator

There is, however, one in-game method to check if your Pokemon has already maxed out its EVs. Go to the lady next to the Energy Guru in Slateport Market and speak to her. If your lead Pokemon has already maxed out its EVs, you can get an Effort Ribbon from her. Apart from this, there are no other methods of telling how many EVs your Pokemon have.

EV-training a Pokemon refers to letting the Pokemon gain the correct EVs according to your plans for the Pokemon's EV Spread. In short, you would have to battle 510 Pok

Nice guide!
It helped me out.
Thank ya!

ohh...ok i get it now...that really did help alot. thanx.

I have had the same problem but I think it has something to do with the Pokemon's Base Stats. Correct me if I am wrong.

It's not in the guide for some reason, but here's the answer: Vitamins cannot boost your Pokemon's EV count of a specific stat above 100. For example, if you give an Iron to a Pokemon with 90 or less Def EVs, it would work, although if it had 91 or more EVs, it would not work. Furthermore, it cannot boost the total EV count of all stats above 510, so as another example, if you used an Iron on a Pokemon with no Defense EVs but 501 or more total EVs, it wouldn't work. This being said, the guide should say that the 100 EVs gained by the vitamins should be used when the Pokemon has no EVs at all, when the Pokemon is hatched or caught. Then you do EV training when all necessary vitamins are given.

(And it has nothing to do with base stats)

hp depens on EV right so what is the best type 4 hp and what #should be EV

1) Hidden Power doesn't depend on EVs; it depends on Dynamic Values (DVs) or Individual Values (IVs). A link to info about IVs/DVs is here.

2) HP's best type depends on the Pokémon using it. For instance, most Zapdos have HP Ice or HP Grass, but many Sunny-Beamers have HP Fire or HP Ice.

3) Huh?

all this is so confusing... i no about ev training but if ur raising ur pokemon, lets say in special attack, wen u fite a dugtrio and gain speed evs, can u avoid that or do u just run?


PS tell me if this doesnt make sense.

I have a question. I didn't see it mentioned, I might have skipped over it.

When you do the switch-out method, who gets the EVs? Do they both get the same amount?

heres a good trick for fast EV training in emerald. lets say you want to train a pokemon (bagon say) with 252 speed and 252 attack. take your bagon as your first pokemon and a groudon as your second. give your bagon the macho brace, and pokerus if you are able. then go to the cave where the fossil maniac is digging (in fallarbor town). there are wild dittos in the cave. walk around until a wild pokemon appears. if it is not a ditto, run away (or switch to groudon first if you cant escape). if it is a ditto, then switch to groudon and the ditto will transform. use solar beam and you will KO the ditto. but because it transformed into groudon, you will get 3 EVs for attack. in fact, since you are holding the macho brace, you will get 6 EVs (or 12 if you also have pokerus). after you have reached 252 EVs (which amounts to 42 dittos if you just have the macho brace, or 21 if you also have pokerus), repeat the process with a sceptile in place of groudon. this will result in 3 speed EVs instead of attack. (i usually make sure sceptile has arial ace and choice band so it can OHKO the transformed ditto.) obviously you can replace groudon/sceptile with other pokemon. here are the ones i recommend for the various stats:

speed: sceptile
attack: groudon
special attack: kyogre
defence: regirock
special defence: regice
hp: exploud

of course there are many others, but these all give you 3 EVs for their stat.

a simple modification of this trick allows you to train many pokes at once. say you also wanted to train a torchic and aerodactyl in 252 speed and 252 attack. have your lineup as follows:

bagon
groudon
torchic
aerodactyl
sceptile (or anything that can OHKO groudon)

make sure they all have a macho brace (and pokerus if you can). the strategy is that you send in your bagon, and when a ditto appears you switch to groudon. then ditto transforms into groudon. then you switch in your torchic, then switch in your aerodactyl, then finally your sceptile and KO the ditto. the only problem is that while you are switching in all those weak pokemon, the ditto, which is now a powerful groudon, is probably knocking them all out! so before you do all this you go to the move deleter, and get rid of all of groudons attacking moves. just leave it with something like scary face or bulk up.

this is always the way i EV train my pokemon. since im lucky enough to have the pukerus virus floating around on my games, it only takes 21 battles to max out a stat. hope this helps!!!

I'm really sorry if I'm repeating this, but how do you know which Pokemon give out which EVs?

The EVs that Pokemon give can be found on their Psydex page, under Other Stats, in the Stats section.

Thanks Snowball, this helped out a lot.

Ok, then what would happen here?

I have an Infernape that I decide to raise as a Physical Sweeper. I give it the 252 EVs in Attack, and level up normally, etc. Then, at lvl 99, I notice for the first time that its natur is Modest. I decide to quickly switch to Special Sweeper, so I use berries to lower the Attack EVs and put them into Sp Attack. Then I level up to 100. Will it gain 63 in one level then, or do I have to do the box trick?

Yes, I realize thats very unlikely, Im just curious, as my friend almost did that (lvl 95), his little brother used a bunch of them to evolve hsi Golbat into Crobat and deleted half his Speed EVs :roll:

could someone explain the box trick because i don't understand how it works.

and im...completely lost on this one.....

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you just give your pokemon all the EV's and THEN do the box trick?

If the game recalculates your pokemon's stats everytime you withdraw it, then why do you need to do the box trick every 4 EV's? Wouldn't it just calculate all the EV's you have at once?

I have a question... If you run away from a wild pokemon battle, will you gain evs from it?

Don't the vitamins only raise BASE stats? (''Torterra's base attack stat has been increased'' or w/e.)