1st Gen Do I need to worry about EVs, IVs and things like that in this generation?

Hello ^^

One of the reasons it took me so long to get into Pokémon games "properly" where these terms that I still have to learn about. I have read a few guides on them but I am still confused, but I think Yellow didn't have these concepts, right? I want to play through all Pokémon games I can and mayyyybe I will want to have a good team to battle with people (in the future and in say, Sun/Moon or when I restart X), but absorbing the content of these guides makes it a little difficult for me.

You don't have to worry about EVs, IVs, or anything like that when playing through any of the games. It's actually better to worry about those features after you beat the main storyline, so you can then focus on raising your Pokemon with the right EVs and IVs.

That said, the First Generation has a different system in place than the current way of EV training. You can battle any wild Pokemon and have it help with EV training, where it's based on the wild Pokemon's base stats. There's no need to worry about fighting only specific Pokemon.

But you don't need to worry about stats when just playing through the games! You can use any Pokemon with any stats to defeat the main storyline. When you are ready to start competitive battling, our Team-Building forum would be a great place to get help!

Ahhh I see, thank you. ^-^

I was asking because my fear was that, in order to get a "good" team in any game, I would have to train them from scratch. You never when I might be interested in competitive battling so I kinda want to raise my Pokémon the "right" way.

The whole EV/IV stuff (which I still have to read properly, when I start playing later games) is kinda confusing to me x_X. In a way I'm glad I don't have to worry about that in the first generation, but at the same time it's a drag to do twice the effort if you want to get into competitive gaming hahaha.

Thank you for your answer ^-^.

If you want to maximize the usefulness of your team for later, you can try to get the best starting stats you can. IVs (or DVs, as they're frequently referred to in gen I and II) do exist, though they only range from 0-15 (double them to get the corresponding values in the current generation), so it's a bit easier to randomly get the ones you're looking for than it is in gen III and beyond. There's no breeding in gen I, so if you're trying to use a Pokemon that's only obtainable once per playthrough, you may want to reset a few times before picking it up to get the best stats you can. If you don't want to worry about the details, but want your Pokemon to be decent, just plug the stats you can into a max stat calculator (you can find one on Marriland, I think), and make sure you're near the top of the range (and try to max out speed, since that's probably the most important stat for competitive play).

Fortunately, as previously mentioned, EVs don't work the same way (you can max out all of your stats in gen I, rather than having to pick and choose with the modern EV system), so you don't have to worry about those.

That being said, if you're planning on playing competitively with your gen I Pokemon in gen VII (Sun/Moon), and not in the gen I games themselves, I wouldn't bother worrying about IVs in gen I. X and Y have made it a lot easier to get the IVs you want for your team, and I'm sure those mechanical changes will carry over to the new games as well, so you're better off breeding there if you decide to get into competitive battling down the road. Additionally, since the games use a different stat structure (IVs from 0-15 + "stat experience" in RBY rather than 0-31 + EVs now), it's not clear how everything will translate when moved from RBY to Sun and Moon, so it would probably be better to wait and see what happens before training older Pokemon to use competitively in the newer games.

Imperator161 said:

If you want to maximize the usefulness of your team for later, you can try to get the best starting stats you can. IVs (or DVs, as they're frequently referred to in gen I and II) do exist, though they only range from 0-15 (double them to get the corresponding values in the current generation), so it's a bit easier to randomly get the ones you're looking for than it is in gen III and beyond. There's no breeding in gen I, so if you're trying to use a Pokemon that's only obtainable once per playthrough, you may want to reset a few times before picking it up to get the best stats you can. If you don't want to worry about the details, but want your Pokemon to be decent, just plug the stats you can into a max stat calculator (you can find one on Marriland, I think), and make sure you're near the top of the range (and try to max out speed, since that's probably the most important stat for competitive play).

Fortunately, as previously mentioned, EVs don't work the same way (you can max out all of your stats in gen I, rather than having to pick and choose with the modern EV system), so you don't have to worry about those.

That being said, if you're planning on playing competitively with your gen I Pokemon in gen VII (Sun/Moon), and not in the gen I games themselves, I wouldn't bother worrying about IVs in gen I. X and Y have made it a lot easier to get the IVs you want for your team, and I'm sure those mechanical changes will carry over to the new games as well, so you're better off breeding there if you decide to get into competitive battling down the road. Additionally, since the games use a different stat structure (IVs from 0-15 + "stat experience" in RBY rather than 0-31 + EVs now), it's not clear how everything will translate when moved from RBY to Sun and Moon, so it would probably be better to wait and see what happens before training older Pokemon to use competitively in the newer games.

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Thank you for your helpful post ^-^.

I'm trying to find the site you mentioned (Marriland) but for some reason I cannot find it. Is it this one instead? azurilland.com

I will try that calculator when I get home tonight and see what it is like. I caught to Pidgeys earlier at the same level and I did notice one of them was better than the other, so this helps.

When you say I should try to max out speed, do you mean just look for Pokémon with good speed in the wild? Or are there any ways to raise those particular stats (Proteins, etc?). I'm really early in Gen I so please forgive my ignorance ^-^;. In general, I think I should try to find a way to max out any stats and just see how far I can with them.

I guess I better wait for Sun/Moon before training any of the Pokémon I catch here hard. The first thing I noticed is that there's no natures (which honestly I never quite understood in the newest games so I have to do some reading) and they don't have genders, so it will be interesting how Sun/Moon decide that ^-^.

Thank you again for the helpful post!

Cordeline said:

I guess I better wait for Sun/Moon before training any of the Pokémon I catch here hard. The first thing I noticed is that there's no natures (which honestly I never quite understood in the newest games so I have to do some reading) and they don't have genders, so it will be interesting how Sun/Moon decide that ^-^.

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I think it'll probably be randomized, but we'll wait and see how the data gets handled for R/B/Y transfers to S/M.

I guess it is the one on azurilland.com now (http://www.azurilland.com/tools/stat-calculator). Maybe it used to be on Marilland (or maybe I used to use another one on there), or maybe I just never paid attention. It's one of the first hits that shows up when I type "Pokemon max stats calc" into Google, so whatever you found probably works. Do be aware that the special stat info may be confusing, as that stat split after generation I. If you know what a Pokemon's base special was in gen I, and what its base special attack and special defense are in gen II and beyond, you can see which stat matches up (so if "special" in gen I has a base value of 80, and "special defense" has a base value of 80 in gen II, but "special attack" has a base value of 100 in gen II, you can look at the "special defense" section of the stat calculator to figure out how good your special stat is). By base stats, if you look at this page on Pidgey, for example (http://www.serebii.net/pokedex/016.shtml), you can find the "base" stats in a table at the bottom of the page.

For maxing out speed, I mean that you should try to make sure that the speed stat on Pokemon that you're using matches the maximum value for the Pokemon's level given in the max stat calculator. Note that you probably won't be able to narrow down the stat to its exact value until a higher level. The reason why you want to focus on speed in competitive battling, typically, is that it determines who goes first and who goes section, and therefore, it can determine whether you get a chance to attack before getting clobbered by your opponent. One point in speed can frequently make or break a battle, while one point in, say, attack or defense, is unlikely to do so.

Items like protein, etc., add to the "stat experience" of your Pokemon, kind of like EVs in later generations. You can use them to improve your Pokemon's stats, but they'll never change the base "potential" of a Pokemon. You can think of IVs/DVs as being like genes. You could give me all the vitamins and training you want, for example, but I'm still never going to run as fast as an Olympic athlete. Training and stat experience help, but at the end of the day, with maximum training, a Pokemon with a lower speed DV will never beat a Pokemon with a higher speed DV and comparable training (just like I'm not going to win the Olympic 100 m dash even if I train as hard as the athletes who have enough natural talent to compete at the Olympic level).

I agree that you might be better off waiting until Sun and Moon, though. If you really want to train competitively, start learning how to breed and use Super Training on XY or ORAS. I don't know what will happen with the natures. That being said, gender determination actually depends on DVs in the first two generations (that's how they allowed people to move Pokemon from RBY to GSC and assign them genders), with male Pokemon generally having better attack DVs than female ones. (The exact breakdown of how it works depends on the gender ratio. If a Pokemon is 50/50 M/F, the top half of the attack DV spread (8-15) is male, and the bottom half (0-7) is female. If a Pokemon is 7 M / 1 F, males have attack DVs from 2-15, and females have 0-1. Shininess is actually determined by DVs in gen II as well, and as a result of a bunch of factors, you can't have a female shiny starter in gen II [because shinies cannot have attack DVs of 0 or 1], but that's a tangential point that isn't really relevant to your question.)

Cordeline said:

Thank you for your helpful post ^-^.

I'm trying to find the site you mentioned (Marriland) but for some reason I cannot find it. Is it this one instead? azurilland.com

I will try that calculator when I get home tonight and see what it is like. I caught to Pidgeys earlier at the same level and I did notice one of them was better than the other, so this helps.

When you say I should try to max out speed, do you mean just look for Pokémon with good speed in the wild? Or are there any ways to raise those particular stats (Proteins, etc?). I'm really early in Gen I so please forgive my ignorance ^-^;. In general, I think I should try to find a way to max out any stats and just see how far I can with them.

I guess I better wait for Sun/Moon before training any of the Pokémon I catch here hard. The first thing I noticed is that there's no natures (which honestly I never quite understood in the newest games so I have to do some reading) and they don't have genders, so it will be interesting how Sun/Moon decide that ^-^.

Thank you again for the helpful post!

Click to expand...

Imperator161 said:

I guess it is the one on azurilland.com now (http://www.azurilland.com/tools/stat-calculator). Maybe it used to be on Marilland (or maybe I used to use another one on there), or maybe I just never paid attention. It's one of the first hits that shows up when I type "Pokemon max stats calc" into Google, so whatever you found probably works. Do be aware that the special stat info may be confusing, as that stat split after generation I. If you know what a Pokemon's base special was in gen I, and what its base special attack and special defense are in gen II and beyond, you can see which stat matches up (so if "special" in gen I has a base value of 80, and "special defense" has a base value of 80 in gen II, but "special attack" has a base value of 100 in gen II, you can look at the "special defense" section of the stat calculator to figure out how good your special stat is). By base stats, if you look at this page on Pidgey, for example (http://www.serebii.net/pokedex/016.shtml), you can find the "base" stats in a table at the bottom of the page.

For maxing out speed, I mean that you should try to make sure that the speed stat on Pokemon that you're using matches the maximum value for the Pokemon's level given in the max stat calculator. Note that you probably won't be able to narrow down the stat to its exact value until a higher level. The reason why you want to focus on speed in competitive battling, typically, is that it determines who goes first and who goes section, and therefore, it can determine whether you get a chance to attack before getting clobbered by your opponent. One point in speed can frequently make or break a battle, while one point in, say, attack or defense, is unlikely to do so.

Items like protein, etc., add to the "stat experience" of your Pokemon, kind of like EVs in later generations. You can use them to improve your Pokemon's stats, but they'll never change the base "potential" of a Pokemon. You can think of IVs/DVs as being like genes. You could give me all the vitamins and training you want, for example, but I'm still never going to run as fast as an Olympic athlete. Training and stat experience help, but at the end of the day, with maximum training, a Pokemon with a lower speed DV will never beat a Pokemon with a higher speed DV and comparable training (just like I'm not going to win the Olympic 100 m dash even if I train as hard as the athletes who have enough natural talent to compete at the Olympic level).

I agree that you might be better off waiting until Sun and Moon, though. If you really want to train competitively, start learning how to breed and use Super Training on XY or ORAS. I don't know what will happen with the natures. That being said, gender determination actually depends on DVs in the first two generations (that's how they allowed people to move Pokemon from RBY to GSC and assign them genders), with male Pokemon generally having better attack DVs than female ones. (The exact breakdown of how it works depends on the gender ratio. If a Pokemon is 50/50 M/F, the top half of the attack DV spread (8-15) is male, and the bottom half (0-7) is female. If a Pokemon is 7 M / 1 F, males have attack DVs from 2-15, and females have 0-1. Shininess is actually determined by DVs in gen II as well, and as a result of a bunch of factors, you can't have a female shiny starter in gen II [because shinies cannot have attack DVs of 0 or 1], but that's a tangential point that isn't really relevant to your question.)

Click to expand...

Thank you so much for this information, even that last detail was interesting even if it isn't about my specific question ^-^. I will try to read more into everything you told me (I'm having a tough week and haven't touched my game in two days now :( ), and see how that goes.

Thank you very much again ^-^.

Cordeline said:

Thank you so much for this information, even that last detail was interesting even if it isn't about my specific question ^-^. I will try to read more into everything you told me (I'm having a tough week and haven't touched my game in two days now :( ), and see how that goes.

Thank you very much again ^-^.

Click to expand...

No problem, happy to help! :) Competitive Pokemon can be a lot to take in, so especially if life is pretty busy, I would just take it one step at a time. When I first started learning about competitive Pokemon, I initially focused on just one or two aspects of it (things like egg moves in gen II, or EV training in gen III) and built up that knowledge over time, and that went pretty well for me, so maybe just pick something to start thinking about in your gen I run and build from there.

Nope, which exactly why I love the older games. :) The stat system was simpler and far more streamlined back then, which made for less stressful playing and far less of a hard divide between in-game and competitive. With the right movesets and synergy, in-game teams could be used to great effect in Stadium, and Stadium wasn't exactly known for being light, easy battling.