"Pokemon Go Breeding Primer"

#PokemonGO: IntroductionWhen Hanke et al say “We hope to bring breeding to Pokémon Go” people get pretty excited. If done right, breeding Pokémon will be a cash cow for Niantic and a positive mechanic that casual and experienced players alike will depend on for in game progress and flavor. Like so much else in Pokémon Go, breeding sees its origins in the handheld Pokémon games, beginning in Gen II. In the handheld games, breeding allows you to build an arsenal of more perfect, more potent, more prestigious Pokémon. There is a pretty significant learning curve to master all the nuance but once you get the hang of it, it’s easy and less time consuming. Breeding in Pokémon Go could open a pretty significant door to even the most casual player: perfect Pokémon.In anticipation of breeding being implemented in Pokémon Go, I wanted to look at how breeding works in the parent games and then make some basic and less-basic assumptions about how it all might translate to Pokémon Go. Skip to the end for a tl;dr.BREEDING IN POKÉMON GAMESIVs: Each Pokémon has stats defined by six IVs ranging from 0-31. The goal with breeding is to produce offspring with six optimized stats. By optimized I don’t mean perfect or 31/31/31/31/31/31 but that is the goal most of the time.Using the tools within the game, as many as five IVs that belong to the parents can be passed down to the child. With a little bit of knowhow, good IV parents can produce optimized/perfect offspring. Here is how this works:Normally: when two compatible Pokémon breed and produce an offspring (more on compatibility below), the RNG chooses three IVs from among the 12 available numbers to pass down to the child. The rest are RNG’d. The child might get two IVs from one parent, all three from one parent, one from each, or two from one parent. The one from each and two from one scenarios occurs when the RNG rolls the same stat for each parent. When both pass down the Attach stat, one overwrites the other, the other becomes irrelevant and is lost. This makes it possible, and even likely, that the offspring will regress and have worse IVs than the parents.Destiny Knot: equip one of the parents with this item and the offspring will receive five different IVs from the parents. Essentially, this item adds two more IVs to the child and eliminates the possibility that the same stat can be rolled for both parents. Less regression, less time.Power Items: There are 6 power items, one for each stat. A parent holding one of these items will automatically pass down the IV that corresponds to the item. A parent holding the Attack Power item, will automatically pass their Attack IV. If the other parent holds the Destiny Knot, 4 other IVs will be passed down as well.CompatibilityThere are two determining factors when it comes to producing offspring.Egg Groups: Pokémon in the same Egg group are breeding compatible. The Egg groups are fairly straightforward but there are lots of them. Pokémon can belong to more than one Egg group. An example: fish Pokémon can breed with other fish Pokémon but not with all other Water Pokémon. A Magikarp, which belongs to the fish Egg Group, cannot breed with a Poliwag. Magikarp, which also belongs to the Dragon Egg group, can breed with Charmander. Some Pokémon are not in an Egg group at all and are ineligible to breed as a result. These are usually Legendary Pokémon. No infinite army of Mewtwos for you.Gender: You need a male and a female in the same Egg group. Or either of those and a Ditto (more on them later). The offspring is always the same type of Pokémon as the mother. Male Charmander, female Magikarp will always produce a Magikarp with IVs from both (potentially). Genders are not distribute evenly in the wild. Eevee, for example, has a notoriously low 12% chance to be female. These same % chance applies to the offspring of a mating pair.Additional Breeding ConsiderationsIn addition to breeding for IVs, there are a couple of other things that you need to consider when trying to optimize the progeny.Natures: There are 25 Natures available in Pokémon. A Nature is a qualifier that magnifies one stat and diminishes another. HP is never magnified or diminished. This results in 20 Natures, one for each stat combination. The magnified stat is multiplied by 1.1 and the diminished stat is multiplied by 0.9. The Jolly Nature, for example, increases Speed by 1.1 and reduces Special Attack by 0.9 and is useful for Pokémon like Weavile (evolution of Sneasel, Gen IV) who prize speed above all else. Less useful for a Pokémon like Jolteon who prizes Speed but doesn’t like taking the hit to Special Attack. The result is that not all Pokémon are created equal. Two Pokémon with the same IVs but different Natures will have different stats. In addition to the 20 different combinations there are 5 additional neutral Natures that don’t change stats at all making a total of 25 natures. A Pokémon holding an Everstone will pass its Nature 100% of the time (this makes Destiny Knot and Everstone the most utilized and useful combo of items held).Abilities: Abilities give Pokémon a unique power in combat or in the overworld. One ability might inflict the Poison status condition when the Pokémon is physically touched while another might give you a chance to pick up a random item while walking around. As you can imagine, some are more useful than others. Which often means you want your optimized Pokémon baby to have the right Ability. Some Pokémon only have one ability, most have two. Some have a third, called a Hidden Ability (which I will not talk about in any detail). The basics is that Pokémon have a 50/50 chance of appearing with their two abilities in the wild. When you breed, the female has an 80% chance of passing its ability to the offspring. If you’re not breeding with a female (Ditto!), it more random.Ditto!Ditto is in all Egg groups but cannot breed with Legendary Pokémon. Ditto can take the role of a male or a female. Ditto is essential. A Ditto will never produce another Ditto, the offspring that results is always the same as the other Pokémon in the pair, even if it is a male.Cost/Benefit of Producing EggsTaking your Pokémon to the Daycare (where the Magic happens) has traditionally had a benefit and a cost. The benefit, aside from potential Eggs, is that each step you travel while your Pokémon is/are cared for, earns 1 Experience Point for that/those Pokémon. When you go back to the Daycare and take your Pokémon out, you pay an in game currency amount based on the number of levels grown. In Gen VII, you can forgo the XP gains and pay a flat fee to get them back (ultimately cheaper).Each step you take also increases the chance that when you return to the Daycare, your Pokémon will have produced an Egg that can be hatched. Once you have an Egg, it takes a number of steps to hatch.The ProcessHow do you take all this knowledge and all these tools and produce optimized offspring? Going to try and be concise without going in to too much detail:Put two compatible Pokémon in the Daycare. The more perfect the IVs, the better. Equip them with the Destiny Knot and/or Power items to make sure any high IVs stay in the family.Hatch a bunch of Eggs. Evaluate the Eggs to see if any of them have all the perfect IVs of the two parents or rolled any new perfect IVs. Set them aside.Swap in different parents with more and different combinations of perfect IVs. Keep breeding offspring with more perfect IVs than their parents. At some point you’re going to want to swap in a female with the right ability and at least one or both parents with the right Nature. Once you have one with the right Nature, equip the Everstone so the ability it stays in the family.Eventually, hatch an egg with the desired IVs.As you can imagine, if you don’t start with any perfect IVs, you’re dependent on the RNG to start folding them in to the family. This can take a very long time. Luckily, in game, there is a way of starting with parents that have at least three perfect IVs. There is also a way of finding parents with the right nature and ability from the start. Any way you look at it, breeding the perfect Pokémon takes time and some RNG (but not so much RNG that the desired result never arrives).Breeding for Shiny PokémonIt is possible. Mostly I don’t want to talk about it. The important thing: Shiny Pokémon don’t have a higher chance of producing Shiny offspring. Google “Masuda Method” and “Time Machine Method” if you’re interested in knowing how it CAN be done. Also, learn to love Magikarp.BREEDING IN POKÉMON GOIVs: In Pokémon Go, there are only three IVs and this both simplifies and complicates the issue.Basic Assumption: I feel pretty confident in saying that Niantic will bless us with the ability to pass IVs from the parents to the offspring. Or at least I hope they will. Aside from the novelty of creating our own Eggs, optimizing IVs is where the money is. My assumption is that, at a minimum, we will get two IVs passed from the parents. One from each or two random from the six available numbers. I think best case scenario is three random from among the six available.Destiny Knot: We don’t know if they will ever implement items to be held by Pokémon. It’s not a stretch to say that if they do implement items, that they might implement items that impact breeding. The key thing here is that Niantic has to think this through (sigh). If we’re going to get a Destiny Knot (or equivalent), it’s okay if IVs passed roll the same stat and we only get one (both parents pass Attack but we only get one value). If we aren’t going to get a Destiny Knot (or equivalent), it would be preferable if the same stat could not be rolled.Power Items: Less useful given fewer stats. Feels unlikely even if we do get items.CompatibilityEgg Groups: My prediction is that Niantic chooses not to reinvent the wheel and we get the exact same breeding groups as the original games.Gender: Should work exactly the same ways as the original games.Additional Breeding ConsiderationsNatures: This feels very unlikely to ever come to Pokémon Go. If they exclude HP like the originals, there are only four natures. +Att/-Def, +Def/-Att, and two neutrals. BO-RING. If they don’t exclude HP, there are nine. Six combinations and three neutral. Still BO-RING and no real added value besides nerfing 8/9 Pokémon that people have sunk Stardust/Candies into. So maybe likely lol.Abilities: This could happen eventually. If it were to happen, two abilities per Pokémon at 50/50 chance in the wild feels like the most complex it would get. They could implement the 80% passed on from female in breeding, or keep it a flat 50/50 to add more work for players.Ditto!Still essential. Dittos with single or multiple perfect IVs will be http://ift.tt/2jFjEVi of Producing EggsI feel fairly safe in assuming that one cost of breeding is going to be an available Incubator. Whether you get an Egg instantly (Daycare or Daycare equivalent) or you have to walk X number of steps before the Egg is available, you’re going to need an Incubator to hatch it.Besides the Pokémon in the Egg, will there be other benefits or costs? Candy and Stardust on hatch feels like a reasonable assumption. Will Candy and/or Stardust be a cost to start the process? Will Eggs from breeding take the same number of KMs? Will they hatch at level 20? Will hatched RNG’d IVs be a minimum 10 like current Eggs? Will there be an additional cost to use the Breeding Service like a Daycare Voucher or… Destiny Knot item from the Shop? I don’t want to speculate here. All seem possible and not possible. Schrödinger’s options.I will say this: if there is a significant cost beyond the Incubator, there better be some version of the IV inheritance I’ve discussed. Two Pokémon producing an Egg like the ones we have now where IVs range from 10-15 in all three stats and there is no transfer from parents at the cost of a single Incubator is fine if all you want to do is give players the ability to farm a particular type of Candy. I say fine in the sense that it’s the exact same cost we have now with the added benefit of player choice. It’s not fine in the sense that we already have Rare Candies for that which come with other rewards and the chance to capture a powerful Pokémon in its own right. Anything more than an Incubator with a mechanic like this and basically why did you even bother. Which is why I feel IV inheritance is likely.If they are going to enable IV inheritance in breeding, I can see some other for-coin item from the Shop cost being required (and/or a Candy/Stardust). Maybe a breeding attempt and Incubator in one or both as separate items.The ProcessEssentially, breed a lot to increase your chance of passing down the right IVs. Swap in new high IV Pokémon to speed it up.Starting with perfect or near perfect Pokémon will drastically decrease the time and cost of producing a perfect offspring. The usefulness here is producing more of the same (army of perfect Tyranitars, rawr) but also diversifying across egg groups (perfect male in the Charmander family is going to simplify the army of perfect Dragonites). In a slightly best case scenario where you have two Pokémon with perfect IVs already each parent passes one different IV, that’s exactly a 1/16 chance of hatching a perfect Pokémon (much better than current chance). If RNG’d IVs are still a minimum of 10 it increases to 1/6.Breeding for Shiny PokémonThis could be interesting. They could switch it so that Shiny does increase chance of hatching a Shiny. Might create a Rich get Richer, Poor stay Mad scenario but you’d only need one per player to start an Incubator purchasing bonanza. Oh, and there would be a Shiny Ditto cult. Can confirm, would join.Tl;drBreeding might involve a mechanic that allows parents to pass their IVs on to their offspring. It seems likely that this will get implemented because it is a potential cash cow and provides incentive to breed beyond Candy/Stardust farming. Even though not yet implemented, other things like Abilities might be inherited. We may get items to help us with breeding, we may not. Pokémon can produce offspring if they are in the same Egg group and if you have a male and a female or a Ditto. Breeding may be an effective way to get a shiny copy of your favorite Pokémon. If any of this gets implemented, you should endeavor to do the following as you continue to play the game in its current state:Keep Dittos with perfect IVs, even if it is only 1/3 and the rest are trashKeep a female from each Pokémon family. Female Pokémon determine the Pokémon hatched in a breeding pair and might have an increased chance to pass on their AbilityThink twice about cashing current Egg hatches in to candy when they don’t meet your standards. That 82% Dratini with perfect HP may feel useless now but it could be the key piece in breeding your 100% Dratini later.Keep all your 100% Pokémon; even if you have no plans to power them up. That perfect male Spinarak is could be your gateway to the elusive perfect Scyther.Edit: Formatting fixes. via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2wBGYUW