A lot of us have experienced Pokémon games in one generation or another.  I’m sure a lot of you are playing through the 4^th generation of games now, with a 5^th coming September 18th in Japan!

How many of you are wondering how some trainers are able to train their Pokémon to a point where they appear unbeatable?  Well, I can help answer that.  This is the first in a series of posts that will help explain how to thoroughly train your Pokémon and prepare them to be the best they can be.

There are a number of things that contribute to the overall stats of your Pokémon.  The easiest ones to understand are natures and max possible stats.  Ever since Ruby and Sapphire’s release, Pokémon have been given natures to help differentiate one Pokémon from another.  There are natures such as Docile, Brave, and Naïve. 

Natures not only give Pokémon their own personalities, but they also determine what stats they will be best in.  For example, a Weavile with a Naïve nature will be faster than a Weavile with a Brave nature.  That is because natures generally increase the max possible amount of stat points in a particular stat by 10%. 

 20 of the 25 natures have an advantage and disadvantage, meaning that while it increases a particular stat by 10%, it will also decrease another stat by 10% in order to keep things balanced.  The remaining 5 are neutral natures and have no increase or decrease in any stat area.

Let’s look at Sneasel’s evolved form, Weavile again.  There are 2; one has a Naïve nature (for increasing Speed) and the other has a Hardy nature (no increase or decrease).  The maximum number that Weavile can have in Speed with a neutral nature is 349.  That’s nothing to sneeze at!  However, the maximum number the Speed-increased one can have is 383.  That can make a huge difference when fighting another Pokémon trained to be fast!  In fact, that’s not too far off from Mewtwo’s maximum Speed with a Speed-increasing nature (394).

            The following is a list of natures and what they increase and decrease.

If you are playing HeartGold/SoulSilver, you can clearly see what stats are affected.  When viewing the stats on the summary page in your game, the stat names that are colored Red will gain the 10% increase because of the nature, while those colored Blue will receive the 10% decrease.  All other stat names stay White.

Having this information is just the beginning of your Pokémon training.  There are other things that contribute to the stats of your Pokémon, including Effort Values (EVs) and Individual Values (IVs).  Combined with Natures, these variables are called Dynamic Values (DVs).  Natures are really the only Dynamic Values that can be seen in-game, which is why they are the easiest to work with.  Next time I'll cover Effort Values, since they are the next step up for training!