This page describes an example breeding project in Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl (BDSP).

Very often the first step is the hardest. If you’ve never seriously dabbled in Pokémon breeding before, it can be difficult to know where to begin.

As a rule of thumb, you should consider the traits that are the hardest to change afterwards (if not outright impossible), while considering the resources you’ve got.

These are the key traits that define a Pokémon:

1. Nature: This can be manipulated by using an Everstone while breeding. You can also modify a Pokémon’s Nature using Mints, but it’s rather costly.

2. IVs: These can be manipulated by using a Destiny Knot while breeding. Later, you can maximize a Pokémon’s IVs via Hyper Training, but the Pokémon must be Level 100 and it’s quite resource-heavy.

3. Ability: The offspring will inherit the mother’s Ability 60% of the time, with a 40% chance of having one of its regular Abilities. You can use an Ability Capsule to swap between regular Abilities. Or use an Ability Patch to swap from a regular Ability to a Hidden Ability. Both items are expensive. Also, you cannot swap from Hidden to regular Ability.

4. Moves: Egg Moves can be inherited from both parents, as well as moves that both parents know (except TMs). You can also make Pokémon share Egg Moves by depositing them in the Nursery for a while.

To summarize, Nature, IVs and (to an extent) Ability can be changed afterwards, but you need BP and/or Bottle Caps, which requires a lot of farming. Lastly, moves are the most lenient.

Step 1: Passing Down Ability¶

With that in mind, the first thing you should lock down is the Pokémon’s Ability.

Decide whether you want your Pokémon to have its Hidden Ability or not. If you want the Hidden Ability, you’ll need to catch a parent with the Hidden Ability using the Poké Radar (or trade for one). Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to tell if an Ability is “hidden” or not via the game itself.

Meanwhile, if you’re happy with the regular Ability, any old parent will do. That said, if the species you’re breeding has two regular Abilities, it’s better to have a parent with the Ability that you want. Otherwise, when breeding, you have a 60% + 20% = 80% chance of the offspring having this unwanted Ability.

On this occasion, we feel like breeding an Eevee with its Hidden Ability, Anticipation. If you’re a novice, we don’t really recommend starting with Hidden Ability breeding, nor Eevee breeding, due to the increased difficulty. But we’ve done it plenty of times already in the past (and we’re suckers for punishment…).

Once you have a parent with the Ability that you want, continue to the next step.

Step 2: Passing Down Nature¶

Nature and IVs are in a similar boat, but passing down Nature is far easier than IVs. So you should get it out of the way first.

We’re assuming that you want one specific Nature for your Pokémon, because being indecisive generally isn’t a good idea. If it’s a physical attacker, you’ll typically want Adamant or Jolly. Go for Adamant if you want to prioritize Attack; otherwise Jolly for Speed.

When you’re aiming for one Nature, you’ve got a 1 in 25 chance of getting it. To get a specific Nature, there are a few things you could try.

1. See if you have any Pokémon with the Synchronize Ability that also has the Nature you want. If you put one of these Pokémon at the front of your party, all wild Pokémon will have the same Nature as it.

2. Catch lots of wild Ditto, until you get one with the Nature that you want. It’s still a 1/25 chance, unless you have a Pokémon with Synchronize. But Ditto can breed with anything, so you can easily re-use it when breeding different Pokémon.

3. If you cannot catch a Ditto, try to catch a parent with the Nature that you want (it doesn’t matter if they’re male or female). Again, you’ve got a 1/25 chance, unless you’ve got a Synchronize Pokémon with the Nature that you want.

4. Failing that, the last resort is to keep breeding the Pokémon until you hatch one with the correct Nature. However, hatching usually takes longer than catching.

In our example, we’re planning to evolve Eevee into Espeon, so a Timid Nature would be ideal. However, as you can see, our Eevee is Calm. Luckily, among all the Ditto we caught, one of them is Timid. So we’ll just quickly breed these two together, with the Ditto holding an Everstone (and the Eevee a Destiny Knot to pass down its singular perfect IV).

Got a parent with the Nature that you want? Fantastic, you’re nearly ready to start breeding for real!

Step 3: Passing Down IVs¶

This is the time-consuming part, unless you’re lucky. First, it’d help if you had some Pokémon with a few max IVs. Try your best to get a 20+ chain going with the Poké Radar. At a chain of 20, you can catch a Pokémon with at least 1 max IV; at 30, you can catch a Pokémon with at least 2 max IVs. Realistically, you likely won’t get longer chains than that.

If you’re patient, you can wait until Pokémon HOME support is added, then transfer over a high IV Ditto from Pokémon Sword and Shield raids, etc. Or trade online for a hacked Ditto with all perfect IVs. So long as the offspring don’t have any hacked traits (like an impossible Poké Ball), there’s zero difference whether they have a hacked parent or not.

Once you’re ready, grab the parent of the species that you want to breed, with the Ability that you want (this will be the mother, unless you’re breeding a male with a Ditto). Plus the parent who’s going to mate with it.

To keep things simple, we’ll pretend you’ve got parents that are very middle of the road. For example, an Eevee caught with 1 perfect IV and a Ditto with 2 perfect IVs.

Generation 1¶

Give the Everstone to the parent with your preferred Nature so it will pass down its Nature. Then have the other parent hold the Destiny Knot so the offspring inherits 5 IVs from the parents. Then drop the pair off at the Pokémon Nursery.

Now hatch a bunch of eggs. A good number would be 5, which is a full party, with the 1st Pokémon being the “caretaker” with Flame Body, Magma Armor or Steam Engine. Just in case you accidentally run into a scary wild Pokémon, give the caretaker a Smoke Ball if you have one, so you can always run.

After hatching those eggs, check the Ability of the offspring, especially if you’re trying to pass down a Hidden Ability. Any offspring that don’t have the Ability that you want, toss them away. It may be harsh, but there’s no room for weaklings.

As for the offspring that remain, check their IVs using the in-game Judge function. In our example, an offspring with 3 perfect IVs (HP, Sp. Atk and Speed) would be great. But the chance of that is pretty low, so 1 or 2 perfect IVs would be OK.

As luck would have it, one of our offspring inherited all 3 perfect IVs from both parents. However, this first generation is mainly to lock down the Ability and Nature, so don’t worry if you don’t have many (or any) perfect IVs. What you want is an offspring with the correct Nature and Ability that you want–any perfect IVs are a bonus.

Step 4: Repeat Step 3 with Different Parent(s)¶

Retrieve the two parents that you left in the Nursery; they can retire now. Then grab the best offspring from the previous step. Next, find a Pokémon that it can breed it, with perfect IVs in as many different stats as possible.

If the offspring is female, you’ve got a lot of flexibility, because you can breed it with any male from compatible egg groups or another Ditto. Otherwise, if the offspring is male, Ditto’s your only choice.

Give the Everstone to the offspring and the Destiny Knot to the new Pokémon, then drop them off at the Nursery. Hatch another group of eggs, then check the Abilities and IVs. What you’re ultimately looking for is an offspring with the right Ability, plus more perfect IVs than before. In our example, HP, Defense, Sp. Atk and Speed would be great.

Generation 2¶

Because of the randomness of the RNG, this can take a while. Whenever you want, you may swap out one (or both) of the Pokémon in the Nursery with new offspring that have more (unique) perfect IVs than you started with. Doing so will significantly improve your odds.

Generation 3¶

In our example, we managed to hatch an offspring that inherited 4 perfect IVs, but it was the wrong gender: male (we need a female Eevee to continue breeding). However, rather than continue using the Ditto, we replaced the Ditto with this offspring. (Technically, it’s the mother breeding with the son, but Pokémon don’t care about this…)

Once you’ve obtained the best offspring you think you’re going to get, repeat Step 4 as many times as necessary. Basically, breed the best offspring from the newest generation with a compatible Pokémon, in a way that the two Pokémon’s perfect IVs cover as many different stats as possible. Once you’ve got every stat covered, shift your focus on overlapping stats.

Generation 4¶

Regardless, the goal is to keep going until you’ve got an offspring with the correct Ability and perfect IVs in all stats, minus Sp. Atk for a physical attacker or Attack for a special attacker. Mixed attackers need 6 perfect IVs though.

Be warned: the final stretch is always the hardest part, but hang in there and you should eventually reach the goal! That said, if you’re impatient or think you’ve done enough, you may stop whenever you feel like. Any offspring that still have imperfect IVs can be fixed with Hyper Training, after all.

Here’s our end result: effectively a perfect special attacker Eevee (future Espeon). You may notice the Defense is Fantastic (30 IV) and not Best (31 IV), but it’s the same thing at Level 50, if you don’t invest EVs (which we’re not planning to). Besides, we spent enough time! (Admittedly, the Fantastic Attack is pointless at best and troublesome if Espeon gets confused.)