Important Breeding Mechanics:

Breeding Perfect Pokemon:

Breeding MORE flawless Pokemon:

Extra Tips and Information:



Escaping the 1/24 plateau

x5 IV wrong nature parent + x3-4 IV right nature parent.

x5 IV right nature parent + x4 IV right nature parent.

Since breeding perfect Pokemon is now actually reasonable without RNG manipulation, I figure I'd throw together a brief guide designed to get veteran breeders and RNGers up to speed with the new mechanics.Let me know if I screwed something writing this or if you have any suggestions. If you have any questions about breeding myself and others are happy to answer your questions in this thread!-----------Breeding Pokemon for the last four generation has been an enormous pain. For what huge effort you put into a Pokemon, very little came out as you'd still be stuck with a subpar Pokemon with flawed IVs. Generation six, however, has made some major changes that make breeding much easier. Here, I will walk you through important breeding mechanics and how to use these mechanics to breed a flawless Pokemon.Do note that throughout this guide, I will speak assuming you know many of the fundamentals of breeding (ex: Male Species 1 + Female Species 2 will always breed Species 2) and covering competitively relevant and recently changed mechanics.These are essential mechanics to be aware of when you set out to breed your flawless Pokemon. For veteran breeders, even if many of these mechanics seem familiar, be sure to glance through them as multiple mechanics have been changed over the last 4 generations.A mechanic that's been a mainstay since Pokemon Emerald, the abilities Flame Body & Magma Armor will cut the time it takes to hatch a Pokemon by about half. You should always have a Pokemon with either of these abilities in your party whenever you breed. The easiest and far and away best Pokemon to use for this job is Fletchinder or Talonflame, as both are extremely easy to access and allow you to fly to the IV checker without swapping out your flame body user to fly.A new mechanic to Pokemon X&Y are the O-Powers. O-Powers grant you a number of useful in battle and overworld affects, including a power that speeds up Hatching rate. To find this O-Power, you must obtain every other O-Power in the game, then talk to Mr.O-Power in Cafe Introversion in Lumiose City once you have maximum style.In Kiloude City's Pokemon center, you can find a purple haired trainer that can tell you the potential (IVs) of your Pokemon. If any IVs are flawless, the trainer will list out your Pokemon's flawless IVs followed by a message that those stats "can't be beat!" Additionally, should one of your Pokemon have an IV of 0 in any stat, he will point it out to you with a negative mention of that stat. This is very useful for breeding Trick Room Pokemon.The friend safari is a new feature in Pokemon X&Y that allows you to catch Pokemon not normally found over the course of the game. What’s more notable is that every single Pokemon you catch in the friend safari will always have two flawless IVs. For passing down flawless IVs, starting with Pokemon here is an excellent place to start. Not to mention, Dittos can be caught here as well.Additionally, there’s a new mechanic to X&Y where Pokemon that cannot breed (not even with Ditto, so no Magnemites or Dittos) will always be granted three flawless IVs. This group mainly consists of legendary Pokemon, but it also includes baby Pokemon like Azurill, Budew, and Mantyke that can eventually be made breedable. This is another excellent place to start to pass down flawless IVs.A huge change that effectively eliminates incompatible egg moves, parents of either sex pass down egg moves as of X&Y. This makes it possible to use parents with the best IVs you have, even if one would need to be a male ditto or another male without egg moves. Also note that for some reason, TM moves are no longer passed down at all.Forget 5th gen entralink RNG, you can now pass down that hidden ability even if you're male. Note that pairing an Impostor Ditto with a non-hidden ability Pokemon will NOT generate a child with a hidden ability. Also, a hidden ability male will not pass down it's ability if it's paired with a regular female of the same species.This is a pretty minor change, but if you enjoy having matching / contrasting Pokeballs, your bred Pokemon can have them too. All female Pokemon will pass down their Pokeballs, unless it's a Ditto acting as a female. I recommend that if you're breeding anything that will eventually use Return when fully trained, you breed it in a Luxury Ball to get the happiness up very quickly.This is actually a change that’s been in effect for a while now, but a few of us might have been disconnected with traditional breeding for so long to not have heard of this. The Everstone now ALWAYS passes down the nature of the parent holding it. No longer will your perfect breeds be spoiled by a wrong nature. Additionally, if you haven’t bred since DPP, male Pokemon can pass down natures with the Everstone as well.Power Items will always pass down the Parent’s IV for the stat the Power Item grants EVs for. This is useful if you wish to pass down IVs for Hidden Power, for Trick Room Pokemon, or for specific situations listed farther below. Note that using a Power item on one parent and another Power item on the other will cause either of their IVs to chain down, not both. Primarily though, for breeding, you'll want to rely on the Everstone and the...And here we have by far the most wonderful and significant change to breeding with X&Y. If either of your parents holds the Destiny Knot,to the baby Pokemon. With this item, it has become significantly easier to chain IVs on to Pokemon and easily receive perfect PokemonWith our important new breeding mechanics out of the way, it’s time to start breeding perfect PokemonTo start, catch whatever Pokemon you wish to breed. Then, head to the friend safari and catch several potential parents in compatible egg groups for your target bred Pokemon. If the Pokemon you wish to breed you caught earlier does not already have the nature you want to pass down, I recommend using a synchronizer when catching your friend safari parents to get your desired nature. For parents, Dittos are the most flexible option if you have access to them. Baby Pokemon are also an option for this part if you have any in the right egg group / limited friend safari access.Now, with several parents on hand, develop a strategy for chaining down IVs. The general strategy is to breed two parents together until their child has all the relevant flawless IVs that a final parent lacks. Once that child is bred, breed the child with the final parent until you get your final target. Along the way, if a child is born that outclasses either of the parents, replace that child with the inferior parent to increase your chances of getting your desired final product. Remember to preserve your nature with either of your parents with the Everstone and to make sure at least one parent is holding the destiny knot this entire time.I want to breed a Timid Flawless Charizard. To start, I caught a Charmeleon, and two Dittos from the friend safari. One of the Dittos was timid thanks to a timid synchronizer I had at the front of my party. Charmeleon’s IVs are 31/x/x/x/31/x. The Timid Ditto’s IVs are x/x/x/x/31/31. The non-Timid Ditto’s IVs are x/x/31/31/x/x.Now, to start breeding. I gave the Charmeleon a Destiny Knot and my Timid Ditto an Everstone. After several eggs, I want to get a Charmander with the IVs of 31/x/x/x/31/31 or better. Both were left in the day care and got busy.A few eggs later, I received the 31/x/x/x/31/31 Charmander I wanted. Now, I just need to pass down my final Ditto’s perfect IVs for my target flawless Charmander. The two are paired together again and start breeding.Eventually, a male 31/x/x/31/31/31 male Charmander was born. Since this Charmander is objectively better than my current Charmander I’m using as a parent and gives me a higher chance to pass down my wanted IV combination, I took my old Charmander out of the day-care and put the new Charmander in. Along the way, if any children spawn that are objectively better than their parents, I replace the parent with their superior child.Once I start working with quad-flawless parents from this process, it’s only a matter of time until my 31/x/31/31/31/31 Charmander is bred!Once you have a perfect Pokemon on hand, repeating this process is substantially more easy. You already have a flawless parent to pass down IVs to new Pokemon if your final product was male. If your final product was female and can’t pass down IVs to other species of Pokemon, you can still use any outstanding male “spitback” parents that led to your flawless Pokemon. Going back to my previous example, if I ever want to breed something in the Monster or Dragon egg groups, I have my Charizard to use as an awesome parent!With this in mind, it might be best to think a little bit on what to breed first. Aim to get Pokemon with low Egg Cycles that are in multiple egg groups like Gyarados or Azumarill would be wise to get good future parents fairly quickly. Other good candidates include Pokemon like Smeargle who can easily contribute to a huge array of breeding chains, both with IVs and with egg moves.Finally, here are a few tips and tricks. If you're looking to make your breeding process more efficient after digesting the basic information above, some information here might help you get your final result quicker. Note that from here onwards, x2, x3, x4, and x5 refer to the number of relevant flawless IVs.While using the Destiny Knot + Everstone can easily net you a perfect Pokemon, there are certain situations where momentarily ignoring nature and focusing on IV inheritance with the Power items and Destiny Knot can make the breeding process quicker. Using Power Items + Destiny Knot is most useful when you want to pass down raw IVs. A few specific situations where this may prove useful or should be avoided are listed below, but this list is not all inclusive.The "1/24 plateau" refers to the usually frustratingly lengthy period of getting the final product once you have two x4 31 Pokemon of the correct nature in the daycare. Giving a power item to one parent (and the Destiny Knot to the other) so the flawless IV the other parent lacks is always inherited can modify this process to speed it up slightly. With a power item, you have a 1/10 chance (1/5 of all the write IVs being inherited, 1/2 of the other parents IV being inherited) of a receiving a x5 IV parent, albeit with the wrong nature. From here, you can substitute in the x5 IV wrong nature parent for either parent and continue breeding, the wrong nature parent holding a Destiny Knot and the correct nature parent holding the Everstone. The chance of receiving a flawless egg is now 1/12. This doesn't save a great deal of effort, and will have you breeding an extra set of competitively useless parents in the process, but narrowing down your chances can prove useful if you're frustrated with your x4 IV parents taking too long. It's a case of whether you want to work with two higher chances or one lower one.In this case, replacing either parent with one of their offspring later in the breeding process is not worth it. Any egg that hatches of the x5 parents gender will be worse or equal to the x5 parent, while any egg that hatches of the x3 IV parents gender will not preserve the nature.The chances of getting a flawless final product with a correct nature in this case is 1/12. Should you use a Power Item, you lower this chance to 1/10 , but only for obtaining flawless IVs. Because of this, you need to do a second cycle with a 1/6 chance of generating your desired final product. The likelihood increase on the first cycle is easily not worth the entire extra cycle.If you're curious about your chances of obtaining a certain offspring from your parents, check out the Pokemon X/Y - IV Breeding Probability Calculator by Agnaktor . The calculator currently works only with the Destiny Knot and Everstone, but it's an excellent way to gauge how long a particular breed will take.