IV Crossovers

So you have a Destiny Knot, that will get you 5 of the parent IVs transferred over. Hopefully the perfect IVs, but that's not something you get to control. Of course, the more perfect IVs the parents have, the more likely they'll pass it on to their children.

This is where crossover breeding is awesome. Imagine you want to make a powerful Blastoise - you and your friends brag about how awesome you are at breeding and battling...the bet is made. Whoever makes the best one in an hour, wins all of the breedings. You can get 5 perfect IVs fast, once you have some basic work done.

I recently did some IV crossover breeding. Starting with Newton, the 6 perfect IV male Electabuzz, I bred it with a female Cacnea. (Ideally, it's from another country so it breeds faster.) I eventually get a female Cacnea (let's call her Betsy) that has 3 perfect IVs from Newton, and then start breeding Betsy and Newton. Sadly, the breeding is slower now - Betsy and Newton are different Pokemon which slows it down, and the foreign mother's effect is gone. As time goes on, I'll get better Cacneas 4 & 5 perfect IVs. When I get a male Cacnea with 5, I retire Newton. With a male and female Cacnea with 5 perfect IVs each, it becomes random luck getting a baby with 6.

But! Cacnea is part of two egg groups - Human-like and Grass. I can take a female Grass Pokemon and breed it with my 5 perfect IV male Cacnea...and repeat the process I did with Newton. I would stay closer to Pokemon that have a 50/50 split for female to male...getting stuck breeding with a bad half is just painful. (I did some Corsolas once - the females were common, so I had 4 IVs easily. Males were rare, and I was stuck on 2 IVs.

So far, I've got 5 perfect IV males in multiple egg groups. I have a bunch of Human-like starts, taking advantage of Newton's perfect 6.

• Meinfoo - Human-like & Field
• Cacnea - Human-like & Grass
• Illuminise - Human-like & Bug
• Skorupi - Bug & Water 3

My future crossovers:

• Dwebble (Bug/Mineral)
• Mareep (Field/Monster)
• Stunfisk (Water 1/Amorphous)
• Ekans (Field/Dragon)
• Clawitzer (Water 1/Water 3) - 3800 steps*.
• Dedenne (Field/Fairy)
• Woobat (Flying/Field) - 3800 steps*.

The more crossover Pokemon you have, the faster it is to get a match. You can even work in Natures & Hidden Abilities - breed a female with the right Nature (using an Adamant Ditto with an Everstone, get the Adamant Nature)...Hidden Abilities are a bit trickier to get started with due to Safaris or previous versions, but at least they are transferred through the female! As of this writing, Pokemon Bank is still on hiatus from the US store.

Eventually, I'll get a male 5-IV for each of the egg groups. If I bred all of the time, I'd probably do 6-IV, but that takes awhile and a bit of luck.

*Lower steps needed to hatch means faster breeding. Even more important if you're going for 6 perfect IVs.