The Be All End All Guide to Catching, Training, and Breeding Pokémon in (Mostly) Gen 7.

[awesomedude20]

Hello Hello, I've been playing a ton of Pokemon lately and I do indeed happen to make a lot of competitive pokemon.

So, in my boredom, I figure I could impart some of my knowledge to make the process that much easier for anyone that wants to do all that.

Here we go.

I'll be speaking about Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon primarily, as they're the newest mainline entries to the series.

Where to Find Competitive Pokemon Sets
The internet. Namely Smogon.

IVs
IVs are a stat that you can't see yourself until you beat the game and talk to a dude sitting by the battle tree on Poni Island. Hatch 20 eggs or so and talk to him and he'll give you the ability to check your own IVs. IVs are effectively a stat that can be anywhere from 0 to 31, and is applied to every stat of your pokemon. The higher the IV, the better in almost all cases. Who would want more free attack or defense or health or speed? These are randomized in almost all cases, but they can be bred to perfection via the Pokemon Nursery on Akala Island, more on that later. Do also note that legendary pokemon always have 3 random stats with a perfect 31 IVs, but they also can't be bred to perfect the rest of them, but that's easy to fix too. More on that late

EVs
EVs are more points that can make a pokemon's various stats stronger, and they can be raised by vitamins, or defeating particular pokemon, not to mention using Isle Evelup on Poke Pelago, which is a very precise but slow way of obtaining EVs. You can have a max of 510 EVs on any single pokemon, and these points can be spread among whatever stats you need to have a bit of a boost. Do also keep in mind however, that any single stat can only have 252 EVs put into it. This leaves you able to max out 2 stats, and put an extra 6 points into another stat of your choice. Every 4 EVs counts towards a single actual stat point increase in your pokemon's stats, so you have an extra 2 EVs that do absolutely nothing. More on how to get this part done quick later.

Natures
Natures add +10% to one stat, and -10% to another stat. That, or they don't do anything at all. These ones are very useless. Here's a useful chart.

Make sure you can actually make the Pokemon first.
Some pokemon are just straight-up impossible to get anymore without cheating them in, and some require so much effort it entirely isn't worth it. You want a competitive Aggron that knows avalanche? Well you'll have to go all the way back to HG/SS, breed the Aggron to perfection in that game (which is absolutely the worst thing, never do it, trust me) and then once you finally get the right nature and the IVs you want, you have to use a one-time-use avalanche move tutor on it. And then send it all the way up to a newer game that still has functioning servers where you can then use it. Which costs money btw. Pokebank is a pain. So before getting invested, fact check all your moves and whatnot, and make sure you're actually capable of acquiring them.

Set Up a "Utilities" Box, and a "Natures" Box in your PC.
I've never actually heard of anyone else going through the trouble of this, but I did it, and it's the best decision I've made.

I'll go over the Natures Box first. What you need to do is catch yourself an Abra, or a Ralts that has the ability "Synchronize". Synchronize is an incredibly useful ability in that when you have it in the lead slot of your team, any pokemon you encounter has a 50% chance to be the same nature as it. So, take that Abra/Ralts, and breed them into oblivion, until you have one of every Nature in your Natures box. Don't bother getting the neutral natures though, refer to the chart up there. There's one other pokemon you'll need in this box though, and that's Ditto. What if you already have a pokemon but there's no way to catch a new one? You'll need to breed it, and you CAN breed it at random and hope you get the nature you need, 1 in 30 chance, but we're making this EASY! Now, you won't need another 20 Dittos, in fact you'll probably only need 4. Adamant, Modest, Timid, and Jolly. Other natures will pop up sometimes, but you'll find that in almost all cases, those are the 4 you'll need. If it makes you feel better, you could probably grab whatever others you find you happen to need. Now look! You have the ability to catch any wild pokemon and make it have whatever nature you need, and you have every ditto you'll need to breed any nature of pokemon you may need! Need a Ditto you don't have? Just use the Abra to get one! As a heads up, Abra can be found in Hau'oli and Route 2. Ditto can be found on Route 9, Konikoni City, and Mount Hokulani.

Next, the Utilities box! First, move the Modest, Adamant, Timid, and Jolly Abras and Dittos over to this box. They'll be used a whole bunch, so you'll want them in an easy to find place. Next, get 2 high level pokemon that can learn False swipe, as well as a single target attack move or two. Or three. The higher the level, the easier your life will be. I'll explain why you need 2 of them later. Personally, I have a Garchomp and a Lurantis. I also highly recommend any high level pokemon that has a multi-hit move. Next up, a Magcargo with the ability magma armor or flame body, both will work fine. Toss Magcargo into your team when you're hatching eggs, and the eggs will hatch in half the time! Next up, a high level Butterfree! Teach it Thief and make sure it has the ability Compound Eyes. This is how you get Heart Scales, for relearning forgotten moves from the Move Reminder whom is located in the Pokemon Center on Mount Lanakila! The pokemon Luvdisc can be found by fishing at Route 9, Melemele Sea, and Hau'oli City. Compound Eyes (assuming Butterfree is in the lead of your party) raises the chance of a wild pokemon to be holding an item, and then simply use Thief! If the Luvdisc has a Heart Scale, its yours now. Just be sure to take the Heart Scale off of Butterfree before you continue to fish. Next up, grab a pokemon with the ability Illuminate. If a pokemon with Illuminate is leading your team, your chance of encountering a wild pokemon is increased by 100%. Just makes finding hard to find pokemon that much faster. Lastly, youère gonna want 5 pokemon with the ability Pickup. I have 5 Meowths. This is useful for 2 things. If you REALLY don't want to buy a Destiny Knot for BP, you can simply hope one of these guys will pick one up after a battle. The other option, is if you're trying to level just one pokemon, and you use that same pokemon in your lead to train it. May as well get random items while you're at it, for every rare candy you pick up after all, it's one less level you have to grind for if you so choose to use them that way! Check after every battle so as to clear their item slots if they did pick something up. You can get a variety of items, ranging from garbage, to nice stuff like rare candies. The higher the level of the Meowths, the better odds they'll have of finding rare items, here's a chart that explains it all.

How to Breed Pokemon
Simply leave a breeding Ditto, and whatever pokemon you wish to breed, in the nursery. Make sure the Magcargo you should have is the only pokemon on your team when you begin, to maximize egg production. You'll notice that, almost directly under the Nursery, there's some fences, and a small space you can run around in. Picture. Go in there and call in Tauros. Now hold sprint and run in a circle. It counts as running full tilt while keeping you in one spot so you can see when the egg lady gets an egg, signified by her crossing her arms. Her getting an egg is entirely dependent on number of steps, so keep running and you'll get eggs eventually. The only case where you won't get an egg is if you talk to her and she says something along the lines of "they prefer to play with the other Pokemon" THEN, you won't be getting any eggs. You can actually speed up the odds of her getting eggs if you acquire the Oval Charm, which I won't go over since it's a lengthy side quest sorta thing, but I will link a tutorial here.

How to Breed the Nature You Want
This part is stupidly easy. You simply make the non-ditto half of your pokemon in the daycare hold an Everstone. That's all you need to do. It'll 100% of the time pass down its nature to the child.

How to Breed the Abilities You Want
This part is entirely up to percentage-based luck. Not cruel odds though. When breeding a male pokemon, with a female of the same type of pokemon, the female will determine the ability 100% of the time. The male does not matter. If breeding with a Ditto, whatever is NOT the Ditto will always count as the female for all intents and purposes, this is why Dittos are so convenient. If the female pokemon has its hidden ability, it has a 60% chance to pass it down to the child, with a 40% chance for the other ability the pokemon may have, or a 20%/20% split if the pokemon has two non-hidden abilities. If the female pokemon does NOT have its hidden ability, there's a guaranteed chance the offspring will get its ability if the species only has one non-hidden ability, or if it has two non-hidden abilities, an 80% chance to pass down the one the parent has, with a 20% chance to pass down the other one. Notice that if you don't start with the pokemon's hidden ability, there's no chance at all that you'll get it via breeding, you HAVE to start with a parent that has the ability. This info I've simply gotten from a source, but speaking from experience, I've had MUCH more success having a female breed with the Ditto for hidden ability passing, rather than a male, so I do suggest that.

How to Breed Egg Moves
Egg moves are moves that a pokemon can only learn by inheriting them from another pokemon via breeding. This part can get messy, but I'll try to dumb it down as much as possible. Your breeding ditto is useless for this portion, so leave it in your Utilities box. You'll need a female pokemon of the species that you want to acquire an egg move, as the female is the one that determines the species of the offspring. The male parent must have the egg move(s) that you want to be sent to the child, as well as be in the same egg group as the pokemon you wish to breed. If they're in different egg groups, you simply can't breed them at all, so don't try that. You can easily check pokemon's egg moves on sites like this one. It should also display their egg groups, but you can do that much on the in-game pokedex. Assuming everything is set up correctly, when the two pokemon breed succesfully, the offspring will be the pokemon you want, with the egg moves that you want! You then want to turn that pokemon into a parent, and fix its nature with another offspring if it isn't already the right one! Then you're good to go, your pokemon has its egg moves, and it will forever send them down to offspring. You can now go back to using your Breeding Ditto. Going back a moment, I did mention that egg moves can get messy. What I meant by that, is that on some occasions, you'll need to breed an entirely different species with ANOTHER different species in order to get a parent that can have the egg moves that the pokemon you actually want needs. If you're able to use Smeargle for this, consider yourself very happy, as it makes this process a breeze since it can learn any move.

How to Breed Perfect IVs
Once you have the natures and utility boxes, it really isn't so bad. First up, get yourself a breeding Ditto, and make sure it has as many perfect IVs as possible. It's damn near impossible to get a 6 perfect IV Ditto, but if you're morally cool with getting hacked (but legal) pokemon, go for it. (On a side note, if you happen to want bonus shiny odds, make sure the Ditto is from a country other than your own, as well as being shiny itself.) Make sure that this Breeding Ditto is holding an item known as a Destiny Knot. This will guarantee that 5 random IVs are passed down from the parents to the child. See why a 6IV Ditto is nice? Anyways, always make sure that the Ditto is holding the destiny knot, and then just start collecting eggs! Whenever you collect and hatch 5 eggs into your inventory, take them to the PC and check their IVs. If the IVs are not listed as "Best" then they're no good, they aren't a perfect 31 IVs. That being said though, if you breed a pokemon that has better IVs than your parent in the nursery, swap them out! Don't forget to give the new parent the everstone for keeping its nature! Always remember this as well, not all pokemon NEED to have 6 perfect IVs to be competitive. If you have a pokemon that only uses special attacking moves, the attack stat is completely worthless, so there's no need to make it perfect. Getting 5 perfect IVs is easy, it's the 6th one that's a pain, so unless you have a mixed attacker or some other special cases, don't worry about whichever attack stat you won't be using. Once you have a 6IV Ditto and a 5IV parent in the nursery, you have great odds for getting the 5 IVs you need, and even the magical 6IVs if necessary. a 5IV Ditto will work too, just make sure that both of the parents are covering different stats with their perfect IVs, for example, don't have 2 parents that are both missing their perfect speed IVs. All you have to do now is make sure your pokemon has the ability you want before calling it a day!

How to EV Train Your Newly Bred Pokemon
This part isn't so bad, but MAKE SURE that you do not defeat any pokemon with your newly bred, EV-free pokemon on your team. The Exp share spread EVs as well as experience, so if you mess up what EVs the pokemon gets, it can be a pain. This can be fixed, but it's an annoying initial process, which I will touch on next. First however, you're going to need a few things. Get yourself one of every Power Item available from the Royal Battle Dome Shop at Royal Avenue. These items are the Power Anklet, Power Band, Power Lens, and so on. These give you 8 extra EVs to a specific stat every time you defeat a pokemon in battle, on top of the EVs given to you by that pokemon. Simply make your pokemon you wish to EV train hold the appropriate item, and go to town, though I'll describe more about what to go to town on later. Next, you're going to want to buy an absolute ton of Adrenaline Orbs, which can be purchased at any pokemart in a pokecenter.
If you're lucky enough to have a pokemon afflicted with Pokerus, you're going to have a swell time with this. Spread the pokerus to your newly bred pokemon by putting the afflicted pokemon next to your newly bred pokemon in your team, and encounter a few wild pokemon, but DO NOT defeat them, simply run. Every time you run, check your newly bred pokemon's summary to see if it has pokerus. I'll say now, that if you bring your pokerus-inflicted pokemon to be healed at a pokecenter, it will heal the pokerus away, and you'll never be able to get it again on that pokemon, so be careful about that. It also heals itself after a certain number of battles, so keeping a few pokerus-ridden pokemon in your PC is always a good idea in case you ever need more. Pokerus doubles all EVs your pokemon receives upon defeating a pokemon. Speeds up the process a ton, obviously, but if you can't get pokerus, don't worry, it's not too bad still.
So now that you have your items, gather those 2 high level false swipe pokemon I mentioned to put in the Utilities box. These will be how you S.O.S. chain your EVs onto your pokemon, and false swipe is key since you need to NOT kill a pokemon to do this, just get its health low. S.O.S. chaining is when a pokemon calls another pokemon in for help during a battle. The lower the health of the pokemon doing the calling, the higher the odds of them calling in another pokemon to aid it. This called in pokemon gives double the EVs that a normal pokemon would, and so long as you don't defeat the weakened pokemon, it will keep trying to call in more pokemon for you to beat up. Do note however, that an S.O.S. call isn't guaranteed. That's what the adrenaline orbs are for. Use one during the battle and it'll make it MUCH more likely for the opposing pokemon to start calling for help. You want two false swipe pokemon because in a LOT of cases, I find that the weak little pokemon you'll be punching for a while love to hit you with status effects and stat debuffs, which stack up. If your pokemon is ever too encumbered by lowered accuracy or gets confused and you don't want to mess around more than you have to, just swap pokemon to get a fresh start.If for whatever reason the intial pokemon does feint, as long as their another S.O.S. called pokemon of the exact same species in battle, you can false swipe it and continue like you were. Now all you have to do is defeat as many pokemon as you need to to max the EVs in the stat you needed! 
Now here's an absurdly useful tool.

EV Calculator

This allows you to type in how many EVs you need for a pokemon's stat, which stat you're EV training for, and whether you have pokerus and/or a power item. This will then tell you exactly how many S.O.S. called pokemon you need to defeat, and which pokemon to defeat to do so, as well as their locations. If you happen to choose to farm Magnemite, or another pokemon of your choosing that can have Sturdy as an ability, bring along your pokemon in your Utilities box that has a multi-hit move, and optionally false swipe to save you some swapping around. Because trust me, Sturdy is annoying. Ignoring it with multi-hit moves is the way to go. Now, the calculator does have one other section, and that is for the poke pelago's Isle Evelup. Get that to level 3 as fast as you can, but the calculator tells you the speeds at all levels, so don't worry about it too much. Use this only if you need specific EVs for a stat. For example, you need 40EVs in a stat. It'd be a pain to defeat the EXACT amount of pokemon while having to worry about going over what you need, and yeah, it'd be stressful. The calculator just tells you how many sessions to do to get the desired EVs. It's slow, but it's accurate. You can even get stuff to 252 EVs if you're sleeping or whatever, but manually S.O.S. chaining is a MUCH faster method. If you'd like to see what your pokemon's EVs look like, go to their summary page and hit Y. This will change their stat Graph on top to display EVs, signified by the yellow or blue graph marks. If a stat is sparkling, that means it is maxed out. If the entire graph turns a light blue, that means you've hit the maximum 510 EVs for that pokemon, and cannot gain any more.

How to Remove EVs
Removing EVs is only initially a painful process. You need to collect one of each EV berry, which are located at the base of the Berry Tree on route 10. You'll need to come back every day to try your luck getting all of them. These berries are as follows:

• Kelpsy Berry - Attack
• Tamato Berry - Speed
• Hondew Berry - Sp.Atk
• Pomeg Berry - HP
• Qualot Berry - Defense
• Grepa Berry - Sp.Def

Each of these berries LOWERS a particular EV, each one lowering an EV by 10. So this means you're gonna need to get a LOT of these berries. No better way to do so, than Poke Pelago's Isle Aplenny. You'll want to get this to level 3 as quickly as possible, as not only does it give you more space to grow berries, it increases yield by a ton. Simply plant whichever EV berries you need more of here and wait for them to grow. At level 3 you'll be able to plant 18 berry bushes, each bush yielding 14 berries. That's a lotta berries. Spend a few days just growing your stock till oyu have around 200 of each berry, but don't stop there, keep going, you'll need them, trust me. These berries also happen to be an extremely efficient way to increase a pokemon's happiness. Just spam a berry on a pokemon that affects EVs the pokemon isn't using. You won't lose anything, but it'll raise your pokemon's happiness by a tiny bit for every berry, eventually maxing out and telling you the berry will have no effect!

How to Level Up Your Newly Bred Pokemon
This part is quite easy, you can just run around Poni island beating things up if you want, after all, the only level that matters is 50 for competitive battling, and that's a breeze to reach. But there's a better way. First, get your hands on a Lucky Egg, which can be acquired like so. On top of that, using a Roto-Exp power is a HUGE help, but unfortunately getting those is a lottery. Just talk to the RotomDex a lot, you might get some eventually. The buff lasts for 10 minutes, however the duration is infinite so long as you stay in battle, keep that in mind. It will simply run out the instant you leave the battle. Anyways, there's a bush on Poni island that has a 20% chance of throwing a Chansey at you when you get near it. Chanseys are absolutely fantastic for exp, and they can even S.O.S. summon a Blissy, which gives even MORE exp. Make sure you have a STRONG false swipe pokemon with you for this, as Chanseys and Blisseys are quite tough to beat up if you aren't absurdly overlevelled. Then all you need to do is start an S.O.S. chain with the Chansey, and go to town. If you're staying there for extended periods, be sure to switch which Chansey is doing the S.O.S. calling, else it'll run out of PP and feint. Just occasionally punch the low health one and then false swipe the other, repeat as necessary. (A note. Don't try to get smart and feint a Chansey after it calls in a Blissey with the intent of getting the Blissey to call in more Blissey. That Blissey won't call ANYTHING, so you'd be screwing yourself. You may also find that sometimes a pokemon won't call a pokemon and you'll be left standing there not sure what to do. You have a few viable options here. Refill on health or PP or whatever you need to if necessary, maybe switch pokemon or heal status effects. You could hit the pokemon with a second false swipe, which won't do anything. But the best choice when you truly have nothing to do, is use another Adrenaline Orb. If you've already used one, it'll simply fail, NOT consume an adrenaline orb, and end your turn. With these methods and a lot of Leppa Berries (which can be found on Route 3, Route 17, and Ula'ula Beach, use Isle Aplenny to get tons of them) you can get your pokemon to level 100 within... a day? It's not fast, but it is for certain, the fastest method in the game.

How to Hyper Train
This part is really easy, but also really painful. All you have to do, is beat the game, and get the pokemon you want to hyper train to level 100. Hyper training artificially sets a pokemon's IVs to perfect, permanently. This is great for making competitive legendary pokemon, or perhaps shiny pokemon with bad IVs. The hard part comes from the cost of hyper training. You need Bottle Caps to do this, and Bottle Caps are a massive pain to get, don't even get me started on Gold Bottle Caps (which max all IVs of a pokemon), those are nearly Event-Exclusive (though it is possible to get them in-game in a few badly farmable ways). There's a few ways to get Bottle Caps, and the first one most people come to is fishing. You can fish on any spot on Poni Island for a very small chance to get a bottle cap. Very small. Not exactly worth doing, but you could use your pickup squad of Meowths to get rare candies as you go at it, so you could make it worth your time. Your 2nd best bet would be Poke Pelago's Isle Aphun. You have 2 choices on this one, you can either take the MUCH slower but very safe route of the level 1 cave path to gather shards, You can trade in 30 shards of any one colour to a man in the Festival Plaza Castle and hell give you a bottle cap. You may also go for the level 3 cave path which has a larger reward pool, but less shards. However one of these rewards is a GOLD bottlecap, which is nice. The third and best option is to rank up your Festival Plaza to level 8. This allows you to buy facilities from the people that show up in your Plaza. Find someone that is offering a 2 star Treasure Hunt facility, make that person one of your VIPs, and then buy the facility. Make sure it's the ONLY facility of that kind that you have though, (different stars don't matter, just don't have 2 or more 2 star Treaure Hunt facilities.) and if you already have one, replace it after you've visited the old one at least once. So what's the trick? The first time you visit a brand new 2 star Treasure Hunt facility, they'll give you a bottle cap. So now that you've made that person that offers the facility a VIP, you can call them back at any time to buy the facility again for 200FC. How do you get FC? Just get good at the Type Matching and Type Inverse games, they reward 50/60 FC each respectively if there's enough people playing. You should never get more than 1 2 star treasure hunt facility because if you do that, it'll permanently raise the price of buying another one.

How to get BP
BP is obivously pretty important, as it's what you use to get moves from move tutors, as well as get a load of items that you'll be needing for competitive play. So how do you get it? Mantine Surfing.
Here's a solid video guide with some tips, however it assumes that you'll have gotten to "Max Rank" in Mantine Surfing by getting the high score on every beach in the game and acquiring the surfing Pikachu. (This Pikachu also comes with a Gold Bottle Cap) Doing all of these things will get you all of the moves you'll need to max your score in Mantine Surf, and if you get good enough you can make around 50BP in not even 5 minutes.

[Geano]

This is very detailed if I do say so. Good work on this.