When you need to Breed Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet, you need to follow a set order of steps. The Nursery is no longer a thing in Generation IX, now, players have a bit more control. Game Freak has decided to tie the picnic system into breeding, meaning that you can abuse the game’s mechanics to maximize not only the number of Eggs, but also make some cash on the side. Keep reading to learn the best methods to Breed Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet.
How To Breed Pokémon
It’s really easy! All you need to do is set up a Picnic on a flat surface anywhere in the wild. The Pokemon in your party will then randomly spawn Eggs inside the basket under the table. The trick is, the breeding Pokemon have to be of the same Egg group.
Let’s say you want to breed a Charizard for better stats and a Shiny variant. and you want it to have the Ancient Power ability, you would need all this stuff:
- Charizard Evolution or Tyranitar Evolution with Ancient Power, and desired IVs/Pokéball, of opposing genders
- Two Destiny Knot
- A lot of RNG and time
Just from that list of elements, you can see why most people don’t bother with egg groups, as there’s a much better way.
Because Ditto are the perfect mimics of the Pokemon world, they make excellent breeding candidates. For best results, you need to use a Ditto. Ditto are found in West Province (Area Two) and West Province (Area Three), although they disguise themselves as other Pokémon! There’s an old trick called the Masuda method that involves obtaining a Ditto from another region and breeding with that one instead. This drastically increases the chance of getting a Shiny variant of the non-Ditto parent. Also, you will want to complete your Pokédex ASAP, and get the Shiny Charm, which further increases your Shiny chances.
If you’re someone who’s breeding for competitive IVs, there’s a bit more involved here. You will need a Ditto with six perfect 31 IVs, which isn’t normally very easy to get. There are ways involving generating it with PKHex, but that’s beyond the scope of this guide, and if done improperly, can get your account banned, so be very careful. The other thing you need is at least one Destiny Knot. This item passes down five of the six IVs of the Pokemon holding it. So you give it to your Ditto, then have them breed with the Pokemon you want to get Eggs for. You just have to hope RNG is on your side, and you eventually get the six IV perfect mon that you desire.
There is another option for getting a regional Ditto, check out our guide on the trade method here.
Getting More Eggs
There are other options that give you Egg Power 1, which is useful in the early game, but you really want to rush to get the Egg Power 2 recipe as soon as you can. So what you really want to unlock is the Ultra Pickle Sandwich.
For those that do want the Egg Power 1 recipe, the easiest way to get it is the Jam Sandwich. This just uses 1x Jam and 1x Strawberry, and is great for brand-new players who just want to get a few eggs each time they camp out.
To unlock the recipe, you need to head to the right place. head to the Artisan sandwich shop in Mesagoza. Head back to the Academy and look for the Sandwich shop on the bottom left of the Academy area. It has a very noticeable sandwich sign above the door. Head inside and talk to the man in white to the right of the counter. He will give you a slew of new recipes as you progress through the game. You need 4 Gym Badges to unlock the recipe for Ultra Pickle.
Ultra Pickle Sandwich Recipe Location
We have the recipe for making a Ultra Pickle Sandwich below along with where you can purchase the ingredients if you can.
| Ingredient | Location |
|---|---|
| Pickle | Sold by Acquiesta Supermarket and Sure Cans |
| Olive Oil | Sold by Acquiesta Supermarket and Artisan Bakery |
| Watercress | Sold by Acquiesta Supermarket and Deli Cioso |
| Basil | Sold by Deli Cioso |
So go out, set up a picnic, and make a sandwich, then sit back and collect your Eggs.
Maximizing Returns
The thing with these Sandwiches is that they cost money. Players will want to use a handy little trick to make money back on each Picnic, that way you can constantly make as many Sandwiches as you can. The process is simple, and is easy to repeat as long as you need cash.
To begin, you need to figure out where you want to camp. I usually do this in the Asado Desert, as it has a high chance of spawning Stardust and Starpieces. What you’re going to do is go hunting for a Starpiece spawn. Then, you want to set your picnic up on top of it to get free items along with your Eggs. Each Ultra Pickle sandwich costs 870 Pokédollars, so one bag of Stardust pays for it. And usually, you get multiple per each picnic run with this method.
Here’s the order of the steps:
Go into the Options menu, then scroll down until you see Autosave, set that to Off, then confirm the change by pressing A. Now, head out into the sand and find a gold sparkle marking an item drop. Manually save before picking the item up, if it’s a Starpiece, you’re good. Otherwise, reload your save and try again to get a Starpiece. Anytime you drop a picnic on top of one of these gold sparkles, you get a few of the items as loot inside the picnic basket.
Setting up a picnic in Scarlet and Violet
Hatching Eggs
Actually hatching the Eggs from when you breed Pokémon in Scarlet and Violet is much easier and faster than making them. But there’s a trick to this process as well.
The Eggs hatch after a certain number of steps, and each Egg group has a set step counter that varies randomly as well. So instead, Trainers focus on cutting down the overall number of steps it takes to hatch an Egg. And that’s done with a unique ability called Flame Body. If you have a Pokemon with Flame Body in your party, it cuts the number of steps for any Eggs in your party to hatch by 50%. So just pop the Eggs and a Flame Body in your party, then start riding around on your mount, and hatch all the Eggs you could ever need.
Pokemon with Flame Body:
- Rolycoly
- Carkol
- Coalossal
- Fletchinder
- Talonflame