Egg Groups

How Breeding Works

Breeding happens at the Pokémon Day Care (or the Picnic in Scarlet & Violet). Leave two compatible Pokémon together and, after enough steps, they'll produce an Egg. Two Pokémon are compatible when all three of these are true:

• They share at least one Egg Group.
• They are opposite genders.
• Neither is a Legendary, a Baby Pokémon, or one of the special non-breeders (Unown, Nidorina, Nidoqueen).

Ditto is the universal exception: it can breed with almost any Pokémon that's otherwise able to breed, and it's the only way to breed genderless Pokémon.

What Hatches

The Egg always hatches into the base form of the mother's evolution line. Breed a female Blastoise and you'll get a Squirtle; breed a female Gardevoir and you'll get a Ralts. When Ditto is a parent, the Egg is the other parent's species — Ditto and a male Charizard yields a Charmander. Eggs hatch at Level 1 (Level 5 back in Generations II–III).

Special Cases

• Gendered counterparts. Nidoran♀/Nidoran♂ and Illumise/Volbeat can each hatch as either member of the pair.
• Incense babies. A parent holding the right Incense produces a baby form instead of the usual base form — a Roserade holding Rose Incense lays a Budew Egg rather than a Roselia.
• Manaphy & Phione. Though listed in the Water 1 and Fairy groups, they only breed with Ditto, and always produce a Phione — which never evolves into Manaphy.

Egg Moves

The main reason to breed is to pass moves down to the offspring. A baby can hatch already knowing moves it couldn't otherwise learn yet:

• Any move it would normally learn at Level 1.
• Any level-up move both parents know — two Ampharos that know Thunder produce a Mareep that already knows Thunder.
• Egg Moves — moves a Pokémon can only obtain by breeding from a compatible parent that knows them. Sometimes you must chain-breed through several Pokémon to carry a move to where you want it.

When several moves compete for the baby's four slots, later sources overwrite earlier ones in this order:

1. Level 1 moves.
2. Level-up moves both parents share.
3. Compatible TM/HM moves the father knows (Generations II–V only).
4. Egg Moves known by either parent.

Inherited Stats & Traits

• Ability. The mother (or the father when bred with Ditto) has a 60% chance to pass her Ability slot down — Hidden Abilities included.
• Nature. Give a parent an Everstone and the baby is guaranteed that parent's Nature.
• IVs. The baby inherits 3 random IVs from its parents. A Destiny Knot raises that to 5 IVs from one parent, and the Power items (Power Weight, Bracer, Belt, Lens, Band, Anklet) each lock in one specific stat's IV.

Baby Pokémon

Some Pokémon — Pichu, Cleffa, Igglybuff, Togepi, Riolu, Toxel and more — exist only as the pre-evolution at the bottom of a line and can be obtained by breeding their evolved forms (several require a held Incense). Many later games also let you catch them in the wild.

Egg Group Connections

Because many Pokémon belong to two Egg Groups, the groups form a web. A dual-group Pokémon acts as a bridge: it lets you carry an Egg Move from one group into another. When no single Pokémon links the two groups you need, you chain-breed through an intermediate.

Example: to move an Egg Move from a Fairy-group Pokémon onto a Dragon-group Pokémon — no Pokémon belongs to both — route it through Field, Flying or Water 1. Breed the move onto a Pikachu (Fairy + Field), then onto an Arbok (Field + Dragon). Every group's page lists exactly which groups it bridges to, and the Pokémon that bridge them.