Pokémon Breeding: Eggs, the Day Care and Baby Pokémon

An Egg found in a picnic basket, and a whole hidden mechanic kicks into gear. Ever since Gold and Silver, breeding has been the quietest part of the Pokémon games — and yet the deepest: this is where a future champion's nature, stats, ability and sometimes even Poké Ball are decided. There are precise rules behind all that shell-side poetry: fifteen loving families, a Ditto that is a little too obliging, and nine babies out of nineteen that only existed if you were holding the right incense. Step inside the incubator.

Contents

• The Principle: Two Compatible Pokémon, and an Egg Appears
• The Fifteen Egg Groups, the Real Compatibility Map
• Ditto, the Day Care's Master Key
• From the Day Care to the Nursery, Then to the Picnic Basket
• Nature, IVs and Poké Ball: What Really Gets Passed Down
• Abilities: 80% for a Regular Ability, 60% for a Hidden Ability
• Egg Moves, and the Mirror Herb Revolution
• Incubation: Cycles, Steps, and Three Abilities That Change Everything
• The Nineteen Baby Pokémon, and the Nine Incenses That Unlock Them
• The Lucky Egg, the Breeder's Real Allies, and the Routine That Works
• Pokémon Breeding in One Table
• Frequently Asked Questions

The Principle: Two Compatible Pokémon, and an Egg Appears

The basic rule fits in one sentence: two Pokémon that share at least one Egg Group and are of opposite genders can produce an Egg. Left at the Day Care, they don't battle and don't really train — they get along, more or less well, and the caretaker lets you know when something has turned up in the pen.

The baby that hatches always belongs to the mother's species, with two famous exceptions: the Nidoran♂ / Nidoran♀ and Volbeat / Illumise pairs, where the gender drawn at random decides the species. One point that is often misunderstood: every one of the baby's characteristics is locked in the moment the Egg is obtained, not when it hatches. Saving right before the shell cracks is therefore completely pointless.

🥚 Volbeat or Illumise, the draw is already made by the time the Egg arrives: the shell cracking open no longer decides anything. The only shell you really open every day belongs to one of our Pokémon AirPods cases.

The hatching level changed along the way: babies were born at level 5 up to Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald, then at level 1 starting with Diamond and Pearl. And through all of it, the games keep up a lovely mystery: at the Solaceon Town Day Care, a character points out that nobody has ever seen a Pokémon lay an Egg.

The Fifteen Egg Groups, the Real Compatibility Map

Every species is filed into one or two Egg Groups, and those groups have nothing to do with types. There are fifteen: Flying, Amorphous, Water 1, Water 2, Water 3, Dragon, Fairy, Human-Like, Undiscovered, Bug, Ditto, Mineral, Monster, Field and Grass. A Pokémon that belongs to two groups at once becomes a terrific move courier between lineages that, on paper, had nothing in common.

Two groups are dead ends by design. The Undiscovered group gathers everything that does not breed: Baby Pokémon, every last one of the legendaries, the Ultra Beasts and the Paradox Pokémon. The Dittogroup, for its part, has only one tenant, and it cannot breed with itself.

The classification holds a few casting surprises. Almost every member of the Flying group is a Flying type, except for Decidueye, Galarian Farfetch’d and its line, plus the families of Quaxly and Flittle. And in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, where breeding does not exist, Egg Groups still serve to determine the favorite foods of each creature — a repurposing nobody saw coming.

Ditto, the Day Care's Master Key

You can't talk about breeding without Ditto. Genderless, it breeds with any fertile species, whatever its Egg Group — which makes it the essential tool for breeding genderless Pokémon like Voltorb or Magnemite, who literally have no other possible partner.

Its only limit is a logical one: it can do nothing with the Undiscovered and Ditto groups. And there is one Mythical exception worth knowing about. Manaphy and Phione are the only two Mythical Pokémon outside the Undiscovered group; paired with Ditto, Manaphy produces an Egg… of Phione, and that Phione will never evolve into Manaphy.

A few species stubbornly refuse to cooperate, even with it: Unown does not breed at all, and neither do Nidorina and Nidoqueen, even though Nidoran♀ can. It is in fact the only Pokémon in the games that loses its fertility by evolving, a detail inherited from Japanese encyclopedias that predate the mechanic itself.

From the Day Care to the Nursery, Then to the Picnic Basket

The setup has been reinvented three times. The Pokémon Day Care of the early generations raises levels — one experience point per step you take — and, ever since Gold and Silver, it allows breeding too. Watch out for the flip side: Pokémon there automatically learn their level-up moves, overwriting whichever one sits at the top of the list, and they never evolve as long as they are staying there.

The seventh generation introduced the Pokémon Nursery, a specialized version: no more experience, no more moves learned, Eggs only. Sword and Shield offer two of them, one of which is in the Wild Area, with a real quality-of-life touch — you can drop off Pokémon straight from your boxes.

Then Scarlet and Violet swept it all away. There is no Day Care and no Nursery anymore: Eggs appear in the picnic basket, up to ten at a time, as soon as two compatible Pokémon are in your party. A sandwich that grants Egg Power increases your chances of finding them.

Nature, IVs and Poké Ball: What Really Gets Passed Down

Inheritance has grown more refined generation after generation. The Everstone first offered, in Emerald, a 50% chance of passing on the nature of the parent holding it; ever since Black 2 and White 2, that transfer has become guaranteed. It is the simplest and most rewarding building block in all of competitive breeding.

On the stats side, the Destiny Knot arrived in the sixth generation and changed everything: instead of three inherited values, the Egg picks up five drawn at random from those of both parents, with the sixth left to chance. Ever since HeartGold and SoulSilver, the Power items additionally force the transfer of the stat they are tied to.

A detail collectors love: the Poké Ball is passed down too. Since the sixth generation, the newborn hatches in its mother's Ball — except the Master Ball, Cherish Ball and Strange Ball, which are replaced by an ordinary Poké Ball. In the seventh generation, the rule loosens and the baby can inherit the Ball of either parent when both are the same species. If you want to know everything about these containers, our feature on Poké Balls breaks down every single one.

📌 Master Ball, Cherish Ball and Strange Ball: the only three a newborn will never inherit from its mother, a detail collectors love. Your own collection gets pinned to a jacket lapel or a bag strap, which is right where our Pokémon pins fit in.

Abilities: 80% for a Regular Ability, 60% for a Hidden Ability

This is the most misunderstood part of breeding, because for a long time it was… nonexistent. In the third and fourth generations, abilities were not inherited at all: the Egg drew one of its species' possible abilities at random, full stop. Inheritance only shows up with the fifth generation.

Since the sixth generation, the rule has been stable and easy to remember. If the mother — or the non-Ditto parent — has a regular ability, the baby inherits the same ability slot 80% of the time. If it is a Hidden Ability, the odds drop to 60%, but the payoff lies elsewhere: since that same generation, a male paired with Ditto can pass on its Hidden Ability as well, which used to be impossible.

An Egg that misses this roll necessarily hatches with a regular ability: there is no second chance. In the eighth generation, Pokémon caught in Dynamax raids offered a handy source of Hidden Abilities to feed back into an entire lineage afterward.

Egg Moves, and the Mirror Herb Revolution

A newborn knows its starting moves, the ones both parents share and that it will be able to learn by leveling up, and above all the famous Egg Moves: attacks that no other method would ever give it. Up through the fifth generation, only the father could pass them on — hence the endless breeding chains used to carry a move up from lineage to lineage.

The eighth generation had already made life easier: two Pokémon of the same species and the same stage can share an Egg Move, one learning it from the other if it has a free slot. But it was Scarlet and Violet that blew the lock open with the Mirror Herb, sold for 30,000 Pokémon Dollars in Cascarrafa.

How it works is worth reading twice. During a picnic, a Pokémon that holds this herb and has a free move slot learns an Egg Move known by any other member of the party — and Egg Groups no longer matter at all. The item is not consumed, several Pokémon can hold one, and you simply need to know that a move obtained this way cannot be relearned if you forget it.

Incubation: Cycles, Steps, and Three Abilities That Change Everything

An Egg does not hatch after a set amount of time, but after a number of cycles specific to each species — the rarer a creature is, the higher its counter. Those values have never budged; what changed is how they convert into steps. The second generation counted 256 steps per cycle, the fifth and sixth 257, the seventh 256… and ever since Sword and Shield, a cycle is worth only 128 steps. Which is to say modern breeding runs twice as fast.

The classic accelerator is still an ability sitting in your party. Three of them do the job, and only one counts at a time: Flame Body, Magma Armor and Steam Engine, the last of which arrived in the eighth generation. They divide the number of steps in half, and stacking several holders does nothing at all — a classic rookie mistake.

The rest is a matter of habit: ride your bike, favor long straight lines or loops to limit direction changes, and stack whatever bonuses the game offers. The Oval Charm, awarded to players who complete their regional Pokédex, does not speed up hatching but does speed up how often Eggs appear: the best possible pair goes from 70% to 88% odds per window.

The Nineteen Baby Pokémon, and the Nine Incenses That Unlock Them

A Baby Pokémon is not simply a first stage: it is a stage that cannot breed, and therefore belongs to the Undiscovered group. There are now nineteen: eight that appeared in the second generation, including Pichu and Togepi, two in the third, eight in the fourth and just one in the eighth, Toxel.

Where the mechanic turns tricky is that most babies introduced after the second generation only hatch if one parent is holding a specific incense. Without it, the Egg produces the base stage directly: a pair of Snorlax without Full Incense produces a Snorlax, never a Munchlax.

The nine incenses involved are the Sea Incense for Azurill, the Lax Incense for Wynaut, the Rose Incense for Budew, the Pure Incense for Chingling, the Rock Incense for Bonsly, the Odd Incense for Mime Jr., the Luck Incense for Happiny, the Full Incense for Munchlax and the Wave Incense for Mantyke. The exact name matters: plenty of guides get them wrong.

🌸 Rose Incense for Budew, Rock Incense for Bonsly: here, a scent decides which species hatches from the Egg. Yours hangs from the rearview mirror, and our Pokémon car air fresheners ride along with you.

Two babies introduced after the second generation, Riolu and Toxel, escape this constraint — as do the eight second-generation babies, which the incenses never applied to. And since Scarlet and Violet, the question no longer comes up at all: the incenses no longer appear in the game and are no longer needed. If evolution mechanics intrigue you, our feature on how Pokémon evolve takes it from here.

The Lucky Egg, the Breeder's Real Allies, and the Routine That Works

Its name fools everyone, so let's set the record straight: the Lucky Egg has no effect on breeding. Introduced in the second generation, it's a held item that gives a 50% boost to the experience gained at the end of a battle — the item for express level-ups, not for hatching.

Its legend comes from the way you used to get it. Up until the fourth generation, you had to steal it from a Chansey in the wild, which held it only 2% of the time in the second generation, then 5% starting with FireRed and LeafGreen — hours of hunting, a single item, and a stubborn old grudge against that perfectly innocent pink Pokémon.

From the fifth generation on, a character simply hands it to you, and breeding gets back to its real allies: the Everstone, the Destiny Knot, the Oval Charm and a solid Flame Body at the head of the party. Those who want to take the logic all the way then move on to hunting for Shiny Pokémon, where the Masuda method rests entirely on Eggs.

In modern games, an efficient breeding session comes down to a handful of moves. You set up a picnic with the female you're targeting and a Ditto, give the Everstone to the parent whose Nature you want, the Destiny Knot to the other, and make a sandwich with Egg Power before letting it run for a few minutes.

Then you open the basket, fill the party with Eggs, keep one Pokémon with Flame Body on board, and off you go. Sorting happens at hatching: Nature, stats, Ability. Nothing says you have to aim for perfection — most players breed above all for the joy of hatching a Pokémon that's all their own, and our Pokémon plushies carry that little ritual on rather nicely.

Pokémon breeding in one table

Frequently Asked Questions

• How many Egg Groups are there in the Pokémon games?
  There are fifteen Egg Groups: Flying, Amorphous, Water 1, Water 2, Water 3, Dragon, Fairy, Human-Like, Undiscovered, Bug, Ditto, Mineral, Monster, Field and Grass. Two Pokémon of opposite genders sharing at least one group can produce an Egg, except for the Undiscovered and Ditto groups, which do not breed.
• What are the chances of inheriting an Ability from the parents?
  Since the sixth generation, if the mother or the non-Ditto parent has an ordinary Ability, the baby inherits the same Ability slot 80% of the time. For a Hidden Ability, the odds are 60%. In the third and fourth generations, Abilities were not inherited at all: they were drawn at random from the species' pool.
• How do you hatch an Egg faster?
  A Pokémon with the Flame Body, Magma Armor or Steam Engine Ability placed in your party halves the number of steps required, and the effect does not stack if several holders are present. Since Sword and Shield, an incubation cycle is worth only 128 steps instead of the 256 or 257 it took before, which already speeds hatching up considerably.
• How many Baby Pokémon are there, and do you need an incense to get them?
  There are nineteen Baby Pokémon. From the third to the eighth generation, nine of them require one parent to hold a specific incense: Sea Incense for Azurill, Lax Incense for Wynaut, Rose Incense for Budew, Pure Incense for Chingling, Rock Incense for Bonsly, Odd Incense for Mime Jr., Luck Incense for Happiny, Full Incense for Munchlax and Wave Incense for Mantyke. Since Scarlet and Violet, these incenses no longer appear in the game and are no longer needed.
• Is there still a Day Care in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet?
  No. Scarlet and Violet offer neither a Day Care nor a Nursery: Eggs turn up in the picnic basket, as many as ten at a time, as soon as two compatible Pokémon are in the party. A sandwich that grants Egg Power raises your chances of finding them, and a Pokémon holding an Everstone becomes the only parent in the group that breeds.
• Is the Lucky Egg useful for breeding?
  No, despite the name. The Lucky Egg is a held item introduced in the second generation that raises the experience gained at the end of a battle by 50%. It has no effect on breeding or on hatching. Up until the fourth generation, the only way to get one was to take it from a wild Chansey, which held it just 2% of the time in the second generation, then 5% starting with FireRed and LeafGreen.
• Can a Legendary Pokémon breed?
  No Legendary Pokémon can breed, and neither can Ultra Beasts or Paradox Pokémon. Only two Mythical Pokémon escape the Undiscovered group: Manaphy and Phione. Manaphy paired with Ditto gives a Phione Egg, and that Phione will never be able to evolve into Manaphy.

In short

Breeding is the one place in the game where you don't catch Pokémon: you pass things down. A chosen Nature, five inherited stats, a Hidden Ability wrung out of a 60% chance, an Egg Move carried back from three generations earlier — every Egg you find in the basket is the output of a small watchmaker's mechanism that has been running since Gold and Silver. And it is also the only moment when a Snorlax weighing several hundred kilos begins its life small enough to fit inside a shell.