Breeding

Daycare Block

Breeding is a process where two Pokémon reproduce, resulting in a new level 1 Pokémon.

Requirements

In general, two Pokémon of opposite genders are required to breed. They also must both be part of the same Egg Group. This process will produce an Egg containing a level 1 Pokémon that is the base evolutionary form of the mother's Pokémon species (e.g., a mother Venusaur will produce a Bulbasaur Egg).

Exceptions

• Ditto can breed with any Pokémon except Pokémon in the Undiscovered Egg Group. This compatibility is not reliant on gender, so male, female, and genderless Pokémon can all breed with Ditto. This is the only way that genderless Pokémon can reproduce.
  • If a Ditto breeds with another Ditto, the resulting Egg will be a random species of Pokémon. It is possible for Pokémon not normally found inside Eggs to be inside of this Egg, such as evolved Pokémon, but Legendary Pokémon cannot normally hatch out of these Eggs.
• Pokémon in the Undiscovered Egg Group cannot breed with any Pokémon, including Ditto and other Pokémon in the Undiscovered Egg Group.
• Certain Pokémon, such as Snorlax, will not produce their base forms unless the mother is holding a certain incense. Without the incense, these Pokémon will produce the evolutionary forms immediately following their base forms (e.g., breeding a Snorlax without a Full Incense will produce an Egg containing another Snorlax instead of a Munchlax). These Pokémon and their required incenses are listed below.
  • Chansey, Blissey→Happiny: Luck Incense
  • Chimecho→Chingling: Pure Incense
  • Mantine→Mantyke: Wave Incense
  • Marill, Azumarill→Azurill: Sea Incense
  • Mr. Mime→Mime Jr.: Odd Incense
  • Roselia, Roserade→Budew: Rose Incense
  • Snorlax→Munchlax: Full Incense
  • Sudowoodo→Bonsly: Rock Incense
  • Wobbuffet→Wynaut: Lax Incense
• If a Nidoran♀ breeds or a Nidoran♂, Nidorino, or Nidoking and a Ditto breed, the resultant Egg may contain either Nidoran♀ or Nidoran♂.
• If an Illumise breeds or a Volbeat and a Ditto breed, the resultant Egg may contain either Illumise or Volbeat.

Getting started

Daycare interface.

To breed any Pokémon, a day care is required. By default a player has 3 day care boxes which can be changed via config or sidemod. After placing down a day care, two Pokémon from the player's party can be moved into the day care interface.

Breeding process

In order for two compatible Pokémon to breed, they must be supplied with the neccessary item requirements. There are three different item requirements for each type by default. A Pokémon's item requirements will only depend on its primary typing (E.g. Gastly will only require the items from the ghost category). If you were to breed two different pairs of gastly's you would need to get two times the amount of items than if you were to only breed one pair.

The item requires corresponding to each type are as follows:

Fire Item Count Flint and Steel 5 Lava Bucket 2 Blaze Rod 2	Water Item Count Scute 3 Water Bucket 2 Fresh Water 5	Grass Item Count Grass 5 Oak Leaves 3 Grass Block 3
Electric Item Count Block of Redstone 2 Glowstone 3 Redstone Lamp 2	Normal Item Count Leather 10 Hay Bale 3 White Wool 3	Poison Item Count Brewing Stand 1 Mycelium 3 Slime Block 3
Ground Item Count Clay 3 Brown Terracotta 3 Soul Soil 3	Ice Item Count Ice 10 Blue Ice 3 Snow Block 3	Dark Item Count Block of Coal 2 Skeleton Skull 1 Obsidian 1
Bug Item Count Dandelion 2 Cobweb 3 Spider Eye 3	Psychic Item Count Eye of Ender 5 Bookshelf 3 Clock 2	Steel Item Count Iron Block 3 Iron Bars 3 Silver Block 2
Flying Item Count Feather 10 Glass 3 Target 3	Ghost Item Count Ghast Tear 10 Soul Torch 3 Soul Sand 3	Fighting Item Count Oak Planks 3 Bricks 3 Temple Brick 2
Dragon Item Count Block of Diamond 1 Gold Block 2 End Stone 3	Fairy Item Count Cake 1 Lily of the Valley 3 Chorus Fruit 3	Rock Item Count Boulder 5 Granite 5 Stone 10

Once both Pokémon have been supplied with the necessary items, the breeding process will begin by selecting the green tick. The process by default takes a total of 1.5 hours.

You may leave the daycare until it has finished the process. Meanwhile, you can check open your inventory to check how your breedings are going.

Daycare interface from inventory.

Both the item requirements of a specific type and the time required for each Pokémon can be modified using datapacks.

It is possible to skip a single requirement for a Pokémon using Isi's Copper Hourglass. You can use Isi's Silver Hourglass to skip 25% of the timer for a Pokémon to breed. Since 9.0.7 you can only obtain Isi's Gold Hourglass (Completes all requirements and timers) and Isi's Diamond Hourglass Completes all requirements and timers for three of the day care boxes giving them perfect IVs, maximum happiness and a ribbon) through cheats.

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  Copper hourglass

• 

  Silver hourglass

• 

  Gold hourglass

• 

  Diamond hourglass

Hatching

After claiming an Egg, the player must walk around with the Egg until it hatches. An Egg will not hatch or become closer to hatching while it is stored in the PC. In an Egg's summary screen, instead of the usual information, there is only an indicator of roughly how long the Egg will take before it hatches. Eggs cannot participate in battle.

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  Regular Egg

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  Togepi Egg

After a sufficient amount of steps, the Egg will hatch. A "step" in regards to Egg hatching is equivalent to the time it takes to walk the full length of two blocks at normal speed. Methods of boosting traveling speed, like mounting a Pokémon, will increase the rate that Egg steps are deducted at. The amount of steps needed for an Egg to hatch depends on the species of Pokémon inside the Egg and the config setting for "stepsPerEggCycle" in the Pixelmon config file. If a Pokémon with either Flame Body or Magma Armor or Steam Engine is in the player's party, any Eggs in the player's party will hatch twice as fast. This effect does not stack if multiple party Pokémon have Flame Body or Magma Armor.

Once the Egg is hatched, a level 1 Pokémon will be revealed. The player can then use the newly-hatched Pokémon in battle and train it like a regular Pokémon.

Inheritance

Parents can pass on several traits that they possess to their offspring.

IVs

• Combined, the two parents will pass down three random IVs to their offspring. These IVs will not overlap with each other (i.e., the mother and father cannot both pass the same IV).
• Certain held items can influence the inherited IVs. These held items are detailed in the held items section below.

Poké Ball

• If two Pokémon of the same species are bred (regardless of form), the egg will have an equal chance of inheriting either parent's Poké Ball. Otherwise, the Poké Ball that the mother is in will be passed to her offspring unless the Poké Ball is a Master Ball or a Cherish Ball.
• In genderless breeding if a Pokémon in the right slot of a Day Care has an inheritable Poké Ball (any Poké Ball aside from Master Ball or a Cherish Ball) the egg will inherit the corresponding Poké Ball. Otherwise, the offspring would inherit Poké Ball matching with the Pokémon in the left slot.

Growth

• The growths of offspring are inherited from their parents. Growth inheritance is determined by the growth between the mother's and father's growths (e.g., ordinary is directly between runt and giant), with some random variance allowing the two growths directly next to the determined growth (using the previous example, small and huge growths would be possible as well). This slight variance in growth will occur even if both parents have the same growth. This is the only way to obtain Pokémon that are microscopic or ginormous, requiring two Pokémon that are pygmy or two Pokémon that are enormous (respectively) to breed together. Each offspring from these Pokémon will having a ⅓ chance of inheriting the corresponding extreme growth stats.

Ability

• The mother has an 80% chance of passing her Ability to her offspring, unless it's a hidden ability, in which case it will have a 60% chance to be passed to her offspring. The male's Ability has no bearing on the inherited Ability if a mother is present.
• If a male Pokémon breeds with a Ditto, the male Pokémon's Ability has a 60% chance of being passed on. This applies to normal abilities as well as hidden abilities. The Ditto's Ability does not affect this chance.
• If the Ability is not passed to the offspring, the child randomly gains one of the base Abilities for its species. This can result in regaining the parent's Ability if the parent was passing down a base Ability.

The 1/150 chance (by default) of obtaining a hidden Ability is not present when breeding. If neither of the statements above allow the inheritance of a hidden Ability, there is no chance that the offspring will have hidden Abilities.

Note: The inheritance of Abilities depends entirely on the Ability slot of the Pokémon rather than the Ability itself. If all Abilities are obtained legitimately and not edited with external NBT editing tools, this is not an issue, but improperly editing the Abilities of Pokémon without changing their Ability slots will cause breeding mechanics to use the original, unedited Ability when determining inheritance. More information can be found here.

Egg moves

If the mother or father have certain moves, their offspring could potentially inherit these moves despite not normally being able to learn them.

• If either the father or the mother (or both) know certain species-specific "Egg moves", their offspring will inherit these moves. The majority of these moves are unable to be learned by the Pokémon except with this method.
• If the father knows any moves that can be taught via TMs or HMs, the offspring will inherit these moves if they are able to normally learn these moves via TM/HM.
• If both the mother and father know moves that are in their offspring's level up movepool, the offspring will inherit these moves. This may cause the offspring to know moves that it would normally only be able to learn at higher levels.

If more than four moves fit the criteria above, the moves that the offspring will have are decided using the above list as a hierarchy; i.e., Egg moves have priority over the other criteria. If there are more than four potential Egg moves to be inherited, the mother's Egg moves are prioritized.

Additionally, the Mirror Herb also allows existing Pokémon to be given an Egg Move from another species that has that egg move. The Pokémon that needs the Egg move will hold the Mirror Herb and must have an empty move slot. The Pokémon that knows the Egg move has no requirements. The two Pokémon do not need to be compatible in any way (egg group, gender etc), and no offspring is produced when in the Day Care. Eventually, the first Pokémon will learn the required Egg move. This allows male-only and Genderless Pokemon to learn egg moves.

• An example of this is Azumarill learning Belly Drum. If Azumarill holds the Mirror Herb and has an empty slot, any Pokemon that knows Belly Drum can be put into the Daycare with it. This could be a Poliwag or even a Snorlax. Azumarill will eventually learn Belly Drum.

If a Pikachu or a Raichu breeds while holding a Light Ball, the offspring Pichu will know the move Volt Tackle regardless of whether the parents know the move.

Held items

Several held items influence aspects of the parent Pokémon that are passed to the offspring Pokémon (except Mirror Herb).

• Destiny Knot: If held by either parent, five IVs will be passed from the parents to the offspring instead of three.
• Everstone: If held by a parent, the offspring's Regional Forms and Nature will always match the nature of the parent holding the Everstone. If both parents are holding Everstones, the offspring will randomly inherit one of the parents' Natures.
• Mirror Herb: If held by a Pokémon that has an empty move slot, it will learn the egg move of the other Pokémon in the Day Care. This item is the only item that does not require compatible Pokémon nor produce an offspring.
• Power Items: If held by a parent, the offspring will always inherit the IV from that parent that corresponds to the power item. If the two parents are each holding a different power item, both of them will pass down their corresponding IVs. If both parents are holding the same type of power item, either one of them will be randomly chosen to pass on the corresponding IV.

Stat	Power item
HP	Power Weight
Attack	Power Bracer
Defense	Power Belt
Special Attack	Power Lens
Special Defense	Power Band
Speed	Power Anklet

Regional Form Breeding

When breeding Regional Form Pokémon, the offspring will always be the default non-regional form of that Pokémon, unless a parent with a Regional Form is holding an everstone, in which case the form of the parent holding the everstone will be taken. The following information is current as of version 9.0.7.

Other

• If the parents have differing original Trainers, their offspring have six times the normal chance of being Shiny. This stacks with the Shiny Charm's threefold boost for a maximum 0.44% chance of the child being Shiny.

Trivia

In Pixelmon versions existing in Minecraft 1.12 you used ranch blocks to breed pokemon. This process required an environment for pokemon to enjoy whilst breeding.

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  Ranch block

In earlier developmental versions of Pixelmon, the breeding process was different than the version that is currently in the mod. This antiquated version of breeding was never released publicly and was changed into the current version of breeding before the public release of breeding in Pixelmon.

Former breeding method

Rather than building a suitable environment for Pokémon to breed in, affection was instead increased by giving Pokémon certain items that they liked based on their types:

String	Eye of Ender	Gold Ingot	Redstone	Brick	Blaze Powder	Bread	Ghast Tear	Flower Pot	Soul Sand	Ice	Apple	Slimeball	Ender Pearl	Block of Quartz	Iron Ingot	Water Stone Shard

Each gift, if accepted, raised the corresponding Pokémon's affection by one stage. After giving a gift, the Pokémon would not accept another gift until a random amount of time between 20 and 40 minutes (1-2 Minecraft days) had passed.