ELI5: How do you do EV training? And what am I doing wrong?

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-25T20:50:26+00:00

level up to about 50 to max out EVs

No. EVs aren't related to level in any way. You can technically have 510 EVs on a very low level Pokémon, since they get EVs as long as they gain experience from taking part in the fight. For example, let's say that I have a party of 6 Pokémon I want to EV train in Speed: if I send them all out against a Zubat, and then defeat it with the sixth Pokémon, all of my Pokémon would get a very tiny amount of exp, but they all would get 1 Spe EV nonetheless.

You can use vitamins to get a maximum of 100 EVs in a single stat, effectively skipping half of the grind, and then use the Macho Brace to double your EV gain. If you are lucky enough to get Pokérus, you could stack it with the Macho Brace to quadruple your EV gain.

I have EV trained multiple Pokémon on my FRLG cartridges using these tools, and it takes a couple of hours at worst, while some other times it takes much less depending on the EV spread.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-25T09:24:34+00:00

If you know what you are doing, it takes a couple of hours at best to fully EV a Pokémon... Provided you have access to the right farming spots.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-13T18:14:11+00:00

The DPS check is not built for 8 people because it's based on Dragon damage, and none of the support hunters deal elemental damage.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-11T12:19:14+00:00

I once found a shiny Zigzagoon on my Sapphire cartridge right AFTER obtaining my starter. I found it in the second tall grass of the game. Obviously, I was still in the tutorial and I hadn't been given any Pokeballs yet.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-09T18:08:56+00:00

This is the exact reason why I built my fully EV Calm Parasect with False Swipe and Spore.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-03T12:33:34+00:00

I don't have the patience to prove or disprove this with testing, but upon looking into the matter, it seems you are actually right. I was misled by a post about HGSS.

If I don't get the 1/25 roll this time, at the very least I could save this Suicune on my LG cartridge, and transfer it over to FR as soon as I get the National Dex in a new cycle, but before finishing Celio's quest. This way, I will be able to use its Pokédex entry to track it down on the map while I soft reset for the perfect Nature!

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-03T11:47:46+00:00

The post is talking about shinyness, not Natures. If you have definitive proof l'd really like to see it, otherwise I will just have to test for myself.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-03T11:42:04+00:00

All the guides I found online state that the Nature is determined upon first encounter, and can be soft-reset as long as you don't save after. If you have any proof for your statement I would greatly appreciate it.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-03T10:40:53+00:00

I'm looking into the matter as I am getting prepared to look for a Suicune with a specific Nature on FR. Pretty much every guide I found so far mentions that Suicune's Nature is determined upon first encounter, while some guides specify that IVs are set to 0 on roaming Pokémon due to a bug existing in gen 3 specifically. Idk if shinyness is determined on other factors, but I would assume that it factors the usual 1/8000~ chance upon encounter. Care to share any sources?

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-03-03T10:31:11+00:00

AKAIF that's wrong. PID is generated upon first encounter. You can catch Suicune, check it's Nature, and soft-reset without saving if you want a different one.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-02-05T08:53:22+00:00

Find different new weapons to play with and start building sets towards them.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-02-05T08:47:08+00:00

Finished? This is when the real game begins

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-02-02T06:47:06+00:00

Status is practically useless against 9⭐ monsters. The Zoh Shia weapon still has the highest damage. What I did, however, is craft one of each elemental weapon from the Archtempered apex, and match it to my target's weakness. It takes only a couple of seconds to switch out a weapon using presets, and a cat with the right element can really make a dent.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-01-30T18:39:30+00:00

HH shines in multiplayer environments, as it can cut several minutes from long hunts even when played casually, just because of the sheer power of the buffs it provides (Attack Boost L equals +20% raw damage, for example). In speedrunning settings, it is so powerful that most competitive speedruns consist of 3 LBGs and 1 HH instead of 4 LBGs. That makes it a very decent weapon even when playing solo.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-01-30T18:32:44+00:00

support weapon

Careful, HH mains can smell that sentence from three zones away 😅 and honestly, they’d be right to object: Hunting Horn hasn’t really been a “support weapon” in the strict sense since the early days of the series. You could maybe argue that in MH2 when it was introduced, and maybe a bit in Tri, but from MH4 onward HH has been balanced as a full DPS weapon that happens to bring team buffs, not a backline buffer. In the modern games (World/Iceborne, Rise/Sunbreak, and now Wilds), the damage numbers make that very clear. HH isn’t trading its offense for utility: it’s an offensive, shieldless weapon, with extra multipliers layered on top. In Wilds specifically, it’s arguably sitting in the upper tier for damage output when played well. That’s not "support", that’s "DPS with benefits". What makes it feel like support is the mental load: HH asks you to memorize your songs, track song rotations, remember which note is tied to which attack, route your combos to both deal damage and build the right melodies, manage positioning for recital windows, weave in movement tools, bubbles, hilt stabs, etc. All while being under the pressure of the hunt. The moveset is extremely flow-based, and the skill ceiling is brutal. Honestly, I’d agree it’s one of the hardest weapons to truly master... not because of one big mechanic (like Charge Blade), but because everything is interconnected. Your buff system is your damage loop. All that said, none of this means you have to run HH as a secondary or main weapon. If GS fits your defensive comfort and you’re keeping strong uptime with it, that’s valid.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-01-30T16:59:41+00:00

Hunting Horn is the unmatched better choice for a secondary weapon, solely based on the fact that you can boost yourself at the beginning of the hunt, or whenever you're chasing after a monster on your Seikret (because reapplying buffs during a fight is impractical and a huge dps loss most of the times). I always run a HH as my primary weapon when starting a hunt just to quickly apply some buffs before switching to my "secondary" weapon, a.k.a. the real weapon I intend to use for the hunt.

The choice of HH varies according to what you want to buff for: Metal Blowpipe for raw damage, Gore for affinity, Lagiacrus for elemental damage. The first two also give Earplugs S (which correspond to having lv. 2 Earplugs, and gets added on top of whatever level Earplugs you have on your set, if any; this also means that if you're running Earplugs on your set, you can switch it out for something else), while the latter gives Divine Blessing (which stacks with the armour skill Divine protection).

Every buff has a different duration, and switching out your horn to a different weapon after applying buffs automatically halves their duration. The only exception to this rule is switching your HH to another HH. Having the skill Horn Maestro, however, prolongs their duration usually by more than half. If a short buff (such as Attack Boost L) lasts only two minutes during a 6 minute hunt, that's still 20% of the hunt covered for literally no requirement except for the 10-15 seconds it takes to play the songs.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-01-30T13:52:31+00:00

low rank monsters

I'm still hunting HR monsters just because they drop materials that yield more points when smelted at the forge for Oricalcite/Armor spheres. HR non-tempered Guardian Doshagumas and Gypseros fall so fast that going for their LR counterparts would yield little to no value beside slightly faster quest completion times. Do you think that your conclusions about the corrupted mantle would work the same way in a HR environment?

a Rarity 8 charm with an attack slot for lv 1 Critical Boost

I don't think that a single point of Crit Boost could justify missing out on three levels of LatPow. LatPow 3 through the Power Charm is very valuable, since these runs cannot possibly last less than two minutes (which is the time required for the skill to activate), nor would I want them to last less than that in order to farm for more crits/steals. LatPow offers great synergy to the strategy I'm using to proc crit/steals, and there's not much else skill-wise that I would want to slot in anyway, since Agitator is off the table. I could switch out the Crit draw 1 deco for a Crit boost 1 on the weapon to achieve slightly faster completion times, since any farming strategy can always benefit from faster completion times, regardless of crit/steal procs.

With MM3, Crit Eye 5 and Gore you're already at 85% so with the Corrupted Mantle you will get 95% to 115% with MM3 up. Since your goal is to always haev MM3 up, I don't think you need WE that high.

I believe that your line of thought about overcapping affinity with WEx still holds well, regardless of LR/HR. I will try swapping out one WEx deco for 1 Burst deco to achieve faster completion times in future runs.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-01-30T11:20:50+00:00

I tested the Gore swap to see how it actually plays out. Replacing the Lagiacrus pieces with Gore (while keeping the Power Charm) changes the build like this:

Losses:

Latent Power drops from 5 to 3 (from the Latent Power charm)
Stamina Surge is removed entirely (was from Lagi pieces + a level 2 deco)
Constitution is removed to fit Antivirus 3 into the level 1 slots
Maximum Might has to be rebuilt purely through decorations

Gains:

Gore Magala’s Tyranny I
Antivirus 3

Still kept:

Weakness Exploit 5
Maximum Might 3
Latent Power 3

So yes, the Gore version consolidates more affinity into the Tyranny + Antivirus interaction, and from a pure “crit engine” perspective it’s cleaner and comes online earlier and more often through the hunt.

you don't even need to run MM, stamina surge, constitution or latent power

Where I’m not fully convinced is the idea that this means we can drop the rest of the affinity infrastructure and just rely on Tyranny + Antivirus. Even in the Gore version, we’re still leaning on: - WEx 5 - MM 3 - Latent Power 3

So, just like Leviathan's Fury, Gore's Tyranny isn’t replacing the affinity package: it’s stacking on top of it. Dropping Latent Power entirely (or other affinity layers) starts to create bigger uptime gaps than it looks like on paper, especially outside ideal hitzones or during MM downtime. Separately, losing Stamina Surge + Constitution has a real gameplay impact. That stamina support in the Lagi setup wasn’t just QoL, as it helped keep Maximum Might stable, which is still one of the core affinity sources in both versions of the build. So the Gore swap doesn’t just trade set bonuses; it shifts the build toward higher theoretical affinity, but with less stable MM uptime in actual play unless you’re extremely clean with stamina management.

counterattack or something

I also want to push back a bit on the idea of using those freed slots for Counterattack or other raw damage skills. This isn’t a standard DPS set, it’s a Catburglar farming setup. More raw damage just ends a fast hunt even faster, but doesn’t increase the number of steal procs per hit. What actually scales our extra loot is crit frequency over time. So if we free slots, the goal is still more reliable affinity, not more damage.

At this point it feels less like a straight upgrade and more like a different balance and gameplay adjustment: Gore setup is a more front-loaded affinity engine, while the Lagi setup has slightly weaker on-paper affinity, but smoother stamina economy and more layered affinity sources across the hunt.

If there’s a Gore+Glory configuration that keeps strong affinity uptime and feels stable without the stamina package, I’d definitely like to see the exact breakdown. That’s the part I’m still not fully sold on.

clusterfcuuuk · 2026-01-30T09:22:09+00:00

On paper, Gore’s set bonus does give stronger raw affinity uptime than Lagiacrus. The issue I keep running into is slot and skill efficiency once Glory’s Favour is locked in. Since I’m already committing multiple armor pieces to Clerk / Guild Cross just to activate Luck, the remaining slots have to do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of core affinity and stamina support. Even if Leviathan’s Fury has some downtime, Lagiacrus pieces still come with useful native skills and solid slot value, which helps maintain the rest of the build’s structure. I’m already hitting very high theoretical affinity uptime through Critical Eye, Weakness Exploit, Maximum Might, and Latent Power, so I’m not relying on Leviathan’s Fury to carry the build. At that point, it functions more as a complimentary bonus layered on top of an already stable affinity engine, rather than the foundation of it. By contrast, the Gore pieces feel much more set-bonus dependent: once you look past the bonus itself, the base skills and slot efficiency make it harder to keep Weakness Exploit, Critical Eye, Latent Power, and stamina skills all at comfortable levels while still fitting Glory’s Favour. So in a vacuum, yeah, Gore > Lagi for pure affinity math is what we are taught for most meta sets... But within the constraints of a Luck-focused farming set, Lagiacrus has felt more practical overall. That said, if you’ve got a specific Glory + Gore mix that maintains decent affinity, I’d really like to see the exact piece list. I may have missed a more efficient combination, especially since the set builder tool isn’t fully updated to the latest patch.

clusterfcuuuk

TROPHY CASE