Effort Values are hidden stats that influence how a Pokémon’s stats grow. When a Pokémon defeats an opponent in battle, it gains effort points based on the defeated Pokémon’s species. The effort values contribute to stats as the Pokémon levels up, allowing trainers to customize their team’s strengths.
Each of the five stats (HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, and Special) has its own effort value.
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Effort Points
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Vitamins
Vitamins increase a Pokémon’s effort values. These include:
- HP Up raises HP
- Protein raises Attack
- Iron raises Defense
- Calcium raises Special
- Carbos raises Speed
These items raise a Pokémon’s effort value for the corresponding stat by 2,560 points.
The items cannot be used on a Pokémon if the stat’s effort value exceeds 25,600.
Recalculating Stats
A Pokémon’s stats recalculate when a Pokémon’s level increases. If a Pokémon reaches level 100 before its efforts are maxed out, further increases to the effort levels will not impact the Pokémon’s stats.
The workaround for this is to place the Pokémon in Bill’s PC. Retrieving the Pokémon from the PC recalculates its stats, applying any missed effort level gains.
This “box trick” is useful when raising a Pokémon received in a trade, as traded Pokémon receive an extra 50% experience points while gaining no boost in effort points. A traded Pokémon is more likely to reach level 100 without maxing out its effort levels.
Starting with the advanced generation, EV-altering items including vitamins and berries cause stats to recalculate. The PC may also be used for recalculating stats obtained from battling wild Pokémon.
Starting in the Black/White titles, stats recalculate as effort points are gained.
Terminology
As a hidden value in the Pokémon games, Game Freak did not provide names for these values.
This lead to the Pokémon community coming up with its own term. In the English-speaking community, the term Stat EXP was used, while the Japanese community had 努力値 (effort value).
Since I tended toward translations of the terms used on Japanese sites, Pokémon Forever started using the translated term Effort Value. While this term ended up being fairly encompassing, my original usage included:
- Effort Points: Similar to experience points, this referred to the points gained from defeating a Pokémon. This term was mostly used on the “Effort Points per … Area” pages for advanced generation titles.
- Effort Level: Equivalent to the number of points a stat gains from an effort value. This appeared on the “Effort Level Per Effort Value” page, which listed the “minimum effort value required to reach any given effort level”.