Breeding and Everstone

[EngiMatikul]

Ok, so I know this trick is SUPPOSED to work because I got it to work once, BUT in a recent breeding spree with modest Ralts this trick has failed me, miserably.

For those who don't know, attaching an Everstone to the female will usually keep the personality trait of the female pokemon. Now, like I said, I did it before on my Diamond version and it had worked perfectly, and I had a box full of Digletts with the same trait. Unfortunately, I can't say the same with Ralts as the personality traits still seem random; I DID get 2 Modest ones eventually, but after like 25 tries and frankly I'm getting more lonely Ralts than Modest.

So my question is, is there anything I'm messing up on that's making my baby Ralts not modest? D: D: D:

[RattataGuy]

For those who don't know, attaching an Everstone to the female will usually keep the personality trait of the female pokemon.

Well, it's not "usually." If you attach an everstone to the female then the baby has a 50% chance of receiving the female's nature. So in the case of your diglett, you were lucky. In the case of your ralts, you're just unlucky unfortunately.

[Elec Man EXE]

What RG said. Its only a 50% chance. Luck just isn't on your side this time I guess.

[EngiMatikul]

Well, I thought this at first, until I had about 50 eggs of Ralts, and out of all of them, 2 were modest. somehow this seems more like 5% rather than 50%...

[Negrek]

Were the ralts and the ditto from different-language games? D/P isn't region-locked, but the everstone breeding trick fails when breeding pokémon from different languages of origin (i.e. a ditto you got off GTS that's from Japan and a ralts from an English-version game).

[EngiMatikul]

first off its not a ditto. Second, no I bred it with an ingame traded pokemon (that haunter you get in the snow city).

[Negrek]

Hmm, interesting. Perhaps the game treats ingame traders as foreign for some reason; I've never heard of any problems with that, though. If that's not it, then your luck is just crap.

[EngiMatikul]

Well, if it is my luck, this would also explain why I got 4 Haban berries in a row from the berry girl... wtf how many dragons are gonna be afraid of other dragons that they need Haban berries -_-;;

[rinku]

Were the Ralts or the Diglett GBA cart imports, or caught in the wild? I could certainly see GBA imports being considered "foreign".

For what it's worth - odds of you only getting 2 Modest pokémon in 50 trials if the everstone WAS working are about 33 million to one, while that rate is about expected for 1/25 random nature. I think we can rule out a run of bad luck.

Four of the same type of berry in a row out of 17 types is only 1/4913! Much less than the chance of seeing a shiny (although since you only get one berry a day, it IS a much rarer event in practical terms). Certainly, with millions of D/P games out there, there will be thousands of gamers to whom this will happen.

[EngiMatikul]

Ok, for that now here's the thing.

I initially bred a Ralts from a GBA cartridge game without everstone until I got a modest ralts baby. I then proceeded to attach the everstone to the ralts baby and replaced its mother.

The same procedure was used on the diglett, but this time I actually caught the former diglett (and the father Camerupt as well). So, the child bred is considered mine from ingame, but the former mother was not for the Ralts.

Could this be the issue? It would be rather strange though...

[rinku]

Try breeding the baby Ralts with a father who was not obtained from a trade of any sort. The Haunter affecting things seems a lot more likely than the original mother's trade status being carried over to her kids.

Probably it's as simple as "If one of the parents is a trade, everstone doesn't work".

[EngiMatikul]

I actually bred one of the child ralts (male) with another child ralts, it still didn't work. Even more weird, the guy said they "got along", implying that they were traded, when both of the OT was me for the child.

Weird o_O

[Elec Man EXE]

Actually, I'm pretty sure 2 pokemon of the same species will usually "get along". I saw a chart some time ago that said something like this...

Same Species, Traded = Fasted Egg time
Same Species, same ID = 2nd Fastest
Different Species, Trade = 3rd (This may or may not be switched with #2, can't remember for sure)
Different Species, same ID = 4th

And I believe all combinations from 3rd and higher will give the message that they get along.

As for the actual problem... I really don't know. I've bred traded pokemon before (both traded from other D/P games, and transfered from my GBA games) and never had a single issue with the Everstone trick. In fact, I just finished a breeding run using a male Lucario and a Modest Ditto w/ Everstone that I transfered from Emerald, and I was getting Modest Riolu like crazy.

[EngiMatikul]

Anyway I'm currently testing this out with my modest female surskit I imported from my Ruby game... so far it looks promising as out of 5 eggs I got two modest but I could just have been lucky, so I'll be hatching more eggs in hopes of more modest surskits while training my ralts family evolution pokemon.

One of the positive things that came out of this was that I also eventually got an adamant male ralts in my massive hatching spree and so far he's turning out quite nicely... :>

[rinku]

Yeah, there are effectively three breeding rates:

Same species/Different OT -> Fastest
Same species/Same OT OR Different species/Different OT -> Medium
Different species/Same OT -> Slow

Something just occurred to me - are you SURE you had the female holding the Everstone? I know I've accidentally given it to the male in the past. That would explain everything...

[EngiMatikul]

YES.

I have been absolutely sure that the ralts was holding it. Because halfway through (aka after 20 eggs) I went back and checked and it had the everstone.

[rinku]

Well, must have been the father. You said that was an in-game trade, so OT was NOT you.

[EngiMatikul]

Wow, that's really interesting. Wonder why its like that o_O