How to Breed Pokémon in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet

Guide: Breeding Pokémon, Getting Egg Power, Hatching Eggs, and Catching Ditto in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet

Whether you’re shaping Pokémon to their absolute competitive best, shiny hunting, or just looking to obtain all three starters with a group of friends, breeding is back in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet and has been made easier than ever. In our guide below, we will teach you how to breed Pokémon, create the best sandwiches for Egg Power, capture Ditto, hatch eggs, and so much more! This is your Pokémon Scarlet & Violet guide to Pokémon breeding.

Where Can I Breed Pokémon in Scarlet & Violet?

Shockingly enough, unlike prior Pokémon games that required daycares to watch over two of the player’s creatures, trainers can breed Pokémon anywhere a table can stand in Scarlet & Violet–literally! Picnics are where Pokémon can breed together after the player releases their party from their Poké Balls. To set up a picnic, all the player has to do is find a flat surface in the wild. As long as you can set up camp and settle down, you’re good to go.

Upon placing the picnic table, players will notice a small basket sitting alongside the main centerpiece of the camp. If two Pokémon in the player’s party happen to fall into the same egg group and can breed together, this is where their eggs will appear after spending some time together. While breeding may seem like a waiting game, there are ways to ensure that the player’s Pokémon will begin making eggs fast–but we will get to that in just a moment.

As per usual with Pokémon games, having the only Pokémon you want to breed together in the party is the best course of action a player can take. Now that the player can potentially have six Pokémon that can breed with each other at once rather than two, the odds that they might end up with unwanted eggs is naturally higher. There is no way to choose which Pokémon will breed together–the only way to stop them from doing so is to place those you do not want to breed in the PC.

Egg Power and Sandwiches: The Fastest Way to Breed Pokémon

There is no reason to spend minutes waiting, hoping two of your Pokémon will finally have an egg together. For players looking to speed up the breeding process tremendously, a temporary Egg Power can be activated at a picnic by eating a variety of sandwiches. As the name implies, the Egg Power effect will help players breed Pokémon at a faster rate. There is an extremely easy way of obtaining sandwiches that provides Egg Power Lv. 2 at the beginning of the game.

In Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, there are quite a few sandwiches and meals such as the Tropical Sandwich and Marmalade Sandwich that can provide Egg Power, but why wait to obtain or create those when you can spend a minimal amount of poké dollars for what you want before you can even reach the second gym or a titan battle? The cheapest and best sandwiches to activate Egg Power in Pokémon Scarlet & Violet are packed with peanut butter and banana.

The ingredients needed to create “Great Peanut Butter Sandwiches” can be found at stores located in almost all of Scarlet & Violet’s cities. For the convenience of readers, I recommend going to the Mesagoza West market to get what you need, as this location is accessible less than an hour into Scarlet & Violet and is a mandatory area the player must visit. The Artisan Bakery and Sure Can stores contain every ingredient the player needs to create Great Peanut Butter Sandwiches.

You need to buy Bananas, Butter, Peanut Butter, and some Picks (it can be any type of Pick, but some may boost the effects of a sandwich). After purchasing all of these materials, open up a picnic wherever you can, and in the Creative Mode of the sandwich maker (“X” button when opening the Sandwich menu), select all your ingredients (“+” can be used to shuffle through ingredient menus). Creative Mode will allow you to bypass having to obtain recipes from NPCs and is an instant way to create almost every one of the game’s food recipes.

With less than a grand of cash and a few minutes spent, making Great Peanut Butter Sandwiches is as simple and easy as that! Now you will have Egg Power Lv. 2 and can help Pokémon breed within literally a minute or two. On a side note, just be careful not to leave your Nintendo Switch running too long while at a picnic!

In Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, you can get up to 10 eggs in a basket at a time. So unless you plan on shiny hunting or mass distributing, be sure to check on your basket with every minute that passes. You may accidentally fill up your entire party with eggs if you are not careful!

Skipping Steps: The Best Ways to Hatch Eggs

If there is one thing Pokémon breeders are constantly searching for, it’s ways to cheat the system, lay back, and collect the most amount of steps possible while doing nothing to hatch their eggs. Sadly, no exploits like the Prism Tower loop in Pokémon X & Y have been discovered yet in Scarlet & Violet. However, that does not mean hatching eggs has not been made easier.

Get on your Koraidon or Miraidon, hit the dash button, and just run for about two to four minutes. You can be climbing, swimming, or gliding, and there will be a chance the egg will hatch mid-activity. Thanks to Scarlet & Violet’s ridable legendary Pokémon, hatching eggs takes the shortest amount of time compared to any other entry in the entire franchise. Seriously, do not even think about walking on foot for this process.

Getting What You Want: How and Where to Catch Ditto in Scarlet & Violet

Like every previous Pokémon game, Ditto is the best way to breed specific Pokémon without having to obtain any duplicates or specific parent groups as the shapeshifting creature will always mimic the Pokémon it is placed together with—in other words, for those looking to breed Fuecoco, Quaxly, and Sprigatito for their friends, now is the time to pay attention!

In Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, Ditto can be found within the West Province’s Area Two and Area Three–you can technically obtain Ditto as soon as the first gym badge if you are daring enough to try and capture a Pokémon that is usually roaming around in the level thirty range. Before rushing off to find the iconic light-purple imposter Pokémon with your Quick Balls in hand, players should note that they are not actually looking for Ditto itself while exploring.

There is an imposter among our wild Pokémon! Ditto cannot be found in its original form in the wild. Much like this past year’s clever Pokémon GO TCG collectible, Game Freak has disguised Ditto as other Pokémon in Scarlet & Violet. Sadly, there are no dead giveaway beady-eyes to help you spot one, but we do have an effective method of finding Ditto.

Catching Ditto in the wild may seem time-consuming on the surface, but there is a simple method that allows players to instantly identify whether or not the Pokémon in front of them is the shapeshifter in hiding. By simply locking onto a Pokémon with the ZR button, the player can see a Pokémon’s name right above the creature.

For anyone who is finding Ditto for the first time, if you have captured the other local Pokémon in the area, try searching for a Pokémon with the name of “???”. While this may be a tip for those deep into exploring Paldea, the same goes for Zorua and Zoroark, who are hidden the same way within Scarlet & Violet’s wild areas!