In Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, your Pokemon’s stats are more important than ever. To defeat five-star and six-star Tera Raid battles, you’ll need to maximize the efficiency of your Pokemon’s stats, which means breeding perfect IV Pokemon and training their EVs correctly.
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Essentially, IVs are your Pokemon’s base stat potential. The higher the IV, the higher that stat has the potential to be through leveling up. If you’re wondering how to see this information for yourself, you’ve come to the right place. Here, we’ll take a look at how to unlock the Judge function, and how to check your team’s IVs.
Updated February 11, 2025, by Andrew Scariati: How to check IVs in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet will take a bit of effort, but once you’ve unlocked the Judge Function, it will be easier than ever before thanks to this quality-of-life change. We’ve also added an explanation clarifying the difference between IVs and EVs.
How To Get The Judge Function
The Judge Function is an in-game tool that you can use to check the IV (Individual Values) spread that a Pokemon of your choice has in its stats.
However, this menu isn’t something you get by default.
To unlock the Judge Function in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, you’ll need to progress through the main story of the game until you beat all three main arcs (The Gym Leaders, Team Star, and the Path of Legends Titan Pokemon).
Then, complete the final story arc until you see the credits.
Once you have reached that point, you must go to a Pokemon Center, where the nurse will tell you that the Judge Function is now unlocked.
How To Check IVs
To check your IVs, simply open up your Boxes menu, and select the Pokemon you want to check.
Then, press the Plus (+) button to cycle to the Judge Function screen.
Here, you can see the IVs of each of your Pokemon’s stats, ranging from “No Good” to “Best”.
The exact value range of each label is shown below.
- Best – 31
- Fantastic – 30
- Very Good – 26-29
- Pretty Good – 16-25
- Decent – 1-15
- No Good – 0
While these IVs are randomly generated when you catch or hatch the Pokemon, they can still be changed later using the Hyper Training Function.
These numbers don’t tell you how strong that particular stat is currently, but rather the native potential of that stat, which adds to the final result once you have fully trained that Pokemon.
The higher the IV, the higher values that stat can reach once it has been fully EV-trained or fed stat-boosting items like Protein.
There are five Pokemon in Scarlet and Violet who have their IVs set at distinct values, and thus are not randomized.
These four Pokemon will always have 20 IVs in every stat:
- Raging Bolt (Scarlet)
- Gouging Fire (Scarlet)
- Iron Crown (Violet)
- Iron Boulder (Violet)
However, Terapagos, the Legendary Pokemon from the Scarlet & Violet DLC, will always have their IVs set at 31 in every stat except Attack, which will be 15.
What Are IVs And Why Are They Useful?
As mentioned above, IVs are essentially the DNA that determines your specific Pokemon’s stats.
When you catch or breed any Pokemon, it will be randomly assigned IVs ranging from zero to 31, with 31 being the absolute best.
However, certain Pokemon prefer to have zero in a given IV if they want to have the lowest value in that given stat.
For example, slow Pokemon who are perfect for Trick Room teams will want zero Speed IVs.
Every single Pokemon has different IVs, which is why you can catch two different Pikachu with different stats.
When creating a competitive team, you’ll want to make sure all your Pokemon’s stats are as good as they can be, because your opponent will be doing the same thing.
Although IVs are very important, you’ll need to choose the correct nature for your Pokemon and ensure you level up their EVs to maximize their beneficial stats.
This can be a long process, but it is made significantly easier in Scarlet and Violet thanks to Hyper Training and Nature Mints.
What’s The Difference Between IVs & EVs?
IVs (Individual Values) are your Pokemon’s inherent strengths and weaknesses, judged on a scale from zero to 31.
Previously, IVs couldn’t be changed, but thanks to Hyper Training and Nature Mints, you can now improve a Pokemon’s IVs and maximize them if you have the proper items. Caught Pokemon can have IVs anywhere between 0 and 31.
EVs (Effort Values) are your Pokemon’s stats that can be influenced as a result of training or through the use of items like vitamins, feathers, or berries with a minimum value of zero and a maximum value of 252.
EVs can be increased or decreased depending on what berries or vitamins you feed it. Caught Pokemon begin with zero EVs in each stat.
To illustrate the effects of perfect IVs and maximum EVs, a level 100 Koraidon with maximum stats in each and a helpful Nature will boast a 405 Speed stat.
However, a Koraidon with a hindering Nature and 0s in both IVs and EVs will have a 297 Speed stat.
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