Talk:Egg cycle

Values

has anybody noticed tha all these values are DIFFERENT from the ones reported in any other Pokémon website? how comes? I checked Aggron, Lairon and nidorino.... they're all less than 255 higher than the values reporde on legendarypokémon, serebii etc. can someone explain this to me? --Ipergorilla 21:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I think these are the stats taken straight from the game. Serebii, LegendaryPokemon and most other websites tell you how many egg cycles you need to hatch the pokemon. Egg cycles remove 256 (255 in gen IV) steps every time they occur. Thus their stats are the egg cycles * 256 Link 23:35, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Cycles

Umm... I was breeding a bunch of Riolu the other day, and it took 6885 steps for them to hatch, not 6630. This is 27*255, not 26*255 like the formula claims. Does this mean that Pokemon don't hatch when the egg cycles/happiness value reach 0, but rather when it reaches -1? I was using Pokemon Pearl if it helps. (If this confuses anybody, imagine a Pokemon egg with an egg cycle of 3. After 255 steps, the egg cycle would drop to 2. A second and third 255 steps would drop it to 1 and 0. If it hatched upon reaching 0, it would be 3*255 steps. But if it had to finish out the 0 phase to reach -1, it would be 4*255 steps instead, which is what I suspect.) --Paranoid Trainer 05:27, 1 June 2010 (UTC)

list's organization is off

i was hatching magikarp and wanted to know how fast they hatch (really fast). anyway, when I clicked on the little icon to organize the list by order of cycles, magikarp is not first - it shows SINGLE TYPE pokemon first, then after they are done it goes to the DUAL TYPE pokemon. weird, huh? figured i'd point that out. - unsigned comment from Dsaerno (talk • contribs)

I can fix that. —darklordtrom 00:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, that's what you wanted fixed. I found and fixed a different issue. (Really should read the talk page before going in with guns blazing, but hey - it worked for America...) :D —darklordtrom 01:14, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Its fixed, slightly ugly but it works :D Link 15:37, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Not quite fixed yet. Trying to organize by number of steps doesn't work. Phantom♫Junkie 19:17, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

It's been 6 months (since the last post about this issue) and it still hasn't been solved. Someone please fix the tables. Thanks in advance. SaitoFX 21:55, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

You can organize them by egg cycles. I just tested it and that will get it correctly, and it's the same order. And you can still use the other wrong order for something instead of having 2 orders that are the same. Efaj 03:50, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Minimum steps?

The article implies that the number of egg cycles is fixed, and that the number of steps per egg cycle is also fixed at 255. However, it also says the number of steps is the "minimum"? How is this possible, shouldn't it be the exact number of steps, or is there some randomness thrown in there? - unsigned comment from DisgruntledGoat (talk • contribs)

IIRC, If you retrieve another egg from the daycare the step counter is reset to zero, so you lose the steps already taken on that egg cycle. Also, if two eggs are due to hatch at the end of the same egg cycle, only one will hatch. The other will hatch one cycle later. I don't know if either were changed for Gen V. Werdnae (talk) 20:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Sortable Tables

The tables don't sort correctly (for me, at least). For example, when I try to sort by Steps, a 5355 always tops the list, no matter if it's descending or ascending. I looked at the code, and it all looks fine to me. Does anybody have any insight into this problem? --LimeGreenCharizard-- 10:49, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not getting that problem. 2805 on ascending and 10455 on descending. You try to sort on any of the other column of the table? Luna Tiger * the Arc Toraph 11:23, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't work for me or for the users of the discussion "list of oeganization is off" up there↑. I realised that the list seperates pokemon with one egg group from those with two, I fixed it so it works now, but an admin needs to fix the template to not link to the none group that I added. Pikiwyn ^talk 11:27, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't think the problem was with the egg groups, seeing as it was number of steps, but what you did seems to have worked. It sorts fine now (for me, at least). --LimeGreenCharizard-- 11:48, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Mew

How many egg cycles are required to hatch a Mew? The main article says it's 2, this article says it's 121, and veekun says it's 120... ~Enervation 22:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Legendaries

For what exactly do you need the egg cycles for legendaries or babies if you don´t want to cheat? It´s useless for players who don´t want to do that, isn´t it? -Ignore my horrible English-Shadow Kyurem 08:50, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't really hurt to provide the info. It's in the games, just unused. --SnorlaxMonster 10:58, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Gen VI values

Should the step counts be tested manually or just should we all just wait for a data dump for risk of time/reliability/user error? -- EnosShayrem_talk 17:21, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

User error is not impossible from a data dump. Someone still has to enter it on the page, or format it for entering. The short answer, though, is: there's no need to wait on what you can figure out yourself. Tiddlywinks (talk) 17:41, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Gen VI different Egg cycle length

I've done a bunch of testing, and for some reason, it appears that the length of an Egg cycle in ORAS (and, I assume at the moment, in Gen VI generally) is 257 steps. I suspect that, "under the hood", it's actually more like 256 + 1. I can only assume this is a case of a counter using ">=" or "<=" when it should be using just ">" or "<", meaning that the Egg cycle length ends up being 257 even though the value being compared might be 256; and when you operate on "256" (like when a Hatching Power is used), you still get a "+1". This all fits with my observations. ...It's either that, or something else controls the "+1", but I tried a few things (changing my party size (5 or 6, counting the Egg), changing the number of Eggs in my party, removing Pokemon from the Day Care) and it doesn't seem to me that anything changes it.

I'm mostly reaching out here wondering if anyone has reason to think I'm wrong or that I'm missing something. (I also know I haven't really explained myself a lot here, so if you have a question, feel free to ask.)

I'm also wondering now how far back this goes. This needs manual checking. (And I really should double-check XY.) So I'll look into that, and eventually, I'll edit what I find/have found into the page... If someone would like to help check a generation or two, I think all you need to do is save before the Day Care Man when he has an Egg (Magikarp has the shortest hatch time), pick up the Egg, see how many steps it takes to hatch, then reset, walk about 300 steps before picking up the Egg this time (but keep track of how many steps you take here), then pick it up and see how many steps it takes to hatch then. If you subtract the first number from the second and then add how many steps you walked before picking the Egg up the second time, the difference should be a multiple of the Egg cycle length (hopefully x1, possibly x2).

(Tangentially, I'm also wondering if the chance to gain friendship is also on a 257-step cycle, since Egg cycles are supposed to be stored in the friendship variable and use its counter.) Tiddlywinks (talk) 13:02, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I've done some egg cycle testing lately (because what else can you do while breeding lol), and I've noticed some discrepencies too. I'll have to do some more testing to actually make this claim, but I believe the egg cycles listed listed here on Bulbapedia are a little off. If I'm not mistaken, the agg cycles are multiples of five rather than multiples of 5 plus one (eg. 15 cycles rather than 16). Also, Flame Body and Magma Armor seem to decrease the steps to hatch rather than the cycles as an integer (there's no rounding for 1.5 cycles, it's just that many steps. Once more, I can't back any of this up yet, I just posted this so that someone could test this on their own if they wanted to. PlatypusVenom (talk) 14:57, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, Flame Body/Magma Armor make an Egg's Egg cycle count decrease by 2 instead of 1. So it's not "exactly" half, it ends up as half rounded up. I did one test with Magma Armor before and it seems to work like that (or consistent with that). Without Magma Armor, I could hatch the Egg in 1,162 steps (4*257 + 134, or 5 Egg cycles); with Magma Armor, I could hatch the same Egg in 648 steps (2*257 + 134, or 3 Egg cycles). I didn't even think to double-check the length of the Egg cycle with Magma Armor at that point, but half doesn't seem to even work for those numbers (128*5 = 640 (or 129*5 = 645), so if it were that, the Egg should've hatched somewhat earlier). The Hatching Powers, though...those definitely affect the length of an Egg cycle. Tiddlywinks (talk) 15:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I just realized that I think you may right about the Egg cycles (for a species to hatch), PlatypusVenom. I pretty much forgot about it, but during my tests with Magikarp, I always came up with 5 Egg cycles to hatch instead of 6 like this page currently says (and the Egg always said "This Egg will hatch soon!" after I picked it up, which is supposed to be for 1-5 Egg cycles). (I didn't even notice in my response above that I was typing "5" Egg cycles and the page said "6". =P )

(And just to note this: I did what I described above to test the Egg cycle length in XY and I got 257 there as well; and also 5 Egg cycles for Magikarp.) Tiddlywinks (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2015 (UTC)

Has anyone tested the friendship cycle length? Egg cycles are supposedly stored in the friendship values, implying that friendship increases every 257 steps as well, but we should do testing to confirm this... not sure how to effectively test friendship though. Also, should we just start correcting the egg cycles on the list by hand? PlatypusVenom (talk) 04:39, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Lemme start with a bit of a preamble before addressing those questions... (Look for the bold.)

BW is like ORAS/XY. Most importantly, this means that picking up or hatching an Egg doesn't affect anything, contrary to what this page currently says.

In HGSS... 1) An Egg cycle is 255 steps. 2) Picking up an Egg resets the Egg cycle step counter (to 0, supposing it counts up), but it doesn't affect an Egg's current Egg cycle count. (Dunno about hatching Eggs at the moment.) 3) Magikarp has 6 Egg cycles (1530 steps to hatch)...but its Egg says "It will hatch soon!" right after I pick it up. So it looks like the Egg cycle quote ranges may need some thorough checking.

So for correcting the Egg cycles: I'm not sure. I suppose we should prefer the most current values, but should we also have a column(s) for the previous values, or just note that they were one higher in other generations (or what)? (A benefit to having columns for both is that the page can also show the step requirement for both, since it's not a constant difference for all species.) But before that, though it's tedious as hell, we should verify all the Gen VI values manually. Or else we should find a very reliable (and citable) source for all the Egg cycle values; but in a brief search of notable Pokemon sites, I can't find any that are reliable (for all games) based on my basic findings so far. (It may be possible to search a Gen V ROM for Egg cycles, but that'd at least leave Gen VI Pokemon to manually check).

Friendship is/will be tedious. What you probably want to do is get a Pokemon to max friendship, then go somewhere and faint it, and save in that spot/state, where it has 254 friendship. (If you do this to multiple Pokemon at the same time, it should actually make the subsequent stuff here easier.) Then you start walking... Walk 100 steps or something, see if your Pokemon is at max friendship (if you try an EV Berry on it, it'll have no effect or should say "It adores you"; or strategically test it around the friendship rater), and if not, reset and try again, until you've tried enough (maybe 10 times) you can be reasonably sure the friendship counter didn't rollover in that span. So then reset, walk 100 steps, save there, and do it again. When your Pokemon hits max friendship, then you start narrowing down the number of steps you walk. And eventually you find the rollover point. If this is the same as the Egg cycle counter, then when you activate Hatching Power Lv3, the number of steps remaining until the rollover should be halved (rounded down). Testing that should probably be sufficient, but I'd like to try to test the length with Hatching Power Lv3 active too. And to check the natural length of the friendship cycle (without any O-Powers, I mean), you can walk exactly past the rollover (save, and if your Pokemon is at max friendship, you can make it faint again), then walk about 250 steps and save and then check how many more steps there are from there to the next rollover. (Strictly speaking, you should also try to make sure you didn't walk over another rollover in the "first" 250 steps you took.) Tiddlywinks (talk) 05:49, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

(resetting indent)Just a couple quick things I found today (in ORAS)... Poochyena has 15 Egg cycles and Wailmer has 40 (I'm pretty sure; I ended up making Wailmer's hatching a bit weird). I also checked the Egg quotes in ORAS, and they basically check out as they're currently stated, except that I can't verify that the lower bound for the last quote is 41 since Wailmer (who should be an example of the highest possible/legal Egg cycles) starts at 40. (The quote is in ORAS's text dump, though.) Tiddlywinks (talk) 18:56, 31 March 2015 (UTC)

I figured out what the deal is with the Egg cycles (and the difference between Gen IV and V) and the Egg quotes. It may well be a case of using the wrong sort of comparison again (like ">=" instead of ">"). Let's use the example of a Magikarp Egg. In both Gen IV and Gen V, when a Magikarp Egg is picked up, the value "5" is stored in its "friendship". At the end of an Egg cycle, this value is decremented by 1 (by 2 if Flame Body/Magma Armor are in the party, to no less than 0), and after walking 4 Egg cycles, this value is 1. You would expect that if you then walk another Egg cycle, the count will hit 0 and the Egg will hatch; and this is exactly what happens in Gen V. But in Gen IV, the count hits 0, and you have to walk another Egg cycle before the Egg hatches; that is, an Egg doesn't hatch unless its Egg cycle count is 0 when an Egg cycle ends. (I've verified all this by making some save files and looking at them in a save file editor.)

That "little" difference means that all Pokemon in all games can start with Egg cycle counts that are a multiple of 5, but pre-Gen V, you had to walk an extra Egg cycle; this also means that, for Pokemon with odd initial Egg cycles (like Magikarp's 5), if you hatch the Egg with the help of Flame Body, it takes an extra Egg cycle than you would expect: (4 instead of 3 for Magikarp: goes from 5 (at start) to 3 (1 Egg cycle) to 1 to 0 to hatch (4 Egg cycles)).

This also means that the Egg quotes are "right" in all games; it's just that, pre-Gen V, an Egg cycle count of "X" means you still need to walk "X+1" Egg cycles.

Since they just fixed the way an Egg hatches, I don't think anymore that we need to verify every Pokemon; I'm confident that all Pokemon have base Egg cycles in multiples of 5. (FWIW, I also checked one Pokemon from each possible value in ORAS, from 5 to 40, and they all check out as a multiple of 5.) I'm going to be updating the page with this (and updating the template at some point).

(Disclaimers: I did my "Gen IV" tests in HGSS and my "Gen V" tests in BW. I may, to some extent, look at other games in those generations, but probably not so thoroughly as I've checked those. And I'm not strictly sure about Gen III since I haven't looked at anything there yet...but for now I'd be willing to bet it's the same as Gen IV.) Tiddlywinks (talk) 14:41, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

This doesn't belong here, but...

The Egg steps for all Pokémon's own pages are still using Gen III-IV values, and not Gen V+ values or even Gen II values. We might just have Egg Cycle count, and the amount of steps they are converted to in parenthesizes or in a mouse-over texts. Trainer Yusuf (talk) 05:22, 10 April 2015 (UTC)

Move

This article should be moved to its singular form, because there are only a few titles in plural form. Also, this is used in other variants, like "Egg cycle count". So this article should be moved. ★Poké⁹⁵ 05:12, 17 July 2015 (UTC)