Each egg takes a different amount of steps to hatch, but you can halve the time if you have a Pokémon in your party with the abilities Flame Body or Magma Armour. If you have two Pokémon, one with each ability, the incubation effect stacks, and reduces hatching time further.
When an egg is ready to hatch, your character will freeze in his tracks, and you'll be treated to a hatching animation. Congratulations, you're a Poké-parent!
What will hatch from my eggs?
Which Pokémon hatches from an egg depends on the parents. Generally speaking, the baby will be the same species as the mother and inherit moves from the father. It will also be at the lowest evolutionary level of the mother's chain. For instance, a male Bulbasaur and a female Vileplume would get you a baby Oddish.
Sometimes, breeding is the only way to get Baby Pokémon – hyper adorable 'pre-evolutions' of more familiar Pokémon. It's worth putting some time into breeding to completely fill your Pokédex.
What if I don't have a male and female Pokémon?
This is where the exception to the gender rule, mentioned above, comes into play. If you capture a Ditto, its genetically volatile nature and lack of gender allows it to breed with any other species. Even if you breed Ditto with a male Pokémon, the egg that it produces will hatch into the father's form.
This is particularly useful when it comes to the starter Pokémon. While there is a chance the creature you pick at the start could be female, only 12.5 per cent of them are. Chances are far higher the Litten, Rowlet, or Popplio you start out with will be male, so breeding with Ditto is the only way to get more of them.
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Ditto can be caught on Ula'ula Island. It appears in the patches of grass scattered along the road down from Hokulani Observatory, where you'll complete your seventh Island Challenge. Although Ditto is a rare Pokémon, it's worth enduring the multiple random battles until one presents itself.
When should I breed?
While you can leave Pokémon to breed as soon as you find Paniola Ranch, it's advisable to wait until at least the point where you have Charizard Fly in your Ride Pager. That will let you return to the Ranch whenever you want, then fly back to continue your adventure once you've hatched a few eggs.
However, it's best to wait until you've caught a Ditto before breeding in earnest, which will be a few hours after discovering the Ranch. This will mean you can breed almost any other Pokémon without having to worry about the gender balance or egg group compatibility – and the more eggs you hatch, the more likely you are to get at least one of each gender of the desired creature.
Can I breed every Pokémon?
No. As with previous entries, Legendary Pokémon - such as Mew, Celebi, Jirachi, or Sun and Moon's cover stars, Solgaleo and Lunala, cannot be bred. This is to keep them scarce and prevent players flooding the online Global Trade System with countless duplicates, and making a Rayquaza as common as a Pidgey. If you want those rarest of rare Pokémon, you'll have to hunt them down the old fashioned way!
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
