This guide should help you to know all about breeding in the new Gold and Silver games. People who have bred Pokémon before will know about the long time it usually take and the tedious activity it involves. You have to get the two parents together, and make sure that one is male, and one is female. Also, they have to be compatible. This guide will help tell you if the actual long process will work, or if your efforts are futile, or, how long it will take.

Why Breed?

Why breed? Well, there are various reasons for breeding. Here are some of them:

To Get Another Pokémon of the Mother's Type

This is the most obvious reason. Breeding allows you to recreate another one of the more rare Pokémon such as Charmander, Squirtle, or Bulbasaur without the need to trade with a friend or use another version. It also allows you to give them your rare Pokémon without actually giving up your Pokémon. Get it?

Completion of the Dex

A few of the Pokémon require that you breed them together to get a pre-evolution, so, you require breeding some to finish the Pokédex. A few of these Pokémon are the Pikachu, Jynx and Magmar pre-evolutions.

Getting New Types of Attacks on Other Pokémon

If the father Pokémon has an attack that the child Pokémon, or mother Pokémon could inherit, it would get it through breeding. For instance, breeding Barrier onto Magmar by breeding a Male Mr.Mime with Barrier, with a Female Magmar. It may give you a Magby with Barrier.

The Process of Breeding

Just south of Goldenrod City is the Pokémon Daycare Center. Here is where the actual breeding takes place.

To breed, you need to give a male Pokémon to the Old Man, and a female Pokémon to the Old Woman, or vice versa. You may also use a Ditto instead of one of your Pokémon.

Length of Time to Breed

You actually decided to breed after all that explanation? Well, here is some more vital information;

There are several factors that determine whether a Pokémon will produce an egg quickly, slowly, or not at all.

One worth mentioning, is that many Pokémon, especially rare ones like Mewtwo, Zapdos, and Lugia, are not able to breed at all. The legendary Pokémon cannot breed, and some Pokémon like Magnemite are genderless, and they cannot breed.

Also, another variability is compatibility. A basic guide to follow is to match Pokémon with either the same species or ones with the same icon shown under the Pokémon entry on the Pause menu. The best way to know is to look at this site's Pokédex. Ditto are able to breed with all Pokémon, that is, the ones that can breed.

The next part is a bit more complicated. If the Pokémon can breed, then follow the steps as follows:

Call this number you just picked X. OK, here's where you require some math skills.

1. After you tell the old folks to take care of your Pokémon, a random number is picked between 1 and 255, which we'll call Y. For every step you take, Y is subtracted by 1.

2. After Y reaches zero, another random number is picked between 1 and 255, which we'll call Z.

3. Now, if your number X is greater than Z, you will have an egg. If not, go back to step 1 above and start over.

Essentially, Pokémon will breed fastest if they are the same Pokémon, but, from different trainers.

If you intend of breeding with a Ditto, remember that if you don't trade it from someone else, it will take a long time.

You should remember that while you're wasting time waiting for your Pokémon to breed, they are gaining 1 experience point for every step you take. So, breeding works best when using higher level Pokémon who no longer learn new moves naturally, or else the Pokémon you will be getting back might have some different attacks.

So, now you should have an egg. How long until it hatches?

Egg Hatching Guide

When you receive an egg, a certain period of time must pass before it will hatch. Rather, you must take a certain amount of steps before it will hatch. This amount varies with the type of Pokémon that will hatch from the egg.

(Again, this list might not be completely accurate, and is somewhat estimated.)