All Pokemon, when you beat them, give your Pokemon a certain amount of experience points. What they also give you is effort points. Effort points can also be gained by feeding vitamins to your Pokemon.
The vitamins give you a flat 10 effort points to the statistic when given to a Pokemon. However, once your Pokemon's statistic passes 100 effort points you can't feed it any more vitamins of that type. There is also a limit of 510 effort points a Pokemon can accumulate before no more can be gained.
If you use the EXP Share the Pokemon will also receive the full effort points for the battle. Using the Macho Brace will double the effort points gained.
When a Pokemon gains a level, through battling, they get a statistic increase of 1 point for every 4 effort points they have earned in that statistic!
Now, you are probably looking at the title of this article and wondering where the bug Pokemon comes in. Well, I'll tell you.
In Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald GBA games you have the ability to make a âsecret base and then trade that secret base to your friend's game. If you, like me, have several copies of the games (or at least one of each) you can use the secret base feature as a training base feature.
The idea behind the training base is to make a series of secret bases with Pokemon that give you a high number of effort points but a low number of experience points when battling them. Now, what sort of Pokemon fits this bill? Why bug Pokemon of course!
Bug Pokemon are the only Pokemon that can reach their highest evolved form at level 10.
The bug Pokemon I favor are:
All of the above Pokemon make their final evolution upon reaching level 10 and give 3 effort points when battled. Most non-bug Pokemon that give 3 effort points are in the level 36+ range.
What I have done is create two training bases. Training base one has 6 Beautifly in it and the other has 6 Dustox in it. Each Pokemon has had all but the String Shot move removed so there is no danger to my freshly hatched Pokemon. They typically give about 510 experience points when beaten so I suggest you give your Pokemon a few vitamins before going to the training base.
The training bases give my Pokemon a minimum of 18 effort points after beating the base and it can be bumped up to 36 effort points by using the Macho Brace!
Using this technique I have seen my Pokemon gain six points in a single statistic when going up a level. This has proven to be a tremendous boom for me in creating very tough low level Pokemon.
I have not populated all of the secret base spots on my games yet, but I am working towards it.
For more information on Effort Points and proper Breeding of Pokemon I suggest you visit serebii.net.