The Daycare, also known as the Nursery, has been an important area in the Pokémon series for several generations, and Pokémon Sword & Shield is no exception. Passing down stats, abilities, and egg moves have never been easier thanks to new items and features, and it’s become a vital resource for any good trainer.
If you want to improve your competitive team, using the Nursery can still take a frustrating amount of time and involve hatching a ridiculous amount of eggs. If you want to hatch as few eggs as quickly as possible, here are some of the best ways to speed up your Pokémon breeding.
10 Catch A Coalossal
There are many great ways to make eggs hatch faster, but few others are as helpful and effective as having a Pokémon with the ability Flame Body, Steam Engine, or Magma Body. All three of these have different effects in battle, but having a Pokémon with at least one of these Fire-type exclusive abilities will hatch your eggs twice as fast.
There are several Pokémon that this works for, but because Coalossal’s two possible abilities are either Flame Body or Steam Engine, it’s certain to be useful for what you need it for. There’s one roaming in the Giant’s Cap of the Wild Area, and while it can have too many weaknesses for most battles, it’s a perfect partner for breeding.
9 Find Great Dittos From Max Raid Battles
While it’s one thing to hatch eggs, being able to breed strong Pokémon is its own challenge. There are tons of Egg Groups that each Pokémon can be a part of, but those can be extremely difficult to obtain when you just intend to breed for stats. Since Ditto can breed with any non-legendary Pokémon, having one with good stats means you only need one parent to raise a new teammate.
Five-Star Max Raid Battles will always have a large number of IV stats, so finding a Five-Star Ditto is the quickest way to have a parent who you can use for any breeding needs. There’s one that can spawn in a Den around the corner to the north of the Nursery behind a small grass field, so if you have spare Wishing Pieces it’s worth hunting for.
8 Get The Oval Charm
The last thing needed to breed quickly is to make sure your Pokémon in the Nursery are providing eggs fast, something which the Oval Charm does perfectly. Once you’ve defeated Champion Leon, there’s a police officer named after classic Pokémon designer Morimoto in the Circhester Hotel, and after beating him in battle he’ll give you the item as a prize.
This Key Item increases the speed that eggs are provided without any extra effort, ensuring that you’ll always have a new egg waiting for you whenever one hatches. Since there’s always a bit of luck when it comes to breeding specific stats or abilities, this is a vital item to prevent you from needless waiting.
7 Upgrade Your Rotom Bike
Eggs require you to take a certain amount of steps to hatch, and the fastest way to move has always been by riding your bike. With Pokémon Sword & Shield being fully 3D, this is easier than ever thanks to you being able to ride your new Rotom Bike in circles near the Nursery, and so long as you don’t hit any walls, you can hatch eggs in a matter of moments.
To maximize your speed, you’ll have to frequently use your speed boost, something you can upgrade in exchange for Watts by talking to the vendors throughout the Wild Area. It won’t speed things up by an obscene amount, but it’ll shave enough time that it’s worth the investment.
6 Keep Your Party Empty For Eggs
When you start looking for the perfect Pokémon, or intend to hunt for shinies, you’re bound to go through a lot of eggs. There’s tons of storage space and options in Pokémon Sword & Shield, but a key thing to keep organized is your party, as you’ll need them there to hatch.
When breeding, you should generally only have one Pokémon in your party besides eggs, and that ideally should be one like Coalossal with an ability that hatches eggs faster. From there, make sure to check if your Pokémon’s good the moment it hatches and put it in a box if they aren’t. That way, you’ll always have room for a new egg.
5 Organize Your PC Storage
While your party is the most important place to keep organized for hatching eggs, if you do lots of breeding you’re going to need a lot more. This is why your PC should be just as organized, as you’re going to fill it either with a lot of spare eggs and extra Pokémon.
Having boxes aside for your extras is massively important, and will make it much easier for you to either release them or send them away using the game’s Surprise Trade feature to trade them with strangers for random Pokémon. If you have Pokémon Home, don’t be afraid to use it as a trash bin if you need some more space.
4 Equip Items
The randomness of Pokémon breeding can make the process intimidating to trainers, but there are tons of ways to guarantee a specific stat or nature will pass down. Held items like Everstones will let the equipped Pokémon pass its nature, which dictates one stat that’ll be higher and one that’ll be lower.
This can also be done to help passing down specific stats. The Destiny Knot will ensure that five stats between the two parents will pass down, but Power Items like the Power Bracer and Power Lens will ensure that the associated stat of the equipped parent will always pass to its child. It’s one thing to breed fast, but it’s much more efficient to breed as little as you have to.
3 Don’t Worry About Using Both Nurseries
Perhaps the biggest new addition to Pokémon Sword & Shield’s is that there’s not only one, but two Nurseries available for you. The first you encounter is on Route 5 just east of Turffield, and the second is in the Wild Area just between the bridges past Motostoke. Both are identical in function, meaning you can have two sets of parents going at once.
That said, you don’t necessarily need to use both simultaneously since you can only hatch a certain number of eggs. If you’re hatching at a normal speed, you’ll usually replace each egg by the time it hatches with just one, so flying between them will just eat up more time.
2 Egg Moves Can Pass Without Breeding
While it’s important to know how to breed effectively, it’s just as important to recognize times where breeding might not be the best method. With Hyper Training and Nature Mints, breeding is far from the only way to get a perfect Pokémon, so don’t be afraid to quit hatching eggs if you have an alternative.
This can even apply to unique Egg Moves, which can now pass between parents without breeding. Simply put one Pokémon with the Egg Move with another of the same species with an empty attack slot, and after some time it’ll learn the move. If you already have a Pokémon with perfect stats, you don’t need to fully breed and train a new one to get a unique attack.
1 Multitask
No matter how fast you get, breeding is always going to take be a little dull. Running in circles can hatch eggs fast, but this gets incredibly boring and makes the game feel like a chore. So long as your party is full, you’re much better off collecting treasures and Watts from Max Raid Dens than filling your boxes with endless eggs.
In addition to multitasking in the game itself, Pokémon breeding doesn’t require a whole lot of active effort, so don’t feel like you need to pay perfect attention. Feel free to watch a show or listen to some music while you hatch your eggs, otherwise you’ll get bored and tired very quickly.
NEXT: Can You Breed Gigantamax Pokémon? (& 9 Other Things You Didn’t Know About Them)
