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Pokémon Stats
The HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, and Special of a Pokémon are affected by four different things.
The Pokémon's level is the main influence. The Pokémon gains experience points by any method and grows to the next level. The higher the level, the better the stats.
The species of Pokémon is also important. Each species has a set of base stats, which contribute to the final stats of any members of that species. This is why all Electrodes are fast, and all Magikarp are weak. This attribute of a Pokémon is stored in the ROM section of the game pak, and cannot be changed, even using a cheating device. One byte is used to store each of the base stats.
There are two bytes which control the natural variation of a Pokémon. They are what make two untrained Pokémon of the same species and level different. They are determined when you first get the Pokémon, and stay the same as it grows. Together, they are normally known as the diversification value or DV. The first hex digit of the four affects Attack. The higher it is, the higher the Pokémon's Attack. The second affects Defense. The third affects Speed. The fourth affects Special. The fifth one for the HP is calculated from the other four. If you take the least significant bit of each of the other stats, arrange the four bits in order, and convert to hexadecimal, that is the HP digit. The best possible DV is FFFF.
There also are ten bytes, two for each stat. The first in each pair is more significant. The greater these are, the better the Pokémon has been trained, and the better its stats. Together, they are normally known as stat experience. When you first get a Pokémon, they are 00. They increase as you train the Pokémon. They are not increased by Rare Candies or the Daycare Centre. How much they increase in each battle depends on the species of enemy Pokémon, but not on the enemy's level. (In fact, the Pokémon earns stat experience equal to the enemy's base stats.) This means that your Pokémon will be stronger at each level if you train them on lower-level enemies.
A Pokémon's stats are recalculated from these four variables every time it levels up, or if it evolves. The stats are also recalculated if you put the Pokémon in the PC, because the stats themselves are not stored for boxed Pokémon. This trick with the PC means that level 100 Pokémon can still gain stat experience and raise their stats. Apart from on level 100s, the effect of the new stat experience each time it's applied is usually small, and often not enough to make any visible difference. But the total stat experience gained during a Pokémon's training has a substantial effect, and can easily mean the difference between winning and losing a battle.
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