Quoted By:
I don't know if this is well known or not but I recently learned that in gens 1, 2, 3, and 4 the game would apply a pokemon's effort values to their stats every time they level up. So if you level them up to level 100 with only rare candies their stats would suck because they never got effort values from fights and since they are level 100 they cannot have any more effort values applied to them. But there is a way around this in gens 1 and 2. If you deposit and withdraw the pokemon from the pc the game will recalculate their stats and take EVs into account. So if you take a level 100 with no EVs and grind it up to max out it's EVs and then throw it in the pc, when you take it out all its stats will instantly increase by 63. This cannot be done in gens 3 and 4 because the game no longer recalculates stats when withdrawing from the pc. The only way for a level 100 pokemon to gain EVs in gens 3 and 4 is through the use of vitamins and at that point they can only gain a maximum of 100 EVs in each stat due to those games only allowing you to use 10 vitamins on a pokemon per stat. Normally this wouldnt really matter since everyone will just fully EV train their pokemon before they hit level 100 but Gamefreak decided to release Arceus in gen 4 as a downloadable event only pokemon and it came at level 100. This meant that Arceus, the literal god of all Pokemon was permanently screwed out of achieving max stats without cheat codes until generation 5. From Black and White onwards the games apply EVs to all your pokemon at the end of every battle so now any pokemon at any level can be EV trained from scratch.
