Part 38: Side Note 04: Can you make some Poffins, man?
Side Notes 04: Can you make some Poffins, man?
How many breads have you eaten in your life? In similar vein to Pokeblocks, Poffins are necessary to become a Contest star by upping their Condition and Sheen. But how does it all work and why is it so needlessly complicated? Well let's find out.
To begin with, you need to decide which Berry you are going to use. I'll assume you're making Poffins alone instead of with your cool friends, laughing with you just offscreen, therefore only using one Berry, but doing this only cuts down on the time to make them, since you not only spin them faster, but also get more of them when you're finished. While you need to be pretty good at the minigame, selecting the right berry for the job is very important. Each berry has a specific base level, feel and flavour stat that, aside from flavour, you only know after you've made your Poffin, potentially wasting the berry. Fun times!
On the berry's tag, it specifies in a pentagon what flavour a berry has, and how strong it is. Some only have the one flavour, others have two, while certain berries can have all 5 flavours. Though, importantly, some berries might be really good for specific Poffins, but were only available via events and the only way to get them now is having someone to locally trade you one. Or hacking. Just hack.
These are the best berries for the job, though while it might be tempting to only use the ones on the right, the final row are practically unobtainable due to being event only, or from Gen 3 event berries in the Enigma Berry case, and using the berries on the second-to-last row might not be the best idea. Usually the rarer the berry is, the higher its base level and smoothness is, so feeding high level Poffins is always important, but high smoothness Poffins increase a Pokemon's Sheen. And if that goes over 255, you can't feed it any more Poffins, thus no more increasing their stats. To maximize the amount to feed them, the third-to-last row is usually the best, but it's up to you. Like Gen 3, it's important to fill the adjacent category stats as well, since they also contribute towards Appeal round points, though it's not as necessary this time.
Now to determine the Poffin you'll make with the berry you have. You can find out the berry's base level by taking 60 seconds to make the Poffin, since that'll be the base level of the Poffin, and the smoothness will always be the same due to what berry you use. The faster time you make, the higher level it'll be, determined by this formula: Level = B x (60/T) - M
B is the base level of the Berry, T is time taken to make the Poffin, and M is the number of times you either burned or spilled the mixture. Simple enough.
The minigame isn't too interesting, to begin with, when the flames are red, it's easy to stir, but also easy to spill. When the flames are orange, the mixture has thickened, but it can still spill. Finally, for blue flames, the mixture can't be spilled anymore, so spin as fast as you can to end the minigame as fast as you can. You'll also need to alternate the direction you stir on occasion.
The final result depends on the flavour of your Poffin, though if there's two flavours, which a good chunk of berries are, then the lesser flavour will still appear in the form of sprinkles. But there's a few more varieties of Poffins you can get, depending on performance and flavours.
We've seen the Foul Poffin, it occurs when you tank the level by burning or spilling the mixture too much, resulting in the flavour being reduced so much it reaches 0. They also occur when two of the same berry is used in multiplayer. Rich Poffins are any poffin with 3 flavours and Overripe Poffins have 4 flavours. Due to how it all gets made, there's no way to get 5 flavours in one Poffin, since having one flavour makes another flavour be subtracted by that amount.
Mild Poffins are any Poffin above level 50. This overrides other Poffin types. A Mild Poffin still retains whatever flavour values resulted from the input berries and the formula, just like any other poffin, and will raise the corresponding attributes by the appropriate amounts. The type of Poffin (foul, rich, overripe, mild, named after flavours) is cosmetic, it's just meant to help you categorise them, the stat gains are determined entirely by the flavour values. The Mild Poffin you get from Jordan is an impossibly powerful one: it has a feel/smoothness/sheen value of 40 and a value of 60 in every flavour. This is an utterly absurd combination you'll never obtain through blending and is definitely worth using on a contest star. Poffins are also made similarly to Pokeblocks, but since we don't have NPCs, the single player ones are usually pretty mediocre. Platinum fixes this by offering store-bought ones later on, which are actually pretty damn good if you can afford the price. They're a combination of two flavours, so it'll increase your Sheen by a fair amount.
With your Poffins in hand, you can feed them to your Pokemon until their Sheen maxes out. However, while it rounds down to 255, the boosted stats are not, so getting as many poffins as possible as close to the Sheen limit is important. Of course, natures make it easier for certain stats to rise, with one being boosted and one being hindered, similar to regular stats. Also important is evolving Feebas, which requires 170 Beauty, so feed it Poffins that have a higher level than feel and you should be fine. That's everything about Poffins, but of course that's only half the story, we've still gotta win the damn contests...