How Does The Oval Charm Pokemon Sword Affect Egg Hatch Rates?

Lately I've been checking threads and patch notes, and I get why this question keeps popping up: the Oval Charm is a tiny little thing with big breeding implications. In my experience, the Oval Charm increases the chance of the Pokémon Nursery producing eggs — it's basically a quality-of-life item for breeders that speeds up getting more eggs. That makes it one of those items people beg for in updates because it directly cuts down the grind for competitive and shiny breeding alike. Looking at how 'Pokémon Sword' received content historically — the two paid expansions, little post-launch patches, and occasional event distributions — I'd say the most realistic ways the Oval Charm could appear are as a part of a special event, a mystery gift, or tucked into a future patch if the developers decide to rebalance breeding convenience. If Nintendo or Game Freak had plans, they usually announce on official channels or drop it quietly via event distributions. For now I'm cautiously hopeful but not counting on it; I've built my breeding routines around patience anyway, so if it eventually shows up I'll be thrilled, but I won't let it ruin my fun until then.

This is one of those questions that makes breeding feel delightfully efficient: yes, the Oval Charm in 'Pokémon Sword' and the Destiny Knot do different jobs, so they absolutely stack. The Oval Charm is a key item you get after progressing in the story that increases how often Day Care/Nursery will produce eggs while you’re riding around. It doesn’t touch IVs or inheritance rules — it just helps you get more eggs in less time. The Destiny Knot, on the other hand, is a held item for one of the parents that changes IV inheritance: instead of three IVs being passed down from the two parents, five IVs get inherited, which is huge when you’re aiming for competitive spreads. Because one affects egg frequency and the other affects which IVs transfer, you can and should use both together when you’re breeding for perfect Pokémon. I’ve been doing sprinter runs of egg hatching with the Oval Charm and letting a Destiny Knot do the heavy lifting on IVs, and it feels way less grindy — very satisfying when a nearly perfect hatch pops out.

Alright, here's the short guide I wish I'd had when I was hunting for it: the Oval Charm in 'Pokémon Sword' isn't something you usually stumble on in the first few towns. It’s effectively a late-game/post-game convenience item — traditionally handed out once you've completed big Pokédex milestones or triggered certain post-story events. That means you can't reliably find it sitting in a chest or sold in a shop early on by normal progression. That said, if you really want it early, the practical routes are multiplayer and community trades. I’ve snagged one within my first few hours of post-game by offering a decent trade in online forums and raid lobbies. Another realistic option is to take advantage of trading with friends or joining Discord/Reddit communities where people often hand out handy items like Oval Charms. Lastly, keep an eye on official Mystery Gift/Max Raid event drops — sometimes the game devs distribute items that make breeding and collection easier. For my part, I waited until after finishing most story content and then traded for one; breeding became noticeably faster and more fun. It’s not strictly early-game material, but with a little social effort you can get it much sooner than solo play would allow.

I got curious about this one too when I was hunting for better breeding convenience, and the short, useful fact is: you don't need any DLC to get the Oval Charm in 'Pokemon Sword' (or 'Pokemon Shield'). In my playthrough I found that the Oval Charm is part of the base game—it's a quality-of-life item that makes the nursery more generous about producing eggs. You can get it through normal in-game progression by talking to the right NPCs and visiting the nursery area; it isn't locked behind 'The Isle of Armor' or 'The Crown Tundra' expansions. If you ever see guides implying it's a DLC exclusive, that's incorrect. If for some reason you didn't pick it up or you're playing a friend’s cartridge, trading for it is an easy workaround. Personally, once I had the Oval Charm, my breeding sessions felt way less grindy — totally worth grabbing early on.

For breeders in 'Pokemon Sword', the Destiny Knot is basically the little cheat code that flips How luck decides IVs into something you can actually influence. If either parent holds the Destiny Knot, five of the baby’s six IVs will be copied from the parents rather than being fully random. The game randomly picks five different stats (no duplicates) and for each chosen stat it randomly takes the IV from one parent or the other. The one stat that isn’t selected gets a brand-new IV from 0–31. That means if you have parents that each carry high IVs across different stats, the Destiny Knot lets you combine the best bits into offspring far more reliably than plain luck would allow. Mixing Destiny Knot with other breeding tools is where the fun starts. If you want to lock in a nature, give the parent with the desired nature an Everstone — nature inheritance and IV inheritance are separate systems, so you can use both at once. Power items that force a particular IV to pass will still guarantee that stat; Destiny Knot accounts for that, so a Power item will effectively occupy one of the inherited slots (you won’t get more than five inherited stats total). Ditto works perfectly fine holding Destiny Knot too — breeding with a high-IV Ditto is one of the fastest ways to start producing near-perfect babies, especially when the other parent contributes egg moves or species-specific traits. If you’re trying to make a competitive mon, my go-to workflow is: catch or trade for a Ditto with a few 31s, find a female of the species you want with the right egg moves, put Destiny Knot on whichever parent has the best IV spread (often Ditto), put Everstone on the parent with the nature I need, and go. Use the Nursery with the Oval Charm to speed eggs, check IVs with the Judge feature, then swap parents in as you get better IVs until you breed out a 5- or 6-IV baby (Hyper Training can fix the last IV later if needed). Breeding with Destiny Knot feels like tinkering with genetics in a comfy lab — slow but deeply satisfying when you finally hatch that perfect Pokémon.

I got this by poking around every nursery and talking to every NPC until something clicked: the Oval Charm in 'Pokemon Sword' comes from the person who runs the Pokémon Nursery on Route 5 (the Bridge Field area of the Wild Area). Talk to the nursery attendant — she’s the one associated with egg breeding — and she’ll hand over the Oval Charm, which boosts your chances of getting eggs when two compatible Pokémon are left at the nursery. If you care about breeding, this little trinket is golden: it doesn’t change IVs or nature, but it cranks up egg frequency so you spend less time staring at the overworld waiting for that next hatch. I kept it tucked into my bag the whole postgame while I hatched for competitive spreads, and it saved me a ton of time. Worth hunting down if you’re trying to fill a team or breed a shiny—small thing, big payoff, and the nursery lady’s always worth a chat. I still smile when I remember the first clutch of perfect eggs I got with it.

If you're hunting for a Dragonite and hoping to get some lucky Dratini candy along the way, yes — Dratini can and does hatch from eggs in Pokémon Go, but it's a little more complicated than just tossing eggs into incubators and waiting. Over the years Niantic has shuffled which Pokémon appear in which egg distance categories, so historically Dratini has most commonly been found in the longer-distance egg pools (think 10 km eggs), though event rotations and special seasons sometimes put it into shorter-distance eggs like 2 km or 5 km temporarily. The bottom line is: Dratini hatches from eggs, but what kind of egg and how often depends on the current in-game egg pool, which changes with seasons and spotlight events. From my own walks I learned to treat eggs like lottery tickets with hints — when you tap an egg in your bag, Pokémon Go often shows a preview of the species that could hatch from that distance category. That preview is a huge help: if Dratini is listed under the 10 km preview, slot those eggs into fast incubators and get walking. Pro tip from my commute routine: stack long-distance eggs (the 10 km ones) when you can, then use your Super Incubator on them to squeeze more hatch-per-egg time out of your special incubators. Adventure Sync is your best friend for passive hatching — I’ve hatched several rare babies while biking to work or doing grocery runs simply because Adventure Sync kept counting my steps even when the app was closed. A couple of things to keep in mind so you don’t get frustrated. First, hatching odds are generally low for popular Pokémon like Dratini when they’re in the long-distance pool; you might hatch a bunch of other things before seeing one. Second, Niantic frequently runs events that bump up hatch rates or temporarily adds Dratini to shorter eggs — during one Spring event I lucked into a shiny Dratini from a 5 km hatcher and nearly fell off the curb. Third, if you want to evolve Dratini, it’s the usual candy grind: it takes 25 candies to get to Dragonair, then 100 more to reach Dragonite (so plan your candies and buddy distance accordingly). Also remember lucky eggs only double XP, not hatch chances, and star pieces only affect stardust — helpful but not the same as improving hatch odds. If you want the most reliable path: watch the in-game news and community posts for egg pool updates, save your long-distance eggs until Dratini is listed in their preview, use Super Incubators on 10 km slots, and let Adventure Sync run in the background while you go about your day. Wild spawns and Community Days are also great for getting candy and shiny chances, so combine hatch strategies with catching events. Personally, there’s still something magical about that hatch animation revealing a little blue serpent — it never stops being fun, and it’s a nice mix of patience and surprise in a game that rewards both planning and luck.

Breeding in 'Pokémon Sword' always feels like a little laboratory of chance to me — and the Destiny Knot is one of those tools that turns chaos into something you can actually plan around. In short: yes, when a parent holds a Destiny Knot the offspring will inherit five IVs from the two parents. The game randomly selects five of the six stats (HP, Attack, Defense, Sp. Atk, Sp. Def, Speed) and for each chosen stat it picks one parent's IV to pass down. That means you get five guaranteed stats coming from the parents' existing IVs and the remaining stat is rolled randomly for the baby. There are a few practical wrinkles I always keep in mind when I'm breeding. If you're breeding with a Ditto, either the Ditto or the other parent can hold the Destiny Knot — either works. Power items (like Power Bracer, Power Lens, etc.) still force their specific stat to be inherited from the holder, so using one of those can lock a particular IV you need. Everstone passes nature, not IVs, so if you want a certain nature alongside five parental IVs, put the Everstone on the parent that has that nature. The Destiny Knot's five-stat selection is distinct from the Power items' guaranteed single-stat inheritance: Power items effectively reserve that stat from a specific parent while Destiny Knot handles the random selection of five stats overall. If you're aiming for a six-perfect-IV Pokémon, Destiny Knot doesn't make that guaranteed — the sixth stat could still be randomly rolled to 31, or you can Hyper Train later using Bottle Caps once the Pokémon reaches level 100. Also, Destiny Knot doesn't affect shininess or egg moves; use the Masuda method (foreign parent) to boost shiny odds and breed on for egg moves separately. My go-to routine is: get two parents with the best IV spread I can, equip Destiny Knot to one parent, Everstone on the one with the desired nature, and use Power items only when I need to lock a stubborn stat. It's a little meticulous, but there's nothing like hatching an egg with five perfect IVs — that spike of excitement never gets old.

I get asked this a lot when folks are starting a fresh run of 'Pokémon Sword' or 'Pokémon Shield' — so here’s the short-but-clear scoop and a few friendly tips from my playthroughs. Oddish itself always evolves in the same way across both games: it becomes Gloom at level 21, and then Gloom has two possible routes. Use a Leaf Stone on Gloom to get 'Vileplume', or use a Sun Stone to get 'Bellossom'. There aren’t any Galarian or version-exclusive evolutions for Oddish in these titles, so the choice of final form is entirely yours rather than tied to which cartridge you picked up. Where it gets fun is the decision-making. I’ve delayed evolving Oddish a few times because I wanted a Gloom to learn a specific move before applying a stone — you can totally do that. In battle roles, Vileplume tends to lean toward that classic bulky, status-inducing grass type vibe, while Bellossom has a different feel and movepool leaning more into special attacking and support. If you’re into aesthetics or a team theme, that often decides it for me: I once made a whole floral-themed squad and picked Bellossom for the soft palette. Remember also that evolution stones and the ability to trade or breed give you flexibility — if one stone’s scarce early on, you can always come back later or trade for the form you want. Practical tip: an Everstone will stop evolution if you want to keep Gloom for a bit, and checking move tutors/TMs in the area helps you avoid losing a needed move on evolution. Personally, I usually evolve to Vileplume if I need a tank for raids and pick Bellossom if I’m doing a more niche or pretty-looking team — both have their charm, so go with what makes your team feel complete.