Game Help What is Pokerus?

[:Zelda:Druggie:]

So I picked up my DS for the first time in a while today and thought I'd spend a little while catching up on some Pokemon, Pokemon Diamond to be specific. I go to heal my Pokemon at a Pokemon Center and after finishing up, the nurse told me something I'd never seen before.
She told me my Pokemon had something called "Pokerus", some micro-organism thing that latched onto one of my Pokemon. She said there's no cure and it's contagious. Now my entire current party has this thing and I have no idea what it is . . .o.o

What does this do? Is it bad or good? Have your Pokemon ever gotten it? I've never heard of it until now so I'm really curious as to what I'm supposed to do . . .

 

[Garo]

Pokerus is nothing to worry about - in fact, in many ways it's a good thing. It will double all EVs (effort values) your Pokemon gain after battles. What exactly EVs are and how they effect stat growth is a bit complicated, but the short form is that it will make your Pokemon grow stronger, fasterOnce it goes away they can't catch it again, but they do keep its effects - they just can't spread it to other Pokemon any longer.

So it's a good thing!

 

[Beeker]

Pokerus is a very good thing! I was lucky enough to get it few times this year, once several months ago in my HeartGold and again about two weeks ago in White!
I believe you can get it from fighting wild Pokemon. Like Garo said, it raises EV values faster. Each Pokemon you fight gives EVs in a certain stat like Speed, Attack, etc. With Pokerus, you will gain more higher values than usual.

Here's something you should know: Pokerus only sticks around for a couple of days. BUT if you put a Pokemon infected with Pokerus in the PC, it will keep the virus, even if those couple of days pass by. So what I tend to do is keep a Pokemon with Pokerus boxed, and use it in case I need to bring up stats on a Pokemon in the future. ^^

 

[Fig]

Pokérus is a great and awesome thing to randomly obtain! The Pokérus virus actually helps your Pokémon become stronger and gain more stats! Congrats!

 

[Dan]

I always thought the pokerus as some sort of pokemon fetas... but no apparently it's a virus that makes your pokemon a lot stronger. So it's pretty much like a good version of cancer I guess... Why they call it a virus I don't know. :I

 

[Brodogs]

Does anyone know if it remains on the Pokemon through trading? If so do you think someone could trade something with it to me so I can infect my storage with it - been looking for it for ages but no luck so far.

 

[masterSword2]

I had been wondering what this was for a while now, but had never gotten around to looking it up. at first I thought it was going to be like poisoning and slowly drain my pokemon's HP. I'm glad this came up so now i can rest assured that my pokemon wont randomly faint lol.

 

[Celeboy]

I was lucky enough to get a Pokemon with pokerus when we went to the game event to play a demo of HG and SS. We bought along our copies of diamond and pearl to get a free arceus for HG and SS (along with a deoxys and darkrai because someone hacked the machine). My friends and I thought it would be funny to steal Pokemon off the demo. I got a sentret, because they're cool, and it had pokerus. Now I keep him in a box on white and use him when I feel like training someone up, by infecting the desired. If you keep at least one Pokemon in the box, then pokerus stays for ever as it only vanishes if the Pokemon is in the party for 3 days (I think).

 

[OcarinaofLink]

I remember getting it in saphir and in silver, though i think it was a glitch because i left my snubull at the daycare (he end up being level 100 in just an hour O.O) and it gave me an egg and the pokémon inside was bulbasaur and it had a pokérus.

 

[TheRizardon]

Pokerus is a very rare pokemon "disease". What it does is it boost the EV gain doubles it in fact it's very good for EV training with macho brace or what not. But it will lose effect after 1 day I think so it would be wise to put the pokemon with Pokerus into the PC if you're not done training it but don't want to play anymore. Overall it's definitely GOOD it will also spread to the pokemon next to it in the party menu after a couple of battles.

 

[The Wanderer]

I remember getting it in saphir and in silver, though i think it was a glitch because i left my snubull at the daycare (he end up being level 100 in just an hour O.O) and it gave me an egg and the pokémon inside was bulbasaur and it had a pokérus.

Yeah, that's a glitch. These random wacky things tend to happen if you mess around in your game with a GameShark or Action Replay, particularly if the codes used aren't of sterling quality. I can't breed in my FireRed or Ruby games because of senseless hacking. A note to all potential Pokemon hackers: many codes are hazardous by nature and offset other areas of the game for no apparent reason. Even ones that seem harmless can screw up unforeseen aspects.

I'm not necessarily saying that's what you did, but it's something that happens often. Back to the topic at hand, I did catch Pokerus once in my HeartGold file. I was grinding my team at Mt. Silver, using the Exp. Share to raise a young Luxio's level, when I checked its status and noticed it had Pokerus. Turned out my entire team did, and it was extremely beneficial when my Tyranitar gained 9 Attack points in one level-up. I could have sworn I kept that Luxio (now probably a Luxray) in the PC to preserve the virus, but I checked back some months later and the Pokerus had disappeared anyway.

I'm still a little confused, though. While my Pokemon had Pokerus, their level-ups were definitely more productive. When it faded, their stat gains essentially returned to normal, even though I'm told the effects are supposed to last forever, the only difference being that the Pokemon can't spread the Pokerus anymore. Has this happened to anyone else, or am I merely perceiving things wrong?