Welcome to the Individual Value and Hidden Power guide. IV is a common abbreviation for Individual Value and for the remainder of this guide Hidden Power will be refered to by the abbreviation HP, not to be confused with Hit Points. IV's are a simple thing; they are stats randomly determined when a Pokemon is caught or hatched. So how can you influence IV's? Well, you can't really. The best thing you can do is either catch large amounts of the Pokemon species you want or to breed until you get a Pokemon with the IV's you want. Pokemon that are bred usually result with normal/higher than normal IVs. While this isn't always true, more often than not it is. There really isn't much you can do to get good IV's except for persistent effort, so make sure you have the patience for it.

IV's are a very important part of competitive Pokemon battling. It can make such an unbelievable difference in a battle. A Pokemon's IV's range from 0-31, 31 being the max and 0 being the lowest. I have seen Pokemon of the same species fight with the same EV training and the victor won only because it had an advantage in IV's. I am not going to bore you with the math; however if you would like to check it out theSerebii Individual Value guide will explain in further detail.

Hidden Power deserves it's place here due to the fact that Hidden Powers are determined by the IV's. So HP is a cool Special Attack move that varies in power and type depending on the IV's of a Pokemon. HP can be any type except for normal and its power can range from 30-70. There are two ways to find out the HP of a Pokemon, the easiest of which is putting it's IV's into a Stat Calculator. You can also go around using your HP on Pokemon of different types until you have successfully eliminated all but the type it is. If you would like to use the second method, which can often be more accurate, Psypokes.com has a nice method for manual HP testing that can be found here. (Another easy method for testing a Pokemon's HP is to use the move against a Kecleon, but this isn't always a viable option as it cannot be found in the wild of Pearl.) There is a formula and again I will not bore you with the details; however if you would like to figure out the math, then by all means, Read up. At this point, you should see how a HP can be useful. Imagine a fire Pokemon with a water move, or a Psychic Pokemon with a reliable fighting move. The list of usefulness can go on for a while. I hope that this guide has been useful to you. If you have any questions, by all means, ask them here. If I or one of the moderators do not know the answer we will personally find the answer and Post it here.
(Editted by GeneralBlueRaven for clarity and added the bit about the Psypokes method for HP testing, cuz it does work, and the bit about Kecleon, cuz it's true.)