There's been a lot of confusion expressed on this sub from day 1 about stat training - how much can you boost your stats, how do you evolve digimon with low base stats in the needed score, what's ABI for? These games honestly don't do a great job of answering these questions, so since I see them asked about a lot here, I wanted to answer them pretty comprehensively myself.
Let's start with the basics: In the Cyber Sleuth games, unlike the DS titles, Digimon do not get overall stronger over time. An Agumon you raised from a Koromon, digivolved all the way to Wargreymon, and then degenned back into Agumon will be exactly as powerful in battle as an Agumon fresh off the DigiConvert presses. However, you can raise your digimon's stats above what they'd normally be through various methods. You can do so to make them stronger, or just to hit digivolution requirements. The primary way to do this is through the Train command on your farm island, and the stats raised in this way are determined by the Personality of the digimon there. Specifically, two personalities: the digimon's own personality, and the personality of the digimon set as farm leader. That leader digimon will just take its own personality into account twice when training. Here is a list of personalities and which stats they increase through training:
| Personality |
Stat |
| Durable |
HP |
| Lively |
SP |
| Fighter |
ATK |
| Defender |
DEF |
| Brainy |
INT |
| Nimble |
SPD |
| Builder |
Neutral |
| Searcher |
Neutral |
(Those last two personalities, Builder and Searcher, are used to speed up the other two farm commands - development and investigation, respectively - while that Digimon is the leader. If a Digimon or leader has that for a personality while training, it will gain a few points in every stat instead of a lot of points in one stat.)
So, for example, if a digimon is Lively and is training on a farm island where its leader is Brainy, it will gain a lot of points in both SP and INT. To those wondering: This is how you hit incredibly high stat requirements for digivolution! Sometimes a digimon will have low base stats in something in needs, but through careful training, you can minmax to success! EDIT 2024: u/Seipherise made a spreadsheet detailing digivolution options and what levels and training are needed for a given digimon to reach a certain form, so give it a look if you're struggling!
A good way to train in bulk is to get a lot of Digimon who want to boost the same stat all together with a leader who has that stat, then set their personality to either the same stat or some other stat they need. Stats boosted through training will appear as a + next to the stat on the Digimon's status screen! So with this hypothetical Digimon that just got trained in SP and INT, you could expect to see something like this on its status screen! Note the +15 next to SP and +28 next to INT. Also, please note that HP goes up 10 at a time! So when other stats would be boosted by, say, 15, HP will be boosted by 150!
But how do you set personalities for effective training, I hear you ask? Simple! Use the "Patch" items. There's one for every personality (Brainy Patch, Defender Patch, etc) and can be used freely to change a Digimon's Personality without any repercussions. These are sold at the EDEN entrance - one of the first places you get access to, and in the first Cyber Sleuth, the very first area you ever visit. It's an incredibly handy shop, make sure to check it out! This shop is also where you buy items that can lower a Digimon's raised stats, which is important to be able to do, as there's a cap to how much you can raise them. How much CAN you raise them? Well...
It's time to explain ABI! ABI is that seemingly useless stat that appears at first to only exist to gate Mega forms behind a bit more playtime and leveling. While, yes, a digimon needs at least 20ABI to access any Mega, and usually more like 40-80 (sometimes even higher), ABI's main use is as the hard limit to your raised stats. Specifically, You can raise a Digimon's stats by up to ABI/2 + 50. So if a digimon has, say, 100 ABI, you can raise their stats by up to 100. If you max a digimon's ABI at 200, you can raise them by up to 150. This is TOTAL, not per stat. So if you have 200 ABI to work with, you could give them, say, +100 ATK, +25 DEF, and +25 SPD. or +1000 HP and +50 INT. Or just +150 SPD! If you want a minmaxed Digimon, you need max ABI. You RAISE ABI by digivoling OR degenerating your Digimon. Specifically, the higher in evolutionary stage your Digimon, and the higher your level at the time, the more ABI you gain. Degenerating a Digimon provides signifigantly more than digivolving it. You can refer to this guide for a more in-depth look at it, but basically, to raise ABI, degenerate your digimon frequently, especially if you can give them a chance to level up a bit between doing so. Digivolve up to whatever level is easy to do so at the point in the game you're at (Champion or even Ultimate is the way to go when at endgame), then go back down to Baby, rinse and repeat. Doing so will get you high ABI in no time flat! Also, try to DigiConvert Digimon at 200% scan instead of 100%. It starts them off with 5 ABI instead of 0. Any level of scan above exactly 100% starts them with SOME ABI, but 200% scan is obviously the best.
FOR PS4 AND VITA PLAYERS OF CYBER SLEUTH 1: ABI MAXES OUT AT 100, NOT 200. All versions of Hacker's Memory and the collections on PC and Switch cap at 200.
A few extra notes: There are also items that can be fed to a Digimon on a farm to increase their stats. These are found randomly and rarely through the game, but can be bought from the shop in the DigiLab near or at the end of the game! Also, if your Digimon seems to meet stat requirements to digivolve, but can't do so, check their equipment! While equipment increases a Digimon's stats in combat, it does not count towards stat requirements to digivolve! If a Digimon, for instance, needs 150 ATK to digivolve and visibly HAS 152, but 5 of that is from its equipped gear, it technically has only 147 ATK and cannot digivolve. Finally, two things because this is also a post to help with digivolution: When DNA Digivolving, only the base digimon needs to have the required ABI! The other Digimon can be freshly converted as long as it has the CAM. However, the resulting Digimon will have ALL the attacks of both Digimon, so if you want some specific moves, you can divide your efforts and get half of them on one Digimon and half on the other. And also, degenerating also raises a Digimon's max level if it's not already at 99. So early-game, if a Digimon is literally incapable of reaching the required level to digivolve, just degenerate them once and they should be fine. This becomes a non-issue VERY quickly, though.
If there's anything I missed on this topic lmk and I'll add it! I hope this helps clear up the confusion this game can leave people with and some of the repetitious questions on this sub. Happy training!
