How often should dexnav work?

Question

Do I need to take a certain amount of steps like it was for the pokeradar, can I just sit there hitting search and eventually get something? The situation that has me frustrated is trying to find koffing in fiery path (I'm trying to find one with Toxic Spikes). I search and search with no result, taking half a dozen or so steps each time, then suddenly after 2-3 steps something else triggers the dexnav, and my concern is wether this is resetting some unseen counter.

Comments

If your ultimate purpose is a Toxic Spikes Koffing, it would likely be more efficient to chain breed Toxic Spikes from Trabbish/Garbodor onto Yamask/Cofagrigous, then from that Yamaks/Cofagrigous to Koffing.  There are just so many layers of RNG at play.  The chance to have an egg move vs a different attribute, and the chance that that egg move will be Toxic Spikes rather than it's other options.

---

the chain breeding option was a guaranteed long process (mostly due to catching restrictions), trying for toxic spikes koffing could have been quick, or taken an eternity. luckily for me, soon after I asked about this I found a toxic spikes koffing, lucky me

Answer 1

To use the DexNav efficiently, I would recommend you use the Acro Bike and jump by using 'B'. This counts as a step, and make sure you go away from the grass to stop other Pokémon triggering. It seems that special Pokémon (Those with Abilities and Moves) appear around Search Rate 20. And there is not an amount of steps you need to take, if that answers your question

Source: Knowledge
Hope I helped!