Do you need to have an arduino board to properly install the arduino IDE? I want to do a tiny85 project and it says to install arduino and the attiny add on but want to make sure.
No, no arduino board is required to install the IDE.
To work with a tiny85 you need to install the IDE, and the core for the ATTiny85 (either my core - linked in sig for an attiny being programmed via ISP or serial using optiboot, or the digispark core for a digispark vusb based board).
If not using digispark (which has a number of caveats), you do need an ISP programmer - either an arduino running Arduino as ISP sketch, or (preferably) a standalone programmer like a USBAsp.
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