Dewgong

Two short fangs protrude from its upper jaw, while the rest of the animal is covered in dense white fur, so pale that it looks like snow. It is 1.70 m tall and weighs 120 kg. Its body is fusiform and moves through the water with barely any effort. Its official category, Sea Lion Pokémon, points to a pinniped, even though the animal lending it its name is something else.

Cold doesn't slow it down; it fires it up. Its activity increases as temperatures drop, and it enjoys the water more the colder it is. It sleeps on the ice, and that habit is behind the most repeated of the six stories told about it: the one about the sailor who mistook it for a mermaid after seeing it lying on a glacier. After eating, it lies in the sun on the beach, because raising its body temperature helps it digest.

It hunts on the move at eight knots, and in Alola it favours Wishiwashi. It completes a two-stage line: Seel reaches it at level 34, and there is nothing after that. What it gains in the change is length and fangs; it already had the fur.

475 points spread out without a single peak: 90 HP, 95 Special Defense, 80 Defense, and a triple 70 in Attack, Special Attack and Speed. Its highest stat is Special Defense, and 95 won't scare anyone. Defeating it gives 2 Special Defense Effort Points, which fits what it is.

Thick Fat is what gives it the most: it halves damage from Fire and Ice. Since Water/Ice already takes Ice attacks at a quarter damage, Thick Fat reduces that to an eighth, turning an enemy Ice Beam into a nuisance. Hydration, its other standard Ability, cures status conditions while it's raining; combined with Rest, learned at level 21, it restores it to full HP and wakes it up immediately. Ice Body, its Hidden Ability, restores HP in hail, and it learns Snowscape at level 65.

The disaster is on the other side of the chart. Water/Ice resists two types, Water and Ice, and takes double damage from Electric, Grass, Fighting and Rock. Four weaknesses, two resistances and no immunities, on top of defenses that don't reach 100.

It has no place in organized battles. With 70 Special Attack, neither Blizzard nor Hydro Pump gets much out of its power, and 70 Speed leaves it moving after almost everything capable of taking it down. Where it does work is in a normal playthrough: Aqua Ring at 23 restores HP turn by turn, Brine at 33 doubles its power against opponents below half HP, and Encore at 13 locks the opponent into the move it just used. That gets it through the game's aquatic stretch without any scares.

It belongs to the Water 1 and Field Egg Groups, a broad combination that lets it breed with most marine wildlife as well as half the terrestrial Pokédex. The gender ratio is an even 50% female, so breeding doesn't depend on finding a specific specimen or resorting to a Ditto.

Its 20 Egg Cycles amount to around 5355 steps, which is fairly standard. Ten moves can hatch from its Egg, and the list is stranger than it looks: Perish Song, which seals the fate of everything on the field three turns later; the Stockpile, Spit Up and Swallow trio, which stores charges to release them all at once or turn them into health; and Belch, with 120 power and the condition that it must have eaten a Berry first. It also learns Entrainment and Disable.

The evolution has no trick to it: Seel becomes Dewgong upon reaching level 34, with no items, time requirements or friendship involved. It grows at an average rate.

Its habitat is the sea. A catch rate of 75 puts it in the middle range: considerably harder to catch than a common route Pokémon and considerably easier than species with a rate of 45. In the wild, it may be carrying an Aspear Berry or Never-Melt Ice.