Dustox

The Wurmple line splits in two halfway through, and Dustox is the ugly end of the branch. The caterpillar shuts itself inside Cascoon at level 7, and at level 10 a 1,2-metre, 31,6-kilo moth comes out, with a purple body, red eyes and green wings with frayed edges. The other route, starting from the same caterpillar, leads to Beautifly. The comparison is inevitable, and it never does Dustox any favours.

Pokédex entries repeat two behaviours. One is light: it is instinctively drawn towards it, gathers in swarms around streetlamps in cities and strips the leaves from trees along the roadside to feed. It is a nocturnal Pokémon, and that is the part of the text that has remained intact since Ruby and Sapphire. The other is the dust. When attacked, it beats its wings hard and releases a fine dust that is poisonous, and the more recent entries warn that it can harm even the strongest of the strong. Its antennae act as radar for locating food in the dark.

Its official category, Poison Moth Pokémon, is shared with Venomoth, which arrived two generations earlier with the same idea and the same two types.

385 base stat points, with the spread heavily skewed in one direction: 90 Special Defense, 70 Defense, 60 HP, 65 Speed and a double 50 in Attack and Special Attack. In other words, it takes special hits reasonably well and does not hit back. With 50 Special Attack, even Bug Buzz, learned at level 43 and packing 90 power, amounts to little more than a scratch against anything with its Special Defense in good order.

Its two abilities point to the same thing: wearing the opponent down. Shield Dust cancels the secondary effect of the attack it receives: no flinches, burns or added paralysis, which is more useful than it sounds against multi-hit contact moves. Compound Eyes, its hidden ability, raises accuracy, and that turns PoisonPowder (level 11) into near-certain doom.

That is its only honest plan: poison the opponent and wait. Iron Defense at level 6 covers its physical side, Venoshock at 25 punishes anything already poisoned and Bug Buzz closes the account. The problem is that Bug and Poison hit almost the same targets—Grass, Psychic, Dark and Fairy—and Steel types are immune to half of that. Defensively, it resists Fighting, Grass, Bug, Poison and Fairy, but falls to Fire, Flying, Psychic and Rock, four types that are everywhere.

Outside a normal playthrough, it has no place. Where it does work is on a first run through Hoenn: it arrives early, absorbs special attacks during the initial Gyms and spreads poison while another team member does the real work.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Bug, which is one of the most crowded and least interesting: it can breed with half the insect Pokédex and not much else. The gender ratio is 50%, so getting a female costs nothing. Its 15 incubation cycles work out at about 4080 steps, a middling figure on the short side.

Its movepool is limited to what it learns by levelling up: Confusion and Poison Sting from the start, Tackle and Iron Defense at 6, PoisonPowder at 11, Silver Wind at 18, Venoshock at 25, Psybeam at 34 and Bug Buzz at 43.

The evolution is simple once the filter has been passed: Cascoon becomes Dustox on reaching level 10, with no items, no time restrictions and no friendship involved. The filter comes earlier, with Wurmple.

Its habitat is the forest, and its catch rate, 45, is harsh for such a common insect: the same resistance to a Poké Ball as a starter. It grows at an average rate, gives 3 Special Defense effort points and may be carrying Silver Powder or Shed Shell in the wild.