Geodude

Rock Pokémon, with no surname or adornment. The official category promises nothing and is honest about it: what you get is 40 centimeters and 20 kilos of boulder with eyebrows, a mouth, and two muscular arms that let it climb up slopes. The rest of the body simply doesn't exist.

Every Pokédex entry insists on the same idea. That it's impossible to tell it apart from an ordinary rock, that people trip over them and step on them, that it sleeps half-buried and doesn't wake up even when someone stomps on it. In the morning, it rolls down the slope to look for food.

Two details step outside the pebble joke. One: the longer it lives, the more wind and water erode it, so old ones are rounder than young ones even though their temperament remains just as rough. Two: they test their hardness by crashing into one another, a headbutting duel between stones.

The rest is a matter of quantity. One entry says that an idle researcher started counting them along the sides of a road and reached a hundred. It's the first step in a line that climbs to Graveler and ends at Golem, and the species almost everyone associates with the first cave of their first playthrough.

Three hundred points distributed with the subtlety of a brick: 100 Defense and 80 Attack on one side; on the other, 40 HP, 30 and 30 in the two special stats, and a Speed of 20 that leaves it moving last against practically everything. And that high Defense is deceptive, because with 40 HP behind it, it can take one physical hit, not two.

Sturdy is what keeps it standing: from full HP, no attack can knock it out in one hit, and it always has 1 HP left. Rock Head, the other Ability, cancels the recoil from Double-Edge, but it doesn't stop Self-Destruct and Explosion from taking it out: there, fainting is part of the move and doesn't count as recoil. Sand Veil, its Hidden Ability, raises its evasiveness in a sandstorm.

On the offensive, the Rock/Ground typing spreads the damage around well. With Stone Edge, learned at level 42, and Earthquake, at 34, it covers Fire, Ice, Flying, Bug, Electric, Poison, Rock, and Steel. Defensively, it's a disaster: Water and Grass hit for quadruple damage, followed by Ice, Fighting, Ground, and Steel. Six weaknesses, two of them among the most widely distributed offensive types around. Immunity to Electric is the only consolation.

Everything it does, Graveler and Golem do better, sharing its types with higher numbers. Where it fits is in a regular playthrough, and early on: Stealth Rock, at level 28, leaves the rocks in place for the rest of the battle, and Self-Destruct, at 24, takes something with it that wasn't supposed to go down.

Mineral Egg Group and nothing else, the drawer for stones and gears, so its possible partners are other inanimate things with faces. The gender split is clean, half and half, so two wild specimens are enough to breed without resorting to Ditto.

Fifteen incubation cycles, roughly 4080 steps. The egg produces two Fighting-type moves with 100 power, Hammer Arm and Dynamic Punch, and that's the real reason to breed it: it learns nothing of that type by level, and the closest thing available by TM is Brick Break, with 75. It can also inherit Wide Guard, which stops priority moves and is useful in doubles, as well as Mega Punch, Curse, Block, and Flail.

Evolution has no trick or special condition: at level 25 it becomes Graveler, and from there it only becomes Golem through trading. It's worth checking its held item first, because some wild specimens come carrying an Everstone, and that item blocks exactly what you're trying to do.

Its habitat is the mountains, although in practice it appears in every cave and in absurd numbers. With a catch rate of 255, catching it isn't a decision: throw a Poké Ball at the first opportunity and it's already inside. It grows at a medium-slow rate and leaves 1 effort point in Defense.