Gligar

Its front legs end in pincers and its hind legs in claws, and all four serve the same purpose: grabbing onto something and not letting go. Pokédex entries describe it hanging from a cliff, motionless, until it spots prey. Then it spreads its wings and lets itself drop.

It doesn’t fly; it glides. The text insists on that distinction—it moves without making a sound, “as if it were skating,” and reaches the opponent’s face before they hear it. There it grips on with its hind claws and front pincers, then injects poison with the stinger on its tail. Another entry sums it up without embellishment: it flies straight at the target’s face and finishes off its terrified victim.

The official category, Fly Scorpion Pokémon, splits the design between bat and scorpion without committing to either. It is 1.1 meters tall and weighs 64.8 kilograms, an odd density for something that stays in the air with membranes and doesn’t flap its wings.

It is number 207 in the National Pokédex, right after Dunsparce, and for two generations it was the only Pokémon in its line: Gliscor didn’t appear until the fourth.

430 points spread around with one clear peak: 105 Defense. The rest ranges from modest to useless—65 HP, 65 Special Defense, 75 Attack, 85 Speed, and 35 Special Attack that do nothing for it. It takes physical hits well and falls apart to special ones.

Its typing makes up for some of that. Ground and Flying grant it an immunity to Electric and Ground, resistances to Fighting, Bug, and Poison, and only one real weakness: Ice, which hits it four times as hard. An Ice Beam wipes it out even if it comes from something that isn’t a strong attacker.

Of its three Abilities, Hyper Cutter prevents its Attack from being lowered, which makes little difference with 75 base Attack; Sand Veil raises its evasion in a sandstorm; Immunity, its Hidden Ability, prevents poisoning and is the only one that solves a specific problem: opponents that live off Toxic.

For attacking, Earthquake by TM and Swords Dance at level 50 are the whole plan: double its Attack and use its Defense to survive the setup turn. Acrobatics, learned at 22, goes from 55 to 110 power if it isn’t holding an item, which clashes head-on with Eviolite, the only thing capable of covering that 65 Special Defense. You have to choose.

The underlying issue has no solution: Gliscor does the same thing with 510 points instead of 430, and Gligar remains an unevolved Pokémon that lacks both power and special bulk. Its place is in a normal playthrough, where its high Defense and two immunities are enough to get it across entire routes. An Electric-type Trainer can’t touch it.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Bug, which rules out the bat half of the design and leaves the scorpion: it can breed with Skorupi and the rest of the arthropods in the Pokédex. The gender ratio is 50% on each side, so getting a female doesn’t depend on luck.

Its 20 Egg cycles work out to around 5355 steps, making it a slow egg. The offspring can inherit six moves: Wing Attack, Double-Edge, Counter, Feint, Night Slash, and Cross Poison. The last two cover types that its level-up list never touches, and Counter makes some sense on something with 105 Defense, although its 65 HP leaves it only half-effective.

Evolution requires two conditions at once: gaining a level while holding a Razor Fang, and doing so at night. If either one is missing, nothing happens, and it’s an easy method to leave half-finished without realizing it.

Its habitat is the mountain, and it grows at a Medium Slow rate. Its catch rate, 60, puts it in the middle range, leaning inconvenient, far from the 255 of common wildlife. In Scarlet and Violet, it doesn’t appear in the base game: you have to look for it in Kitakami with the downloadable content, in places such as the ravine or the mountain.