Graveler

The official category is Pokémon Roca, plain and simple, and it does exactly what it promises: a one-metre, 105-kilogram brown boulder with four arms and a stone plate over its forehead. The lower pair serves as its legs. It almost never uses them.

Pokédex entries insist on two habits. The first is food: stones, more than a tonne a day, with a stated preference for ones covered in moss, chewed with a racket that can be heard from far away. It climbs to the top of the mountain by biting its way through. The second is the way back down. It rolls downhill without slowing or changing direction, over whatever obstacles it finds, and if it gets a run-up it can exceed 100 km/h. It doesn't care if pieces break off along the way; one entry describes it as careless and free-spirited by nature, which is a polite way of saying it does its own thing.

Between Geodude, which fits in one hand, and the final stage, it occupies the middle step with 390 base stat total. This is the stage where the line stops being a rock with arms and starts to have some real bulk of its own: the lower limbs appear, and the thing no longer leaves the ground.

The 115 Defense is the figure that catches the eye, and also the one that misleads. Behind it are 55 HP, so the wall only exists on one side: Special Defense stays at 45, and with 45 Special Attack it has no real way to answer on that front either. 95 Attack is enough to deal damage. 35 Speed guarantees it will do so last.

Sturdy is what buys it a turn: at full HP, it cannot be taken out in one hit, and that turn is spent on Stealth Rock, which it learns at level 30, or simply on Explosion at 44. Rock Head offers a different game — it cancels the recoil from Double-Edge and Take Down — but it does not stop Self-Destruct and Explosion from knocking it out anyway. Sand Veil, the hidden ability, depends on setting up a sandstorm to raise its Evasion, and that takes two turns it does not have.

On the attack, Rock and Ground divide the work neatly: Rock reaches Flying, Bug, Fire and Ice; Ground reaches Steel, Electric, Rock, Fire and Poison. Earthquake at 40 and Stone Edge at 54 are the two serious hits. Grass resists both types, and that is the biggest problem, because defensively Grass and Water hit it for quadruple damage. Immunity to Electric does not make up for that.

Outside a normal playthrough, it has no place. With Eviolite it can take a physical assault and little more, and its real role is waiting for a cable: one trade away stands Golem, which does the same thing with better numbers in every column.

It belongs to the Mineral Egg Group, the one for fossils, gears and everything else this series counts as rock. The gender split is exact — 50% female — so breeding a line of your own does not depend on getting lucky with the encounter.

Fifteen incubation cycles work out at roughly 4080 steps, on the shorter side. The egg gives it seven moves it cannot learn any other way, and several cover its exact weak points: Strength and Dynamic Punch hit the Rock- and Steel-types that resist its normal attacks, Wide Guard stops moves that sweep the whole team in double battles, and Block prevents the opponent from switching out. Mega Punch, Flail and Curse complete the list.

The condition to get it is raising Geodude to level 25, with no items, time restrictions or friendship involved. The next one is more awkward: it only evolves by trading. There is no stone or level that can replace it.

Its habitat is the mountain, and its catch rate, 120, sits in the comfortable zone — neither a freebie nor a demanding catch; a Great Ball handles most encounters. In the wild it can be holding a Hard Stone or an Everstone, the item that prevents evolution. Carrying the thing that blocks its promotion fits the rest of the Pokédex entry rather well.