Igglybuff

It lives in grassland, and in Paldea that translates into showing up across half the map without you even looking for it: mass outbreaks in cities and one-star Tera Raid Battles included. It wasn't always this accessible. In Diamond and Pearl you had to go to the Trophy Garden, while in Alola it only appeared on Routes 4 and 6, and only during the day.

It's a balloon with legs that barely uses them. It gets around by bouncing, because its body is so soft and elastic that rebounding is cheaper than walking; Pokédex entries warn that, if it starts rolling, it crashes into everything and there's no way to stop it. Thirty centimeters, exactly one kilogram.

What gives it character is its throat, and that's only half-developed. It loves singing and sings badly: its vocal cords aren't fully developed, and if it sings for too long it hurts itself, so it gargles with pure spring water. The more praise it gets, the better it sings. When it gets tired of bouncing, it sweats and gives off a sweet aroma that calms opponents in battle; the comparison used by the Pokédex is meringue.

It's the baby form of Jigglypuff: the first link in a three-stage line, and one that didn't exist when the line debuted.

Two hundred and ten points distributed with one good idea. The 90 HP is the figure that stands out, and everything else is on the floor: 30 Attack, 40 Special Attack, 15 Defense, 20 Special Defense, 15 Speed. That 20 Special Defense is the absolute minimum in the game, tied with Caterpie, Weedle and Magikarp. The 15 Defense is the frailest of anything with the Fairy type. A large tank with the tap left running.

Of its three abilities, the only one that does anything is Friend Guard, the hidden ability, which reduces the damage its allies take. Competitive raises Special Attack when one of its stats is lowered, which on 40 Special Attack is little more than decoration. Cute Charm infatuates anything that touches it, and depends on the opponent choosing to hit it with a contact move.

Its typing, on the other hand, is one of the clean ones: Normal and Fairy gives it immunity to Ghost and Dragon, resistance to Bug, Dark and Fighting, and only two weaknesses, Poison and Steel. None of that matters when any neutral attack knocks it out.

It's not there to attack. Disarming Voice, at level 12, has 40 power and never misses; Charm, at 20, lowers the opponent's Attack by two stages; Sing, which it knows from the start, puts targets to sleep when it hits. It learns moves like Play Rough and Hyper Voice through TMs that it will never get any value from with 30 Attack. In a normal playthrough nobody takes it into battle: you carry it around until it evolves.

It belongs to the Undiscovered Egg Group, so it can't breed. Wigglytuff and Jigglypuff, both in the Fairy Egg Group, produce the eggs, and that's where it comes from. Its 10 hatch cycles amount to about 2805 steps, among the shortest there are: it hatches before you have time to forget about the egg. Three out of four are female.

An egg can give it eight moves that it can't learn any other way, and several of them are the real reason to bother breeding the line: Wish, Heal Pulse, Perish Song, Last Resort, Present, Covet, Rollout and Gravity. They all remain after it evolves.

Its evolution depends on friendship. It starts at 70 base friendship and needs to reach 160, after which all it takes is gaining one level; no stone, time of day or item involved. In practice: walk around with it, give it candies and don't let it faint.

In the wild, it sometimes holds an Oran Berry. Its catch rate is 170, a high value — where 45 is a difficult Pokémon and 255 means throwing a Poké Ball and being done with it, this is close to the second extreme. It shares that exact figure with Jigglypuff and nobody else. It grows at the Fast rate, so it levels up sooner than almost everything around it.