Krabby

One hundred and five points of Attack and thirty HP. That imbalance is the whole species: one large claw with a small body behind it, forty centimetres tall and weighing six and a half kilos, much of which is shell and the two red pincers growing from its arms.

Pokédex entries insist on two things. The first is a bluff: when danger approaches, it blows bubbles from its mouth and hides behind them to look bigger than it is. The second is that its claws come and go — they break off when it attacks and grow back, and the same thing happens if someone tears them out of place. It lives buried in holes in beach sand. When food is scarce on fine-sand beaches, specimens wrestle belly to belly, shoving each other to mark their territory.

The official category, the Crab Pokémon, did not overcomplicate things. It occupies the first half of a two-stage line: at level 28 it evolves into Kingler, which keeps the same basic setup but has one claw much larger than the other. Pure Water type, with no secondary type and no alternate forms of any kind.

The 325 base points are spread around without much pattern. 105 Attack and 90 Defense are high figures for something you can fish up early in the game; 30 HP and a flat 25 in both Special Attack and Special Defense are bottom-tier numbers. The 90 Defense is misleading, because without the HP to back it up, it takes quite a bit more damage than the figure suggests, and any special attack knocks it out in one hit. Its Speed, 50, does not let it choose when to strike either.

Of its three abilities, the hidden one sounds best. Sheer Force raises the power of moves with secondary effects and removes those effects; the problem is its movepool. Crabhammer, learned at level 44 and the best move it gets at 100 power, has no secondary effect and gains nothing from it. Razor Shell, at 32, does benefit. Hyper Cutter prevents its Attack from being lowered, and Shell Armor blocks critical hits: two perfectly serviceable abilities with no strings attached.

It has no place in organised battling, and the reason is simple. At level 28 it evolves into Kingler without needing an item or any special conditions, with more Attack and the same movepool, so keeping it unevolved only makes sense if the format requires it. Where it does work is in a normal playthrough, and early on: you fish it up by the shore, it gives 1 Attack EV when it faints and, with False Swipe from TM, it leaves any awkward catch in the red without knocking it out. Swords Dance, learned at level 40, is more a promise of what its evolution can do than a plan for Krabby itself.

One Egg Group, Water 3, the one for crustaceans and shelled creatures. It is a small group, so the list of partners for passing down moves is not much to write home about: Corphish shares it, and so does Clauncher. The gender split is perfectly even, 50% female, so breeding does not depend on luck or force you to use Ditto.

The 20 Egg Cycles work out at roughly 5355 steps, making it a quick hatch. From breeding, you can get Brick Break, which at 100 power and Fighting type covers the gap against Rock and Steel better than anything it learns by itself. There is also Flail, which it does not learn by level until 29 — in other words, after the point when it should already have evolved — so breeding is the only way to get it earlier. Ancient Power, Knock Off and Night Slash round out the useful options. Amnesia, on 25 Special Defense, does not fix much.

The evolution has no trick to it: reach level 28, with no items, time-of-day requirements or friendship involved. Its habitat is the water's edge, and its catch rate, 225, is very close to the maximum of 255. A normal Poké Ball is almost always enough, and for a Pokémon that appears while fishing, that hardly matters: the difficult part is getting a bite, not stopping it from escaping.