Lanturn

It blinds its prey with a flash of light and swallows it whole, in a single bite, before the stunned animal understands what has happened. If anything survives the flash, it gets an electric shock as well. That two-step hunting method is repeated in almost every Pokédex entry, and explains the purpose of the antenna tipped with two spheres that grows from its head.

The light isn't magic: according to the Pokédex, it's produced by a chemical reaction between bacteria and the bodily fluids in the antenna itself. And it's visible from a very long way off. Hence the two nicknames used in translations, High Sea Star and Deep Sea Star, and the image that keeps appearing entry after entry: looking out over the sea at night from a ship's deck and finding something that looks like a starry sky, with the points of light shining from below. Its official category is the Light Pokémon.

It is 1.2 metres tall and weighs 22.5 kilograms, and lives in the open sea. It's the second and final stage of a two-stage line: Chinchou evolves into it and stops there, with no alternate forms or regional variants. The antenna, which is two long, separate appendages on the smaller Pokémon, becomes a single short, compact structure here.

The 125 HP is half the argument; the other half comes from Volt Absorb, which turns any Electric-type attack it takes into healing. Since Water and Electric leave it with only two weaknesses — Grass and Ground — and its usual weakness to Electric disappears thanks to the ability, what remains is a Pokémon that resists Fire, Water, Ice and Flying, and takes Steel at quarter damage.

The problem is the rest of the stat spread. 76 Special Attack doesn't kill anything, 58 Defense lets any physical attacker chew through that HP reserve in two turns, and 67 Speed is slow without being slow enough to make the most of it. The total, 460, is almost entirely spent on staying power.

It therefore works as both a wall and a pivot. Volt Switch lets it hit and switch out in the same turn; Scald punishes physical attackers with a burn; Ice Beam covers the Grass- and Ground-types coming after it. Spark, at level 30, is the Electric-type attack it will use for much of the game, because Hydro Pump doesn't appear until level 54. Recovery is its weak point: Aqua Ring at level 36 only trickles health back, and Rest forces it to sleep for two turns unless it's paired with Sleep Talk.

Smogon's lists place it in PU in Scarlet and Violet, and in RU in the Nat Dex format. In other words, it has a place, but down the ladder. In a normal playthrough, its time to shine is during sea crossings: it absorbs the Electric-type attacks used by coastal Trainers and fears almost nothing that swims around there.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Water 2, the fish group, with an even gender split: 50% female. Its 20 Egg cycles amount to roughly 5355 steps, an average wait.

It hatches with five Egg Moves: Mist, Psybeam, Water Pulse, Soak and Sucker Punch. The first four are expendable; the fifth is a bitter curiosity, because a 70-power priority physical attack sounds good until you remember that its Attack is 58. Soak, which turns the opponent into a Water-type, makes more sense in doubles than in one-on-one battles.

The evolution is straightforward: Chinchou evolves into Lanturn at level 27, with no items, times of day or friendship involved. Getting there is the part that takes time, because the line uses the Slow growth rate and needs more experience than most Pokémon to reach the same level.

Its habitat is the sea, and its catch rate of 75 leaves it in no-man's-land: neither the starters' 45 nor the first-route bugs' 255. A couple of good Balls are usually enough. When defeated, it gives 2 HP EVs, which fits the only thing it genuinely does well, and sometimes holds a Yellow Shard or a Deep Sea Scale.