Lugia

The plates running along its back fold against its body when it needs to gain speed; the rest of the time, they stand raised over a silvery-white back that ends in a blue belly. Its silhouette does not match any one animal: there is a bird in the wings and beak, a plesiosaur in the long neck, and something dragon-like in the overall design. It is 5.2 metres tall and weighs 216 kilos.

It lives where no one else does. The three Pokédex entries repeat the same portrait: it sleeps on a deep-sea ridge, far below the surface, and appears so rarely that sightings are treated as rumours — one of them on a stormy night. The reason given by the Pokédex itself is that its strength gets in the way. A single flap of its wings is enough to bring down entire buildings, and sustained flapping can cause forty days of storms, so it stays away from any inhabited area. Hence its title as the guardian of the seas, and hence its official category: the Diving Pokémon.

It does not evolve, does not come from anything else, and has no alternate forms or regional variants. It is a one-link species, paired from the start with Ho-Oh, which occupies the same place in the other game.

The 680 points are distributed with a very specific idea in mind: 154 Special Defense and 130 Defense over 106 HP, with only 90 in each of the two attacking stats. The figure that changes everything is its 110 Speed. Very few walls move before the things they are supposed to withstand, and that lets it heal before taking the second hit instead of afterwards.

The rest comes from Multiscale, its hidden ability: at full HP, damage taken is halved. With those defenses, it is difficult to take down in one hit even with a type advantage. But the ability switches off after the first scratch, and being a Flying type makes it vulnerable to Rock-type entry hazards. Poison, a burn, or a sandstorm from Tyranitar is enough to strip it away. Smogon places it in Ubers, and its analyses from Generations VI to VIII agree: it is a wall that depends entirely on Multiscale and only fits on attrition teams with a healer behind it.

The moves that keep this plan going come from its own level-up moveset. Recover arrives at level 45 and gives it reliable healing. Whirlwind is available from level 1, sends the opponent out of battle, and also wipes out any stat boosts they may have set up. Aeroblast, at level 54, is exclusive to Lugia: 100 power, a high critical-hit ratio, and only 5 PP.

What holds it back is its typing. Psychic and Flying leave it with five weaknesses — Electric, Ice, Rock, Ghost, and Dark — and the last two are everywhere. It is not intimidating on the attacking side either: 90 Special Attack is low for the format it plays in, and Steel types take almost everything it can throw at them while setting up hazards at its expense.

It cannot breed. It belongs to the Undiscovered Egg Group, has no defined sex, and cannot breed with Ditto, so the only possible specimen is the one you catch. The 120 Egg cycles listed in its data are among the longest in the game — around 30,855 steps if it could ever hatch from an Egg — and serve only as a reference figure. The curious part is that its list includes an Egg Move, Dragon Rush, which no Lugia can inherit through the normal method.

Its catch rate is 3. To put that into perspective: 45 is the figure for a difficult Pokémon, while 255 is the figure for one that goes down to the first Poké Ball. With 3, the only sensible option is to leave it at 1 HP and put it to sleep, and even then you count the Balls by the dozen.

The habitat assigned to it by the Pokédex is Rare, the label reserved for Legendary Pokémon. It levels up at the Slow rate, the most expensive curve of the six, so a caught specimen takes time to make back the 306 base experience points it gives out. What it does leave behind when trained against are 3 Special Defense EVs, which fits the stat that defines it.