Makuhita

Granite Cave was the first place where anyone ran into one: the ground floor and first basement in Ruby and Sapphire, and later Victory Road. Since then, it has always lived among stone — swarms on Sinnoh’s Route 225, Alola’s Route 2, the mines and dry paths of Paldea — and its recorded habitat is the mountains.

Underneath the design is a miniature sumo wrestler: a yellow lump, a marked belt around its waist, black, broad hands. It is exactly one metre tall and weighs 86.4 kilos. That density is almost all it has going for it, and explains why it eventually learns Heavy Slam at level 46, a move whose power depends on how much the user weighs.

The Pokédex entries always talk about routine. It hardens its body by slapping big tree trunks with its open palms, eats a lot, sleeps plenty and trains methodically; one of them sums up the day as intensive training interrupted only to eat and take a little nap. Another insists on its stubbornness: no matter how many times it is defeated, it gets back up, and every recovery helps it build energy for its evolution.

It is the smaller half of a two-stage line. At level 24, it stops being this and becomes Hariyama. The official category, Guts Pokémon, describes the attitude, not the results.

237 base stat points, with the highest where they help the least: 72 HP ahead of 60 Attack. Defense and Special Defense are stuck at 30 each, Speed at 25 and Special Attack at 20, enough to dismiss the entire special half of its TM list at a glance, Focus Blast included. Being pure Fighting gives it three resistances — Bug, Rock and Dark — and three well-spread weaknesses: Flying, Psychic and Fairy. On the offensive side, things improve, because Fighting hits Normal, Rock, Steel, Ice and Dark for double damage.

Thick Fat softens Fire- and Ice-type attacks. Guts raises its Attack as soon as it suffers a status condition, and that is the one that gives it something to work with: with a burn on it, Facade doubles its power from 70 to 140. Sheer Force, its hidden ability, boosts Poison Jab and Zen Headbutt at the cost of cancelling their secondary effects.

Its own moves: Knock Off at level 19 removes the item as well as dealing damage, Bulk Up at 22 raises Attack and Defense at the same time, and Belly Drum at 25 is what defines any serious attempt — half its HP in exchange for maxing out its Attack. That is the problem, and it is arithmetic. With 30 in both defenses, whatever is left after paying for Belly Drum does not survive a neutral hit, and with 25 Speed it gets to choose the order of almost nothing. It reaches Close Combat at level 40, sixteen levels after the point at which most players have already evolved it.

Where it does the job is in a normal playthrough, from cave to cave, with the Black Belt it sometimes carries strengthening its same-type moves.

A single Egg Group, Human-Like, so the list of partners is limited to other vaguely human-shaped Pokémon or a Ditto. The sex ratio is three males for every female: 25% female, enough to make getting the mother a non-issue.

The 20 egg cycles amount to about 5355 steps, and that egg produces seven moves it does not learn by level. Counter makes use of its 72 HP by returning twice the physical damage received. Bullet Punch gives it a priority hit, which is the only way for something with 25 Speed to move ahead of anything. Dynamic Punch and Cross Chop push its power above anything it can learn on its own, at the cost of accuracy. Feint, Wide Guard and Helping Hand complete the list.

It evolves by reaching level 24, with no stones, held items, time conditions or friendship requirements. It grows in the Fluctuating experience group, which makes the early levels much cheaper and the later ones more expensive, so reaching 24 costs little and everything after that comes at a steep price.

Its catch rate is 180. If 45 marks difficult and 255 trivial, this is clearly on the comfortable side: a regular Poké Ball and some damage are enough. Defeating it yields 1 HP EV and 47 base experience points, among the lowest figures you see in a cave.