Misdreavus

Gold and Silver saved it for last. In Generation II, it only appeared inside Mt. Silver, at night, on the first two interior floors, once the Pokémon League had already been cleared. It was the series' first pure Ghost type: until then, every Ghost had come with Poison as a secondary type by default.

What floats there is a head with no body, blue-grey, with tufts that serve as hair and five red orbs hanging from its neck like a necklace. Seventy centimetres tall and exactly one kilogram, because there is no body to support. Its official category, the Screech Pokémon, describes exactly what it does in Pokédex entries: screams, howls and sobs at night to scare anyone who comes near. The red orbs are the digestive system of the whole thing — they absorb other people's fear and the life energy of whoever gets scared, and that is what it eats. If you hear sobbing in a room that should be empty, you already know who is lurking there. During the day, it sleeps hidden in the darkness.

It has no pre-evolution, and for two generations it had nothing ahead of it either. The fourth added Mismagius through a Dusk Stone.

435 points distributed with an unusual symmetry: 60 HP, 60 Attack, 60 Defense, and then exactly 85 in Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed. Not a single spike anywhere on the sheet. What keeps it going is not any of those numbers, but the combination of pure Ghost typing and Levitate: immune to Normal, Fighting and Ground at the same time, and therefore also to Spikes and Toxic Spikes, which sit on the ground it never touches.

That gives it the job it has always performed: blocking the opponent's Rapid Spin so the hazards on their side of the field cannot be cleared. Since Generation V, Eviolite has multiplied both defenses by one and a half, and that 60/60/60 spread can actually take hits; the price is giving up every other item, Leftovers included, so its only recovery is Pain Split, learned at level 32, which works precisely because its maximum HP is low.

The rest of the job is handled by Will-O-Wisp against physical attackers, Taunt against passive Pokémon, and Hex, learned at level 23, which doubles in power if the target already has a status condition. An offensive route exists — Nasty Plot raises Special Attack by two stages and Shadow Ball comes at level 41 — but 85 Special Attack does not break through walls.

Its tiers have always been the ones below, with one exception: it was OU in Gold and Silver, where it stopped Snorlax and blocked Starmie's Rapid Spin better than any other Ghost. After that came UU in Ruby and Sapphire, NU and RU in Generation V, NU and PU in Generation VI, and ZU in Generation VII. In Scarlet and Violet, Smogon only analyses it for Draft, at two or three points.

Amorphous Egg Group, the box where ghosts, gases and everything without a fixed shape end up. The gender split is straightforward: 50% female, so getting the mother is not the usual bottleneck.

Twenty-five incubation cycles work out at about 6630 steps, putting it among the slow-hatching eggs. Its growth rate, on the other hand, is fast, and it reaches each level with less experience than average.

The egg gives it moves it cannot learn in any other way. Destiny Bond, to take down whoever finishes it off. Memento, which drops both of the opponent's attacking stats by two stages at the cost of fainting. Shadow Sneak and Sucker Punch, the only two priority attacks it has access to. And Screech, which is what gives its category its name.

It evolves with a Dusk Stone and nothing else: no minimum level, no time of day and no friendship. Just the stone. The change adds exactly twenty points to Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed, leaving HP, Attack and Defense where they were.

Its habitat is caves, and its catch rate of 45 puts it in the difficult bracket, the same one as the starters. In the wild, it may be holding a Spell Tag. Its base friendship is 35, among the lowest in the Pokédex.