Nidoking

“Drill Pokémon” isn’t a friendly metaphor. Pokédex entries describe a horn that can pierce diamonds and is loaded with poison, along with skin as hard as steel whose purpose is to make sure the one doing the ramming doesn’t feel it. The tail is what comes up most often in the official text: one blow can split a telephone pole like a matchstick, and a single swing is enough to topple a metal transmission tower.

All that fits into 1.4 metres and 62 kilograms, which makes it a fairly compact animal for what the description promises. The entries keep insisting on the same character trait: once it goes berserk, nothing can stop it. Only one thing can calm it down, and that’s Nidoqueen.

It’s the final stage of the male branch, and the change in form is the more drastic of the two. Nidoran♂ evolves into Nidorino at level 16 and stays that way, on all fours with its snout out front, until someone brings it a Moon Stone. What comes out stands on its hind legs, has arms and hands, and drags a tail that wasn’t much to look at in the earlier stages. The category changes with it: Nidorino is still a spiky rodent; this is something else entirely.

The distribution of its 505 points suggests one direction, while its actual use goes another way. The highest figure is 102 Attack, followed by 85 Special Attack and 85 Speed, with 81 HP, 77 Defense and 75 Special Defense bringing up the rear. The horn and tail in the entries promise a physical attacker, but the two moves that define its game are special: Earth Power, at 90, and Sludge Wave, at 95, both available as soon as it evolves.

The reason is Sheer Force, its hidden ability, which raises the power of every move with a secondary effect and removes that effect. Earth Power, Sludge Wave, Flamethrower, Ice Beam and Thunderbolt all benefit from it, so it boosts the whole set rather than just a couple of attacks. Smogon treats it as the only ability worth using, combined with Life Orb: the item’s recoil is also negated by Sheer Force, so the damage boost comes for free. The role assigned to it by analyses of Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl OU and Sword and Shield UU is the same: breaking walls.

On offense, Ground and Poison get in each other’s way very little, and TM coverage fills in the gaps. Defensively, the numbers work out worse: 77 and 75 with 81 HP don’t take much of a hit, and there are four weaknesses — Water, Ice, Ground and Psychic — all common across different metagames. Immunity to Electric is the best part of the typing. And 85 Speed leaves it just below the cutoff for fast attackers, so it almost always moves second with a body that isn’t built to take the first hit.

It belongs to the Monster and Field Egg Groups, two of the most populated, but that matters less than the other figure: 0% female. They’re all male, without exception, so breeding has to go through Ditto or a compatible female of another species. The obvious choice is Nidoran♀, which shares both groups and is 100% female. The 20 Egg Cycles work out at roughly 5355 steps, an average figure for a three-stage line. It has no exclusive Egg Moves recorded: anything inherited is inherited at the Nidoran stages.

Its evolution condition is a single one and doesn’t depend on level: use a Moon Stone on Nidorino. That has a practical consequence worth considering beforehand, because from that point on its level-up list dries up — apart from Megahorn, which arrives right upon evolution, everything else is listed at level 1 and has to be remembered manually.

Its recorded habitat is grassland and its Catch Rate is 45, the figure for a Pokémon that’s difficult to catch, although in practice almost nobody catches it in the wild: the usual route is to breed it from Nidoran. It grows at a Medium Slow pace, starts with 70 base friendship and gives 3 EVs in Attack, which is exactly the stat its best moves don’t use.