Phanpy

Cufant repeats the idea twenty years later: a small elephant, its trunk out front and a flat colour that doesn't look like any real animal. This one came first. It is half a metre tall and weighs 33.5 kg, and the Pokédex insists that its compact body is deceptive — it can carry a person on its back without effort, and when it bumps someone with its trunk as a sign of affection, it sends them flying.

The trunk is the part that organises everything else. It uses it as a shower: it sprays water over itself, and when several are together they spray one another until they're soaked, making it easy to spot them drying off near the riverbank. It also uses it to mark its territory. It digs a deep hole in the ground along riverbanks to make its nest and leaves a sign around it so the rest of the group understands that patch is taken.

Its official category in English is the Long Nose Pokémon, which is exactly what you see. It is a pure Ground type, with no second typing, and occupies the first of the two stages in a short evolutionary line that ends with Donphan at level 25. Its form changes completely there: the round baby with short legs becomes a wheel with tusks.

330 points distributed with one figure that stands out: 90 HP, more than many already-evolved Pokémon have. Everything else drops off. 60 Attack and 60 Defense, with a floor of 40 in Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed. Those 90 HP without the defenses to back them up are enough to take one hit, not two, and 40 Speed guarantees that it almost always attacks second.

Of its two Abilities, Pickup is one that works outside battle: it finds items after battles and changes nothing during them. Sand Veil, its hidden Ability, raises its evasiveness while a sandstorm is active, and it can learn Sandstorm by TM, although setting the weather with a Pokémon that has 40 Speed and no way to take advantage of it afterwards is wasted effort.

Being a pure Ground type gives it immunity to Electric and good matchups against Fire, Rock, Steel, Poison and Electric, with no additional resistances and Water, Grass and Ice dealing double damage. Its offensive movepool has high numbers and awkward conditions: Last Resort, at level 37, deals 140 but fails while even one move on the team remains unused, and Double-Edge, at 42, deals 120 at the cost of recoil on defenses that cannot take it. The honest options are Bulldoze at level 15 and Earthquake by TM.

It is not a serious battle Pokémon, and where it does fit is in a normal playthrough: an early Ground type that resists Electric-type Gyms and hangs on long enough to reach 25. In formats that only allow unevolved forms, its 90 HP is the only reason to look at it.

A single Egg Group, Field, one of the most populated in the Pokédex, lets it breed easily with half the terrestrial Pokédex. The gender split is fifty-fifty, so there is no need to hunt for females or resort to a Ditto to start a breeding line.

The 20 incubation cycles come out at roughly 5355 steps, a standard egg. What hatches from it makes up for that: Head Smash, with 150 power, is the strongest attack it can reach by any method, and Ice Shard gives it a priority hit against Grass types that would otherwise dismantle it. It also inherits Fissure, which is devastating when it hits and misses almost every time, as well as Play Rough and High Horsepower, with 90 and 95 power respectively and no unusual effects.

Evolution has no conditions: reach level 25 and that's it. No item, no friendship, no time of day. It grows on the Medium Fast experience curve, the one-million-point curve up to level 100, which makes it reach 25 before most slow-growing lines.

The habitat assigned to it by the Pokédex is rugged terrain, although its own entries place it beside rivers. Its catch rate, 120, is in the comfortable range: neither handed out like an early-route Pokémon nor locked away like a 45. In the wild, it may be holding a Passho Berry.