Pineco

What’s hanging from the branch isn’t a fruit. It’s an animal waiting, and the shell that makes it look like a pine cone wasn’t there from birth: it makes it itself, sticking bark to its body with saliva until the shell grows thicker, layer by layer. Its official category in Spanish is Larva Pokémon; in English it’s called the “Bagworm Pokémon”, after the caterpillar that builds itself a portable case out of whatever it finds around it.

The disguise works both ways. It serves as a shield—the Pokédex entries say that the shell protects it from birds that peck at it by mistake—and it serves as an ambush: it stays perfectly still on the tree and waits for a Bug Pokémon to pass by so it can catch it. In Alola, the Pokédex says, it has a particular fondness for Cutiefly.

What it can’t stand is having its meal interrupted. If someone shakes the tree while it’s eating, it drops to the ground and explodes without the slightest warning. The threat is literal and comes early: Self-Destruct at level 6, Explosion at 34.

It’s 60 centimetres tall and weighs 7.2 kilograms, a weight that, according to the first entry, it doesn’t mind accumulating. It’s pure Bug, has no alternate forms, and one entry warns that it can reach a gigantic size with age—which is exactly what happens at level 31, when it becomes Forretress.

290 total points, with the spread deliberately skewed: 90 Defense against 35 Special Defense. It can take hits from one side and absolutely nothing from the other. Its 65 Attack isn’t enough to threaten anyone, and its 15 Speed is among the lowest figures in existence.

Sturdy is the only thing that gives it a plan. It guarantees surviving any hit with 1 HP from full health, and it also blocks one-hit KO moves. The problem is that being this slow means acting last, so the free turn isn’t spent hitting back but setting something up. Spikes at level 28 are the obvious answer; Toxic Spikes and Stealth Rock come from TM. Rapid Spin, at 17, does the opposite and clears your side of the field.

Those same 15 Speed points are what make Gyro Ball, learned at level 42, interesting: the move’s power increases the slower its user is, and almost nothing is slower. Offensively, its Bug typing is useful against Grass, Psychic and Dark. Defensively, it resists Fighting, Ground and Grass, at the cost of weaknesses to Fire, Flying and Rock; Fire deletes it without discussion.

It isn’t a competitive Pokémon, and there’s no way to disguise that: 50 HP can’t support any kind of wall, and everything it does is done better by Forretress with fifty more points in its stats. Where it does the job is in a normal playthrough, at mid-level and without rare items: it takes one physical hit, lays Spikes, and leaves with Explosion, 250 power at level 34, which takes out anything that doesn’t resist the Normal type.

A single Egg Group, Bug, which reduces the list of partners to anything sharing that label or a Ditto. The gender split is perfectly even, 50% female, so finding one that can breed takes no effort at all.

Twenty incubation cycles work out to about 5355 steps ((20+1)×255). Of the moves it can inherit as Egg Moves, three deserve a mention. Power Trick swaps Attack and Defense, and with a body sitting at 65 and 90 that means hitting with 90. Counter returns twice the physical damage received, and with Sturdy behind it the combination practically builds itself. Toxic Spikes gives it an option through breeding that would otherwise depend on TM. Pin Missile, Flail, Sand Tomb and Swift complete the list.

Its evolution has no unusual condition: reach level 31 and that’s it, with no item, time of day or friendship required. It grows at the medium rate, the most predictable of the six.

Its habitat is the forest, and its catch rate, 190, sits in the comfortable part of the scale: far from a starter’s 45, halfway to the trivial 255. A regular Poké Ball at half health is usually enough. It gives 1 Defense EV and 58 base experience, little even for what you expect from an early Bug type.