Slaking

The snout is pink and pig-like, taking up half the face beneath thick eyebrows that jut out like an overhang. The rest is shaggy brown fur, with a white collar that rises over the head and ends in a tuft. Five-fingered hands, two-toed feet. Two metres tall and 130.5 kilograms that almost never leave the ground.

The four Pokédex entries insist on the same thing from different angles. It eats the grass within reach and only moves, reluctantly, when there is nothing left to chew. Wherever it settles, one-metre-radius bald patches appear, because it grazes lying face down and turning around on itself. Its official category is Lazy Pokémon, and there is no irony in it. It lives in forests, where it also takes advantage of ripe fruit falling from the trees.

What the entries repeat just as insistently is the other half of the matter: all that stillness is stored energy, and it can release it all at once. Slakoth sleeps twenty hours a day, Vigoroth cannot stay still for a second, and the third link returns to the first one's rest with the second one's muscle mass. The line moves forward; its behaviour describes a circle.

670 base stat points: the highest total of any Pokémon that is not Legendary, Mythical or a Mega Evolution. The spread has no obvious weak points — 160 Attack, 150 HP, 100 Defense, 100 Speed — except for a Special Defense of 65 that drops out of the picture and a Special Attack of 95 that is only good for an emergency Hyper Beam.

And then there is Truant, its only Ability, with no Hidden Ability to replace it. Every other turn, the move fails without using any PP. It attacks on the turn it comes onto the field and stares at the ceiling the next. That cuts any damage calculation in half and, even worse, gives the opponent a free turn every two turns to switch, heal, boost their stats or set up whatever suits them. 100 Speed does not make up for the wait.

There are two ways to live with it. One is to make the dead turn not entirely dead: Giga Impact and Hyper Beam, both with 150 power, fulfil their recharge turn during the same loafing turn, so the real cost disappears. The other is to save the lost turn for something other than attacking, with Yawn, Encore or Slack Off, all three available at level 1.

In a normal playthrough, none of this matters. An 85-power Body Slam, a 100-power Earthquake or the 120-power Mega Kick it gets at level 52, backed by 160 Attack, plough through almost everything in its path. Against another trainer, though, all it takes is for the opponent to survive one hit and have Protect: by alternating Protect and loafing turns, Slaking never lands a hit.

One Egg Group, Field, and a 50% gender split, so breeding does not start with hunting for the rare female. Fifteen Egg Cycles, around 4080 steps, an ordinary figure for a three-stage line.

Its Egg Move list is empty, and there is a reason: inheritance comes from below, as Slakoth, and moves up through the evolutions. Of the nine it learns through breeding in its base form, Curse and After You are the ones that add something level-up learning does not cover; Hammer Arm also appears there, although Slaking eventually learns it on its own at level 63.

It evolves from Vigoroth upon reaching level 36, with no items, time requirements or extra conditions. The whole line works this way, with the first jump at 18, but its growth rate is Slow and it takes more experience than average to get there.

Its habitat is the forest, and its catch rate of 45 puts it among the harder Pokémon to catch. The contrast with its own base form is striking: Slakoth has 255, the trivial value, the kind belonging to a Pokémon that stays in the first Poké Ball. The cheap route is to catch the little one and level it up. When defeated, it gives 3 HP effort points.