Sneasel

In mountain forests, at night. In Gold and Silver there were exactly two places to look for it, Route 28 and Mt. Silver, and only during the night; the habitat assigned to it by the Pokédex is the forest.

The rest of its entry is about stealing eggs. The entries insist on it one after another: it sneaks into nests where the parents have stopped watching, pierces the shell with its claw and sucks out the contents. One description adds that it goes raiding in groups with others of its species and that they then fiercely fight over who gets to eat the spoils. Another says that Pokémon Breeders hate it and try to take measures against it, which is about as close as an official text has come to calling a species a pest.

Its curved claws also help it climb by gripping the bark. It keeps them hidden and deploys them when attacked, more as a threat than as a strike. Hence the category, the Sharp Claw Pokémon.

It is 90 centimeters tall and weighs 28 kilograms, quite a lot of density for something always described as being on the move. It does not evolve by level: it stays as it is until someone gives it a Razor Claw, and where it goes from there depends on the time of day and which form it is.

430 points distributed with very little doubt about what they are for. 115 Speed and 95 Attack on one side; 35 Special Attack on the other, turning half the TM list into set dressing—Ice Beam, Blizzard, Dark Pulse and Shadow Ball are there, and there is no reason to touch them. 55 HP, 55 Defense and 75 Special Defense: almost anything that hits it breaks it.

Of its three abilities, the one that changes anything is Pickpocket, its Hidden Ability: when hit, it steals the opponent's held item. Inner Focus prevents flinching and Keen Eye stops its Accuracy from being lowered, two effects that rarely make themselves felt.

On offense, Dark and Ice split the work neatly and leave little uncovered. Defensively, it is a disaster: six weaknesses—Fighting, Bug, Fire, Rock, Steel and Fairy—against three resistances, and with 55 Defense any of the six knocks it out. Immunity to Psychic is the only thing it gets for free.

What it hits with: Foul Play, 95 power by TM, is its best attack. Icicle Crash, 85, comes as an Egg Move, and is the only reasonable route to a physical Ice-type attack. Ice Shard adds priority for finishing foes off. Swords Dance doubles its Attack, and Hone Claws, at level 36, raises its critical-hit chance.

Its ceiling is set by its own evolution: Weavile does exactly the same thing with 510 points instead of 430, 120 Attack and 125 Speed. What Sneasel keeps by not evolving is the right to hold an Eviolite, and with it trades power for surviving one more hit. Against Scizor's Steel-type priority, that does not help much either: Bullet Punch goes first, has a type advantage and ignores Speed.

Field Egg Group, one group only, and a 50% gender split, so breeding it does not start with the usual hunt for a rare female. Twenty incubation cycles, about 5355 steps, in the middle of the table.

Eight moves hatch from the Egg, and two justify the work. Icicle Crash is the best move it will get of its own type, because it learns not a single physical Ice-type attack by level. Ice Shard gives it the priority hit that 115 Speed does not always guarantee. Feint, Counter, Bite, Double Hit, Fake Out and Spite complete the list.

Its evolution depends not on level but on two simultaneous conditions: gaining a level while holding a Razor Claw and it being night. That produces Weavile. The Hisuian form uses the same item with the condition reversed, during the day, and produces Sneasler.

Its catch rate is 60. It is not one of the easy ones: 255 is the number for things that drop into a Poké Ball on the first attempt and 45 for those that genuinely resist, and 60 is right up against that second group. In the wild it can be holding a Quick Claw or a Grip Claw, a thematic coincidence that by this point already seems deliberate. It grows at a Medium Slow rate and its base happiness is 35, among the lowest in the game.