Sunkern

Cherubi at least carries a second cherry in reserve. Sunkern carries nothing: it is a 30-centimetre, 1.8-kilogram sunflower seed, yellow with brown streaks that imitate those of a real seed, two leaves on top and a root poking out underneath. The game classifies it as ball-shaped, and the description falls short only because there is not much else to describe.

Pokédex entries insist on two ideas. The first is stillness: it moves as little as possible so it does not waste the nutrients stored inside, because those are what will have to pay for its evolution someday. It does not eat. It drinks the dew left in the morning on the leaves of other plants, and apparently nothing else.

The second is stranger. It can suddenly fall from the sky without warning, just like a seed coming loose from its parent plant. If a Spearow attacks it while it is falling, it violently shakes its leaves. That is its entire defensive repertoire.

It shares its official category —Seed Pokémon— with the Bulbasaur line, with one fundamental difference: Bulbasaur carries a seed on its back, and this is the seed. It has a single form, with no regional variants, and the second stage of the line, Sunflora, does not come through levelling up.

Six identical figures: 30 HP, 30 Attack, 30 Defense, 30 Special Attack, 30 Special Defense and 30 Speed. Total: 180. There is no distribution to analyse, no stat worth saving from the rest, and that total is among the lowest ever printed on a data sheet.

Its two regular abilities point in the same direction, and neither gets it there. Chlorophyll doubles its Speed in sunlight, but doubling 30 still leaves it behind almost everything that moves. Solar Power boosts its Special Attack in the sun at the cost of draining HP every turn, and something with 30 HP cannot pay that rent for more than a couple of turns. Its hidden ability, Early Bird, shortens sleep; first it has to survive something.

As a pure Grass type, it hits Water, Rock and Ground types effectively, resists those same three plus Electric, and takes double damage from Fire, Ice, Flying, Bug and Poison. Five weaknesses on 30 defenses is a sentence.

What little it has going for it is in its moves. Solar Beam, at level 31, fires without a charging turn if the sun is already up; Giga Drain, at 22, restores half the damage dealt as HP; Leaf Storm, via TM, has 130 power. The real trick is something else: Endeavor, at level 25, brings the opponent's HP down to match its own, and with 30 base HP that leaves the other Pokémon almost empty. With Endure, which it gets via TM, it is the only way this thing can decide a situation.

In a normal playthrough, its role is route nuisance: it appears early and serves to set Sunny Day at level 36 before pulling out.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Grass, which lets it breed with most Grass types that have legs and not much else. The gender ratio is 50% female, so there is no unusual proportion to chase.

Its 20 Egg Cycles work out at about 5355 steps, an average figure that feels long for what you get at the end. The egg can produce six moves it does not learn by levelling up: Leech Seed, Morning Sun, Ingrain, Encore, Curse and Grassy Terrain. Morning Sun is the one that makes sense for this species, because it heals more when the weather is sunny and fits the same plan demanded by Chlorophyll and Sunny Day. Leech Seed is what makes a wild Sunkern annoying for three turns.

Evolution does not depend on level, friendship or the time of day: you have to use a Sun Stone on it, and that's it. That means it can stay in its base form indefinitely, or jump to Sunflora at level 1 if someone has the stone handy.

It lives in grasslands. Its catch rate is 235, practically the top of the scale: any Ball will catch it on the first attempt at half health. It sometimes holds a Coba Berry. It grows at a medium-slow rate and gives 36 base experience when defeated, with a single Special Attack EV.