Ursaring

Ursaring appears in the mountains, but its own Pokédex entries talk about forests: streams and giant trees where it hides the food it keeps gathering. It goes out to patrol the same territory every day, sniffing around, digging things up and hiding them again. It can detect any kind of scent, so it finds food underground without having to dig blindly.

It is a bear standing upright. It is 1.80 m tall and weighs 125.8 kg, with a yellow mark shaped like a new moon on its chest. Despite its size, it climbs well: it eats and sleeps in the treetops, something the entries repeat insistently. Its official category, the Hibernation Pokémon, points to the other half of its routine.

It occupies the middle spot in its evolutionary line, and for twenty-five years it occupied the last. It evolves from Teddiursa at level 30 and has had a follow-up in Ursaluna since 2022, leaving the forest behind and adding the Ground type to Normal. Males and females can be told apart at a glance if you know where to look: females have longer fur hanging from their shoulders.

Of the 500 points it has to distribute, 130 go into Attack, while everything else comes up short — 90 HP and a repeated 75 in Defense, Special Attack and Special Defense. Its 55 Speed is the real brake. It hits second against almost anything in front of it, and with those defenses, the answer hurts.

Guts is the ability that defines it: with a status problem, its Attack is multiplied by 1.5, and burn no longer cuts it down. That makes Facade its most profitable attack, because it goes from 70 to 140 power as soon as it is burned, poisoned or paralyzed. Without a status condition, the alternative is Thrash, with 120 power, which it learns at level 56. Hammer Arm at 64 and Earthquake via TM cover what the Normal type cannot hit; the three elemental punches — Fire Punch, Ice Punch and Thunder Punch — are also on the TM list and serve the same purpose. Swords Dance is on there too, although it rarely has a spare turn to use it.

On the attack, Normal is super effective against nothing, is resisted by Rock and Steel, and has no effect at all on Ghost. Defensively, it has only one weakness, Fighting, and a Hariyama can take it down before it gets to respond. Quick Feet, its other ability, multiplies its Speed by 1.5 with the same status trade-off; Unnerve, its hidden ability, merely prevents the opposing side from eating Berries.

Where it performs is in a single-player run. Against the trainers along the route, 130 Attack settles battles in one hit, and defeating it awards 2 Attack EVs.

Field Egg Group, one group only, and a 50% gender ratio. It is one of the easiest Pokémon to breed: it shares a group with a large part of the Pokédex’s mammal population, so passing on a Nature or characteristics does not depend on finding a difficult partner. Its 20 Egg cycles amount to about 5355 steps.

It has no Egg Moves of its own recorded. Anything it wants to learn outside its level-up list comes through TMs, and that list is long and varied: Fire Punch, Ice Punch, Thunder Punch, Crunch, Stone Edge, Close Combat, Tera Blast.

It evolves from Teddiursa at level 30, with no items or conditions. The second evolution is another matter. To reach Ursaluna, you have to use a Peat Block, and only under a full moon — a condition introduced in Pokémon Legends: Arceus that depends on the game’s own lunar cycle, not the real-world calendar.

It grows at an average rate, without the strange curves found in other evolutionary lines. Its habitat is the mountains, and its catch rate of 60 puts it in the awkward middle ground: neither trivial like a 255 nor locked down like a 45, just enough for a Poké Ball thrown at half health to fail a couple of times. In the wild, it may be holding an Oran Berry or a Sitrus Berry.