Venonat

At night, it follows any light that is switched on. It’s the habit repeated most often in its Pokédex entries, and during the day it does the opposite: it stays among the shadows of tall trees, hunting insects smaller than itself.

The eyes are half the design. Those two red circles taking up almost its entire face aren’t two eyes, but clusters of tiny eyes that can only be distinguished in bright light, and which the entries describe as a radar — no prey goes unnoticed. The rest of the body is a one-metre, 30-kilogram ball covered in a thin layer of thick fur that, according to the Pokédex, it developed for protection.

Its official category is simply the Bug Pokémon, with no further nuances, and that’s where the concept’s ambition ends: a furry ball with legs and antennae. It heads a two-stage line that ends with Venomoth at level 31, with no branches, no alternate forms and no regional variant. What you get at number 48 in the Pokédex is exactly what you see.

305 base stat points spread out without a single peak: 60 HP, 55 Attack, 50 Defense, 40 Special Attack, 55 Special Defense and 45 Speed. Its lowest stat is precisely the one it needs most, because its best moves are special — Bug Buzz and Sludge Bomb, both with 90 power, come off 40 Special Attack and barely tickle.

What saves it from total irrelevance is Compound Eyes, which multiplies accuracy by 1.3. Sleep Powder, learned at level 29, goes from 75% to 97.5% accuracy, and that’s its entire reason for existing: putting something to sleep with a reliability that almost no other Pokémon of its size can offer. Smogon has it pegged for Little Cup precisely because of that, combining sleep with Agility and Baton Pass to hand its Speed to a more dangerous teammate. Its other ability, Tinted Lens, doubles the damage of not very effective moves, but with 40 Special Attack there’s nothing worth doubling.

The typing doesn’t help either. Bug and Poison resist Fighting, Fairy, Grass and moves of their own types, but in exchange open up four weaknesses — Fire, Flying, Rock and Psychic — that are everywhere in any format. Add Stealth Rock taking an eighth of its HP the moment it switches in. Outside Little Cup, there’s nothing to do: at level 31, the sensible move is to evolve it and keep the version that actually has 90 Speed and 90 Special Attack.

It belongs to a single Egg Group, Bug, and its gender ratio is exactly 50%, so breeding it is completely straightforward: any partner from the group works, and Ditto does too. Its 20 incubation cycles come to around 5355 steps, among the longest stretches for route Pokémon.

Eight moves can come from the Egg, and two are worth mentioning. Morning Sun restores HP, something extremely rare in a first-generation Bug type. Rage Powder redirects enemy attacks towards it, which works well in double battles with how little a frail ally can take. The other six are Agility, Screech, Baton Pass, Toxic Spikes, Bug Bite and Venoshock.

It evolves into Venomoth by reaching level 31. No items, no friendship, no time of day: level it up and that’s it. It grows at a medium rate, the most predictable of the six experience groups, and gives 61 base experience and 1 Special Defense Effort Point when defeated.

Its habitat is the forest, and its catch rate, 190, puts it a world away from a starter: a regular Poké Ball with the opponent somewhat weakened is usually enough. It’s filler for a forest area, and the game treats it that way.