Abilities: Overgrow, Harvest
Crabble is the Grass-type starter of the Ferroa region, based very, very loosely on the west coast of North America. It uses its large claw to knock fruit down from trees. Although its soft outer layer makes it resemble a tasty fruit, its bright coloration is actually to warn predators that it tastes foul.
Crabble is the slowest of the three starters at a sluggish 30 base speed. However, it has respectable attack and defense for an unevolved Pokémon, filling a “tank” role. Crabble evolves into Carapoma at level 16.
Abilities: Overgrow, Harvest
Carapoma is the dorky middle stage that I don’t have much to say about. The arm bearing the larger claw can extend to several times its resting length to clobber opponents. Conversely, the other claw is shrunken to near-uselessness. Carapoma evolves into Crustorchard at level 36.
Abilities: Overgrow, Harvest
Crustorchard is the final stage. Its shell is as rugged as stone, so all this Pokémon needs to avoid predators is to bunker down and pretend to be a particularly large and hard-to-chew fruit until they lose interest. This Pokémon is as large as some of the small trees it feeds on, and is so massively heavy that it doesn’t really move around a whole lot. Because of this, it also doesn’t need to eat very often.
Crustorchard’s defenses are both quite good, with base 125 and 120 physical and special defense respectively. It also has a respectable base attack of 90. However, it is only marginally faster than its preevolutions, not that it needs to be particularly quick to begin with.
Fun Design Facts: This line predates the reveal of the Applin line by a good half a year at least. I remember being a little miffed at how close their eyes ended up being to Crustorchard’s, but I ain’t changing em
