After many battles playing out to this rhythm, Magikarp will reach level 15 and finally learn a new move: Tackle.
This is a standard technique for levelling newcomers to your party, but no other Pokémon stays so utterly defenceless for so long. And this is what you must do if you want to level up a Magikarp: you deploy the floppy liability at the start of a battle to soak up a meagre helping of experience points before immediately switching it for another monster, who then has to absorb your opponent’s first move. It’s worse than useless, in fact, because you’re wasting a turn flailing at the enemy that could have been spent switching Magikarp for a monster who can land an attack. Magikarp’s signature move, Splash, is unique in the Pokémon canon for having no effect. Why is Magikarp so worthless? To start with, it only has one attack.
