How to unlock Excadrill
Getting Excadrill means pulling the Unova banner and hitting its 4★ slot. The 4★ band takes 6.5% of all pulls and holds 211 partners, so one specific Excadrill works out to about 0.0308% per draw. The 70-pull pity counter only applies to 5★ results, so Excadrill has no floor of its own and no targeted pull. A duplicate Excadrill refunds 120 coins at the 4★ rate.
Excadrill stats and rank
Excadrill carries 120 HP, 115 speed, a ×1.44 attack multiplier, ×1.44 physical, ×0.97 special, 60 defense and 65 special defense, 508 in total. On the three-stat percentile this is 87.5 out of 100, which puts Excadrill at rank 25 of 966 and in tier S. What separates it from its neighbours is shape, not size: its strongest slot is physical multiplier (96th percentile) and its weakest is special multiplier (26th percentile), so it is a specialist rather than an all-rounder.
Best moves in Excadrill's pool
At move level 5 the pool is led by Body Slam at 75.6 damage per 0.71s (152.8 effective DPS, ×1.44 multiplier), then Metal Claw at 37.8 damage per 0.38s (145.2 effective DPS, ×1.44 multiplier), then Tackle at 33.6 damage per 0.38s (129.0 effective DPS, ×1.44 multiplier). 13 of its 18 damaging moves scale with the physical multiplier and 5 with the special one, alongside 4 support moves. Its physical multiplier is the higher of the two (×1.44 against ×0.97), so physical moves convert better. The top option beats the second by 7.6 DPS, which decides slot one and leaves slot two as a judgement call.
Evolution cards for Excadrill
Its starting move, Mud Shot, evolves into Earth Power once the move is at level 5 and you hold the Power card, which boosts attack for that run. Menu upgrades use a separate system and never stand in for Power. 18 of its 22 moves carry an evolution card, across 5 distinct cards (Vigor, Sprint, Power, Reflexes and Armor). The strongest of them is Body Slam at 152.8 effective DPS, so that is the one worth holding a card for first.
Excadrill compared to similar partners
The two closest stat lines in the roster are Darmanitan (-3 HP, +3 speed, +0.03 attack, -28 total) and Staraptor (-12 HP, +5 speed, -0.08 attack, -23 total). Against Darmanitan, Darmanitan is 3 speed faster and Darmanitan hits harder by ×0.03, and the rank gap is 9 places. Read those deltas as swap costs, because a gain on one line is usually paid for on another, so neither side is a strict upgrade and the move pools have to break the tie.