Today’s Pokemon Direct had some surprising news for franchise fans. First, the second Pokemon Sword and Shield expansion, The Crown Tundra, is coming out October 22nd, 2020. We’ve previously discussed how some kind of movement dungeons would be involved, and as represented in the video, it seems teams of up to four players will simply be going through a series of battles where they choose which Pokemon type to face off against on their way to the final boss. You’ll be using rental pokemon through these adventures, though one person can swap to a newly caught pokemon after each battle.
The expansion also brings all the series’ legendary Pokemon back, so there’s certainly motivation to work your way through the Dynamax Adventure system.
The more surprising announcement, however, is that Pokemon Go will finally be directly connected to Pokemon Home. Home is the intermediary app for phones and the Switch to move past online-capable games’ monsters into the Sword and Shield games. Previously, POGO players could move their mobile monsters there only indirectly, having to move from their phones to Pokemon Let’s Go and then to Home before arriving at Sword or Shield. This not only restricted POGO players from offloading anything not within the original 151 species but also forced them to re-catch their pokemon in Let’s Go before they could send them off to their final destination, which was quite time-consuming.
While there are some unspecified limitations on pokemon that can be moved to Home, the option to move more species and at a significantly faster pace is much appreciated. It may literally come at a cost, though, in the form of PokeCoins, if the Japanese Support page is any indication. (We’ve asked both Niantic and The Pokemon Company’s PR for further comment and will update this should we hear anything back.)
Update: Via Serebii.net, confirmed by The Pokemon Company PR, “After sending a Pokémon from Pokémon GO to Pokémon HOME, you may need to wait a certain amount of time before you can send another Pokémon. It is possible to shorten this time using PokéCoins. Please stay tuned for more details about how to transfer Pokémon in future announcements.”
Serebii also says, “If you wish to transfer certain Pokémon from Pokémon GO that are in HOME into Sword & Shield or any future game, that Pokémon needs to be registered in the Pokémon Sword & Shield game’s Pokédex or have already had one in that game.” However, The Pokemon Company is currently unable to provide further comment on this.
The Pokemon Company says this feature will roll out before the end of the year, and those who use it will see the usual POGO mystery box that spawns Meltan as well as a special Melmetal than can Gigantimax in Sword and Shield.
Don’t forget to grab your Hat Pikachus in Sword and Shield now, and remember that Pikachu and others will be getting costumes and hats in POGO this October when some POGO COVID features will be phased out.
