Sword & Shield **Official news only** DLC Crown Tundra 22nd October

Something I still havent got clarified is if the legendaryes / restricted coming back in Tundra are accounted in those 100+ or not for that expansion.

The optimistic me says no, but the realistic me says yes.
Sadly I think "yes" just because, well, its not wrong to begin with. They are familiar Pokemon returning with that part of the expansion. iirc the trailer also said "over 200 pokemon including the legendaries" (paraphrasing).

But despite the pessimism a part of me cant help but hope that maybe, just maybe, the 100+...is like 140+. If only so there's more than 50 new Pokemon to grab out of the standard Tundra without dealing with the co-op mode's legendary hunt.
 
I wonder if that "over 100" number actually includes every Pokemon catchable in each of the DLC areas? They already pulled something similar with the 35.
 
I wonder if that "over 100" number actually includes every Pokemon catchable in each of the DLC areas? They already pulled something similar with the 35.
They state in the direct that "There will be more than 200 pokemon species that appear in these areas [Isle of Armor & Crown Tundra] [...] including the Legendary Pokemon mentioned before"

So all of them should be standard available and not the weird transfer-only oddity of the 35.
 
They state in the direct that "There will be more than 200 pokemon species that appear in these areas [Isle of Armor & Crown Tundra] [...] including the Legendary Pokemon mentioned before"

So all of them should be standard available and not the weird transfer-only oddity of the 35.
I agree, though at this point I heavily suspect that the "missing" 200 or so after those will either be coming in a future update, or just be snuck in without being in the pokedex (like the "35").

I think at this point it is clear that they want to have a regular "natdex" metagame at some point after Armor release, as well as a regular "GS cup" metagame after (else why bother specifically mention "all" legendaryes).

It would also sort-of match what happened with USUM: obviously the pokemon were in the game files right away at that time, but in USUM you could tecnically catch *almost* every single non mythical pokemon somewhere as native, with just a very small exception (I think less than 20 non mythical pokemon were available only via transfer or breed from transfer from previous generations).
 
I agree, though at this point I heavily suspect that the "missing" 200 or so after those will either be coming in a future update, or just be snuck in without being in the pokedex (like the "35").

I think at this point it is clear that they want to have a regular "natdex" metagame at some point after Armor release, as well as a regular "GS cup" metagame after (else why bother specifically mention "all" legendaryes).

It would also sort-of match what happened with USUM: obviously the pokemon were in the game files right away at that time, but in USUM you could tecnically catch *almost* every single non mythical pokemon somewhere as native, with just a very small exception (I think less than 20 non mythical pokemon were available only via transfer or breed from transfer from previous generations).
Not counting the mythics for this USUM had....560 Pokemon in it. Counting the SM-exclusive island scans, 617
So once we exclude all mythics from the grand total there are...171 pokemon missing from gen 7. Give or take a couple.
 
Not counting the mythics for this USUM had....560 Pokemon in it. Counting the SM-exclusive island scans, 617
So once we exclude all mythics from the grand total there are...171 pokemon missing from gen 7. Give or take a couple.
I won't lie I thought that was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAY less of "transfer only" pokemon.

Well, moreso of a reason to say I see a very comparable pattern going on.
 
Now I'm legit curious if some pokemon will be added to the files and can be transferred that are outside of the DLC.

You mean "not catchable/findable" in the DLC but can be transferred from Home? I am going to say, I very much doubt that.

If they were going to allow us to get everything they would have been advertising it as "all Pokemon return with the DLC". And it would make it look like a better deal for fence sitters.

And I am fairly positive the legendary Pokemon count towards the over 100 in Tundra. Suppose Tundra can have substantially more Pokemon than Isle though. I still think each will be around 105-115 each.
 
You mean "not catchable/findable" in the DLC but can be transferred from Home? I am going to say, I very much doubt that.

If they were going to allow us to get everything they would have been advertising it as "all Pokemon return with the DLC". And it would make it look like a better deal for fence sitters.

And I am fairly positive the legendary Pokemon count towards the over 100 in Tundra. Suppose Tundra can have substantially more Pokemon than Isle though. I still think each will be around 105-115 each.
They already purposely hidden that SwSh had extra pokemon in the data since they had planned events to distribute them, I see no reason for the repeat.
It's also a effective marketing maneuver to be able to suddently reveal "by the way, we have a new event distributing this pokemon now!". Remember, most of the playerbase doesn't really follow the in-depth resources like smogon, and wouldn't even have known, say, Alolan starters were available until GameFreaks revealed it.

I as mentioned earlier am quite convinced that both DLCs will include several "non-present" pokemon only available via transfer or event like the "35", and that at the end SwSh will feature all 1000 or so pokemon available.

Obviously it's just conjecture and time will tell, but it seems both consistent and effective to me, both to shut up the Dexit protest (which either ways has become pointless by now), and also buy themselves the time to have everything coded in properly without needing to rush in every pokemon at same time.

(and remember, either ways this is all free, since while the areas remain locked behind the paywalls, the transfers and game-data of the pokemon will be available to everyone)
 
You know I am pretty sure gamefreak has still not acknowledged that you can transfer over those 35 pokemon. It's kind of weird considering the 7 lines allowed (the starters), but they've never gone like wow! tyou can transfer these legendaries and these starters starting TODAY!! Get home now!!
 
I could definitely see it going either way, like... on one hand, just over 100 Pokémon is still a pretty big and significant number, especially when that includes new Galarian forms, gigantamaxes and even entirely new Pokémon -- not to mention the latter half of the DLC includes every major non-event Legendary. So sticking strictly to that number would still be very safe, would mean less work in the short term and in the long term would mean they have more incentive for any later updates, DLCs or new game releases.

On the other hand, it's also a pretty good PR move to have expectations lowered and tempered to then turn around and say "hey guess what, it's actually closer to 150 we're adding!", basically making your updates look even better than they already were. I suspect this was also a large part of the strategy for SwSh's marketing -- so many of us were surprised by all the new Pokémon and galarian forms that even though a lot of us were soured from stuff like Dexit and the one wild area tree that's apparently the cause of all evil in the world, we were really blown away by this stuff. So they could easily employ a similar strategy here.
 
You know I am pretty sure gamefreak has still not acknowledged that you can transfer over those 35 pokemon. It's kind of weird considering the 7 lines allowed (the starters), but they've never gone like wow! tyou can transfer these legendaries and these starters starting TODAY!! Get home now!!
They have in the sense VGC rules got updated to specificy which are allowed and which aren't.
Which is pretty funny as tecnically only gen 1/7 starters would qualify as eligible anyway, due to the others not being possible to obtain with native gen 8 mark possibly until Tundra releases

On the other hand, it's also a pretty good PR move to have expectations lowered and tempered to then turn around and say "hey guess what, it's actually closer to 150 we're adding!", basically making your updates look even better than they already were. I suspect this was also a large part of the strategy for SwSh's marketing -- so many of us were surprised by all the new Pokémon and galarian forms that even though a lot of us were soured from stuff like Dexit and the one wild area tree that's apparently the cause of all evil in the world, we were really blown away by this stuff. So they could easily employ a similar strategy here.
When the expansions were announced, my very first thought was "Damn GF, you played us well".
To me they planned from very start to have everything slowly come back (potentially, because they really didn't manage to get all Camp animations and moves animations done by SwSh release - remember, the reason the pokemon arent in is mostly Camp and overworld animations as otherwise the models are just barely updated gen 7 ones)
Now, obviously this backfired a bit as they did get a lot of hate and even death threats but in the end... I'd say it worked pretty well on the actually big public so far.
 
so many of us were surprised by all the new Pokémon and galarian forms that even though a lot of us were soured from stuff like Dexit and the one wild area tree that's apparently the cause of all evil in the world, we were really blown away by this stuff.
I get what you mean but gen 8 had 81 pokemon in it the same as gen 7. A number of people were "surprised" because gen 6 & 7 gave us expectations of seeing 90% of the pokemon before release, we were expecting the worst.

"Wow I expected like 50 pokemon but we got 80!!!" is kinda....ehhhhhhh....you know what i mean? Also ngl wasn't seeing a lot of people "blown away" by it.
 
When the expansions were announced, my very first thought was "Damn GF, you played us well".
To me they planned from very start to have everything slowly come back (potentially, because they really didn't manage to get all Camp animations and moves animations done by SwSh release - remember, the reason the pokemon arent in is mostly Camp and overworld animations as otherwise the models are just barely updated gen 7 ones)
Oh, 100%. You don't just announce and show off a significant amount of a DLC season pass like 2 months after release magiced up out of nowhere as if you didn't plan it beforehand; even the best of DLC practises these days clearly left out stuff of base game and planned to add it back for a price half a year later.
 
Could honestly believe the DLC wasn't always in the plan and happened later in development, probably after their pokemon started breaking.

It's just like...man that initial trailer sure was a lot of concept art. And some rough, empty footage. Hell even the g-max galar starters, which had models, were just still screenshots

e: Actually, I think I should specify that the DLC having missing pokemon in it was not always in the cards. They likely did have dlc follow up planned instead of a "third version"
 
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Could honestly believe the DLC wasn't always in the plan and happened later in development, probably after their pokemon started breaking.

It's just like...man that initial trailer sure was a lot of concept art. And some rough, empty footage. Hell even the g-max galar starters, which had models, were just still screenshots

e: Actually, I think I should specify that the DLC having missing pokemon in it was not always in the cards. They likely did have dlc follow up planned instead of a "third version"
My thought is that while the DLC aspect was already planned during the development of SwSh, the fact the pokemon data would have had to be spread amongst them was not. I think the original plan was that SwSh would regularly have all Pokemon data, but at some point during the development, someone realized there was no way they'd have everything ready in time.
There's several points that support my theory:
- Let's Go already had models and most animations ready for the first 151+melmetal, but several of those are not in SwSh
- One of the big advertisment of SwSh (and Let's Go) was the compatibility with Pokemon Go. While it's not even implemented yet outside of the gen 1 pokemon passing by Let's Go, it would have been pointless if most of the pokemon caught in Go would not be transferable.
- Home itself on release had updated data for the missing pokemon which would have been pointless if gen 8 was not going to feature them
- Back when Dexit was announced, it really felt every interview had different answers to "why", which smells as if it was a improvised decision
- SwSh itself as we know already has several rushed elements, most of which are in the graphic deparment
- Edited extra: The Home living dex reward (Original Color Magearna) is currently impossible to redeem in any game.

In the end I think they simply realized that there was no way to have the data ready by the time SwSh launched, so came up with a emergency plan to delay the release of a sizeable chunk of graphic assets without having to admit that they weren't good enough to finish it in time.
 
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They already purposely hidden that SwSh had extra pokemon in the data since they had planned events to distribute them, I see no reason for the repeat.
It's also a effective marketing maneuver to be able to suddently reveal "by the way, we have a new event distributing this pokemon now!". Remember, most of the playerbase doesn't really follow the in-depth resources like smogon, and wouldn't even have known, say, Alolan starters were available until GameFreaks revealed it.

I as mentioned earlier am quite convinced that both DLCs will include several "non-present" pokemon only available via transfer or event like the "35", and that at the end SwSh will feature all 1000 or so pokemon available.

Obviously it's just conjecture and time will tell, but it seems both consistent and effective to me, both to shut up the Dexit protest (which either ways has become pointless by now), and also buy themselves the time to have everything coded in properly without needing to rush in every pokemon at same time.

(and remember, either ways this is all free, since while the areas remain locked behind the paywalls, the transfers and game-data of the pokemon will be available to everyone)

Weren't those extra 35 to push Home though? They were intended for the launch of Home and to boost sales of that, more than anything.

I can see them adding some other Pokemon into the data though to hold out for events. Something like starters in 2021, or Mythical Pokemon.
 
I think a more interesting question is: whats next? We arent even in our first full year of a gen and we got 2 seperate expansions. Gens typically last for 3 or 4 years, so...will they make a remake with a whole different format like they did with lets go? Will there be another expansion pass that takes place post swsh main story? Or will gen life cycles be sped up alltogether?
 
I can see them adding some other Pokemon into the data though to hold out for events. Something like starters in 2021, or Mythical Pokemon.
Not really, they were never mentioned with Home, they just "happened" to be available officially when Home launched.

So far of those 35, the only ones that have shown up in GF's events and official press have been the Kanto starters (due to their raid event), Mewtwo (see above), and Mew (due to the pokeball plus)

The other ones (celebi, jirachi, the horsemen, gen 5 leges and gen 7 leges) have never been mentioned so far

I think a more interesting question is: whats next? We arent even in our first full year of a gen and we got 2 seperate expansions. Gens typically last for 3 or 4 years, so...will they make a remake with a whole different format like they did with lets go? Will there be another expansion pass that takes place post swsh main story? Or will gen life cycles be sped up alltogether?

I suspect there is a third expansion in the oven (which could host the remaining 200), as the expansion pass never specifically stated "two DLCs"
 
Ah you know going back to the "extra" pokemon conversation while I'm not too confident there'll be a bunch of extras, I do think one (or split between both) will bring in the rest of the mythics.

They'd never get acknowledged anyway, so may as well expand your stock for giveaways.


If nothing else, please put Magearna in there so we can actually use the home reward
 
A few random thoughts:-

- I think it's very, very funny that Tauros and Bouffalant are getting brought back in the same update and were even revealed in the same trailer
- Did the path to the tower remind anyone else of XY's Mega Evolution tower? Doesn't mean anything, of course (god I'd love them to shadowdrop mega stones in this), but it gave me similar vibes and was pretty neat
- I get the feeling that Miltank, Pinsir, Heracross and Clauncher are also very likely to be in Isle of Armour due to their counterparts' presence, bolstered by Magmar and Electabuzz both being present in Tundra. Miltank especially -- they seem to treat Tauros & Miltank like Volbeat & Illumise these days.
- I absolutely adore what we've seen so far of the Isle 'routes', or just the general wild wilderness areas. They look absolutely lovely and show what SwSh is actually capable of and have twisting, unconventional structure that feels very natural
 
Miltank for Tauros seems like a sure-bet. Since their inception the only time they aren't connected at the hip was gen 3, because gen 3 was a mess of distiribution, and Let's Go because literally no one other than gen 1 & meltan/melmetal got to be in

otherwise
gen 2: same routes
gen 4: same routes
gen 5: Same Dream World area
gen 6: same route
gen 7: same routes

They really should have jsut gone whole-hog and make them an actual "same species", like volbeat & illumise or the nidorans are.
 
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