SPOILERS! All Returning DLC Pokemon in SV DLC Expansion Pass <Unconfirmed>

[Esserise]

I wonder if maybe Deoxys will squeak in as a bonus Mythical. Of the Mythical Pokémon that aren’t currently in SV (Celebi, Deoxys, Victini, Genesect, and all of Gen 7’s Mythicals), it’s the only one that didn’t appear in SwSh, and it’s also the only* Pokémon left whose form change mechanic relies on a bespoke environmental interaction (finding a meteorite somewhere in the overworld and using that to change between forms). They’ve been pretty consistent in the last two gens about removing location-based factors like that, what with Pokémon like Magneton, Nosepass, and Crabrawler now evolving with evolution stones, and Rotom’s appliances being replaced with the Rotom Catalog key item. Surely Deoxys’s forms could just be reassigned to the old Meteorite key item or something.

(Granted, Galarian Yamask’s evolution method was still a thing, but it was a newly-introduced Pokémon so maybe they were a little more willing to let it have a location-based gimmick for its debut region.)

* Other than Furfrou, but Furfrou’s forms are purely cosmetic and we know it’s not coming back in the DLC anyway.

 

[R_N]

I wonder if maybe Deoxys will squeak in as a bonus Mythical. Of the Mythical Pokémon that aren’t currently in SV (Celebi, Deoxys, Victini, Genesect, and all of Gen 7’s Mythicals), it’s the only one that didn’t appear in SwSh, and it’s also the only Pokémon left whose form change mechanic relies on a bespoke environmental interaction (finding a meteorite somewhere in the overworld and using that to change between forms). They’ve been pretty consistent in the last two gens about removing location-based factors like that, what with Pokémon like Magneton, Nosepass, and Crabrawler now evolving with evolution stones, and Rotom’s appliances being replaced with the Rotom Catalog key item. Surely Deoxys’s forms could just be reassigned to the old Meteorite key item or something.

(Granted, Galarian Yamask’s evolution method was still a thing, but it was a newly-introduced Pokémon so maybe they were a little more willing to let it have a location-based gimmick for its debut region.)

Yeah Deoxys keeps coming to mind, especially since you couldn't get one at all last gen despite being in BDSP, but when I start thinking about that I keep coming back to Diancie who until literally last month when the Go Fest happened was not given away since 2015 ( 2016 for South Korea) And also anyone who got the Diancie through Go can't even bring it into the games without first bringing in someone else's Diancie.

Fits the aesthetics of the tera crystals, too.

 

[MisogiKurakawa]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1701974833334993167

Looks like this is the approximate Blueberry Dex. Kleavor is there, which is nice. Ideally that also means we get access to the others but...we'll see

Actually, something just struck as odd. Lacey is supposed to be a Fairy specialist, right? And yet, going through the dex, there's a grand total of....five Fairy mons, one of them being a Starter (which the games tend to avoid giving to normal trainers).

Anyone else find that strange?

 

[Valoo]

Actually, something just struck as odd. Lacey is supposed to be a Fairy specialist, right? And yet, going through the dex, there's a grand total of....five Fairy mons, one of them being a Starter (which the games tend to avoid giving to normal trainers).

Anyone else find that strange?

Eh, not really. They could easily have teams of 4-5 and include non-Blueberry dex pokemon. I also don’t see the issue with giving her Primarina, even if it’s not that common. Starters have never been in the dex like this before.

 

[R_N]

Also if she only winds upwith 5 Pokemon, one of which will likely be terastalized of another Pokemon, that's still enough to cover the bases.

 

[WinterArcanine]

They could always just use mons that aren't in the dome, I wouldn't be surprised if the students can still access other mons (especially Unova ones) considering it's a huge battling school.

 

[R_N]

So i've been thinking about it, and I'm sure dramps will be happy about this, but I don't think there's going to be any dedicated mode for capturing a bunch of Legendary Pokemon.

My thought was two fold:
1. there's an awful lot of stuff left behind at this point pointing to side quests, new features, character interactions, rooms, etc...but nothing very legendary
2. this list of tutorial tips

https://twitter.com/x/status/1702434863301665049

None of which really align with anything that would be for a mode like Ultra Ride or Dynamax Adventures. Like top to bottom here...

HAGANE -Means Steel. Probably related to the Steel girl. I bet she has a more dedicated sidequest, but probably more on par with Perrin than a whole other mode. I also think if it was more of a mode of play it would be called something other than "STEEL"
RIDEFLY - the new riding minigame/travel mode
TTYPE - likely for the new tera type
SCAN - I would bet this pertains to Perrin's new sidequest
BBPOINT - Explaining how the new currency works
BBMISSION (0-4) - Explaining what to do for the new missions/mini games
CLUB - Explaining the club room and how to mess with it and what you can do
ITEMMACHINE - Bet this is Cram-o-matic 2.0. Put in your garbage, get something more useful. At least it'll be more useful this time with all the exceses materials?
CLUBPC - Presumably anything not directly covered by the Club will go here; probably involves changing the look, items and mayeb inviting people
SMACHINE - I bet this is the "PK Hex lite" we've known is coming.
PHOTOMODE - A New photo thing. Maybe it'll be a rotom drone lol


I do still think they'll add a bunch of legendary Pokemon to fill the remaining slots, mind you, I just don't think gamefreak will care about letting us get them in the game. They already didn't care about players getting them before the biggest most important worlds, so I think that now that there's a moveset deleter and cross-gen transfers they just no longer see the problem.

Since Enamorus DID get a pokedex stub I think Enamorus will probably still have a way to get her; I'd bet Perrin's sidequest is involved with that. Iffy on if the other 3 would be part of this since they didn't get stubs yet, but they were delayed on carbink (& the unovan starters) too so who knows.

At my most charitable I think these are the only 2 other options:
-They'll release all the legends as part of 7* raids and this will be the thing they run until they stop supporting the game.
-The legends WILL be available in game, but they'll be part of 7* raids that show up in-game (rather than exclusively online) once we're done with Terapagos. I dont think either Black Crystals or the 7* event crystals had tool tips, but even if they did they can just like pop up. Alternatively, they can be part of the "TTYPE" tutorial; we will likely need to get the new tera shard from somewhere so listing it here could make sense.


but that's a lot of legends to support with the former (in this scenario they would not be as extensive as Mewtwo's was) and the latter just feels like reaching. I suspect 19th type raids will just be added to the 6* pools and you'll have to grind those very slowly, with no legends to go with them.

e: Also I don't think we're getting a battle facility-type mode at all.

 

[MisogiKurakawa]

So i've been thinking about it, and I'm sure dramps will be happy about this, but I don't think there's going to be any dedicated mode for capturing a bunch of Legendary Pokemon.

My thought was two fold:
1. there's an awful lot of stuff left behind at this point pointing to side quests, new features, character interactions, rooms, etc...but nothing very legendary
2. this list of tutorial tips

https://twitter.com/x/status/1702434863301665049

None of which really align with anything that would be for a mode like Ultra Ride or Dynamax Adventures. Like top to bottom here...

HAGANE -Means Steel. Probably related to the Steel girl. I bet she has a more dedicated sidequest, but probably more on par with Perrin than a whole other mode. I also think if it was more of a mode of play it would be called something other than "STEEL"
RIDEFLY - the new riding minigame/travel mode
TTYPE - likely for the new tera type
SCAN - I would bet this pertains to Perrin's new sidequest
BBPOINT - Explaining how the new currency works
BBMISSION (0-4) - Explaining what to do for the new missions/mini games
CLUB - Explaining the club room and how to mess with it and what you can do
ITEMMACHINE - Bet this is Cram-o-matic 2.0. Put in your garbage, get something more useful. At least it'll be more useful this time with all the exceses materials?
CLUBPC - Presumably anything not directly covered by the Club will go here; probably involves changing the look, items and mayeb inviting people
SMACHINE - I bet this is the "PK Hex lite" we've known is coming.
PHOTOMODE - A New photo thing. Maybe it'll be a rotom drone lol


I do still think they'll add a bunch of legendary Pokemon to fill the remaining slots, mind you, I just don't think gamefreak will care about letting us get them in the game. They already didn't care about players getting them before the biggest most important worlds, so I think that now that there's a moveset deleter and cross-gen transfers they just no longer see the problem.

Since Enamorus DID get a pokedex stub I think Enamorus will probably still have a way to get her; I'd bet Perrin's sidequest is involved with that. Iffy on if the other 3 would be part of this since they didn't get stubs yet, but they were delayed on carbink (& the unovan starters) too so who knows.

At my most charitable I think these are the only 2 other options:
-They'll release all the legends as part of 7* raids and this will be the thing they run until they stop supporting the game.
-The legends WILL be available in game, but they'll be part of 7* raids that show up in-game (rather than exclusively online) once we're done with Terapagos. I dont think either Black Crystals or the 7* event crystals had tool tips, but even if they did they can just like pop up. Alternatively, they can be part of the "TTYPE" tutorial; we will likely need to get the new tera shard from somewhere so listing it here could make sense.


but that's a lot of legends to support with the former (in this scenario they would not be as extensive as Mewtwo's was) and the latter just feels like reaching. I suspect 19th type raids will just be added to the 6* pools and you'll have to grind those very slowly, with no legends to go with them.

e: Also I don't think we're getting a battle facility-type mode at all.

Honestly, I don't really mind this. Reducing Legendaries to glorified collectable trinkets has been a major complaint with the franchise's direction I've had, and cutting that out allows them to feel "special" again if nothing else.

 

[Worldie]

Honestly, I don't really mind this. Reducing Legendaries to glorified collectable trinkets has been a major complaint with the franchise's direction I've had, and cutting that out allows them to feel "special" again if nothing else.

If anything I would like the opposite to happen honestly.

At this point a lot of people treat legendaries as if they're anything special (To the point a lot of people complain that "VGC is just the same 20 legendaries all time" without realizing that if you remove them you just have "the same 20 pokemon" with just different name).
In fact often enough legendaries end up being worse than just regular mons simply cause power creep has gone that far.

Legendaries are just regular pokemon with nothing special other than limited availability. There's also so many of them by now that there's nothing "legendary" about them either. Many of them aren't even anything special, just happen to have limited availability like Urshifu, which is probably why it prompted the creation of new subcategories like Ultrabeasts and Paradoxes that are basically legendaries but not really.

I'd honestly just rather have them throw them in the wild without requiring any gimmick nowadays.

 

[MisogiKurakawa]

If anything I would like the opposite to happen honestly.

At this point a lot of people treat legendaries as if they're anything special (To the point a lot of people complain that "VGC is just the same 20 legendaries all time" without realizing that if you remove them you just have "the same 20 pokemon" with just different name).

Legendaries are just regular pokemon with nothing special other than limited availability. There's also so many of them by now that there's nothing "legendary" about them either. Many of them aren't even anything special, just happen to have limited availability like Urshifu, which is probably why it prompted the creation of new subcategories like Ultrabeasts and Paradoxes that are basically legendaries but not really.

I'd honestly just rather have them throw them in the wild without requiring any gimmick nowadays.

I disagree. While mechanically Legendaries aren't really "different" beyond their stats, symbolically they carry far more creative weight as these immensely significant and powerful figures in the Pokemon world, going up as far as the literal creator god himself. Having them just as powerful wild Pokemon feels....profusely wrong in a lot of ways, and this is more just a symptom of Gamefreak's poor handling more than anything else.

 

[Worldie]

I disagree. While mechanically Legendaries aren't really "different" beyond their stats, symbolically they carry far more creative weight as these immensely significant and powerful figures in the Pokemon world, going up as far as the literal creator god himself. Having them just as powerful wild Pokemon feels....profusely wrong in a lot of ways, and this is more just a symptom of Gamefreak's poor handling more than anything else.

You're confusing Mythicals and Restricted with legendaries.

Mythicals are stuff like Arceus, Mew, etc, always having particular lore behind them, almost never present as catchable entities and distributed via event (usually to celebrate a movie about them or real life event). They've also intentionally always been excluded for online competition due to limited availability, and are often purposely made overpowered or with weird gimmicks specifically cause balance is not a concern for them.
Restricted pokemon are what GameFreaks actually calls "Legendaries", and basically are cover legendaries, which also happen to have particular lore implications. They tend to have high BST and (expecially as of recent) minmaxed stats, as they are meant to be powerful and important.

Then there's the entire rest of the "legendary", or rather sub-legendary as they call them. While they kinda used to be special/unique, nowadays both the games and anime shown they are both not unique and not particularly important. There's plenty of Zapdos (in fact, it even has regional forms), there's multiple Latios, etc. Many of the sub legendaries are just related to regional folklore like the Tapus, but don't have anything else extraordinary. And these make up the large majority of the "legendary" cast. At this point there's no reason for people to think they're anything special (in fact, most of them are actually pretty awful, and several of their most recent "sub legendary" releases like Urshifu or the Calyrex steeds have literally nothing legendary other than the classification and limited distribution.

 

[R_N]

Honestly, I don't really mind this. Reducing Legendaries to glorified collectable trinkets has been a major complaint with the franchise's direction I've had, and cutting that out allows them to feel "special" again if nothing else.

"Special" is such an arbitrary distinction (if I read one more "they're hardly legendary at all anymore!"* im going to explode) and all this does is make them significantly more obnoxious to get if you passed on their initial release.
If anything this makes them more glorified collectables....which let's be real they always will be. It's their entire shtick.


Personally I've always liked the little legendary collectathons. It was something fun to do (mostly...dont care for Ultra Ride that much) and I'll keep singing the priases of Dynamax Adventures for that in particular. Not having them is my equivalent of not having a battle facility for other people.

edit: *scrolled down to see worldie's post and im dealing 250 base damage to both opponents and my ally, knocking myself out

 

[Worldie]

edit: *scrolled down to see worldie's post and im dealing 250 base damage to both opponents and my ally, knocking myself out

I am sorry senpai, here have a Revive, I have about 300 left from my grinding in SV anyway

But *to be fair* I tecnically said that "Legendaries are still special, as long as you're actually thinking of Restricted/Mythicals and not of the now demoted sub-legendaries"

 

[AztecCroc]

I am sorry senpai, here have a Revive, I have about 300 left from my grinding in SV anyway

But *to be fair* I tecnically said that "Legendaries are still special, as long as you're actually thinking of Restricted/Mythicals and not of the now demoted sub-legendaries"

The sub-legends were always considered lesser, that's why they've always been allowed in battle facilities and VGC.

 

[pika pal]

I don't mind the Legendaries when they're among rewards for an existing side mode/content like Dynamax Adventures, I just dislike things like ORAS where they vomit them all over the world map or some proverbial corner to just go grab whenever somehow. The issue is the former takes a lot more work to integrate every game (dialogue, scripting even if it's just arranging battles with existing mechanics, a location, etc) so I think it's less likely to be the norm for Legendary returns by GF.

I'd honestly just rather have them throw them in the wild without requiring any gimmick nowadays.

I share this opinion for SOME of the Legendaries, namely sub-Legends or any that explicitly can have more than one exist, so they don't need a big special framing to appear. Heck I would welcome something like the way LGPE did the Birds, where they could very rarely spawn additional birds as just "regular" wild encounters for you to run into and capture, and this is even how PoGo handles some "Roaming" Legendaries for events (Go Tour could spawn the Beasts or Latis on the map as hard-to-catch encounters with high flee rates if not shiny, plus the infamous handling of the Galarian birds).

Personally I think being able to encounter Legendaries outside of a scripted one-off would be a nice way to at least restore their aesthetic/immersive factor by making them rare-but-standout parts of the world (though imagine being the collector trying to find a Shiny-Overworld Zapdos or something). From a mechanical/collector's point it also would give them a way around Shiny Locking Legendaries: the static encounter shows it exists and gives access for simply being able to play it in VGC or the like, but then the "random" ones can be shiny if you want to collect those rarities on top of that.

 

[R_N]

I don't mind the Legendaries when they're among rewards for an existing side mode/content like Dynamax Adventures, I just dislike things like ORAS where they vomit them all over the world map or some proverbial corner to just go grab whenever somehow. The issue is the former takes a lot more work to integrate every game (dialogue, scripting even if it's just arranging battles with existing mechanics, a location, etc) so I think it's less likely to be the norm for Legendary returns by GF.

I liked the ORAS one a lot because they all had little quirks to enable them. The cloud bros showed up in a giant storm cloud, the lake spirits needed max happiness and were found in cave islands, the musketeers were found on nature islands and required maxed EVs, and so forth. Ho-Oh/Lugia being at the wrecked ship was also a fun way to add more to that location.
The Hoopa rings were also a cute way of popping them out

 

[Eriorguez]

The one thing that really grinds my gears is how legendaries are kept as version exclusives. C'mon, that was the best part of Emerald and Platinum!

But yeah, now that we will have 3 large overworlds, having ways of triggering legendary encounters over them would be fun.

 

[Melons-N-Soda]

For the remaining legendaries, I can see them releasing the remaining Gens 3-5 ones (yes even Deoxys) plus the OG Johto beasts. I do say this mainly based on the legends they actually HAVE already released into the games being the ones for those generations. That being said, I actually see the Kalos trio (Xerneas, Yveltal, Zygarde) coming back too given both the presence of Diancie/Hoopa/Volcanion and the general links Paldea has to Kalos. Anything Ultra Beasts or Gen 7 minus Magearna I doubt it.

 

[RocketSurgery]

I know RN counted before and concluded that there's not enough slots left for all the special mons to make it, but I don't remember if they posted aa breakdown, so at the risk of duplicating effort, these are the special mons still not in the game:

Gen 2:
Gen 3:
Gen 4:
Gen 5:
Gen 6:
Gen 7:


By my count, that's 18 sub-legends, 13 cover legends (counting cosmog & cosmoem here), 9 mythicals, and 11 ultra beasts, for a total of 41+11 = 52, much greater than the (up to) 23 spots left to fill.

Given that ultra beasts were fully given a separate category from sublegends this time around, I would expect that most, if not all of them, won't make the cut, possibly also including Type-Null and Silvally. If none of those make it, that would bring the list down to potential 39 mons.

Last gen all the legends made it into SwSh, but a handful of mythicals didn't. The ones that didn't seemed to be a mix of form-changers (Deoxys, Hoopa, Meloetta) and Gen 4 mons.

Even if no more mythicals make it in, that's still not enough to meet the promised number, so some legends will definitely need to be cut (as RN concluded previously), and we could be looking at a mix of legends and mythicals not making it.

If a gen 5 remake/legends game is on the horizon, then I could see a possibility that most of the gen 5 crew doesn't make it in, except possibly the 3 muskideers because of the paradoxes. (I would be content if the Johto beasts and the muskideers weren't added because of their paradox forms, but I agree that it's more likely that they will make it so that newer players have context for the paradoxes). Since BDSP included all the mons up to gen 4, it could also be that some of the older legends are also cut from SV and only included in the remake/legends.

Hard to speculate too much beyond that. I hope that Marshadow and Zeraora make it in because of Blueberry Academy having a lot of Alola forms (and because Raifort has a blasted Marshadow hairpin), and I hope Deoxys makes it in because it's only been in BDSP on Switch so far. It would also be nice if Poipole made it despite being an ultra beast and wasn't shiny locked.

In general, I would rather GameFreak bias the list towards more recent generations whose mons haven't had the chance to be in as many games as the older generations.

 

[Melons-N-Soda]

If a gen 5 remake/legends game is on the horizon, then I could see a possibility that most of the gen 5 crew doesn't make it in, except possibly the 3 muskideers because of the paradoxes. (I would be content if the Johto beasts and the muskideers weren't added because of their paradox forms, but I agree that it's more likely that they will make it so that newer players have context for the paradoxes). Since BDSP included all the mons up to gen 4, it could also be that some of the older legends are also cut from SV and only included in the remake/legends.

I did say that I expect the Gen 3 guys to make it, or at least the OG Regis. Having Eleki and Drago without the OG trio + Gigas is just kinda nonsensical to me, plus its kind of suspicious that the Weather Trio were the only cover legendaries not from Sinnoh or Galar to make it in (even with the potential ties to Kalos in Paldea they didn't bring back Xerneas/Yveltal/Zygarde). Lati twins I could actually do without, Deoxys I can see them doing some shit like some meteorites in Area Zero that can change its form, or maybe one of the terrariums has said meteorites or replicas of them.

Also with Regigigas being the only Sinnoh legendary to not be in yet I'm going to guess the Regis coming back based on that too. Ofc probably as transfer-only.

 

[R_N]

My safest assumption was that it's:
3 beasts
3 musketeers
The 13 remaining box legends

That'd put us at 235, which is a pretty good number to stop at if they wanted. I don't think we're going up to exactly 239, personally...but they still have some extra wiggle room if they do.

That said I wouldn't necessarily have the regi or Keldeo on lock (least of all being all 5 would push it to 240*). Drago & Eleki are here because they wanted all the post-SWSH mons to be in the game. The musketeers could be here because they wantd their Paradox counterparts. So there's special reasons to be here that doesn't require their hanger-ons.

And while it'd be pretty easy to ignore gen 5's box legends with a Unova game on the horizon, we had the gen 4 crew in full despite two sinnoh games on the horizon so I think being a box legend trumps anything else.


*that said it's also possible some 5 of the new mythics weren't originally planned. We know Magearna wasn't.

 

[MisogiKurakawa]

My safest assumption was that it's:
3 beasts
3 musketeers
The 13 remaining box legends

That'd put us at 235, which is a pretty good number to stop at if they wanted. I don't think we're going up to exactly 239, personally...but they still have some extra wiggle room if they do.

That said I wouldn't necessarily have the regi or Keldeo on lock (least of all being all 5 would push it to 240*). Drago & Eleki are here because they wanted all the post-SWSH mons to be in the game. The musketeers could be here because they wantd their Paradox counterparts. So there's special reasons to be here that doesn't require their hanger-ons.

And while it'd be pretty easy to ignore gen 5's box legends with a Unova game on the horizon, we had the gen 4 crew in full despite two sinnoh games on the horizon so I think being a box legend trumps anything else.


*that said it's also possible some 5 of the new mythics weren't originally planned. We know Magearna wasn't.

Do we have confirmation of a Unova game, or do we just think there is because that's where Blueberry is?

 

[R_N]

Do we have confirmation of a Unova game, or do we just think there is because that's where Blueberry is?

Khu's been teasing it iirc.

 

[RocketSurgery]

And while it'd be pretty easy to ignore gen 5's box legends with a Unova game on the horizon, we had the gen 4 crew in full despite two sinnoh games on the horizon so I think being a box legend trumps anything else.

Definitely could be the case, but it could also be that because of dynamax adventures including all of the legends it would have been weird to just leave the Sinnoh legends out. Since mythicals weren't in DA they had no qualms cutting all of the Sinnoh mythicals. Since they're going to have to cut some legends this time around, we'll have to see if box legend status is enough to protect them despite a possible remake.

*that said it's also possible some 5 of the new mythics weren't originally planned. We know Magearna wasn't.

According to Khu's pre-release dex hints, Hoopa also wasn't originally going to make it in to base SV, but did at the last minute. (Maybe also Arceus, but I could be wrong on that, and a low-effort google search didn't turn up the relevant tweets)

Best case scenario is the "230+" is a promise that guarantees between 230 & 240 mons, but if they manage to break 240 it's still consistent with the marketing.

 

[DreamPrince]

On the topic of VGC, they could do what Regulation D is and simply add the Pokémon through the DLC patch and allow participation- not that I’m saying it’s a good idea of course, but regulation D has shown they aren’t afraid to this approach. This method incentivizes multiple purchases of all the games, which benefits the company but is terrible to the player base.

On the other hand, even if they don’t add the restricted Legendaries, we still have Mewtwo, Super-Ancient Pokémon, Pokémon of Myth, Galar Legends, Miraidon, Koraidon, and presumably Terapagos, which will make for a solid set of box legends.