Pokémon Home gets Arceus, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl update

Pokémon Home will finally be compatible with Pokémon Legends: Arceus, as well as Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Pokémon Shining Pearl, in an update releasing Tuesday. The Pokémon Company announced the long-awaited update via a news release on Thursday May 12, and later confirmed the update would be applied on Tuesday, May 17.

Pokémon Home will go down for maintenance today, May 17, at 8 p.m. EDT, while the 2.0 update is applied.

Pokémon players have been eagerly waiting for information on Pokémon Home; Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were released in November 2021, followed by Legends: Arceus in January 2022, but the cloud-based storage and trading system remained incompatible with all those games for some time.

Image: The Pokémon Company/Nintendo

“For example, you will be able to take a Pikachu that you caught in Pokémon Sword or Pokémon Shield into Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, or Pokémon Shining Pearl,” The Pokémon Company wrote. “Please note that transferring Pokémon to a game they were not originally caught in may cause certain changes to known moves, level, and what type of Poké Ball they were caught in.”

Image: The Pokémon Company/Nintendo

That means that Pokémon moves could change when transferred into Home and then onto other games. The details here are vague, but Pokémon experts over at Serebii are quickly figuring out details from pre-release, Japanese versions of the app: Despite the moves not transferring, they’ll stay “connected” to to Pokémon, meaning that if they’re returned to the game they were caught in, they’ll retain original moves — regardless of whether they learned anything in their trip into another game, according to Serebii.

You’ll also notice that Pokémon transferred from Legends: Arceus will appear in new Poké Balls when transferred. Poké Balls as we know them today didn’t exist in that game, so anything transferred to or from Legends: Arceus will appear in a green Strange Ball.

As part of the update, The Pokémon Company is adding Pokédex from each of the games alongside the National Pokédex.

Lastly, The Pokémon Company is awarding Pokémon Home users with free Pokémon: Turtwig, Chimchar, Piplup, Rowlet, Cyndaquil, and Oshawott. Here’s how to get them, straight from the company:

When you deposit a Pokémon from Pokémon Brilliant Diamond or Pokémon Shining Pearl to the Nintendo Switch version of Pokémon HOME, you will receive Turtwig, Chimchar, and Piplup with Hidden Abilities as Mystery Gifts in the mobile device version of Pokémon Home.

If you deposit a Pokémon from Pokémon Legends: Arceus into the Nintendo Switch version of Pokémon Home, you will receive Rowlet, Cyndaquil, and Oshawott with maximum effort levels as Mystery Gifts in the mobile device version of Pokémon Home.

The Pokémon Home app was released in 2020, replacing the Pokémon Bank app used for the Nintendo 3DS Pokémon games. Pokémon Bank creatures can be transferred to Pokémon Home, but not the other way around.

Update (May 17): This article, originally published on May 12, has been edited to include the release date and time for the new update on May 17.