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Pokémon Home version 2.0 adds Arceus and BDSP support

UPDATE: Arrives tomorrow.

UPDATE 17/5/22: Pokémon Home's big 2.0 update will arrive in the early hours of tomorrow morning - 18th May at 1am, UK time.

Following a period of maintenance, the service is then expected to return later tomorrow with suppport for Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, Shining Pearl and Legends Arceus - full details of all of that lie below.


ORIGINAL STORY 12/5/22: Pokémon Home, the franchise's creature storage app for Switch and mobile phones, will soon add support for new releases Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl.

Support for these games - which was expected, but still not yet dated - will arrive "in the coming weeks", The Pokémon Company said today.

It sounds like Arceus' story and mechanics have prompted a few workarounds to the normal Home formula - as already supported in Pokémon Sword/Shield, Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee and Pokémon Go.

Cover image for YouTube videoPokémon Legends: Arceus Eurogamer Reviewscast
Eurogamer Reviewscast: We chat Pokémon Legends Arceus.

As Arceus takes place in the past, before many Pokéball types existed, any Pokémon transferred into the game from Home will sit in a "Strange Ball". Around the other way, Pokémon from Arceus will be transferred sitting in a regular Pokéball.

A few other words of caution, from The Pokémon Company: "Special Pokémon that can only be caught once during regular gameplay can only be deposited once per save data to Pokémon Home," it says of Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl.

As for Arceus: "The objective of Pokémon Legends: Arceus is to help compile the first Pokédex in the Hisui region. As such, the National Pokédex in Pokémon Home will update its Pokédex entries based on your completion of the Pokédex in your Pokémon Legends: Arceus save data.

"If a Pokédex entry in Pokémon Legends: Arceus is incomplete, you will not be able to see that Pokémon's entry in Pokémon Home."

Finally, linking each game - Arceus, Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl - to Home will result in a Pokémon as a reward via the Mystery Gift function (one of each game's Starter creatures with maximum effort levels or Hidden Abilities).

We'll update when we have a release date for the Pokémon Home update, which will bring the service to version 2.0.

Not tried Arceus yet? "Inspired as much by Pokémon Go as it is Breath of the Wild, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is flimsy and compulsive - and exhilaratingly new," we wrote in Eurogamer's Pokémon Legends Arceus review.