Pokémon Sword & Shield: How To Breed Alolan & Regular Form Pokémon

Pokémon Home is here, allowing you to transfer all your Pokémon in one modern bank system — that you’ll have to pay a yearly premium to use. One of the benefits of Home is that you can now access Alolan / original forms of Pokémon species you’ll find in Pokémon Sword & Shield — that means you can finally get alternate forms like Alolan Raichu, normal Farfetch’d, or normal Darumaka.

You’ll have to transfer these forms in from previous games in the core series, but they’re 100% playable in Pokémon Sword & Shield. There’s just one problem — Pokémon that you breed in the Galar Region always hatch in their native Pokémon Sword & Shield form. If you breed an Alolan Raichu in Pokémon Sword & Shield, it will naturally become a normal Raichu — if you breed a normal Farfetch’d, it will become a Galarian Farfetch’d. It’s a confusing mess, but there’s a way to retain these (relatively) rare alternate forms on the Nintendo Switch. You’ll just need a rare item for your Pokémon to Hold.

Check out the complete list of new transfer-only Pokémon you can play with in Pokémon Sword & Shield.

More Pokémon Sword & Shield guides:

To breed with alternate forms not normally found in Pokémon Sword & Shield, you’ll need a special item called an Everstone. These aren’t easy to locate in the Galar Region, but there are two ways you can acquire them — talk to the Digging Duo in the Wilds and pay the Stamina-Focused brother 500 Watts. There’s a chance he’ll dig up an Everstone. You can also acquire a free Everstone from Turrfield — it’s a hidden item, located southeast of the stadium.

Once you have an Everstone, you can begin breeding alternate forms in the Galar Region — while holding an Everstone, certain Pokémon will always retain their nature and their form when breeding.

How To Breed Non-Galar Pokémon Forms In Sword & Shield:
1. Find an Everstone — found in Turffield or from the Stamina Digging Duo brother.
2. Give the Everstone to a female Pokémon or Ditto before placing them in the Pokémon Nursery.
3. Wait for your Pokémon to breed. If a female Pokémon or Ditto holding an Everstone breeds, they will always retain their original form.

There is one big downside to this. Alolan Raichu and original Weezing can’t breed alternate forms — their off-spring will become standard Pikachu and standard Koffing, and won’t evolve into their Alolan / original forms.

There’s a whole bunch of version-exclusive Pokémon you can now use in Pokémon Sword & Shield. If you want to make more and start trading, now you can. Here’s a full list of all the alternate forms you can now access with Pokémon Home.

You can breed all the new transfer-only Pokémon, but only these select few will change forms if you don’t properly prepare yourself — an Everstone equipped as a Hold Item will do the trick for almost all of them.