The Pokemon announcements came fast and furious today, and now Nintendo and Game Freak have one more for us fans. The Galarian Slowpoke has wandered in from the Isle of Armor and is out in the world right now. This is the first major tease ahead of the new expansion pass coming later this year. As confirmed by Nintendo today, the Expansion Pass will comprise two expansions: The Isle of Armor, planned for release in early summer 2020, and The Crown Tundra, planned for release in fall 2020. If you want to buy the expansions for a single version of the game, it will cost $30.
Galarian Slowpoke is just the first of the newest updates coming to the Switch titles ahead of the expansions. As the team puts it, “Additionally, when the Expansion Pass launches, look forward to free updates for Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield that will let even Trainers who don’t get the Expansion Pass to obtain its Pokémon through other means, such as trading.”
So get in game and download that patch if you want to go catch the new event Pokemon. You won’t be able to evolve that Galarian Slowpoke, however, until the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra expansions are released for Pokémon Sword and Shield. The upcoming Isle of Armor holds an item you will need to evolve this unique form, so you will have to wait a while to get Galarian Slowbro.
The 1.1.0 patch is pretty small. Coming in at a relatively svelte 697MB, the patch is mostly bug fixes and a handful of new additions. The bug fixes are left unspecified, but it’s likely relating to minor issues like texture or sound issues, basically inconsequential stuff, otherwise Game Freak would have mentioned it. Of course all the major pop-in issues in the Wild areas still appear to be there. Game Freak should really fix that.
In case you missed the other reveals during the Pokemon Direct today, here’s a quick recap. There’s the aforementioned expansions for Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield. Those are adding more than 200 missing Pokemon to the game. Nintendo also teased an upcoming remake of the Mystery Dungeon games with all new features.
