It kicks off on July 11
The Pokemon Sword and Shield wild area is getting a change-up in a little over a week, as The Pokemon Company has announced a new event is on the horizon.
Starting on July 11 at 8:59 JST, Poliwag, Marill, and Spheal will appear in greater number, particularly when it comes to the Wild Area nests: including shiny encounters. The Pokemon Company says it’s a way to enjoy the “hot summer.” As a note, a lot of folks have been hunting for that shiny Marill, and the green-colored creature is fully confirmed to appear at a 2% rate in five-star raids.
As a reminder, the Sword and Shield Wild Area is periodically changed to suit different events and rotates around a selection of Pokemon. For getting a full ‘Dex, it was a really fun experience to dive in and check out different weather patterns and locales for creatures — and helped extend my playthrough of the pair of games quite a bit.
It’s interesting, because the Sword and Shield Wild Area both feels malleable and static at the same time. If Scarlet and Violet (and future games, really) want to go the route of “everything is the wild area” in the future, it opens up a bit more — but the team likely isn’t going to completely rework the entire game for little micro-events like this.
While the Wild Area was an experiment of sorts, it ended up becoming one of my favorite elements of any modern Pokemon game.
