Pokemon Sword and Shield Players Are Already Manipulating the In-Game Weather System

Pokemon Sword and Shield have been out for just a few days on the Nintendo Switch, but players have already figured out the in-game weather patterns. The weather affects the open wild areas, and the weather can dictate which Pokemon you see out in the wild.

Over on the Pokemon Sword and Shield subreddit, user AustinJohnPlays has already figured out the in-game weather pattern. They've put together the chart you can see below, so you know the dates that it's going to be rainy, sunny, snowy, stormy, or any other type of PokeWeather.

This is really useful, because it allows you to manipulate your Switch to get any weather you desire. As AustinJohnPlays notes in the comments under the post, you can change the date on your Switch while playing Pokemon Sword or Shield in one of the wild areas, and it'll immediately change to the weather affect of the date that you entered.

However, hail and sandstorm weather is locked behind a certain number of Gym badges, and fog is locked until after you've beaten all eight Gym Leaders in either Sword or Shield. Nonetheless, there's still plenty of weather options available, so if you need to catch an Electric-type Pokemon, you'd want to change the date on your Switch to 11/1/20.

If you want to know our in-depth thoughts on both Pokemon Sword and Shield, now that we've spent tens of hours in Game Freak's latest adventure, you can check out our full Pokemon Sword and Shield review. Alternatively, you can head over to our detailed Pokemon Sword and Shield TMs guide, for a list of all TM moves in the game.