Pokemon Sword And Shield Players Discover New Bug To View An Egg’s Stats, Teach TMs, Or Evolve It Before Hatching

Players of Pokemon Sword And Shield have discovered another strange bug in the game, this time relating to Pokemon Eggs and breeding.

As many of you know, the Pokemon series has a mechanic which allows players to breed two Pokemon for Eggs, which will in turn hatch into new Pokemon with different stats, moves and so forth. Normally, there is no way to know exactly what moves or stats the Pokemon hatched from an egg will have until its hatched.

However, it turns out Pokemon Sword and Shield have a bug which allows players to not only view an egg’s stats before they hatch, but even teach them TMs or evolve them. In essence, the bug involves the following steps:

1. Place the unhatched egg below a Pokemon of the same species in your party
2. Go into the bag
3. Select a TM, XP Candy, or Vitamin you want to use
4. Attempt to use the item on the Pokemon above the egg, but hold down immediately after you press “A”
5. Instead of the Pokemon above the egg, your item will be used on the Pokemon within the unhatched egg

Since this method is a bit difficult to explain in words, we have included a video from Austin John Plays where he shows off the bug in action:

As highlighted by some users on Reddit, similar bugs have existed in past Pokemon games such as in Gen IV where you could check an unhatched egg’s stats using the PC. However, this is likely the first time players are able to use items such as TMs and Vitamins on an egg through such an exploit.

Unfortunately, the bug itself is of limited usefulness when it comes to breeding for shinies or perfect IVs, since it does not offer a way to alter the egg’s base parameters before it hatches. If you want to hatch a level 1 Hydreigon with Hyper Beam though….now you can.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.