Pokemon Sword and Shield: New Gigantamax Raids Available Now

Pokemon Sword and Shield has added several new Gigantamax Raid Battles in the Wild Area. Starting today, players will find more Max Raid Battles featuring the Gigantamax versions of Flapple, Alcremie, Coalossal, Appletun, and Lapras in the Wild Area. Flapple and Coalossal are exclusive to Pokemon Sword raids, while Appletun and Lapras are exclusive to Pokemon Shield. All of these Pokemon will appear more often in Max Raid Battles until early February. The Max Raids will appear at random, so players simply need to head to the Wild Area and find active Pokemon Dens, and then check the silhouette to see if it contains a Gigantamax Raid.

All five Pokemon have some great G-Max moves. Flapple uses G-Max Tartness to deal damage and lower a Pokemon's evasiveness, while Appletun uses the G-Max move G-Max Sweetness to deal damage and heal allies of their status conditions. Gigantamax Coalossal's G-Max Volcalith inflicts damage on a single opponent and hits all opponents with persistent damage that reduces their HP by 1/6th of their maximum for four turns. Alcremie's G-Max Finale deals damage and heals its allies by 1/6th of their maximum HP. Lapras's G-Max Resonance deals damage and sets up a special Aurora Veil effect that reduces damage for five turns. All moves' power is dependent on what base move the Pokemon uses while in Gigantamax form.

While several of the Pokemon are exclusive to one Pokemon game, players can still access Max Raids from other games by connecting to the Internet and keeping an eye for open raids in the Y-Comm system. Or you can join one of your friend's Max Raids when they're online.

Players can participate in these Max Raid Battles from now until early February. Players will need to connect to the Internet to trigger the new raids, although a Nintendo Switch Online subscription is only needed to participate in the co-op versions of raids.