Do Pokemon moves change when they are transferred with Pokemon Home?

With the news of Pokemon Home's 2.0 update on the horizon, the application is seeing use once again by veteran players.

The news of Pokemon Legends: Arceus coming to the application has also piqued the interest of players introduced to the franchise through the game as well as Pokemon GO.

Many players have access to this helpful tool. Hence, many use it to begin investing themselves in battling.

Competitive online battling is a long-valued part of the Pokemon franchise, uniting fans from every corner of the world to test their mettle against one another. Luckily, Pokemon Home is an excellent tool for this.

Pokemon Home is a great way for experienced battlers to bring their old team of seasoned and trained Pokemon out of retirement and into the new generation.

However, this comes with a few restrictions and changes from prior generations and battle formats due to the smaller catalog in Pokemon Sword and Shield.

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Transferring Pokemon to and from Pokemon Home: The finer details

Promotional imagery for Pokemon Home (Image via The Pokemon Company)

When a Pokemon is transferred from one game to Home, players can see that Pokemon's stats, moves, nature, and other small details about it. Any time a Pokemon is transferred from Pokemon Home to Let's GO or Sword and Shield, every detail about them will be kept intact.

There are exceptions, however. The Pokedex from each game have a few restrictions when it comes to what Pokemon can be transferred to each game.

In the case of Pokemon Let's GO, only Pokemon from the Kanto Pokedex and their Alolan variants can be brought into the game. Pokemon also cannot be returned once they are in Home. This restriction also falls on Pokemon transferred from Pokemon GO.

This is due to Pokemon Home "filling in the blanks" for these Pokemon as the app gives abilities as well as other missing factors to these Pokemon. This means that Pokemon brought from these games into Home can only go to Sword and Shield.

Once a Pokemon is brought from Home into Sword and Shield, the player must complete a couple of steps before they can begin using them in battle. The first thing players need to do is head to the Battle Tower. Once they reach the lobby, the player will need to talk to one of the NPCs at the front desk.

This NPC will look over any Pokemon the player chooses to make sure they are ready for battle. This NPC will also look for any banned moves the Pokemon may have and let the player know they will need to change them before they can begin using them in battle.

A list of banned moves can be found here: https://www.serebii.net/swordshield/unusableattacks.shtml. Aside from this one restriction, the moveset of Pokemon do not change once they are transferred from the application.

The player does not have to delete banned moves off of a Pokemon as long as they do not use them in battle. This can help players keep Pokemon intact until the 2.0 update for the app comes out.