Something called Surprise Trade Christmas is coming to Pokémon Sword & Shield this festive season. Effectively a way for experienced trainers to give Pokémon as gifts.

Pokémon Sword & Shield have been on the market for a little over a month at this point, which means eager players who bought one of the games on release day will be well on their way to beating it. Chances are a fair few players will have achieved that already and are now busy training up their Pokémon and completing their Pokédex.

However, Sword & Shield were not released towards the tail end of the year by accident. Nintendo and Game Freak are going after that holiday season money – i.e., people buying the games as gifts, probably for children in most cases. That means come December 25, there will be a massive influx of new trainers to the game just starting their journeys in the Galar Region.

This might seem foreign to some people, but there are gamers out there who will be playing Pokémon for the first time when they fire up Sword or Shield on Christmas Day. The game will be tough to get to grips with for those people, which is why players of the games have initiated something called Surprise Trade Christmas.

Surprise Trade Christmas will use the games’ Wonder/Surprise Trade feature first introduced during Generation VI of the games. Players with well-trained or experienced Pokémon that they don’t really have much use for are being urged to surprise trade them, allowing a new player to add them to their own brand new collection. Having a Pokémon like that will help them get accustomed to the games more quickly.

As for the Pokémon, Bleeding Cool recommends more hardened players offer up their Pokémon. Starters are good, as are version-exclusives such as Galarian Ponyta. An extra fossil Pokémon wouldn’t go amiss, or maybe even something rare that a new player wouldn’t likely come across for a long time, such as a Ditto. If you have Sword or Shield and have Pokémon to spare, get into the giving spirit this festive season and help out a fellow trainer.

Source: Bleeding Cool