Pokemon Sword And Shield Glitch Evolves Eggs

Hatching a Magikarp is easy. Evolving it into a Gyarados is a little harder. In Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, players have found they can sidestep the whole business of grinding their Magikarp to level 20 and instead hatch a fully formed Gyarados via an apparent glitch.

The whole idea behind hatching eggs is that players start out with a baby Pokemon: one that isn't evolved or leveled whatsoever. In order to evolve their new partner, players have to grind for experience and even seek out special stones or items required for the Pokemon to evolve. This new glitch bypasses all of that. What's more is that players can treat their unhatched Pokemon like any other fully-fledged Pokemon. Trainers can teach their eggs moves through TMs and see their stats. No more waiting around if you're willing to do a few fancy button presses.

To take advantage of this exploit, players need to have the parent of the egg in their party. This parent must be just one level away from evolving. Place the parent above the egg (we like to imagine it is incubating its baby) and then give the parent a rare candy to level it up. Here comes the tricky part: immediately press down and hold. It may take some precise timing, but if you get it right, this exploit will trigger the message that, "Egg is evolving!" While the egg won't hatch, it will become the evolved form of its parent. Hatching a Magikarp? The egg will evolve into Gyarados, with all that water-type fury stuffed inside a fragile shell.

Sorry shiny hunters: This does not allow players to view whether or not their unhatched Pokemon is shiny. It does, however, let players totally ignore any gender requirements when it comes to evolving a Pokemon. Male Salandits can become the concerningly curvaceous Salazzle. 

Now that news of this exploit is making the rounds, explanatory videos are garnering thousands of views. The glitch goes against the laws of nature, though, so don't be surprised if Game Freak issues a patch sometime soon.