Pokémon Home – Which Special Pokémon Can’t be Traded

If you’re like me, hopping onto the GTS to see what Pokémon are available to trade was one of the first things you did in Pokémon Home. And if you are even more like me, you checked for something really cool like a shiny Japanese Ditto. Surprisingly, there were plenty up there for my potential breeding of other shiny characters, but there was a hitch. They wanted a Meltan or other rare and valuable creature, and the app wouldn’t let me trade with them. To explain this, here’s which special Pokémon can’t be traded on GTS in Pokémon Home.

Which Special Pokémon Can’t be Traded

And that right there answers a lot of my questions, with these restrictions in place specifically for the GTS platform, and not Pokémon Home as a whole. If you’re trading with friends, anything goes, but on GTS where random players can meet up to swap pre-determined characters, there are restrictions. Specifically, any Mythical Pokémon is considered a “special Pokémon” and will generate the error “this is a special Pokémon and can’t be offered for a trade” whenever you try.

Legendary and event Pokémon don’t have this restriction though, so feel free to trade them any time you want on GTS. The big question now is why players can even request these types of creatures when the app itself prevents them from being swapped. There’s no real answer though, so let’s move on to the second question of which characters count as Mythical Pokémon. Here’s the list in order of release…

Mew
Celebi
Jirachi
Deoxys
Darkrai
Shaymin
Arceus
Manaphy
Phione.
Victini
Keldeo
Meoletta
Genesect
Hoopa
Volcanion
Diancie
Zeroara
Marshadow
Magearna
Zeraora
Meltan
Melmetal

So that’s which special Pokémon can’t be traded on GTS in Pokémon Home. Hopefully this restriction goes away once the app is more stable and becomes a more natural way to swap characters between players. I wouldn’t be too anxious for that to happen though.