PokéBase - Pokémon Q&A
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Say you have a Pokemon Home and Pokemon Sword save file on the same Nintendo account on the same Switch. Your switch breaks, therefore losing all the Pokemon in Sword, because it does not support Cloud Data Backup, but not in Home. Home does support Cloud Data Backup and the Pokemon in Home are stored on the server. Say I get a new Nintendo Switch and I put in my Sword cartridge, (which doesn't hold save data, only game data,) and download my backed up Home file from my previous Switch. All on same Nintendo account. If I go into Pokemon Home, and choose to communicate with Pokemon Sword, will my Pokemon be there from my previous Switch.

I'm just really paranoid about my switch breaking and losing HUNDREDS of hours getting Pokemon. If you have any ideas about how to get Pokemon from a save file that is unavailable, (not deleted) than please tell me in comments.

Feel free to change question title, I don't really know what to put there.

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Not a full answer but as far as i'm aware, as long as you have access to the same nintendo id and log back in, i think in theory it should be there, but i have no way of testing it. This might be something i'll personally test when i get a new switch. Good question overall. +1
Thanks!!
Wierd, I didn't even get it.

1 Answer

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Best answer

According to NoA's support website, access to Pokemon Home accounts is based upon the Nintendo account associated with the console (emphasis mine):

Pokémon HOME on Nintendo Switch is tied to your Nintendo Account, so you can connect with any Nintendo Switch console that your Nintendo Account is associated to. For example, if your Nintendo Account is linked to two different Nintendo Switch consoles, you can use your Nintendo Account on either console to connect to your Pokémon HOME account.

This means that if you sent Pokemon from the broken Switch to Pokemon Home, you would be able to access those Pokemon on a different Switch if it used the same Nintendo account as the broken Switch. The first Switch being broken does not change this because your Nintendo account exists on Nintendo's servers, not any console.

However, the answer to the question in the title is no, because the above would not allow you to access Pokemon from the save file of the broken Switch. As save files are stored in the system memory (source), you would need to access the system memory again to retrieve the Pokemon. (Pokemon in Home are not in the system memory.)

The best way to recover the Pokemon would be to contact Nintendo for repair of the console. If you do this, then you should be specific about the fact you're interested in the save data first, as Nintendo are notorious for clearing system memory during the most innocuous repairs.

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Thank you so much, thats pretty interesting. Thanks for answering!