Pokemon Sword and Shield’s Wild Area is the mainline Pokemon series’ first space that allows for cooperative play. Players can team up together to take on Max Raid Battles, allowing them the chance to capture powerful Pokemon. Players can also visit each other’s Pokemon Camps, where they can inspect and play with others’ Pokemon, as well as cook useful curry dishes. Like many Nintendo games, however, connecting with your friends online isn’t exactly straightforward. For those of you looking for shelter from the wild, this guide will cover how to visit a friend’s camp in Pokemon Sword and Shield.
Visiting friends’ camps in Pokemon Sword and Shield
When you’re in the Wild Area, visiting another player’s camp is as simple as interacting with their tent and agreeing to visit it. You can easily find tents from a distance by looking for the thin, golden beam shooting up from the chimney (not to be confused with the thicker, pink beams that shoot up from Max Raid Battle dens).
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Once you’re in another player’s camp, you’ll see the Pokemon in their party, as well as any other players visiting them. But finding a specific person’s camp is, unfortunately, not an exact science. Theoretically, you should be able to find them if you’re both connected to the internet (you can connect by pressing Y and then the plus button) and in the same place, but it’s up to chance whether you’ll actually see them there. The Wild Area only loads in a few other players at a time, so whether or not one of those people is your friend is completely random.
The only way to guarantee that you’ll be able to find your friend and their camp is to be in the same place in the real world. If you and your friend are both playing Sword or Shield on Nintendo Switch consoles in the same room, you can connect locally instead of online. This will ensure you are the only ones that will load into the Wild Area together. You’ll know you’re using local communication if the Y-Comm icon in the bottom left of your screen is white or if you see “Local Communication” in the top right corner of the Y-Comm menu. If you and a friend are in the same room on local communication but are not seeing each other in the Wild Area, try performing some other kind of interaction — like a Link Battle or Link Trade — to ensure your consoles are communicating.
