A new, secret, 19th Tera Type for terastallizing your monsters in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet was announced this weekend at the 2023 Pokemon World Championship, although details on its specifics function in the games remain relatively unknown.According to the games' official website, the new tera type is being added in with The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero DLC, the first part of which is scheduled for release on September 13. "Something about it seems different from the eighteen Tera Types we’ve seen before, but much is yet unknown. What is the truth behind this nineteenth Tera Type?" the offical website states in a release dated today.But now, according to one very reputable leaker, more information about the 19th Tera type has been revealed. While we still don't know exactly what its strengths and weakneses will be when weighed against all the other types, the leaker is claiming that every pokemon available in the game will be able to acquire this new tera type. Centro LEAKS is one of the most well-known and reputable Pokemon leakers on the Internet, and the Twitter account added to its list of claims early Sunday, simply stating that "Any Pokémon can be the nineteenth Tera type."
Terastallization is a new mechanic that was added to Pokemon last year for Scarlet & Violet, much like other gimmicks that have come before it, like mega evolution in Pokemon X & Y, Z-moves in Pokemon Sun and Moon, and gigantimaxing in Pokemon Sword & Shield. However, unlike those other mechanics, which either offer a heavy-damage-dealing one-shot attack or boost your Pokemon's stats for a few rounds to an entire fight, terastalizing actually changes a pokemon's typing, which alters its defensive strenghs, weaknesses, and immunities as well as its same-type attack bonus (STAB). A few mega evolutions could do that as well, such as Mega Charizard X changing its secondary typing from flying to dragon, but most held back from actually changing the user's type.
The act of making pokemon's weaknesses harder to predict has earned the franchise praise for increasing the difficulty of its games, but the mystery of the new tera type and how exactly it will function in the game could potentially be another complete game-changer, as no new pokemon type has been introduced since the fairy type in Pokemon X& Y, which provided both a much-needed counter for the bulky dragon types and gave more legitimacy to poison types as a counter for fairy types.