Beastieball - News - UpdateMonitor

END OF 2025 MILESTONE UPDATE: Animations, Music, Hangouts and more!

This is the 3rd Milestone Update out of 10 planned.
* = Changed in a patch on 12/19

🖼️ Beastie Art Updates

Zefyre: Animation COMPLETE!
Radillo: Animation COMPLETE!
Daredillo: Animation COMPLETE!
Skorock: Cleaned up poses!
Boldlur: Animation COMPLETE!
Millimine: Animation COMPLETE!
Troglum: Animation COMPLETE!

The number of Beasties marked as complete has gone from 44 to 50.

✨New Stuff

New Gold Sponsorship Opportunity!
- Staying Power Fitness (the gyms where you can train your Beasties' stats) are now offering higher-tier sponsorships to coaches that make a lot of social connections.
- Master the art of Recruit Condition Streaks to multiply your earnings!
- Sponsored players will have an easier time making money and easier access to certain items in Gyms, reducing the barrier to entry for high-level teambuilding
NEW STORY CONTENT
- You can now max out your hearts with Celia.
- A new character can be re-matched after completing the main story.
Huge Visual Effects update!
- Added effects animations for various effects that can trigger during Sports!
- Games feel much more animated and polished now
Environmental improvements
- Additional environmental details have been added around Begonia
MUSIC UPDATES
- NEW SPORT TRACK: VS. Crimson Racers
  - Players who have already passed their point the story will have the new songs available in Music Setup.
- NEW BGM: Hidden Gems of Amberstone
  - This BGM can be found in some tucked-away areas of Amberstone
- The OST is updated on Steam and Bandcamp!
New Lobby Game Mode: Random Teams! This enforces that players get a new random team every match.
- Corresponding with this, and just for general usability, added a button to view your team details when determining your team's rotation before a networked PvP match.
Approx. 15 new unlockable Team Titles added!

🌕 Upcoming Bash

BIGMOON BASH: 2025 CHAMPIONSHIP BOUT!

A Bigmoon Bash is coming next weekend! This one is a contest between Beasties that won Bashes in 2025. Jump into the game next weekend and challenge coaches around the world to help your favorite Beastie win the event!

🔧 Balance Changes

[p]Our main focus in this update was to lightly touch Beasties that are overperforming or underperforming to bring their success rates more in line. We also have changes here that aren't intended to make Beasties strictly stronger or weaker, but just to help every Beastie fulfill a more unique role in the meta. In the process, we wound up making minor adjustments to nearly every Beastie family in the game.[/p]

[h3]💧 New Status Effect: WEEPY[/h3]

A Beastie that's WEEPY won't feel the effect of 🔺BOOSTs.
WEEPY counts up after every offense turn much like SWEATY, but it goes away when the Beastie TAGS OUT.
If a Beastie feels 4 WEEPY (or more), they will burst into tears and instantly lose 100 STAMINA.
If a Beastie that's WEEPY tries to feel JAZZED, the feelings neutralize each other. JAZZED won't be applied, but WEEPY will be cured. The reverse is also true; if a Beastie that's JAZZED has WEEPY applied to them, the WEEPY will not be applied but the JAZZED will be removed.

[p]WEEPY joins the game after extensive testing and feedback in experimental updates! WEEPY offers another tool to slow down hyper-aggressive ramping and pressures the opponent to give up a defense action tagging out or face being WIPED. It's a slower-paced control tool for teams that want to out-sustain opponents. For the time being, this effect is somewhat underutilized in how many plays and traits it interacts with; we don't want to push the mechanical density of the game much further with the current set of Beasties. But this effect does help us carve out some new design space for future content.[/p]

[h3]👨‍👨‍👧‍👧 Mechanic Change: Rally[/h3]

When RALLY is active, SPIRIT attacks do +15 damage (from +50%)
MIND attacks do x3/4 damage (this is unchanged)
Wears off by 1 at the end of each turn. Effects apply as long as there is at least 1 stack. (this is unchanged)

[p]We love Rally and how it enables an all-out offensive style, but it has always given SPIRIT's highest highs an edge that made it very challenging to play into and for some players felt stronger than other types. This new iteration cuts the value of RALLY on higher-damage attacks, but increases the value of low-power attacks moreso. We hope this enables all-out offense gameplay, but not as oppressively, while also creating space for more bulky/defensive playstyles that use lower-power utility attacks. This comes alongside some corresponding POW changes to SPIRIT's highest-utility plays.[/p]

[h3]🍄 Traits[/h3]

(NEW!)Super Armor: DEF x1.5 when STAMINA is at least 3/4 filled
- 🔄 Given to Boldlur in place of Armored
(NEW!) Decoy: When at the net and not TOUGH, all attacks go to this Beastie
- 🔄 Given to Boldlur in place of Steadfast
Boldlur is a Beastie that has never had a proper clear game plan to build around, and that's been reflected in lethargic usage statistics. We've given them a complete rethink this time around to help them establish a unique tanky supporter role.
Neural Net:
- 🔻 New effect: MIND attacks always go to this Beastie
  Walking back the EASY RECEIVE effect added in the previous patch...
Watchtower:
- 🔼 New effect: When not TOUGH, receives attacks in place of adjacent allies
  
  In the previous balance patch, we tried introducing a defense reduction to Watchtower in order to reign in its exploitability. This had the intended effect of curbing its effectiveness and that was reflected in usage/winrate statistics. But it didn't make the trait any more fun to play into... it was further boxed in as something used only for risky offense support, and it introduced unintuitive damage calculations with an awkward 20% conditional damage adjustment. This updated effect removes its single most annoying interaction, thereby allowing it to be more simple and effective in every other context where it's also more fun to play around.
Overwork:
- 🔻 New effect: Attacks do 1.2x damage and cost 15 STAMINA
Vampire:
- 🔼 New effect: Attacks restore STAMINA equal to 1/3 of damage dealt (from 1/4)
Miracle Play:
- 🔼 New effect: Free Ball is an attack with 75 POW (from 60 POW)
Determination:
- 🔼 New effect: Now also triggered by WEEPY in addition to NERVOUS, TENDER, and SWEATY.

[h3]🏃 Plays[/h3]

(NEW) True Strike - BODY Attack, 85 POW. Ignores Traits.
- Via level up
  - Deluja, Supilero
- Via friendship
  - Fetcham, Magpike, Maraptor, Armantis, Conjarr, Hydrolm
  Aside from giving Body yet another answer to Intangible, it also gives a much-needed utility play with decent power to several Beasties whose offense potential has been underutilized up until now.
(NEW?) Stinger - MIND Attack, 65 POW. Target feels 1 WEEPY.
- Via level up
  - Illugus, Hydrolm
- Via friendship
  - Garood, Platypulse, Pladion, Noizard, Varkabond, Vultoxin, Crawlurk, Debugly, Gremlur, Shloom
(NEW!) Gloom - DEFENSE. Target feels 1 WEEPY.
- Via level up
  - 🔼 Mistic, Diabloceras
- Via friendship
  - 🔼 Plumask, Wottle, Orgella, Squimage
(NEW!) Soliloquy - DEFENSE. Every fielded Beastie feels 1 WEEPY.
- Via level up
  - 🔼 Conjarr
- Via friendship
  - 🔼 Hopra, Plumask
(NEW!) Hum - SUPPORT. Spirit POW +1 to self.
- Via level up
  - 🔼 Hopra, Humflit, Kaleidarn
- Via friendship
  - 🔼 Crabaret, Conjarr, Orgella, Scauldra
  After gradually re-tooling and re-distributing Dig and Excited Pass over the last year, we felt there was a missing space for an easy low-level play that some Beasties could use to power themselves up. While we see some applications for this on high-level teams, it isn't a super high-value play and we are hopeful that players can build with it without shaking up the current balance of spirit offense.
Ricochet
- 🔄 New Effect: MIND Attack - 110 POW. Only used at net. Only used when ball is NOT hittable.
  Ricochet is intended to be a powerful attack that hits a bit outside the curve of typical mind attacks, and we hope to preserve that. This new iteration is meant to be simpler while also making it a bit more reliant on planning and strategy to make full use of.
Grit
- 🔻 55 POW (from 60)
- 🔼Now activates from WEEPY in addition to NERVOUS, TENDER and SWEATY
Tornadoball
- 🔻 50 POW (from 60)
Cook
- 🔻 50 POW (from 55)
Twist
- 🔻 30 POW (from 40)
Excited Pass
- 🔼 Removed the STAMINA activation requirement (Prev. 34 STAMINA)
Cover
- 🔼 New effect: VOLLEY. Only used at net. B/S/MDEF +1. SHIFTs self to back row.
Pipe
- 🔼 New effect: VOLLEY. SHIFT ally to back row. If successful: Ally feels 1 JAZZED.
  Pipe has basically been a filler move up until now. We're giving it its own function and niche now; in exchange, however, we had to rethink its distribution quite a bit
Exhaust
- 🔼 Makes the user feel 3 WIPED (from 4)
Clear Field
- 🔻 Restores 8 STAMINA to entire team (from 10)
Torch Pass
- 🔻 Lowers max STAMINA by 20 (from 10)
Hex
- 🔄 New effect: SUPPORT. Target and self trait changes to Haunted (Always feels 4 TIRED).
  The original spark for Hex was wanting a play that could cast Wiped on a Beastie. Since then, we've added it in other forms as a self-sustain tool (Exhaust) and come to realize just how wildly abusable this play could be. This new design still SHOULD be a cruel and powerful disruption, but it's less "free" to click and overall has a lower impact on both the user and target.
Heat Wave
- 🔄 New effect: SUPPORT. Every non-SWEATY Beasties feels 1 SWEATY.
  The previous iteration of Heat Wave was often used on the first Defense turn of the game as an easy counter-serve strategy to put instant pressure on the opponent and set up devastating combos. This new iteration as a Support play cuts into its ability to mount an offense or healing at the same time as this play is run, and also ensures that the user's team ticks Sweaty damage before the opponent, making it just a touch more costly to use. We hope to see this play used more for stall and slow-offense teams, or as a mid-to-late-game clincher than requires a bit more thought and planning to execute, while still exerting huge pressure in the games it's in.
Wall
- 🔼 No longer costs 10 STAMINA

[h3]👹 Beasties[/h3]

Kichik, Ostrisigh, Kassaleet
- 🔼 Plays Added: Shake Off
- 🔄 Tweaked level-up plays to improve their single-player experience and make them a bit less linear for new players
Axolati Hopsong, Hopra
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Excited Pass
- 🔄 Tweaked level-up plays
Shooga, Supassum, Supilero
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Thump
Sefren, Zefyre
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Battle Cry
- 🔼 Plays Added: Clear Field
Woollie, Fetcham
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Faith
Platenna, Platypulse, Pladion
- 🔻Plays Removed: Set
  (In exchange for the Pipe buff)
Radillo, Daredillo
- 🔻Plays Removed: Forward Pass
- 🔼 Plays Added: Pipe, Exhaust
Noizard
- 🔻80 MDEF (from 85)
Albrax
- 🔻46 MDEF (from 49)
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Tactical Pass
  Players have been vocal about wanting to see this Beastie brought down a touch and we hear you. Although their Tractor Beam trait is very powerful, we still stand by it as an interesting and skill-expressive tool. What we have seen is that Albrax often is paired with mind-bulky Beasties that it can support offensively, allowing it to out-ramp the other team while keeping them boxed in. We're removing its ability to support offensive ramp in an effort to help it fit into its niche as a passive trapper that can disrupt opponents but doesn't further its own offensive gameplan, along the same line of reasoning that led us to remove Assess and Splinter in previous patches.
Scrubbub, Grubiron, Beetlback
- 🔼 Plays Added: Dive, Perfect Shot (Beetlback only)
Gastic, Wisper, Mistic
- 🔼 Plays Added: Exhaust
Goofsder
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Perfect Shot
- 🔼 Plays Added: Ricochet
Troglum, Varkabond
- 🔼 Plays Added: Ricochet
Armantis
- 🔼75 BPOW (from 70)
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Ricochet
- 🔼 Plays Added: Perfect Shot, Splinter
  We weren't unhappy with Armantis' power using Ricochet, but the new Ricochet design actively discourages getting blocks, which makes it a terrible fit for Armantis now. We're giving them some new tools to help preserve their threat level in mind offense while also giving them some tools to run body offense as an alternative.
Petula, Flowish, Orgella
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Pipe
Leobro, Broslidon
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Pipe
Crawlurk
- 🔼 Plays Added: Lay Trap
Mudslee
- 🔻73 MPOW (from 83)
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Dump
  *Mudsley is a Beastie that has been a bit under-explored classically; going by analytics, a Mudsley using Dump was only featured in 2 total games out of thousands and thousands played over the last 4 Bashes. Their overtuned attack power and access to one of the most powerful front-lane pressure tools in the game was an oversight we are late to address. Mudslee already has amazing utility with disruptive mind attacks, tanky stats, access to powerful healing and two meta-defining traits. Their added ability to pressure kills wasn't something players often explored and wasn't needed.
Psylusc
- 🔼 Plays Added: Freezeray, Nerve Strike
Xiphosaur
- 🔼 Trait Changed: Armored
- Updated recruit condition: Have your same Beastie receive 3+ attacks in 1 point
Skibble, Skorock, Boldlur
- 🔼 Plays Added: Shake Off
Millimine, Demolipede
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Tactical Pass, Pipe
- 🔼 Plays Added: Clear Field
Beelb
- 🔼80 BDEF (from 70)
- 🔼 Plays Added: Shake Off, Body Ready
Froofulks
- 🔼79 BPOW (from 74)
- 🔻93 SPOW (from 98)
Grazada
- 🔼 Plays Added: Pipe
Druppa, Scauldra
- 🔻Plays Removed: Forward Pass
- 🔼 Plays Added: Pipe
Proteos, Hydrolm
- 🔼90 BPOW (from 85)
- 🔼 Plays Added: Ego Blast
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Pipe
Diabloceras
- 🔄 Added Spitball to level-up plays

🚧Other Fixes and Changes

Improved the tutorial game with a lot more guidance and info and fewer interrupting dialogue boxes
Adjusted many encounters across the game to accommodate updated playbooks and balance changes
Expanded the Credits screen under "Settings" with more detailed explanations of everyone's role on the team! (Very inspired by the credits in Demonschool...)
Added the option to sort the Beastiepedia by "Videographer," showing who the lead animator was for each Beastie
We refactored the scale and proportions of several main characters. A lot of characters were originally drawn without proper scale reference and the result was that proportions were a little all over the place. That's adjusted now!
Lighting has been adjusted so that color applies more vividly on 2D characters like Beasties and humans. This makes game areas with different lighting colors feel more distinct. Corresponding with this, we adjusted the lighting color in several areas such as Solanum Weald and Tawny Wilds.
When the game originally shipped, team titles were rendered with a drop-shadow effect. We later had to change how text was rendered, making the drop-shadow effect impossible, so we switched over to a dark boundary box which functionally worked just as well for making text readable but frequently drew ire and feedback reports as it could look buggy or unintentional in some contexts. We've now reinstated the drop shadow effect using a different system, at the cost of some minor rendering issues like occasional slight position offsets.
The camera angle in sport matches now automatically adjusts slightly to accommodate taller opponent Beasties
Improved the "stickiness" of selection on Beasties while the camera moves in sport matches. This should specifically help with the issue of the corner "options" menu being selected by default instead of the serving Beastie in some occasions.
Adjusted the positioning of Feeling (status effect) icons near Beasties in sports games
Added more visual reinforcement and double-confirm checks when beginning a new game with challenge mode settings (Ironman or Randomizer)
In Impossible Ironman mode, dancing with Sunsoo now causes your team to be Sweaty instead of Wiped, since Wiped is a much more serious resource cost to heal in that challenge mode.
Fixed an obscure crash that could be triggered by some speedrun exploits during tutorial areas
Added a special case when encountering an un-numbered Diggum enforcing that partner Beasties are not additonal Diggums, to ease solving its recruit condition.
Added more icons to text in the Info tab
Added some extra pop-ups informing when an attack's damage was increased due to Receive Weariness
In the past, to reduce clutter, some effect pop-ups were skipped when hitting into a TOUGH Beastie. We have re-enabled some of these pop-ups when playing in games that don't reward experience points (eg. Tower Tourney) since hiding some activated traits/effects caused savvy players to think there was a bug.
Removed Riley from a certain story scene if it is triggered past a certain point in the plot.
Fixed Superorganism so it triggers as usual when playing a Sports Problem in Ironman mode.
More enforcement that manmade rubber balls are used for certain story encounters
Improved stability and culling of 3D particle effects
Very minor area layout tweaks to fix bad cameras/collisions
Changed generation of random teams in PvP such that they have some training points in their stats, to better compete with player-built teams.
Changed name of WALL (the field effect) to BARRIER
Fixed Celia being uninteractable if you attempt to initiate a rematch before finishing the story
Fixed frame data for Yueffowl's movement animation
Fixed stray pixel(s) in Servace and Lunaptra animations
Thickened the outline on Radillo's animations
Adjusted team generation for "Stall" type teams to use fewer attackless sets
Assigned encounter id for the new post-game character rematch to use a harder, more interesting team
Rebuilt model texture UVs to fix a few props including Kaz's sign in Jasper
Fixed typos in new text

Anniversary Open Bash - Final Results and Stats!

This weekend we held a BIGMOON BASH where all Beasties were allowed! It's been a couple months since the last balance patch, so coaches have had lots of time to learn the current meta and optimize their teams. Let's see who was able to bring it all together and come out on top this time around!

[h2]👑 Top-Scoring Players[/h2]

Bolimar (The Crimson Angels) | Bash Score: 3060
Wavewhyse* (The Stellar Tides) | Bash Score: 3052
Erin (The Nefarious Pants) | Bash Score: 2952
- Boolerex (The Big Flowers) | Bash Score: 2904
N/A
AirMan121 (The Bugs) | Bash Score: 2852
Phoenix (The Flaming Birds) | Bash Score: 2800
MochaTeehee (The Hello Fishes) | Bash Score: 2752
Arc Tech (The Arcane Machines) | Bash Score: 2744
Score (The Jamming Ballers) | Bash Score: 2740
Juninha (The Valiant Hearts) | Bash Score: 2728
Mabel (The Cowardly Lions) | Bash Score: 2664
Pyryn (The Earthbound Echoes) | Bash Score: 2640
Dino (The Wayward Pirates) | Bash Score: 2628
Sabrewoif (The Inglorious Shamblers) | Bash Score: 2620
Triangle (The Future All-stars) | Bash Score: 2616
Mateobow (The Violet Waves) | Bash Score: 2612
rwn (The Little Stars) | Bash Score: 2596
HP (The Jolly Jokers) | Bash Score: 2544
Juninho (The Valiant Storms) | Bash Score: 2532
Arcwell (The Sad Cats) | Bash Score: 2504
Byrd (The Soggy Dreamers) | Bash Score: 2468

The median Bash Score this time was 1988. Exactly the same as the last Bash, amazingly!
A big congratulations to all the top-scoring players!

[h2]📊 Beastie Usage Stats![/h2]
As has become tradition, we've collected a ton of data on Beastie usage during this event and we're happy to share that data with you for further investigation!
[h3]> Check out the STATS here![/h3]

[h2]🙇 Thank you!!![/h2]
As always, I deeply appreciate the care and passion that players put into their teams and gameplay. You all inspire us... and give us lots of juicy balance data to investigate and theorize on! We're in the process of putting together the next major balance patch, which will begin testing in experimental VERY SOON. Look out for that!

Beastieball News

END OF 2025 MILESTONE UPDATE: Animations, Music, Hangouts and more!

Next Bigmoon Bash: 2025 CHAMPIONSHIP BOUT!

Experimental Balance Changes for upcoming Milestone #3 (Updated 12/11)

Anniversary Open Bash - Final Results and Stats!

Join the Anniversary Open Bigmoon Bash!