BALL x PIT is pure dopamine-dealing, ball-bouncing chaos — but that chaos extends to its approach to tutorials… There basically aren’t any. Developer Kenny Sun won’t hold your hand, but don’t worry, I’m here to keep those palms warm.
Here are my top tips to getting the most out of your balls in BALL x PIT.
Home Base
Your home base is where you’ll farm and mine resources, to build new structures and enhance your balls. To start, you’ll just be firing off in a straight line to harvest wheat and wood, but soon, you’ll be ricocheting off buildings to build them, and gold mines to haul in coin.
Ball-Building
Different structures have a variety of effects on your trips into the pit: new characters, strength buffs, the ability to revive yourself etc. Some buildings can even be upgraded. Holding ‘ZL’ on Nintendo Switch (or ‘Shift?’ on PC) highlights which existing structures can be enhanced. If you have enough resources to upgrade they’re highlighted blue, while if you don’t have enough they’ll be red.
When you’re setting up buildings and resources for harvesting, you’ll want to create a narrow path for the ball that’s enclosed on three sides, for maximum rebound potential. When you have enough buildings to build and upgrade, you’ll want to use these as your walls — rather than using the side of a cliff — to ensure you’re getting bang-for-your-buckballs.
READ MORE: Review | BALL x PIT: ‘A Hole New Ballgame’ (PC)
Gold-Balls
As you progress you’ll have a lot to build and upgrade, and you’ll need gold and resources to do it. Unlocking the market will allow you to buy and sell resources so your main need becomes gold gold gold.
To quickly and easily fill up your piggyback, you’ll want to build multiple gold mines and arrange them in a u-bend shape so your balls have minimal space and ricochet a lot during harvesting. Mines need one of your characters assigned there to function, have a limited amount of gold per harvest, and your harvest only lasts so long; so for me seven gold mines — three on each side and one at the top — felt like the sweet spot. This method would net me over 1500 gold each time.
There’s also a structure you can build that lets you pay money to harvest again straight away, so you can run this gold method multiple times. The cost increases each time, so make sure to stop when the cost outweighs the benefit.
The Pit
Entering the pit can be overwhelming at first and there are a lot of ball upgrades and passive items to pick from as you level up.
Ball-volution
You’ll come across tiny rainbow ball-vortex’s multiple times during each run, these are essential to creating a strong build. When you pick one up you’ll be given a choice of options:
- Fission – Upgrades 1- 5 of your balls and items randomly, up to level 3.
- Fusion – Combines two level 3 balls together, fusing their effects together, freeing up another ball slot.
- Evolution – Combines two level 3 balls together and evolves them into something even better. Also freeing up a ball slot.
You can’t evolve a ball that’s already undergone fusion, but you can perform fusion on an evolved ball, so make sure you prioritise evolution over fusion.
READ MORE: BALL x PIT: How to unlock all 42 ball evolutions
Some balls, like the nuclear bomb, require you to evolve two already evolved balls together. Figuring out which ones you can combine is the tricky part!
Sometimes, you can evolve level 3 passive items together, though it’s a lot harder to discover the right combinations for those… Hmmm I wonder what happens when you evolve all four daggers together…
Customisa-Ball
There are sixteen characters to unlock, each with their own unique ability and ball type; you’re not going to click with every one of them. If you’re having trouble with a particular character, just leave them alone and move on. They’ll naturally get stronger as you earn more shared stat upgrades, or unlock more ball and item options to choose from.
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You also want to be conscious of picking ball upgrades and items that make sense together and with your character. For example when using the ‘Shade’ character — who shoots balls from the back of the screen instead of from the front — a ball like the ‘Brood Mother’ — that has a 25% chance of spawning a baby ball when it hits an enemy — would work well, as balls fired from the back ricochet around off the backs of enemies. While an item like the ‘Diamond Hilted Dagger’ would be a bad fit as its effects are only activated when hitting enemies from the front.
BALL x PIT is out now on PC and consoles.
