00:00There's nothing you can play that will really prepare you for Ball Pit.
00:03It's part Arkanoid slash Breakout, part Vampire Survivors, and part Base Builder,
00:08but assembled in such a way that feels wholly unique. As such, it can be tough when you're
00:12first starting out to get a feel of how to actually play the game in a way that will lead
00:16to success. To that end, here are 10 tips to get you started in Ball Pit.
00:20As a general rule of thumb, rather than just shooting straight at an enemy,
00:31you should look for gaps in the front line that allow your balls to bounce between enemies and
00:35walls, causing them to get stuck behind enemy lines and making them rapidly bounce multiple
00:40times off different enemies, dealing damage with each bounce. Be aware though that this general
00:45rule of thumb can change depending on how your build goes. Some builds may favor a more straightforward
00:50approach of attacking from the front with big single target damage, or AoE explosions after
00:55a single hit, so just be aware of the direction your run is going.
00:59You should basically always keep auto-shooting on, but turning it off can help if you need
01:05to move faster, like when swooping behind enemy lines to grab a power-up. This applies to most
01:09characters, except the Ichi Finger, whose passive ability lets them move at full speed at all times.
01:15The same goes if you pick up the Fleet Feet passive power-up. It lets you run at full speed even
01:19while shooting, and also increases your movement speed. Every character has a starting weapon,
01:25different stats, and a unique passive, with the exception of the starting warrior character,
01:30and it's important to take all of these distinct elements into consideration during your run. If
01:35your character has high leadership, you should try to get a build that leans into that strength that
01:39focuses on creating lots of baby balls. On the flip side, if your character has high intelligence,
01:44you'll want to try and enhance that by aiming for balls that focus on AoE damage. If your passive
01:49ability lets you fire balls that pass through enemies until they reach the back line, you should
01:54focus on upgrades that enhance that ability, and don't double up on it. That said, don't focus so
01:59much on your strengths that you neglect to try to mitigate your weaknesses. For example, if you're
02:03playing as the Embedded, and you focus all of your effort into strengthening your ability to wreck the
02:07back line thanks to your passive, you might struggle when a boss closes the gap, and you don't have any
02:13close range damage. Your starting special ball will also help guide you when it comes to trying to
02:18collect specific ball combos, which we'll get to a bit later.
02:25You'll gain some pretty significant advantages if you don't focus on just a single character.
02:30Certain characters will give you a percentage of extra gold for choosing them before starting your
02:34run, there are structures that give bonuses for every unique character that has beaten a level, and each
02:39character also has their own level progression with rewards at specific milestones that will aid you
02:44when it comes to base building and resource gathering. There are three ways to improve your
02:49special balls. Level them up, fuse them together, or find two balls that synergize together and evolve
02:58them into something even better. You can improve a ball by buying its next upgrade when you level up,
03:06or by grabbing one of the rainbow pickups and using Fission to randomly upgrade between one and five
03:11balls that you own. When you have two level three balls, you'll be able to either fuse them or evolve
03:16them. Fusing simply merges the two balls into one, copying and pasting the effects of one ball onto the
03:22other. This is good for when you need to make room in your inventory for another ball, and can also be
03:26amazing if you're able to combine something like Broodmother, which can spawn a bunch of baby balls,
03:31with a laser power-up so that each baby ball's bond will cause a laser to fire when it hits an enemy.
03:39Evolutions are what you generally want to aim for. These are special ball combinations that turn into a
03:45completely new, much more powerful ball. Examples include Holy Laser, formed by combining a horizontal
03:50and vertical laser together that deals damage to all enemies in both the same row and column. Shotgun,
03:56formed by combining iron and egg sac, which explodes into 3-7 iron balls after hitting a wall, and bomb,
04:02formed by combining burn and iron, which, as you imagine, does big AoE damage when it hits a target
04:08and blows up. You can change the game speed by pressing the right and left bumper. Generally,
04:14I like to play on max speed, but occasionally will turn it down if things start to get a little hectic,
04:19and I need to be a little more precise with my aim or my dodges. This is more of a personal
04:23preference than anything else, but it's important to know that it's an option that's available to
04:27you, and it will certainly make the slow beginning of each run much more enjoyable to get through
04:31when you turn up the game speed. While the shooting might be automatic, your movement isn't, and that's
04:37where the skill comes in. One of the most important ways to raise your attack speed is to catch your
04:42special balls mid-flight. When a ball is bouncing around, it's unavailable for you to shoot again until it
04:47resets at the bottom of the screen, but if you manage to catch it before it hits the bottom,
04:51it's instantly reloaded into your pouch, letting you fling it again right away. The random nature
04:57of rewards in Ball Pit make it a bit difficult to precisely plan your build, but you should go into
05:02each run with an idea of the combos that you want to make. A good strategy is to base this on your
05:07starting special ball. If you're the Itchy Finger who starts with Burn, you might want to look into
05:11getting Iron to make a Bomb, Wind so you can get Inferno, or Freeze for Frozen Flame. If you're playing as
05:17the Cohabinance, you'll want to evolve your starting Broodmother special to get Spider Queen by
05:22combining it with Egg Sack, and look to improve upon your Baby Ball power with passives like Warhorn,
05:27Bottle Tornado, and Slingshot. To help you get these combos, make sure to...
05:33Reroll and Banish. You can control the randomness of Ball Pit's rewards to an extent by using rerolls to
05:39get a new set of three choices every level up, and eventually, when you get the Exorcist structure,
05:43you'll also get the ability to banish rewards that don't suit your build and remove them from
05:48the pool of potential upgrades. You'll have to use your best judgement on when you should take a
05:52reward and when you should reroll, and you'll need to be careful because while rerolls are initially
05:57fairly cheap in their gold costs, they get dramatically more expensive every time you do
06:01one, and the gold you spend is gold you don't get back at the end of a run. And finally, an important
06:07part of the progression in this game is building up your base after each run. If you're not super into this
06:12part of the game, and I get it, I'm not really either, don't stress too much about the optimization
06:17of building placement and maximizing your resources with each harvest. Unless you're speedrunning,
06:22you really don't need to worry about that stuff, and can treat this more like a marathon rather
06:26than a sprint. I would generally recommend expanding upwards so you can keep your field narrow,
06:31allowing for your workers to bounce against the walls and hit things multiple times,
06:35then opening up the bottom row to place your farms, lumberyards, and stone mines for some automated
06:40resource collection. If you're doing a bunch of construction, you can create a little box with
06:44all the buildings you're making so that your workers just bounce between all of them. Also make
06:48sure that you're regularly upgrading your buildings too, especially the stat scaling buildings, as
06:53they will have a very noticeable effect on your power in an actual run. And those are some starting
06:59tips to help you get on the right foot with ball pit. Thanks for watching, and for everything else, keep it here on IGN.
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