Battle pets have something new(ish): the talent sphere. It's a board of passive battle perks, where you can choose a particular build for your pet. Want more elemental damage? How about evade?

The sphere system is open to everyone through August 15!

Here's the idea. Every pet starts at Awakening, the free node in the center of its own sphere. From there you can train any talent adjacent to one you already own, so builds grow outward, one connected path at a time. Three elemental regions radiate from the hub: Flames & Magma, Water & Ice, and Earth & Air. Each one stacks damage and resistance for its elements and ends in a rare 2-point blessing at the tip. Two bridges (Steam and Mud) connect the regions for hybrid builds, and the neutral lanes between them belong to no element at all. Once chosen, everything fires on its own during battle.

Points: every pet already has at least one to spend, right now, brand-new pets included. The next few come quickly from training strength and defense, and the last of the 18 are a real climb. Most talents cost 1 point, the region ultimates cost 2, and reset is free and unlimited, so try things.

If you played the first test back in May, the board has changed, and three lanes are worth knowing about:

• Evade gives your pet a chance each turn to slip part of an incoming hit. Evade I is a 10% chance to avoid half the damage, Evade II adds 8% more chance, and Afterimage adds a little more chance while upgrading the dodge to the full hit. The chances add up across tiles; there's a hard cap so nobody becomes permanently untouchable.
• Momentum is brand new this update. From your second turn on, your damage climbs 2% per turn, up to +10% with Momentum I or +20% with Momentum II. It builds fresh each battle, so quick fights barely feel it and long slugfests really do. Under the hood this is the first thing in the battle engine's history that remembers anything from one turn to the next, which matters for where the sphere/scrolls/weapons/challengers goes next 👀.
• Riposte is the other new one, and it's for the defense corner. When your pet takes damage, Riposte I gives a 15% chance to strike back for 25% of what you took; Riposte II adds 10% more chance and raises the strike to 40%. Tanky builds that can give back some damage. It works in single battles and the Horde.
• Two more things that are new to everyone: each pet now has three loadouts (build three different spheres, pick which one a battle uses), and any build can be exported as a short share code that another pet can import if it has the points and the paths to afford it. You can find folks sharing those codes on the battle spheres thread.

Found something broken? Built something wonky? The Battle Spheres thread is where I'm collecting all of it.