Ball Grove

Overview

BALL GROVE is a harvest minigame on the MENU, dressed in World 3's Flora colours: “Catch falling fruit, fill the bins — your pet eats the haul.” A fruit tree hangs over a board lattice with six bins along the bottom. Fruit ripens on the branches; you tap a fruit to pick it and it tumbles down the pegs into whatever bin sits under its branch. Your other job is telling the bins which fruit to catch — a fruit that lands in a bin set to a different type is a miss.

A run is untimed: it ends the moment your points reach the goal for your difficulty, and the clock only exists to record how long the harvest took. Winning opens a Fruit Basket of coins, balls and gold balls, feeds the pet you brought (with a chance to amplify one of its stars), and can drop a bush for Your Garden or a hidden Fruit Worm.

Every run plays as an evening harvest. Hard mode has its own tree. The Ball Grove has its own music, its own leaderboard (fastest wins) and 3 titles.

Getting there

Open the MENU and tap the BALL GROVE tile under PERMANENT UNLOCKS. It opens when you break gate 15 in THE HOARD; until then the tile is a padlock over its faded picture, with the gate icon and 15 under it. You do not need to have reached World 3.

• The hub — a banner (“MINIGAME · WORLD 3”), your best time, and YOUR GARDEN with its three bush mounds (see Your Garden).
• PLAY → CHOOSE YOUR HARVEST — pick REGULAR or HARD, SOLO or DUO, and optionally BRING A PET. Each difficulty card shows its goal (“600 / 750 SOLO / DUO”), its fruit (“4 FRUITS”), your win count (“KC”) and your best time.
• The run — tap fruit off the tree, set the bins, swat crows, grow melons, until the points bar fills.
• HARVEST COMPLETE — the results card, your Fruit Basket, then HARVEST AGAIN or EXIT.
• The i button in the lobby opens the in-game HOW IT WORKS sheet — reproduced below.

Choose your harvest

Difficulty is simply how many fruit types are in play. Regular deals the 4 most common fruit; Hard deals all 8, including the rare ones with tricky falls — and carries a bigger goal. Duo goals are higher than solo because two players clear ground faster than one. Everything rarer (amplification, the Fruit Worm, bushes) is 3× more likely on Hard.

Difficulties — per-win odds are per winning basket

Mode	Fruit	Solo goal	Duo goal	Melons from (solo / duo)	Amp ★1 / ★2 / ★3	Fruit Worm	Bush, mound 1
REGULAR	4	600	750	200 / 250	1 in 30 / 75 / 150	1 in 1,500	1 in 150
HARD	8	1,200	1,500	400 / 500	1 in 10 / 25 / 50	1 in 500	1 in 50

The basket also pays more on Hard — see The Fruit Basket.

The fruit

The tree deals fruit by weight. The roster is ordered from most to least common, and a difficulty takes the first N types — so Regular's shares are the same weights rescaled over its 4 fruit. Base points is what a fruit is worth before ripeness, combo and bin multipliers. Fruit have no powers; three of them have a trait that changes how they fall or ripen.

The 8 fruit

	Fruit	Colour	Share (Hard, all 8)	Share (Regular)	Base points	Trait	Fruit guide
	Apple	#e8342b	34%	45.3%	1.1	—	RED · very common — 34% of every drop
	Cherries	#c9143c	18%	24%	1.3	—	CRIMSON · common — 18% of every drop
	Banana	#ffd83b	13%	17.3%	1.5	SLOW pays ×1.5	YELLOW · common — 13% of every drop · slow to ripen, pays 1.5×
	Pear	#6dc23f	10%	13.3%	1.7	—	GREEN · uncommon — 10% of every drop
	Blueberry	#3b7de0	9%	Hard only	1.9	LIGHT	BLUE · uncommon — 9% of every drop · light, drifts wide
	Grapes	#9b4dd6	7%	Hard only	2.3	—	PURPLE · rare — 7% of every drop
	Strawberry	#ff4d8d	5%	Hard only	2.7	LIGHT	PINK · rare — 5% of every drop · light, drifts wide
	Coconut	#f2e6cf	4%	Hard only	3.1	HEAVY	WHITE · very rare — 4% of every drop · heavy, drops straight

The tree

Up to 5 fruit hang on the tree at once, spread across 6 branch zones that line up one-to-one with the 6 bins below. There is no aiming: a fruit enters the board directly under the zone it grew in, so you play the hand you are dealt and the bins are where your decisions live.

Picking

Tap a fruit on the branch to pick it. It drops into the board below its zone carrying its ripeness multiplier. Tap a fruit chip in the bottom panel and every bin switches to catching that fruit.

The board and the bins

Peg rows

10 (12 pegs wide, 11 on narrow rows, 50px apart)

Bins

6 — each exactly 2 peg pitches wide, one under each branch zone

Hop

0.3s + up to 0.06s per peg; final drop 0.62s

Landing spread

about 0.8 of a bin for an ordinary fruit — a drop targets a region, not a guaranteed bin

Switch grace

0.2s

Landing gap

0.28s minimum between two landings

At every peg an ordinary fruit flips a coin and hops half a pitch left or right. After the bottom row it falls into the centre of the bin on that side — never onto a divider. Fruit that would land at the same instant queue up 0.28s apart instead, so two catches are never impossible by construction.

Wrong bin? A fruit that lands in a bin set to a different type waits 0.2s. If the bins flip to its type inside that window it scores as a clean catch (this is what absorbs a fast finger or duo latency); otherwise it is a miss — the bin shakes, and you lose nothing but the fruit.

Scoring

A clean catch scores:

points = base value × ripeness × combo × bin multiplier (× the fruit's own pay bonus, if it has one)

• Ripeness — ×1 early, ×3 peak, ×5 overripe. A SHOT replaces it with ×3; a golden fruit is a flat ×7.5 (2.5 × the peak 3) with no ripeness and no combo.
• Combo — the pick-combo ladder above (peak picks only).
• Bin multiplier — 1 + the bin's golden tier (×1 → ×2 → ×3 → ×4, see Golden bins).
• Points are capped at the goal; the instant you reach it the run ends and the basket opens. Crows and misses never subtract points.

Golden fruit and golden bins

Every spawn has a 10% (1 in 10) chance to be golden. A golden fruit ripens fast (about 3.6s of life) and takes 4 taps to shake loose — a pip counter under it counts the hits left. Once free it pays a flat ×7.5 regardless of ripeness or combo, and falls ×1.9 slower than an ordinary fruit — that slow descent is the escort: 0.24s after you pick it a crow is called and dives at it all the way down (see Crow raids). Golden fruit cannot be slammed (“ESCORT IT — NO SLAM”).

Shots and the bonus meter

The BONUS bar under the board fills with meter XP: +1 for every PEAK pick, +3 for every crow you scare off. At 12 XP it empties and hands you 3 SHOTS automatically (the label flips to “SLAM” with 3 pips). While you are holding shots the meter does not refill — spend them first; XP keeps accruing underneath, so a fresh set arrives the moment your last shot is gone.

• SLAM — tap a falling, non-golden fruit while it is bouncing through the pegs. It drops straight down into the bin below it at ×3 (ripeness replaced, combo not applied). Time it to steer a catch that was heading for the wrong bin. In Duo either seat may slam.
• SCARECROW BLAST — while bats are latched onto a Mega Melon, a tap on the board spends 1 shot to clear every latched bat on every melon at once.
• Golden fruit cannot be slammed — you have to escort those.

Crow raids

A raid is scheduled every 25 points you score, but never within 9s of the last one and never in the last 5 points before the goal. The crow enters from the side of the board, crosses to its target in 2.4s, latches on for 0.5s — the save window — and then flies off with the fruit.

• Target — an untapped golden fruit on the branch first; otherwise your ripest untapped fruit. While a crow is inbound the marked fruit's ripeness freezes, so a crow never resolves against a fruit that already withered.
• Shoo it — tap the bird at any time, while it swoops or while it hangs off the fruit. It flees and you bank +3 meter XP.
• Air raid — when you pick a golden fruit, a crow spawns 0.24s later and chases the falling fruit (it flies ×1.25 faster than a branch raid). Within reach it latches for the same 0.5s window, then steals the fruit mid-air. Tap it off to finish the escort.
• Records — the run tracks raids, crows scared and fruit stolen. Win a run in which crows came but stole nothing for Not One Berry; scare 50 in your career for Scarecrow.
• The swarm that attacks a Mega Melon is called bats in the game's text but uses the same crow art and the same shoo rules.

Mega Melon

Once your points reach a third of the goal, MEGA MELONS start budding on the tree (“MEGA FRUIT — Grow them on the ring — bats will come for them”). It is not a separate phase — ordinary fruit keeps spawning — but a clean melon is worth 150 points flat, so from here on the run is decided by how well you grow, escort and sort them.

1. GROW IT — a melon buds every 6.5–10.5s once unlocked, at most 2 on the tree at once (a new one buds 1.1s after a slot frees). A ring sweeps around it in 1.5s; tap while the sweep is inside the last 20% of the circle for a grow, and inside the last 5.5% for a PERFECT. 5 timed hits release it. Every hit makes the next sweep 10% faster (down to 0.72s). A miss (“TOO EARLY”) only resets the sweep — never the run.
2. ESCORT IT — it takes the real peg cascade at ×2.6 the normal hop time, the slowest thing on the board. The fruit inside it rotates through the active types every 1.15s, slowing ×2.2 once it is 70% of the way down. Bats arrive 1.1s after release and then every 0.75–1.5s, up to 4 at once; each takes 0.95s to reach the melon, latches on and bites every 1.3s for 14% of its value, down to a floor of 25%. The melon visibly shrinks as it is eaten. Tap a bat to shoo it, or spend a shot on a SCARECROW BLAST.
3. SORT IT — on landing (any bin) the melon sits in the bin and demands 5 fruit in a row, showing one at a time with 2.8s per demand. Switch the bins to the demanded fruit before the timer and it locks in the next one. A missed demand halves the melon's remaining health (never below 8%) — the sequence carries on either way.

How it works — the in-game rules

This is the rule sheet behind the i button in the lobby, word for word. It opens with: “Fill the bins — the target is set by your difficulty. Take as long as you need.”

	Rule
	1 · TAP A FRUIT	Tap a fruit in the bottom panel and EVERY bin switches to it. Your job is choosing which fruit to drop.
	2 · PICK YOUR MOMENT	Fruit swells, GLOWS at peak for ×3, then goes OVERRIPE — worth ×5, but it rots in a blink and pays no combo or bonus.
	3 · CHAIN YOUR PEAKS	Peak picks in a row build a COMBO up to ×2. Let the rhythm lapse and it resets.
	4 · GOLDEN BINS	Walk a golden fruit down into a bin and that bin pays DOUBLE for the rest of the run. A second one makes it ×3, a third ×4 — and it keeps its bonus even if you switch what it catches.
	5 · KNOW YOUR FRUIT	Coconut is HEAVY — it punches through a peg row and lands near its lane. Blueberry and strawberry are LIGHT and drift wide. Banana ripens slowly but pays 1.5×.
	6 · GOLDEN FRUIT	Rare, rots fast, and takes 4 taps to shake loose — spam it. Then ESCORT it: crows dive for it all the way down, so swat them off. Land it and that BIN turns golden and pays DOUBLE for the rest of the run.
	7 · SHOTS — SLAM A FALLING FRUIT	Peak picks charge the BONUS bar. Fill it and you get 3 SHOTS. Tap a fruit while it is BOUNCING THROUGH THE PEGS and it slams straight down into the bin below it at ×3 — time it to steer a catch. Golden fruit cannot be slammed; you have to escort those.
	8 · CROWS	A crow crosses the canopy for your ripest fruit — and dives at a golden one all the way down. Tap the bird any time: while it swoops, or in the half-second it hangs off the fruit. Miss that window and it leaves with it.
	9 · MEGA MELON	Once you are a third of the way to the goal, MELONS start growing. Time your tap to the ring — 5 hits grow it, and it drops on its own. Bats swarm it on the way down and every bite shrinks it, so swat them. When it lands it demands 5 fruit in a row: switch the bin to each one before its timer runs out. A clean melon is worth 150 points.

Under the rules the sheet shows THE FRUIT — every fruit with its rounded share of the full table and a HEAVY / LIGHT / SLOW tag:

Apple

34%

Cherries

18%

Banana

13% · SLOW

Pear

10%

Blueberry

9% · LIGHT

Grapes

7%

Strawberry

5% · LIGHT

Coconut

4% · HEAVY

…and closes with: “Watch the SEASON — the tree favours one fruit at a time, and it deals them in bursts, so use the quiet to set your bins.”

Duo mode

Choose DUO in the lobby to harvest with a friend. A party has exactly two seats:

• PICKER — taps fruit off the tree and grows the Mega Melons.
• BINNER — sets which fruit the bins catch and answers the melon's demands.
• Both seats can swat crows and bats, and either can spend the shared SHOTS on a slam or a blast.

The host picks the difficulty. Open parties are listed in the Ball Grove's own party finder (separate from the Boss Raid's). Duo runs use the duo goal (750 Regular / 1500 Hard) and the same fruit, crows, melons and rules as solo — the run is simulated once and both screens watch the same tree. When you win, each player gets their own Fruit Basket (“One basket each — tap YOURS to feed your pet the catch.”), each fed to the pet that player brought, with independent amplification, worm and bush rolls. Both players' win counts and best times are recorded.

A duo party stays together like a Boss Raid party: after a run, after EXIT and through a reload — a player who drops from the lobby keeps the seat for 60 seconds. Picked fruit never pops back onto the tree, fruit finishes its fall before the bin scores it, and picks are graded on the moment you saw on screen.

Results and records

The HARVEST COMPLETE card shows your points against the goal, your time (“TIME 2:41 · best 2:15”, or “NEW BEST TIME!”), the MEGA HARVEST line if any melons landed, and your basket.

• KC (kill count) — one per win, per difficulty. Shown on the difficulty cards, ranked on the leaderboards, and counted by the grove titles.
• BEST — your fastest win per difficulty, in m:ss. A time only counts as a record if the run took at least 30s (and at most 6h); the account's best is kept across devices.
• Harvest medals — the end card grades a run against its goal: BRONZE 25%, SILVER 50%, GOLD 75%, HARVEST MASTER 100%. Because runs are untimed, every finished harvest reaches 100% — a medal is only spelled out on a run that ended short of the goal.

The Fruit Basket

A basket only appears on a won run (“Tap the basket — your catch gets fed to your pet.”). Tapping it makes 3 independent loot rolls from the table below — the same shape and candy odds as the Boss Raid chest — and every roll is paid whether or not you brought a pet. HARVEST AGAIN and EXIT open an unopened basket first, so a basket is never lost.

Fruit Basket — 3 rolls

	Loot	Chance per roll	Regular	Hard	Expected per basket (Regular / Hard)
	Coins	32.2% (1 in 3.1)	+200,000 Coins	+300,000 Coins	193.46K / 290.19K
	Balls	32.2% (1 in 3.1)	+20 Balls	+30 Balls	19.35 / 29.02
	Gold Balls	32.3% (1 in 3.1)	+250 Gold Balls	+400 Gold Balls	241.9 / 387.04
	30 Min Time Candy	2.18% (1 in 45.9)	+1 30 Min Time Candy	+1 30 Min Time Candy	0.07 / 0.07
	1 HR Time Candy	1.08% (1 in 92.3)	+1 1 HR Time Candy	+1 1 HR Time Candy	0.03 / 0.03

Chance of at least one Time Candy in a basket: 9.46% (1 in 10.6). Amounts are fixed per row — a roll of “coins” on Regular is always +200,000 Coins. Baskets are limited to 30 per hour per account.

The rows are shown in the basket as loot lines, then a purple “BUSH! Planted in your farm. (n/3)” line if a bush dropped, then the fruit flies to your pet and any AMPLIFIED or Fruit Worm reveal plays.

Bring a pet — amplification

Tick BRING A PET in the lobby and one pet rides along; your choice is remembered between runs. The picker explains it: “WHY BRING A PET? Your caught fruit feeds it, and winning baskets can AMPLIFY it — each amp turns the next star PURPLE, permanently boosting that star's ability +5%.”

• Any hatched pet that is not in a trade can come, at any star — and only regular pets: elusive and limited pets cannot be amplified, so they are not offered.
• The fruit volley at the basket is purely visual — the number of fruit you caught does not change any odds (you do need to have caught at least one).
• Amplification is rolled once per winning basket. Amps unlock in order: star 1 first, then 2, then 3, and only on stars the pet has — a 1★ pet can light one purple star and a 2★ pet two; fusing it up later opens the rest, and its purple stars stay. A purple star boosts only the ability tied to that star by 5% (stats that fire “every N balls” fire 5% more often instead). It is permanent.
• The reveal reads “★N AMPLIFIED +5% (N/3)”. The third star posts to your friends' timeline (“lit the THIRD purple star on pet — fully amplified”) and awards Fully Amplified.
• Tap any star on the picker to see its ability and the odds of its amp: “NEXT AMP — 1 in 10 HARD · 1 in 30 REGULAR, per winning basket”.

Expected wins to light all three stars: about 85 on Hard or 255 on Regular.

The Fruit Worm

When a pet was brought, every winning basket also rolls once for a Fruit Worm hiding in the fruit — 0.2% (1 in 500) on Hard, 0.0667% (1 in 1,500) on Regular, per win, regardless of how much fruit you caught. No pet, no roll. The reveal: “It wriggled out of the fruit your pet was eating.”

Rarity

RARE

Ability

Quick Wriggle — faster AUTO launch: +20% at 1★. In-game: “AUTO launch fires this much faster — +30% at 2★, +40% at 3★.”

Tradable

No — untradable

Fusable

Yes

Salvage

Yes — duplicates can be salvaged for essence

Counts toward

Grove Secrets (with the Bramble Hedgehog)

Bush drops

Every won run rolls for a bush for Your Garden. The roll uses the odds of the leftmost empty mound, so the first bush is the easiest and the third the hardest; a drop is announced by a purple RARE DROP basket, planted ready to harvest, and posted to your friends' timeline (“shook a BUSH loose in the Ball Grove (n/3 planted)”). With all 3 mounds planted there is nothing left to roll.

Leaderboards

SOCIAL → LEADERBOARD → BALL GROVE has two boards, REGULAR and HARD. Players rank by wins, with their best time shown beside it. An empty board reads “No harvests won here yet. Be the first.” See Leaderboards.

Titles

The grove's trophies went with the retired trophy system. Its long-term goals are 3 titles now, and every one of them needs wins on both difficulties:

• Grove Keeper — 1,000 Ball Grove wins AND 1,000 HARD Ball Grove wins.
• Harvest Lord — 2,500 Ball Grove wins AND 2,500 HARD Ball Grove wins.
• Grove Eternal — 10,000 Ball Grove wins AND 10,000 HARD Ball Grove wins.

A title is awarded by itself the moment you qualify and is kept forever. Your win counts (KC) and best times also rank you on the grove leaderboards above.

Tips

• Set the bins before a burst, not during it — the 1.3–2.3s lull is your planning time, and the season banner tells you which fruit is about to be 30% of spawns.
• Peak taps are everything: ×3 points, combo progress and meter XP all come from the 0.8s glow. Overripe pays ×5 but gives you nothing else.
• Hold a golden fruit until the bins match it, then spam its 4 taps — a golden bin is the strongest permanent upgrade a run has, and it keeps its tier when you retarget.
• Do not sit on SHOTS — the meter will not refill while you hold them. A slam is worth ×3 anywhere and can rescue a fruit heading for the wrong bin.
• Keep 1 shot in reserve once melons unlock: a Scarecrow Blast clears every bat at once and saves far more than one slam earns.
• A flawless melon in a ×4 golden bin is 972 points — more than a whole Regular solo goal.
• Farm on Hard for the rare stuff: amplification, the Fruit Worm and bushes are all 3× more likely there, and the basket pays 1.5× the coins.