Betsy the Leshy

Betsy the Leshy is an ancient tree spirit that serves as a named boss in the Forest. She has protected the woodland for longer than anyone can remember, cultivating bushes and hedges across the area and ensnaring intruders in thorny brambles. In combat she uses Plants and vines to control the board, summons Hounds as meat shields, and deals modest direct damage with a repeating ranged attack.

Betsy begins fights by placing a regular Plant peg four spaces away from the player. On odd turns she applies Bramble to the player; this player-facing Bramble behaves differently from the enemy-facing variant by spawning vines that connect between pegs and grow into bramble vines that interact with orbs and the board. On even turns she performs a ranged attack that deals 5 damage. Starting on turn 4 and every two turns thereafter (turns 4, 6, 8, 10...), Betsy summons a Hound. Hounds have a melee attack for 3 damage and act as shields that absorb attacks that would otherwise hit Betsy; on Challenge+10 they spawn with 45 HP (20 HP on normal). There are twelve Hounds total, so a prolonged fight can exhaust her minion supply, though each time a Hound dies it grants Betsy an invisible buff that increases the number of debuffs she applies to the player.

The Bramble status causes vines to appear between pegs; those vines deal 1 damage on contact and capture orbs that touch them. Captured orbs change appearance and lose their special effects while in flight but keep their size; an orb captured once will not be damaged by being captured again. Captured orbs can be released and vines destroyed by activating or piercing connected pegs (this deals 10 damage to Betsy and releases the captured orb with the damage of the current shot). Some special interactions apply: Infernorb pierces vines and is unaffected by being captured; Bramball is captured but does not damage the player nor change appearance when captured; certain peg modifiers (Critical/Refresh Peg) do not turn into brambles, and two vines never grow from a single peg. Some orb types (e.g., Necorbmancer) cannot be captured by vines because they cannot hit pegs, though they still cannot pierce pegs.

Practical strategies and interactions:

• Multi-hit and pierce effects are strong counters. Intentional Oboe (multi-hit) reduces effective damage per hit but multiplies interactions with vines; Infernorb is particularly useful because it pierces vines. Concentration, Lazorb, and other piercing/multi-hit orbs (Icircle, Poltorbgeist) also perform well.
• Ball Lightning can safely destroy Brambled pegs by zapping them from a distance to free captured orbs without approaching vines.
• Multiball can be risky: if multiball shards like Matryorbshka are captured in vines they can return large damage to the player when released, but multiball also creates potential for many hits once the vine is removed.
• Betsy’s direct damage is low, but vines and Hounds prolong the fight. Monster Training and Knife’s Edge help sustain damage output against a long battle. Inflicting Blind prevents her 5-damage ranged attack but does not stop vine damage; Inflicting Spinfection stabilizes damage output regardless of hit count.
• Overflow, enemy-targeting, piercing orbs, bombs, and improved catalysts help manage Stumps and Hounds. On higher difficulties (C+10), Hounds have much more HP (45), making Bomb scaling (Improved Catalyst, Perfected Reactant) valuable.
• Because there are only 12 Hounds, a player who can survive roughly 60 accumulated Hound attacks will remove all minions and leave Betsy exposed; note that each Hound death buffs Betsy’s debuff output.
• Eggs interacting with vines do not break and return to satchel if they touch a vine; combined with Safety Net or similar effects this can enable large heals without losing the Egg.
• Orbs released from vines use the damage value of the current shot, enabling the use of Ohmygorb!, Omegorb, etc. for big hits; eggs can be targeted for large heals by aiming for the releasing shot.

Trivia: Betsy’s name derives from “Betsy’s Hedge” and the Slavic Leshy myth. When Bramble is applied to the player it shows a unique in-game tooltip. Betsy was first revealed in the game’s 1.0 roadmap.