Ballestra is a boss encounter fought on a triangular pegboard that centers on a stationary Ballista turret. The Ballista periodically charges and fires a massive bolt down the board that threatens the player with heavy damage and a two-turn Confusion (sometimes written as "Conefusion" in sources). The fight revolves around managing the Ballista’s long-range attack cadence while clearing or mitigating the stream of disposable knights it spawns.
The Ballista fires once every five turns; the final turn before firing is indicated visually by a loaded bolt. The fired bolt deals heavy direct damage to the player (commonly noted as 30 damage in source descriptions) and applies Confusion for two turns. Any enemy units positioned along the bolt’s path are affected by the shot: some sources state that enemies in the path are killed instantly, while others report they take substantial damage (reported as 60). The Ballista begins firing on turn one as of v0.7.20.
Each turn the Ballista summons a weak knight (described as a mop-bucket knight or weak knight) to act as a meat shield. These knights have modest health (reported as 50; increased to 62 on Challenge 10+ in some records) and die immediately after they move to attack the player, dealing little damage (reported as near-zero in some descriptions or specifically 7 in others). The encounter has a finite number of knights (25 noted), so if the player survives enough shots the Ballista will stop replenishing shields and becomes vulnerable.
Effective strategies revolve around preventing or mitigating the bolt and limiting the protective knights. The triangular pegboard shape lowers average orb bounces, so methods to increase orb travel and peg durability are valuable: Rubborbs, Electropegnet, Kinetic Meteorite, Splatorbs, and the Gift That Keeps Giving improve peg resilience or orb routing and let orbs gather more damage. Overflow, enemy-targeting formats, piercing orbs, and bombs help clear the summoned knights before they block shots. Round Guard can block the bolt’s damage; note that confusion still applies even when the bolt’s damage is prevented. Blind can occasionally make the Ballista miss but does not prevent Confusion and can be risky if the attack still triggers. Discarding orbs regularly and using Round Guard (with Ambidextrous play to facilitate discards) can reduce the bolt’s impact to zero damage when timed correctly. Surviving six ballista shots (the damage equivalence reported as ~180) lets you exhaust the knight pool and force a straightforward finish.
Version notes: Ballestra was introduced in the Beta and, starting in v0.7.20, fires on turn one. Visual assets for the encounter include a Ballista sprite, map icon, pegboard layout, and attack/death animations.
