Chao Garden: Evolved 1.3.0

Chao Clash

• Eleven new bosses, from Heartwood Court to Frostfall Gorge. The ladder now runs all nineteen venues instead of ending at Ring Divide.
• Between them the eleven cover every second evolution — all ten pairs a chao can grow into, and the moves only that pair unlocks. Six of those moves had never been thrown by a boss.
• New final fight: Stillfall at Frostfall Gorge, a Chaos Chao carrying the Chaos Saber and the heaviest opponent in the game.
• The new stages open one at a time, like every other venue. Beating Halo used to open all eleven at once.
• Bosses fight with the moves they were built with. Six of the original eight had a move they cannot unlock silently swapped for whichever scored highest.
• Halo was missing three of its four moves, including Emerald Requiem, which needs the Chaos Saber. It carries one now.
• Bramble had been given Gigaton Breaker, the strongest move in the game. It fights like the tutorial again.
• The Fire Catalyst now asks for the first ten bosses rather than all of them. Progress already made still counts; the two added are Heartwood Court and Mirror Flats.

Elemental moves

• An element now grants four new moves, one per special direction, unlocked by being that element and nothing else. Thirty-two in all, four per element.
• They are real Arena and Chao Clash moves: equippable, fightable and permanent.
• A chao that has never had its moveset edited gets all four automatically. A hand-picked loadout is left exactly as set.
• Each element’s four are a shot, a dash, a recovery and a heavy close-range blow, so one element’s set reads across all eight.
• They are not stronger than the second-evolution moves.
• Fire keeps earning moves as Run and Power climb: Backdraft (Run 35), Firestride (Power 50), Sunspot (Run 80), Firestorm (Power 95). Each is stronger than the fire art on the same button.
• Firestorm is level with Gigaton Breaker, the joint strongest move in the game. It needs the fire rite and Power 95.
• A Chaos Chao uses the moves of the element it carries. Elemental moves stopped working the moment a chao ascended — a fire Devil arrived with no fire moves at all. A fire Devil now has all eight.

Elemental chao

• Rivalries are two teams. Fire, lightning, earth and light on one side; water, ice, wind and shadow on the other. Any two elemental chao from opposite sides square up, so an elemental chao has four rivals instead of one.
• All four of the old oppositions still count. Twelve further combinations are new.
• Skirmishes are still outcome-free: no damage, no winner, no effect on either chao. They now use moves of the chao’s element rather than ordinary attacks tinted to match.
• Chao still group with their own element, not with their side.
• A Chaos Chao keeps its element. It used to lose it on ascension — no trail, no accent, in every mode at once. The element now sits inside the Chaos accent itself.
• Shadow, water, ice and earth sit inside the orb; wind, lightning, fire and light surround it. The orb dims for water, ice and earth; ice dims it furthest.
• A fire Devil Chaos Chao carries the largest flame in the game.
• Elements travel. Board rivals and online opponents trail their element, and both Chao Clash fighters do, including one on another device.
• A water chao’s accent is a single whirlpool, it leaves a spray wake spaced by distance covered, and it sometimes charges the pond and surfs across it.
• Fire flickers in combat instead of holding its shape.

The Arena

• Attacks use Chao Clash’s combat animations. They had been playing garden animations.
• Six diving moves played a clip drawn belly-up, so the chao attacked upside down: Talon Strike, Tempest Talon, Stratos Crush, Slipstream Slash, Meteor Drop and Wing Rush.
• Swimming moves played a swimming stroke on dry ground; others used garden emotes.
• Support moves are unchanged.

Chao Race: the field

• Eight chao to a race on PC, four on a phone. Beginner courses stay at four.
• Racers are half the size they were, and the cameras scale with them.
• Lane spacing was one body-width centre to centre, so racers stood inside each other before the start. Spacing and in-race separation are both sized off a measured body now.
• Seven of the ten courses start at a painted start gate. The field lines up square to it, holds that row abreast for 100 units, and blends into racing lanes over the next 90.
• Onyx used to start its field at 45° across its own painted lanes. Peridot’s racers faced down the track instead of out of the gate.

Chao Race: the routes

• Racers follow the ground. Racing-line height was interpolated between marked points, putting racers up to 27 units off the floor — behind racers standing on rocks, sinking through the floor, and passing through walls.
• Routes are held inside their corridors, measured on each side separately. 177 points across the ten courses used to put the outermost racer through a wall, by up to 13 units. Three points in the game are now too narrow for a body.
• Where a corridor is tight on one side the whole field slides off it, as far as it is short and no further.
• The zig-zag off the line is gone.
• Onyx no longer climbs 29 units through the slab above it onto the canyon’s middle storey. It runs the lower corridor the whole way.
• Diamond takes the right path to the crab pool — west down the hall, around a descending spiral, south along a tunnel. The course is 2118 → 2477 units long.
• All five drops into water are glides: Crab Pool, Topaz, Aquamarine, Diamond’s cove and Diamond’s tunnel mouth.
• Aquamarine’s first water crossing runs straight, and the wobbles in Onyx’s and Peridot’s first fifty units are gone.

Chao Race: the courses

• The crabs have their shells. All eighteen rendered as claws, legs and eyes, and all eighteen shells were stacked on the world origin — where three jewel courses start. That shell covered 85% of the eight-lane rainbow.
• Thirteen of the eighteen crabs floated, by up to 19 units, six of them above the pool’s water line.
• Twenty-nine rock props were rendering 14–71% transparent.
• The camera no longer skims under the world, and its default look-down angle goes from 15° to 23°.
• The countdown waits for the grid instead of starting while racers are still loading.
• A Blender default cube and a bone gizmo left in the course files are gone.

Happiness

• Happiness had been effectively pinned at 100. It drifted toward the middle from both directions about thirty times slower than one ordinary activity paid, and being thrown was the only thing that lowered it.
• It is now a ceiling set by care. A chao wants attention — a pet, a meal or a gift — once per real day. Past that the ceiling falls, with hunger and tiredness pulling it lower.
• Neglect is owed whether the game was running or shut, and settles the same either way.
• Below 40 a chao sulks and will not play with toys. Below 15 it will not come when whistled.
• Stats, levels, grades, alignment and evolution are untouched by mood. A chao made happy again is exactly the chao it was. Stadium crit chance still rides happiness, as it always has.
• The droop a miserable chao does has been in the game since launch and could not be reached. It plays now.

The garden

• Chao walk around the things you put down. Planted trees, bought décor and placed toys are solid.
• Only one chao uses a toy at a time. A toy someone is walking to or playing with is theirs until they are done.
• The ball is the exception — any number of chao can chase one.
• The ball goes in the water. It floats and can be played with there.
• Trees are solid at the trunk, not the canopy. Ride-on toys stay walk-through.
• Elemental particle and battle-effect textures are prepared while the garden loads, not the first time each is needed.
• A swimming chao sits a little lower in the water than one floating on the surface.

Your chao

• A ◐ toggle beside each of the seven animal-part slots on the Stats page. On, the part wears the chao’s own colour and finish instead of the animal’s.
• Wings take the chao’s wing colour, never its body colour, and follow the second evolution.
• Per part, so parts can be mixed. Off by default.
• Drag the portrait on the Stats page to turn your chao all the way round. It keeps the angle you leave it at.

Held things

• The Kindergarten instruments are placed by hand: bell, castanets, cymbals, drum and sticks, flute, maracas, tambourine and the drawing crayon each carry their own position and angle.
• Sheathed weapons each get their own fit. The katana, bokken, trident, war fan and Chaos Saber shared one angle, length and height; all five currently wear the fit authored against the katana.

Fixes

• A Chaos Chao’s eyes no longer paint through its own goggles or visor.
• A crystal chao renders as crystal in the board gear preview.
• The Android “new version” notice no longer renders under the phone’s on-screen buttons.
• A metal chao is marked ■ in the roster and on the egg shelf. It shared ◆ with the jewels.
• Trees head the Market’s Food tab, above the fruit they drop, matching the Bag.

Chao Quest

• Chao Quest is temporarily unavailable while it is reworked. Nothing has been removed from your save.