⚔ THE TEAM COMBAT UPDATE — KINSHIP IS LIVE

I've been building toward something for a while now, and I want to be straight with you about the problem I set out to fix.

Eighteen Trainer Types. Every one of them deep, every one of them with its own mechanic to master. But when I really looked at how they played together, I found something I didn't like: they were eighteen brilliant solo games standing next to each other. Your marks helped you. Your buffs helped you. Your friend could be swinging at the exact same enemy and get nothing from the work you just did.

That ends today.

🩸 KINSHIP — the bond between trainers

Kinship is earned, not claimed. There's no menu, no request, no button. You build it by actually fighting beside someone — both of you in the thick of it, close enough to cover each other. Do that often enough and the game starts to recognize you as a pair.

Here's what it buys you: the marks you leave on an enemy start paying out for the people you fight beside.

A Dark trainer's Doom used to ramp damage for the Dark trainer and nobody else. Now, if you're kin, your friend's strikes ride that ramp too. Same with a Poison trainer's festering Venom. The deeper the bond, the bigger the cut.

But never the whole thing. Kin cap at half of what the mark's owner gets — always. Laying your own marks is still worth more than borrowing someone else's, and it always will be. This rewards fighting together; it doesn't replace mastering your own type.

Bonds climb a ladder as they grow:

Strangers → Familiar → Trusted → Sworn → Bloodbound

Type /kinship to see everyone you've bonded with and how far each one has come. /kinship <name> checks a single bond and tells you exactly what share you're each cashing in.

You'll also see it live in the Arena, Trial and Reaches team menus — every teammate now carries a bar under their name showing how close that bond is to its next rung, so you can read your whole warband at a glance before you drop in.

Two things worth knowing. You can only hold five bonds at the deepest tier — past that, new bonds still grow but rest just below until one of the deep ones fades. Choosing who those five people are is the entire point. And bonds fade if you stop fighting together, slowly, and only after a week of silence. Come back and it climbs again.

🛡 TANKING IS A REAL JOB NOW

Being unkillable was never tanking. You could stack armor until nothing touched you and the enemies would simply walk around you and eat your healer. So I gave the tanky types the half they were missing: threat.

Steel, Rock and Ground now pull the room onto themselves when they raise their guard. Holding that line hardens you while it lasts — +10% damage reduction — and the shield it grants went up alongside it. Taunting without survivability is just a way to die on purpose.

Fighting gets a different flavor of the same idea. Bracing now hauls every enemy around you into swing range — because a combo dies the moment its target walks away. Bring them to you, then make them regret it.

👊 FIGHTING — guard built by throwing hands

Fighting now builds shield with every blow you land — 0.5 at a time. Multi-hit skills and combo chains stack it per strike, so a full flurry armors you up mid-fight. The longer your chain, the tougher you get.

The cost is real: Fighting takes 10% more damage. You are a brawler who is only protected while you're swinging. Stop swinging and you're glass.

✨ SUPPORTS THAT ACTUALLY SUPPORT

I went through every single stack in the game — all eighteen types — hunting for effects that were quietly locked to whoever cast them. I found a pile of them, and they're fixed. Charm and its cousins now work for your whole team, not just you.

Your Pokémon got the same pass:

• Healers now watch your health and the health of nearby trainers and their Pokémon, and step in the moment anyone is hurt — not just when someone's about to die.
• Shielders throw their guard up the instant it's ready and prioritize covering you first.
• Support and Bulwark Pokémon now reach the whole team instead of just their own trainer.

If you've ever wanted to be the person who keeps everyone else standing — that role exists now, and it's real.

Every skill I changed has had its description rewritten to tell you exactly what it now does. Open your tree and read them.

🔧 ALSO IN THIS UPDATE

• The Guardians menu now clearly marks which Guardian is actually SELECTED, so there's no more squinting at the list wondering if it took.
• Clan Island Expansions now apply the moment you buy them. If your clan bought one and never got the island slot, it's there now — nothing to re-buy, and nothing to ask an admin for. Same for the Island Theme upgrade, which also carries a slot to put your new theme on.

THE POINT OF ALL THIS

I want you to look at your friends list and see a team, not a group of people who happen to be online. I want a Steel trainer holding the door, a healer watching everyone's health bar, and a Dark trainer marking the thing that needs to die — and I want all three of them to be measurably better together than apart.

Go find the people you fight best beside. The game is finally keeping track.

— Eagle