PokéSurvivor Updates · 2026-10-12: Rock Slide, melee, upgrades and rift changes

Game update October 12, 2026 · Article updated October 14, 2026

Historical PokéSurvivor changes: Rock Slide 26→21, melee damage +20%, new critical/reroll/ban upgrades, 50% rift ×10 drops and iPhone/co-op fixes. Overtime was later removed on October 13.

Changes at a glance

This update changed combat balance, per-Pokémon choices, rift rewards and reliability. The sections below preserve all 29 announced additions, adjustments and fixes.
The minute-60 overtime introduced here is historical: the October 13 Arceus update removed it. The old leaderboard eligibility rules below also must not be read as a current no-checks policy.

Seven additions: upgrades, menu and historical overtime

Overtime began at minute 60, making wild Pokémon HP and damage accelerate. The author expected top runs near 90 minutes; this was a design expectation, not a guaranteed build result. Arceus removed this system the next day.
New game versions refresh within 5 seconds while in the menu, or after an active run ends; the announcement says the run is not lost.
A What’s new button exposes the in-game changelog.
The 2, 5 and 8 glyphs were redrawn to make numbers easier to distinguish.
The main menu gains a normal/shiny choice below your partner, using variants you own.
New per-Pokémon upgrades: Critical Hit adds 3 percentage points of critical chance per level, with ×1.5 critical damage; Card reroll adds one extra level-up reroll per run; Ban blocks selected moves from card offers. Select bans in that Pokémon’s Upgrades menu.
Move shortcuts live in per-Pokémon Upgrades: assign a preferred move to a slot, for example Confusion to slot 1, so later learning preserves your familiar controls.

Fourteen adjustments: combat, rewards, rifts and co-op

Rock Slide’s listed damage falls from 26 to 21. The author’s reason was that it defeated almost twice the average move’s enemy count; attribute that balance observation to the author.
Bosses no longer award card rerolls. Each run starts with one free reroll; additional rerolls are purchased through Upgrades.
A rift legendary now drops one ×10 ticket with 50% probability, replacing the former guaranteed two ×10 tickets. An individual win can therefore give no ×10 ticket.
When co-op networks cannot connect directly, the room warns players and retries rather than quietly using a slow relay game.
The server migration may require signing in again with the existing username/password or Google identity. The author says the save and Pokémon remain; check the same identity before creating a new account.
If a gacha shiny is already owned, it is redirected to an unowned shiny of the same rarity when such a species remains. This does not change the base shiny-generation chance into a guaranteed new shiny every pull.
Failed eligible rift checks make the next check more likely. The historical notes describe a maximum 2.5-minute gap; blocked checks and, in the current game, the 28-minute cutoff are separate conditions.
An unbeaten legendary receives four times the rift selection weight of a defeated one. Weight is not the same as a guaranteed appearance.
Healers scale their healing with how hard you hit, with diminishing growth and a ×2.5 cap.
With a melee attack active, received damage is reduced by 25%; melee reach increases 25% and melee damage 20%. The defensive benefit depends on the active attack, not merely owning a melee move in another slot.
Choosing which held item to keep now pauses the run for the whole co-op group; players are no longer hit while that choice runs.
Choosing a Bond fusion also pauses everyone in co-op.
If the host switches tabs or stalls, the co-op run pauses until the host returns.
At this date, runs shorter than one minute were excluded from the leaderboard. This is a historical eligibility rule, not a promise about the current server’s complete checks.

Eight fixes: records, long runs, iPhone and saving

Broken minute-84 records, where the clock continued after the game froze, and some impossible records were removed. The author said the player’s next run would count again; this did not promise restoration of the removed record.
iPhone Safari and Chrome: move icons now accept taps while another finger holds the joystick, and buttons sit above the home bar.
Runs beyond 84 minutes could black-screen, freeze or level forever. The update fixes those old long-run failures; it does not override the later Arceus endgame.
If the game crashes, the run now closes and saves its time, defeated count, records and leaderboard result instead of dropping the whole result.
Very long runs were sometimes wrongly flagged as cheating and omitted from the leaderboard; this false-positive issue was reported fixed.
When a co-op host left the tab, enemies used to stop while other players continued with an unfair advantage. Shared pausing removes that behavior.
Holding the iPhone joystick no longer opens the Copy / Select all text-selection menu.
For iPhone fullscreen, the button explains the installation route: open the original game in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen and launch that shortcut.

Game date, page revision and sources

These are the changes announced for 2026-10-12, not a claim that every rule still applies today. Page revision: 2026-10-14. The historical changelog is preserved in a9b21f09; the October 13 Arceus update supersedes the old endgame and leaderboard rules where noted.

See the website’s data version

What to change in your next run

Rock Slide’s base hit changed from 26 to 21: 5 less damage, or about 19.23% less at the same conditions. This is a base-hit comparison, not a measured whole-build DPS or win-rate claim.
Melee became a more defensible active choice, while rift ×10 rewards became less generous. Plan survivability and ticket sources separately; the patch does not promise a fixed tickets-per-minute rate.

Previous and next updates

Game data & sources

The linked game files show where these stats, costs and rules come from. Updates to the game may change them.

Data version: a9b21f09

Data version →