Ultrapool Seeds: How Seeded Runs Work and What They Control

Yes, seeds exist

Ultrapool ships with both seeded and unseeded runs — the community wiki lists it among the game’s features, and its beginner’s guide describes the option as “inputting a custom seed” when you start a run. Earlier versions of this site said there was no documented seed entry; that was wrong, and this page replaces it.

A seed is a text string. Type the same string and you get the same shop. That is the whole idea, and the rest of this page is about what “the same shop” actually covers.

What a seed fixes

The wiki’s seed page is the most precise description published anywhere, and it is worth reading closely because the seed does not simply replay a run. Each of the three randomised systems is locked to the seed plus a counter, and the counter is different for each:

Two consequences follow directly from that table.

Rerolling is part of the seed. Your fourth reroll of the run shows the same three balls as anyone else’s fourth reroll on that seed, whichever round they did it in. If you are following a seed someone else played, you have to match their reroll count, not just their round.

Cubes are the most predictable part. They depend on nothing but the seed and the level, so on a known seed you know which cube is coming before it arrives — which matters most on Bloody Mary and All Nighter, where cubes decide runs.

Shop ball levels are seeded too, according to the beginner’s guide: the seed “determines all the shop contents, including snacks and the level of shop balls”.

A March 2026 patch note (Update 0.8.1) added “Passives are now consistent with the seed”, so snack offers have only been seed-locked since that build.

What a seed does not fix

Nothing published says the seed controls the physics. Your break, your ricochets and where the balls stop are your own doing, so two players on one seed can buy identical boards and score very differently. That is also why a seed cannot hand you a score — it hands you a shop.

The wiki does not describe a seed-sharing feature either. Sharing a seed means telling someone the string.

Seeds and the daily challenge

The daily challenge is a seeded run: the wiki states the daily “uses the same seed across accounts”, and a Spanish review describes the mode as global leaderboards on fixed seeds. So everyone on a given day is buying from the same shop, and the leaderboard compares how well you played it.

The wiki adds one uncomfortable observation — because the seed is shared, “it is possible to plan and strategize with a second account”. Nothing in the patch notes says whether the developers consider that a problem.

The “ludwig” seed

One seed is special. Enter ludwig and the run randomises normally except that the only cube you receive is Cubert: “Round start: spawn as many very heavy tungsten balls as the round number, up to 10.” Tungsten balls have a score of 0 and only exist for this seed. The name references the tungsten cube owned by the streamer Ludwig. It is a joke seed, not a strategy — a table filling with immovable zero-score balls is closer to a handicap than a bonus.

Do seeded runs count?

The developers have not published a rule. One launch-week review (Pink Fuzzy Bunnies, 29 August) criticises the game precisely because seeded runs do count: “it is possible to get unlocks by searching for the ‘god run’ online.” That is one reviewer’s report rather than an official statement, so treat it as “apparently yes, for now”. This is the opposite of Balatro, where seeded runs disable unlocks, and it may change.

The same review notes that choosing “retry” after a failed run keeps the same cubes, which is what the cube rule above predicts: same seed, same level, same cube. If you want different cubes, start a new run rather than retrying.

Related pages

• Daily challenge — the one seeded run everyone plays.
• Cubes — the part of a seed you can read in advance.
• High score tips — the physics half, which no seed fixes.