Seven battles share one pool of health. Nothing heals between them, a pet that dies is gone for the run, and that is the entire difficulty of the Celestial Court: no single fight here is hard.
Which makes it a drafting problem. 21 pet slots, thirty pets in the bank, and the week's opponents decided before you walk in. Draft it on paper and the run takes twenty minutes.
Celestial Court, Timeless Isle34.7, 59.7
Master Li runs it. He hands out "The Celestial Tournament" once you hold 30 pets at level 25, and the win pays 1 Celestial Coin and 11g 40s. 3 tamers from the week's triad, then the 4 Celestials, who never change.
verified. Transcribed from a primary source: a Blizzard post, patch note, or the game itself.quest and vendor data, read 2026-09-09
Most people hear the first rule and plan for it. It is the second and third that end runs.
Revive Battle Pets and Battle Pet Bandages do nothing between rounds inside the scenario. Your pets go into each fight at whatever health they walked out of the last one with.
A pet that finishes a fight on a quarter health starts the next one on a quarter health. This, not the difficulty of any single fight, is what ends most runs.
There is no revive and no substitution once it falls. Seven battles at three pets each is twenty-one slots, and every death shrinks the pool you have left to fill them.
Zoning out, or logging out in frustration, puts you back at the first tamer with a full roster and no progress. The weekly quest is only spent when you win.
The restriction is on the out-of-battle restore, not on the fight. Opponents heal themselves constantly, and against an opener that deals no damage you can spend that turn topping a pet up instead of attacking. It is the only mechanism for bringing a hurt pet back for a second fight.
Put those together and the arithmetic is fixed: 7 fights at three pets is 21 slots, and a pet that walks out of one at half health has effectively taken its slot with it. That is what the 30-pet gate is measuring, and it is why a roster of thirty is tight rather than generous.
Master Li, verbatim: "Only those who have trained extensively can enter the tournament. When you have trained 30 pets to their maximum level, you will be deemed ready."
Damage is multiplied by the type of the ABILITY against the family of the DEFENDER. The attacking pet's own family is not in the calculation at all, which is why half the opponents below hit for 1.5x with something their family had no business having.
The chart is one ten-link ring. Humanoid beats Dragonkin beats Magic beats Flying beats Aquatic beats Elemental beats Mechanical beats Beast beats Critter beats Undead, and Undead closes it back on Humanoid.
| Defender | Takes 1.5x from | Takes 0.66x from | Its own abilities beat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aquatic | Flying | Undead | Elemental |
| Beast | Mechanical | Humanoid | Critter |
| Critter | Beast | Elemental | Undead |
| Dragonkin | Humanoid | Flying | Magic |
| Elemental | Aquatic | Mechanical | Mechanical |
| Flying | Magic | Beast | Aquatic |
| Humanoid | Undead | Critter | Dragonkin |
| Magic | Dragonkin | Aquatic | Flying |
| Mechanical | Elemental | Magic | Beast |
| Undead | Critter | Dragonkin | Humanoid |
Every matchup chip further down is read out of this table rather than typed by hand, so a correction here corrects the whole page.
Three fixed groups of tamers rotate. Two thirds of what follows is somebody else’s week, so look at who is standing in the court before you build anything.
The off-family week. Most of these nine attack with something other than their own family, so reading the roster and stopping there gets you hit for one and a half times damage by a pet you thought you had covered.
A heal you have to beat, wrapped in two pets that do very little.
Peck, Wild Magic, Rip
Broom, Tranquility, Clean-Up
Tranquility heals. If your damage per turn does not clear it, the fight has no end state.
Tail Sweep, Amplify Magic, Solar Beam
Damage banked into the wrong pet gets parked rather than spent.
Alpha Strike, Lift-Off, Feign Death
Feign Death pulls Screamer out the moment it is low. Finish it in one turn or accept that it comes back.
Bite, Adrenaline Rush, Horn Attack
Uncertainty, Instability, Logic
Three families, and not one of them attacks with the type it looks like.
Claw, Infected Claw, Unholy Ascension
Huge, Sharp Teeth!, Vicious Strength, Burrow
Gnaw, Bloodfang, Cute Face
The control week. Several of these pets take a turn away from you rather than taking health, and a turn spent under a blind or a sleep costs more than the hit you were trying to land.
Three Pandaren monks, all Humanoid, all faster than you expect.
Feigns death and swaps in Taran Zhu's highest-health pet, which resets anything you had set up.
Bandages most of a health bar back.
Blinds you for a round and does not miss doing it. Damage spent into that round is gone; a heal is not.
Two turn-thieves and a beast, in that order of danger.
Bite, Headbutt, Chew
Flank, Lullaby, Locust Swarm
Lullaby sleeps your active pet for two turns.
Inebriate, Barrel Toss, Brew Bolt
Inebriate takes a quarter off your hit chance, which is the same thing as taking a quarter of your damage away.
Opens Undead, then two Dragonkin, one of which heals.
Bite, Blistering Cold, Ice Tomb
Opens at 375 speed, which is the number your speed breeds have to clear to move first.
Breath, Flamethrower, Ancient Blessing
Ancient Blessing means a slow kill is not a kill.
Shadowflame, Roll, Elementium Bolt
The weather and chip week. Two of the three fights are decided by damage you cannot answer by killing whatever is standing in front of you.
The rain is the fight.
Grasp, Cleansing Rain, Dreadful Breath
Cleansing Rain first, every time, then Dreadful Breath across your whole team at double strength while it is raining. Overwrite the weather or eat it.
Arcane Blast, Healing Wave, Soul Ward
Arcane Blast ramps and Healing Wave undoes a slow kill. Burst it or lose to it.
Whirlpool, Pump, Dive
One pet from each of three families, and none of them is subtle.
Gilded Fist, Goldskin, Gold Rush
Make it Rain, Uncanny Luck, Buried Treasure
SMACKTHAT.EXE, Extra Plating, Blingtron Gift Package
Chip damage from something that is not the pet you are hitting.
Nairn!, Call of Winter, Giant's Blood
Batter, Call Lightning, Build Turret
Call Lightning and Build Turret both keep ticking after Stormoen is dead.
Bite, Dodge, Prowl
Lineups and ability names were recorded by players against the 5.4 tournament and cross-checked between independent guides. Nothing since confirms they are untouched.
All four are level 25 elite and all four are scripted, which is the useful part: the two turns you would normally spend finding out what a fight does are free here.
Fire Quills, Ethereal, Tranquility
Opens: Ethereal whenever it is off cooldown, then Tranquility whenever that is off cooldown, then Fire Quills.
The engine: Ethereal resolves before anything you do and dodges the whole round, so it is not a defensive cooldown. It is a turn deleted from your side of the fight, on a schedule.
Take it away: Count the cooldown rather than racing it. Anything on a long cooldown, and any two-turn wind-up, has to land on a round Ethereal cannot cover. That is why delayed damage such as Geyser into Whirlpool gets through and a single large nuke tends not to.
Spirit Claws, Moonfire, Feed
Opens: Moonfire early, which puts Moonlight up.
The engine: Moonlight is the fight. It is what turns Spirit Claws into real damage and what makes Feed heal enough to matter. Xu-Fu with no weather is a beast with a bite.
Take it away: Overwrite the weather instead of out-damaging it. Call Darkness replaces Moonlight, drops hit chance, and halves what Feed returns. Anything else that sets weather at least takes Moonlight off the board.
Trample, Niuzao's Charge, Wish
Opens: Winds up rather than opening with damage.
The engine: Both of Zao's real buttons cost it a turn before they do anything. Niuzao's Charge telegraphs a large hit and Wish telegraphs a large heal.
Take it away: Both wind-ups are visible a full turn ahead, so both are dodgeable and both are interruptible. A dodge on the charge turn spends nothing of yours; damage placed on the wish turn spends the heal.
Jade Breath, Emerald Presence, Lift-Off
Opens: Emerald Presence, then Lift-Off. Neither of those turns damages you.
The engine: Emerald Presence cuts what you deal and Lift-Off takes a round away, so the fight is long rather than dangerous.
Take it away: Dragonkin, so Humanoid abilities land at one and a half times, and a stun settles the argument about the damage reduction without having to win it. Take her last: two opening turns that deal no damage are the only free healing window in the run.
No named team here. Named teams are a shopping list for pets you do not own, and the tournament’s own gate says you have thirty.
Twenty-one slots across seven fights. Write the seven down before you queue and the collision turns up on paper rather than on the fourth boss with two pets left.
What you need is one reliable attacker for each ability type the week asks for, not thirty good pets. Against any given triad, four or five of the ten types do all the work.
The family tells you what to hit it with. The ability list tells you what is about to hit you, and on half these opponents it is a different type entirely.
A pet that finishes a tamer fight at half health is a pet you have retired. When a fight is already won, take the extra turn that keeps the winner healthy over the turn that ends it sooner.
Yu'la buffs then dodges, Zao winds up, and several tamer pets buff themselves before they swing. Those turns are where a hurt pet gets topped up for a second fight.
Zao charges, Yu'la lifts off, Chi-Chi goes ethereal. Three of the four bosses hand you a free round if you brought anything that skips one.
One coin a win, 3 coins a pet, four pets, and no second coin in the same week. There is no version of this that finishes faster than 12 winning weeks.
| What Master Li sells | Coins | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Chi-Chi, Hatchling of Chi-Ji | 3 | |
| Xu-Fu, Cub of Xuen | 3 | The one most people come back for. |
| Yu'la, Broodling of Yu'lon | 3 | |
| Zao, Calfling of Niuzao | 3 | |
| Marked Flawless Battle-Stone | 3 | Upgrades one pet to rare. A whole Celestial costs the same. |
| Battle Pet Bandage | 1 | |
| Pet Treat | 1 |
Coins stack to 50, so banking three weeks before you spend is safe and there is nothing to lose by waiting.
The lineups and ability names here were documented by players against the 5.4 tournament and cross-checked between independent guides. No primary source confirms that none of it has been retuned since. If a pet on this page no longer has the ability listed against it, the comments are the fastest way to get it corrected.
Whether you choose the order of the four Celestials, or the scenario fixes it, is not documented by Blizzard. Every route we found assumes you choose, and the advice to take Yu'la last only works if that is true.
Taran Zhu's three monks are recorded by effect rather than by ability name, because the sources we could reach describe a feign, a heal and a blind without naming them. The families agree across sources; the ability names are not given.
Rikki is listed as Aquatic by two guides and as Beast by a third. The ability list agrees in all three, so the disagreement is about what it takes extra damage from, which is the half that decides your pick.
That healing abilities are entirely unrestricted inside a battle is convention rather than documentation. What is documented is that the out-of-battle restore is disabled and that several opponents heal themselves mid-fight.
If you ran it this week and an opponent did something other than what is written above, the comments are where that gets fixed, with your name on the correction.
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