Obligatory strategy thread. :)

Zaphod77

Active member
Feb 14, 2013
1,316
2
Yeah, i've gotten all four gates open too.

IN a long game, the most important thing to focus on is light outlanes. Once the bonus multiplier is raise dup, your time will go down at warp nine, and you will stay in sudden death for most of the game, even if you max out the time inside of multiball.

With a decent stash, vault multiball pays off more then token mulitball, and token multiball does NOT award time, so you are at risk of double drain from it, where tnt multiball and vault are safe, because you will have time at the end of them.

Computer Disabled is also very useful to collect late in the game, because it gives you a ball saver (you will get the ball back ONCE if you drain while it's disabled) ad it does NOT count down faster during the late game. Call guard rarely gives you a good route. the catch is you have to hit that darn wheel to relight the center wheel, and anything can happen after that.

SO the ideal late game strategy is to take whacks at the post to relight the wheel whenever you are not in sudden death. if you are good at an on the fly shot to the main entrance, you can collect teller awards after the ramp. they can sometimes be good, and give you some time back. And make an effort torelgiht the outlanes after it's collected.
 

WhiteChocolate

New member
Apr 15, 2014
722
0
Which platform are you able to do this on?

looks like rich has a "kindle fire", by way of his forum profile... :) "getting in under the gate" might be a potential prob on xenon too; i saw that on mah ps3... during a multiball, i sent one back up-left loop and somehow got it past the chute-gate all the way to come to a rest back on the plunger; i played the rest of the remaining ball, then found the table just sitting there, it thinking there was still one in play - so i pulled the plunger and relaunched the remaining ball, then played out normally. (are the new "flipper physics" being used on more than just flippers? seems like i'd read others talk about balls slipping through flippers recently; not something i've seen, but seems like a potentially similar situation...)

epsilon, yah at first the "sudden death" thing is off-putting, it did for me too at first! (i think anyone who'd never heard of SC before got "goin' nuts" flashbacks, lol! ;0) buuuut, once you get control of the table a bit, it's really not too difficult to get a longer, more satisfying game. (lol! that sounded like some vulgar spam-mail...) just when you need to kick the timer out a bit, you'll find the right shots (the DMD seems helpful sometimes about it). otherwise just having enough control to keep the play constantly going on one ball is enough to keep everything balanced out...

as i like to say, i'm not much of a "rules" player, so i don't spend too much time micro-targeting something - i do perform a lot of very quickly controlled catching, then making controlled flips almost as soon as i can, so maybe just the fact i try to keep the ball moving, keeps the play/scoring/rules-tripping quickly moving along too. (there's also the need, on a lot of different tables, to often -not-catch the ball as it's comin' down the flipperlane - you want to keep the ball momentum when the flip sends it up a steep ramp or loop!) but maybe that's all stating the obvious... :) hope it's helpful, and not annoying! ;0 i just find going for a "fastest as comfortably possible" strategy with my overall game to be most productive... gets the most out of timers, in any case!

like most any/every table, you have to find your "level" with the play - play too cautiously, and maybe get too lulled into losing mindfullness of the ball traject and find yourself thinking, "oh i shoulda caught/nudged that one" while you watch one drain... or play too aggressively, and causing more trouble than it's worth! i'd been having that happen with my xenon plays; started getting too aggressive with it and found that was being a detriment to better scoring.

at least though it sounds like the theme and token-goals are working for ya! :) same thing with me; the whole package is well-thought-out. was SC around when the whole spat of "ocean's eleven" heist-flicks were in vogue?

p.s. gus, EXCELLENT point!! ... "Can't restart the game after a lousy ball 1 here!" that -is- a good reason to consider that as part of some tables' play... you got one ball, and one minute; make the most of it, and you'll get plenty more minutes of fun out of it!

p.p.s. RSchwantner, i -agree- ya can't pause a rw table... but these aren't rw tables! i know some paradigms are meant to be pushed, but (unless it does contribute deeply into leaderboard cheating, in a way that can't be fixed/post-fixed prior board posting - i can see that peeving off licensors), it would piss off the more casual end of the player-market to the point they'd hold it against it. (no matter what, they'll argue, "it's a VIDEOGAME!" and that gets pretty meta, i know, but they'd be "more right than wrong" on that.)

and besides - there'd be no defeating, say, pausing the console (instead of pausing the game), then returning to the game - and if what you'd propose resulted in people "unpausing" and then, say, finding their paused game immediately aborted, -that'd- be really "bad juju mon"!!

just that, i think it's something that has to be taken in with a half-tablespoon of salt or sugar with an emulated game... people can pause football videogames, basketball videogames, etc etc... even when the ball is in midair, right? :0

-however,- i think there could be some good codebits in the emu overall for every table to indicate "paused interruptions" - there are "length of play" tracks in the high-score trail, aren't there? probably "pause indicator" tags? do those tags include how long the game was user-paused? and considering that if the game itself did not get "user-paused," does the emulator have a tag-trail for console-paused?? :0 (just by way of comparing the clock to the "last saved")...

and those tags can trigger, on needed tables, some "corrections"/fixes to make sure cheats get fixed, like vikingeric mentioned... i know though, "more data = just more data that can be faked"... still though, certain circumstances, that could help cull out some weirdness... kick out cheaters, even help bug-fix. :) just guessing... all interesting things to think about!





p.p.p.p.P.s.: lol!!! now the joke's on me, invitro!! ;0 i suppose the point's been made; you -can't- not pause a videogame, whether you like it or not. ;) though like i posit, a dev -could- make the current round abort if they wanted to... but that'd make people reeeeally angry! still, you know i love thinking out loud... gave me some interesting things to think about, at least! :)

p-to-the-enf: fungi, i'd been radically noticing how different the feel between iOS and ps# on roadshow - i'm having to re-feel out my game there! not all that different, but just enough to have to get a diff feel for it. not even an honest extra ball yet!
 
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Michael

New member
Jan 9, 2015
75
0
This hasn't been mentioned, but I suppose it's fairly obvious... If you're collecting all 26 tokens for the wizard goal, when starting a new game, just keep lighting and completing the three rollover lanes and draining the ball over and over for a new shot at them until the cellar award has moved to the 4th one, which gives a VAULT letter. This can easily be done before the timer runs out. The current award will move 1 spot each time 1-2-3 have been completed. Then just backhand the cellar from the left flipper 2-3 times to collect it. Let the ball drain in sudden death (don't quit since that will reset/refill the tokens in the machine), start a new game and repeat until all letters in VAULT are collected, and then go for the vault. This will start Token Multiball instead of Vault Multiball, which awards 2 extra tokens with the first 2 jackpots. This is the quickest way to earn tokens, since you will almost always have 3 tokens in one go every time you break into the vault. I'm not bragging when I'm saying it's really hard NOT to get at least two jackpots in this 4-ball multiball mode - in all the times I did it I only failed to get the two extra tokens one single time. Though some skill of course helps, basically you just have to flail away at the flippers and you will hit the ramp at least two times, and the spinner inbetween.

This way of spelling VAULT is even faster than collecting the letters from the Assault the Vault mode.
 
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Michael

New member
Jan 9, 2015
75
0
This is a great tip/strategy, and one that would never have occurred to me - thanks for posting it!

No problem, glad if it helps! If you don't back out of the table, quit in the middle of a run, or turn off the console, collecting 80-100 tokens should be enough to get the goal... But be prepared for it to take a week to finish if you also have a life outside of playing TPA... ;) It took me 12 days (!) of playing at least an hour every day.
 
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Eternal21

New member
Jun 3, 2018
126
0
Thanks for the VAULT tip. I've collected 40 tokens so far, which resulted in 19 unique ones, so still 7 more to go. I only got VAULT multiball once, because I didn't realize the letters don't reset, but now that I know the trick, it should go way faster.
 

Eternal21

New member
Jun 3, 2018
126
0
No problem, glad if it helps! If you don't back out of the table, quit in the middle of a run, or turn off the console, collecting 80-100 tokens should be enough to get the goal... But be prepared for it to take a week to finish if you also have a life outside of playing TPA... ;) It took me 12 days (!) of playing at least an hour every day.

There seems to be a bug with the VAULT approach. It worked the first time I tried it, I got 3 tokens, but the next two times, even though I re-lit the VAULT without restarting the game, I didn't get any extra tokens. The only way I got it to work again, is by earning a regular token without lighting all letters of VAULT, and only then lighting up VAULT and going for Token Multiball. 23 out of 26 tokens right now, with a total of 50 tokens earned. Need 1 of each type.

EDIT: Even my workaround doesn't always seem to work, so I just gave up on it. It sucks wasting time to spell VAULT only for the VAULT multiball not awarding you any tokens. I ended up just doing it the regular way. 2 more tokens to go.

EDIT:
Finally got the 26th token. It took exactly 80 tokens after I stopped exiting the table. By the way, you can still TILT to end TNT Multiball faster. Pausing works wonders if you want to avoid a specific dice roll. Simply keep pausing until the one you DON'T want is on the screen. Usually you want the alarm one there. Also works for flying shoes. Unpausing the game will land you one spot further down, after the game circles around. Here's the vid of my earning 26th token. I earned 26th token 10 tokens after I earned 25th:

 
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