Table of the Week Club...week 7: CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON!

[Extork]

Here's how I approach multiball. It may help. It may not.

tl;dr: Keep a ball trapped on the left flipper almost all the time. The only time you want to use the left flipper is to search for the girl on the Slide.

1. Always start multiball by locking the ball in the KISS lane, not in the Slide.
2. Plunge the second ball at full strength. Hold the left flipper and the ball will almost always end up caught there. It will bounce very high, but it will eventually rest. Keep that ball cradled.
3. The ball coming from the VUK to the right flipper, put it in the jets via Move Your Car or up the left ramp.
4. When the ball comes back to the right flipper, shoot KISS. If the girl's there, great, move on to step 7.
5. Next shoot Move Your Car, and when the ball comes back down catch it on the right flipper. Then shoot the Snack Bar. If the girl's there, great, move on to step 7.
6. The tricky bit. The girl's in the Slide. First get both balls trapped, one on the left, on on the right. Then shoot the Slide with the ball on the left. Hold up the left flipper and hope for a catch from the Slide. It's not 100%, unlike a full plunge. Time a nudge right to bump up the odds, but sometimes the ball will bounce up and down the left outlane.
7. You've found the girl! Get a ball trapped on the right flipper, shoot the Snack Bar, and rescue her!
8. Now you've rescued the girl, work on the multiplier. Recommended is to go to 2x on the first multiball of a ball, then 3x on the next, then 4x on the third. That maximizes your multiplier usage. If you go straight to 4x on the first multiball of a ball, you won't be able to go past 1x on subsequent multiballs.
9. With the multiplier bumped to your desired level, get a ball cradled on the right flipper (remember: Move Your Car gives you an easy catch on the right flipper when the ball comes back from the jets). Shoot the Snack Bar for the Jackpot.
10. Keep working on Move Your Car to feed the jets until Super Jackpot is lit.
11. Catch on right from the jets, shoot the Snack Bar, collect Super Jackpot.
12. Repeat from Step 4., ignoring step 8. If it looks like the next Jackpot or Super Jackpot will cause a rollover bug (displayed score < 9B, current Jackpot/Super Jackpot will cause score to go >10B), quit multiball.

Regarding your #2, what I've been doing is instead of just holding the left flipper, try to time it right, and hit it up the left ramp. Seems to work

Well for me, just holding the left flipper is a 50/50 chance of draining. Different on each platform?

 

[vikingerik]

I do exactly the same thing, except swap steps 4 and 5 - try the Snack Bar for the girl before trying KISS because that's the safer shot for me.

In the super jackpot stage, I prefer to shoot Move Your Car from the left flipper rather than the right, and keep both balls in circulation rather than holding one. The left flipper shot to MYC yields considerably safer rebounds on a miss, plus you have a better chance of recovering with both flippers free instead of just one. And the left flipper consistently drops the ball into P of PAID for a longer trip out of the bumpers. It's 100% safe to handle a bumper return by dead-passing right-to-left to do this. Do that with every ball unless they come close enough together that you have to hold and catch the second one on the right. This is very much an advanced tactic for those 100-120 bumper hit levels; probably anyone who isn't me should stick to hold-left grind-right.

Step 12 - if it looks like the next jackpot will cause a rollover bug, shoot Creature letters or Movie Millions (right ramp) for a while until you get the rollover that way.

Holding the left flipper to catch a full-strength plunge works 100% for me. Holding the left flipper to catch a slide eject is NOT safe and will often drop the ball into the left outlane. You must nudge on flipper contact, but it's usually safe if you do.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I may try using both balls with those 100+ jets Super Jackpots. If anything it will stop my left index finger from getting too numb!

As for what to do if a rollover is pending... really it depends on how far off you are. If it's a billion or more, you're better off draining multiball to reset the multiplier.

Also - management of jackpot doubling is very important to getting huge scores. Try to keep the base jackpot below 50M/100M/200M/400M. Remember that the jackpot does NOT build during multiball. My "38B" game I got my last doubling from around 375M to 750M, and wound up with a base jackpot over 1B.

 

[Extork]

Holding the left flipper to catch a full-strength plunge works 100% for me. Holding the left flipper to catch a slide eject is NOT safe and will often drop the ball into the left outlane. You must nudge on flipper contact, but it's usually safe if you do.

60% of the time it works every time. No, you are right, a full plunge is always catchable with the left. How did I not know this before. Even if you lock a ball in the right lock, both balls are able to be caught. Crazy. When testing it out, I was able to get a jackpot almost right away

 

[Heretic]

3 bumpers to rule them all

 

[Gus]

A RL Creature table is spectacular, and I've played it plenty. The theme, music and toys are very well done IMO. It was the qualifying table in the only real tournament I've played (Swedish nationals in '93 or '94, can't remember exactly, but the tables for the tournament were CftBL and WW). I don't really care much for the TPA version though. The shots feel awkward, and it is boiled down to the imbalanced scoring of only playing for the 3x-4x super jackpots. I haven't played it in quite a while, so I'll give it a go during the weekend!

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

The trouble with the TPA version is that the left ramp is way, way, too easy. IRL it's as steep as heck, and even worse during multiball. You really take a risk shooting for it; balls that don't go in there cleanly have a habit of screaming back STDM. In TPA, any half-baked weak shot, backhand, or random slap will make it.

A shame because actually the rest of the table is well done. KISS, the Slide, the right ramp, Move Your Car - those shots feel "right" to me.

 

[Maggie]

The tips on multiball did the trick. I went from 1B high score to 6.5B while still on the first ball. I then drained everything to make sure I got my 1000 HOF points registered. I'm not a great pinball player -- my good results depend a lot on that left ramp being so easy. Still -- I'm a happy girl, that's my third table to get 1000.

 

[Heretic]

6.5on first ball mis not too shabby, use mobile players dont have a great nudge system so wtg

 

[shutyertrap]

The tips on multiball did the trick. I went from 1B high score to 6.5B while still on the first ball. I then drained everything to make sure I got my 1000 HOF points registered. I'm not a great pinball player -- my good results depend a lot on that left ramp being so easy. Still -- I'm a happy girl, that's my third table to get 1000.

Amazing when you can see a score jump like that. Then of course you run into what happened to me the other night...I know all these tricks, I've used them plenty, but for some reason I could not advance past regular jackpot no matter what. I was in multiball so many times as to be ridiculous, yet kept choking. Just one of those nights.

Everybody learning the secrets of this table should make for an interesting TotM on March 28th!

 

[Heretic]

lack of tacos san

 

[Maggie]

Amazing when you can see a score jump like that. Then of course you run into what happened to me the other night...I know all these tricks, I've used them plenty, but for some reason I could not advance past regular jackpot no matter what. I was in multiball so many times as to be ridiculous, yet kept choking. Just one of those nights.

That was the move over this week. There were intermediary steps -- 1.0B to 1.4B to 2.1B to this one! woo hoo. Last night was my night for getting everything lined up and then putzing the superjackpot over and over and over again. So I sympathize!

 

[Extork]

For me, before this totw thing, super jackpots were really really rare. And I doubt if I had even gotten a jackpot in the same multiball after the SJ. Now, I can do it thanks to the advice. But I think 80% of it is just from me cracking down and really trying. That's what's so great about pinball in general. You can have fun just shooting around, and have a lot of fun taking it seriously. CFTBL is one of them where I loved it before, but never really took the time to get good at it. My scores have been going up and up. honestly I'm happy to get 3bil. Now, what I really need to be doing is practicing with no extra balls

 

[vikingerik]

But I think 80% of it is just from me cracking down and really trying.

This. CFTBL does this more than any other table. It happened to me too. My faffing around on Creature had scores in the 50B range several times, then when I cracked down to really try (prioritizing KISS for the extra balls), I went infinite past 200B to the leaderboard #1.

CFTBL has such a drastic gap between shooting around and taking it seriously. There's a metric crapton of distracting junk on the table that doesn't help you toward jackpots and real scores. Combos, Move Your Car (particularly insidious, everybody wants to make the car blow up), the dozen varieties of millions modes from the right ramp and slide, the snackbar crap. Ignore all of that. Eyes on the prize.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

Move Your Car (particularly insidious, everybody wants to make the car blow up)

Forget SST. CftBL does nukes far better. I'm a sucker for Move Your Car, what can I say? If you need 50-80M to trip a rollover, though, it's as reliable as anything else you can do. Plus a few trips to the jets to push the base jackpot up, only way to do it once it's over 400M.