Zuma Blitz: Double Gap Challenge

Since I've covered this board in a previous post I've decided to make a new challenge of obtaining as many double gap shots as possible.

Double Gap Strat: Place a ball or two near the end of one track and do gap shots on the other track as normal.

Playthrough: Hack Slash Crawl

I could do this all day. (and get more than 10+ million hs while at it, if I had more time.)

Hack Slash Crawl: A game that gets its name from Hack and Slash / Dungeon Crawl, and the game plays like Diablo II.

High Score? Werewolf + Figher for Strength / Stanima boosts. When leveling up go all Stanima and later on Strength. Spells are useful in early levels but are particularly useless later on, with the exception of Charm (can save you from death) and Crit Hit. *Charm actually converts enemies to your side for a few seconds, which means you can either run or fight fewer enemies.

Keep upgrading your equipment as you go along, and battle only one ice knight at a time (the only real thing that can kill you). Once you get over 100 ice resistance, there's no way to lose unless you try, so go for any score you feel like. (Note there isn't a shop in the game, but if there was one, the loot dropped at this point is probably a lot better than in the shop.)

Oh, and at around 50 or so levels down, you level up every 10 monsters killed. Have fun.

Lazer Tag, Blue Side

And suddenly, there's the idea of getting some pics inside the Zaps Zone laser tag arena itself and making a fps-like image.

This might give me some idea on how to model one of my art design works (Imma Firin My Lazors).

That One Iron Frog Board

Dr. Mojo said that there would be a few corners and two tracks... he didn't say however that this week's board was a modified Iron Frog board.

TIP: It's hard to get gap shots here without risking death, so unless you're very skilled, explosive powerups would be better off here to get curve clears. But after finding out the points gained from that is relative to how long you've been playing in the current game, and that balls move slightly faster with each curve clear, you might want to wait until the last 30 seconds or so before doing them.

If you do decide to do gap shots, let the inner ring fill up to around 3/4 of the track and try to make gap shots from there.

Overall, it's either you set them up correctly and get lucky with the ball order or you don't and get low scores.

Oh, and I don't have a vid to prove I got that many points, so here's a score breakdown instead. (Note the recently added 'more' tab which actually gives you an accurate score breakdown.)

Unrelated: At this point (lvl 56) I have gotten a gold Goat Sprit Animal.

(Sorry, no video this week due to the rising bandwidth caused by more people visiting than originally expected. May put a vid up once every other week.)

Third Round of Questions

These are questions that have been moved from the level up table because the discussion there became too long. As well as providing a explanation to common problems that people search for.

Sometimes when you click the out of life you get to flip the coin. Any idea how often the coin flip comes up or have you figured out a pattern?

It should be 50/50 according to many users however I have not done enough to tell. It can only be done once a day, however. (Note that when you flip the coin, if it's the first time you hit a skull (no revive) your first life restore is free* but is 15 idols afterward.

how/where do i use idols to buy treasure or powers early?

A bit ambiguous on the treasure part.

Powers: Go to powers and click on the power you want to unlock.
Treasure (slots): Hit a treasure chest and at the end of the game while it's still spinning, click on one of the locked slots to unlock.
Treasure (mojo): Click on Store and buy some there.

NOTE: They will still be unlocked the next time you go through mastery.

Questions related to slow leveling?

The XP bar on the top right is an approximate percent, not an exact one. The approximate number of games to play to advance one level is a bit more to your current level. (ex. I'm at level 70, it takes around 80 games to level up. every 4 of 5 games I play it goes up by 1 percent.)

To determine how much percent XP you earn in one game, take your current level, multiply by 4, and divide your XP earned by that number. Round up / down to see what XP you get. From the above example, 350/280 = 1.25, so you will earn either 1 or 2 %.

What do the spirit animals do for you if anything, as you upgrade them?

They're just trophies, like star medals from bejeweled blitz. They are sharable for 2,500 mojo however.

what are the locks in the shop?

Placeholders. They're probably more special abilities in the shop that might be in a future release of the game.

Added by BlueViper02: There is nothing behind the locks :) That's just generic coding. The shop is controlled via an xml file, so they can add/remove/rearrange items without coding. Not saying they won't add something, though I can't think of what it could be.

Don't want name on right side?

Also known as the game bar, where it tells you who is playing which game. If you hover over the post saying that you're playing a certain game, a small 'x' will pop up on the right hand side. a small window will pop up left to it, with a square on the top-right of that window when you hover over it. You can choose to remove the post or not show anyone that you're playing the app.

Full Screen?

Possible, but NOT recommended until they optimize it, since you will experience severe lag on almost any pre-built consumer PC. If you still wish to do so though, you can (at least on firefox and the latest version of IE) zoom in until you notice part of the game is missing. Please not that the quality of visuals (except text) will not improve.

Slow Game?

It's probably more computer-spec than browser problem. It's GPU and CPU consuming, so anything less than a 2-core processor (under 2 Ghz) will very likely receive lag. As well as any integrated video card.

Locked Items in Shop

There's nothing behind those locks (for 9+ months), would you prefer them to be blank spaces instead?

10000 spirit animals?

What appears at the end of the game when you get a high score and it falls into an score bracket which you have a gold animal (ex getting 2+ million with a gold Quetzalcoatl). The value actually is 1000000 (one million) not 10,000 so don't expect to pass it.

Best Powers?

Multiplier / Time balls are a must. The third is depending on what you aim for: Epic Fruit (if fruit is easy to reach), Hot Frog (If curves can be cleared easily) or Warp Speed (If you find it hard to get double gaps). Personally I have tried games without a multiplier but it never seems to get high scores.

Level Up Cap Increase?

(in my opinion) Balance issues - the way the powers were introduced were specifically designed for a lvl-80 layout - by increasing it, you'd have to introduce powers or upgrades superior to lvl 70ish stuff, other powerups introduced might not be suitable on that lvl, etc.

But if we restructure the leveling up process (give upgrades at different levels) users will have no idea what powerups they have available - first they have timelord, now they don't. The only solution at that point is to either reset everyone's level to 1 and compensate levels gained with mojo/idols or introduce the 100 lvl cap on the next level of mastery.

Extra Permissions

Occurred in January 2012 with the merge to EA. It basically allows the game to publish new high scores / achievements onto the game ticker (which hasn't been implemented right now). You can't remove this permission but you can limit who sees these posts under App Settings.

Zuma Blitz Board Flipped

Playthrough @ Level 52 with Chrono Balls + Sun Frog + Tiki Bombs boosts. 5 Hot Frogs / 8 Curve Clears. Total score: 1,222,380

Well it looks like I've seen this board before... but it's flipped and has a new background. I don't want to do a video demo in the same way as I did last time (gapshot), so I decided to try a red frog / curve clear method combined with sheer speed.

TIP: Using hot frog a lot is a viable option here. Due to the size of the playing field, three well-placed explosions should wipe out an entire curve (and maybe both curves with a fully upgraded Inferno Frog).

See this playthrough for an idea of how to get a high score on this board using gapshot methods.

Zuma Blitz Scoring Mechanics

Note: The following information has been updated for the new island. This is a brief summary for each scoring mechanic - For a detailed breakdown of each one with definitions, please see the Scoring Mechanics Guide.

See Scoring Mechanics (Classic) for the mechanics pertaining to the old island (historical reference only)

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Want to know where all of those points are coming from? Look no further.

Note: For all values mentioned below, this is on a frog without food or powers equipped, before multiplier is calculated. Also indicates the total score bonus if only that food (or power) is equipped. Does not include drinks.

Mechanic	Score
Basic Matching	10 per ball
Speed Bonus	+10 per match in quick succession, up to +120 With Speed Shot I: +13 per match, up to +156 With Speed Shot II: +26 per match, up to +312 With Speed Shot III: +35 per match, up to +420 With Spirit Turtle: +20 per match, up to +240 (can stack with speed shot for a total of +40/480 effect) Total speed bonus multiplied by number of balls cleared in a single match
Combos	1000 for 1st combo, 2000 for 2nd, etc. With Combo Corn: 1150 for 1st combo, 2300 for 2nd, etc.
Chain Bonus	110 at 6 chain, 120 at 7 chain, etc. 500 bonus at x10 chain, 750 at x15 chain, etc. With Hasty Pudding: 750 bonus at x10 chain, 1100 at x15 chain, etc. With Cookie Chain: 1000 bonus at x10 chain, 1500 at x15 chain, etc.
Hot Frog	1000 +100 per ball destroyed With Ignition Sauce: 1500 +200 per ball destroyed With Blue Velvet Cupcake: 1200 +150 per ball destroyed
Gap Bonus	9450 for 2 ball gap, -1100 per additional ball gap width, max gap score 11,000 With Gapple Sauce: max gap score 14,000
Fruit	3000 +50% each fruit collected, cumulative (max 22,800 per fruit) With Kiwi Kebab: 3750 +50% each fruit collected, cumulative (max 28,500 per fruit) With Spirit Eagle: 6000 +50% each fruit collected, cumulative (max 45,600 per fruit)
Curve Clear	1000 +100 per second elapsed in-game With Curvy Fries: 1500 +100 per second elapsed in-game
Consolation Bonus	1000 when Cannon is active, a lot more for Hot Frog / Time Balls (relative to score)
Bomb / Chain Blast / Cannon	10 per ball destroyed With Spirit Weasel: 400 per ball destroyed with Cannon With Canned Cran Blast: 500 per Chain Blast
Color Nuke	10 +50 per ball destroyed With Gummi Nukes: 500 +50 per ball destroyed
Wild Shot	+50 on match
Last Hurrah	+1000 per powerup, +100 per ball destroyed With The Last Bite: Additional 10,000 per powerup and +1000 per ball destroyed
Monuments	+7500 +250 per blue ball (Spirit Cat) +7500 +250 per red ball (Spirit Beetle) +7500 +250 per purple ball (Spirit Turtle) +15000 +500 per yellow ball (Spirit Weasel) +9500 +800 per green ball (Spirit Eagle) With Animal Crackers: Additional 750 +25 per ball from Spirit Blast

Comments

They pertain to the Classic version of the game so it will most likely not be relevant.