Objective: Blacksmith

One of the citizens of Wallden is a well-renowned Blacksmith. He wants to help you in your journey by providing you upgrades to your defensive equipment.
This objective equates to the ballsaver / shield feature. It is not usually dangerous to pursue and is quite easy to complete.

Armor Class / Ballsave

Every player has an armor class stat. This defines how long their ballsave / shield lasts in most circumstances. The AC can be increased to a maximum of 20. The starting AC depends on the game difficulty:

• Zen: 10 AC
• Easy: 9 AC
• Normal: 8 AC
• Hard: 7 AC
• Impossible: 6 AC

Unless otherwise noted, every time a ball is plunged into play outside of multiball, a player will have a shield equal to armor class seconds. There are many other ways a shield is activated as well, which is outlined throughout the game play documentation.

Increasing Armor Class

To increase the armor class, you must spell BLACKSMITH. At any time, you can shoot the horseshoe when it has a flashing letter to collect. The left side has BLACK and the right side has SMITH. Completing BLACKSMITH will increase the player's armor class by 1, assuming it is not already at the maximum of 20.

Each completion of BLACKSMITH will also activate, or increase, the ball shield by the new AC number of seconds * 2 (if playing a mode with infinite shield, it will instead add mode time equal to 1 * your new AC). One strategy is to ensure BLACKSMITH is near completion before starting a major objective so that BLACKSMITH can be finished to add or increase the ball shield for that objective.

Also note that spelling BLACK when left outlane poison is lit will turn it off. And spelling SMITH when right outlane poison is lit will turn it off.

Completing the objective

After reaching an Armor Class of 20, the center hole begins flashing purple (when in normal gameplay). Shoot the hole to complete the BLACKSMITH objective.
Upon completing the BLACKSMITH objective, the blacksmith will give you a few words of wisdom. Then, you have the choice to SPARE or KILL the blacksmith.

SPOILER WARNING

Befriend (SPARE): Blacksmith Mini-Wizard

Unlike in most objectives where you have an additional objective when choosing SPARE, since Blacksmith is your ally from the start, things work backwards; the KILL option has the additional objective.
If you elect to befriend the Blacksmith, then the Blacksmith mini-wizard begins.

• 5-ball multiball with 60 seconds ballsave / shield.
• Light the jackpot for the center hole by spelling the first letter of BLACKSMITH at the horseshoe.
• The jackpot is according to the number of BLACKSMITH letters spelled as indicated below:
  • 1: 4,000,000
  • 2: 10,000,000
  • 3: 18,000,000
  • 4: 28,000,000
  • 5: 40,000,000
  • 6: 54,000,000
  • 7: 70,000,000
  • 8: 88,000,000
  • 9: 108,000,000
  • 10: 150,000,000 (Super Jackpot and instantly collected without needing to shoot the hole)
• Collecting the jackpot at the center hole will award the jackpot, reset the jackpot value, and reset all BLACKSMITH lights. Therefore, it may be worth your while to build up the jackpot by spelling letters before collecting it.

After draining 4 of your 5 balls, A 10-second last hurrah timer begins before the mini-wizard ends.

KILL: Blacksmith Boss Battle

If you elect to kill the Blacksmith, then the Blacksmith engages you in battle. This is a particularly dangerous battle because, although you won't lose HP, you will lose AC as the Blacksmith steals back from you your armor for betraying him. Also, you can no-longer spell BLACKSMITH for ball shields if you choose this option. These can prove catastrophic especially in the final boss battle.

• Starts off with one ball and ball shield.
  • For each letter of BLACKSMITH spelled, [more] ball shield time is added.
  • The length of ball shield depends on game difficulty: Zen and Easy is 20 seconds, normal is 15 seconds, and hard and impossible is 10 seconds.
  • After every 2 letters of BLACKSMITH is spelled, another ball comes into play.
• Shoot either ramp to ready your attack (lights the corresponding horseshoe; e.g. left ramp lights left horseshoe, right ramp lights right horseshoe)
• Shoot the horseshoe to spell a letter of BLACK or SMITH, depending on which side you shoot, and get awarded 10,000,000 points. This deals 10 HP damage to the Blacksmith. The respective horseshoe shot will turn off and the respective ramp will re-light.
• Repeat the process until you spell BLACKSMITH to kill the Blacksmith. You will score a bonus 50,000,000 points if you kill the Blacksmith.
• Warning!: While drained balls come back into play, if you drain without a shield active, the Blacksmith will steal your Armor, and your AC drops by 1.
  • If your AC drops to 0, you fail the battle. The Blacksmith runs away from you because he has no reason now to stay; he took all your armor back. And the objective light turns purple, meaning you neither killed nor spared the Blacksmith.

If you end the battle with less than 5 AC, your AC will return to 5. However, after the battle, spelling BLACKSMITH no longer increases the AC or activate ball shields (because the blacksmith was either killed or ran away). It also no longer turns off outlane POISON.

After Objective Completion

Players can continue spelling BLACKSMITH after the objective is completed. Every completion of BLACKSMITH will award 3 HP at the Potion Motion Mini-Wizard. In addition, if the blacksmith was SPAREd, a ball shield of 40 seconds will be activated.