Rules - 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 ballsave/shield feature. It is not usually dangerous to pursue and is quite easy to complete.

Armor Class

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

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 rules.

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.

You are prompted on what you want to do with the Blacksmith. You can either SPARE or KILL them.

A ball is launched in the shooter lane, but the flippers are disabled. If you hit a TRAIN standup, then you attack the Blacksmith (electing to KILL him). If you miss the standups and let the ball drain, then you choose to SPARE him.

SPARE

BLACKSMITH SPARE screenshot

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 ball shield.
  • Light the jackpot for the center hole by spelling the first letter of BLACKSMITH at the horseshoe. Spell additional letters at the horseshoe to increase the jackpot.
  • The jackpot is according to the number of BLACKSMITH letters spelled as indicated below:
    BLACKSMITH letters spelled Jackpot
    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
  • 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 KILL screenshot

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 on each ball drain as the Blacksmith steals back from you your armor for betraying him. Also, you cannot spell BLACKSMITH for ball shields anymore if you choose this option. These can prove catastrophic especially in the final boss battle.

  • Starts off with one ball and ball shield.
  • 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. Additionally, you will get more ball shield time (20 seconds in Zen/Easy, 15 seconds in Normal, and 10 seconds in Hard/Impossible).
  • 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.
  • After every 2 letters spelled, another ball will be launched into play.
  • While drained balls come back into play, if you drain without a shield active, the Blacksmith will steal your Armor, and your AC permanently 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 of your armor back. And the objective light turns purple (FLEE), meaning you neither killed nor spared the Blacksmith. This will screw your route up.

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 is not present anymore). It also no longer turns off outlane POISON.

Bonus progress

Players can continue spelling BLACKSMITH after the objective is completed. Every completion of BLACKSMITH will potentially award 3 HP at the POTION MOTION Mini-Wizard. In addition, if the Blacksmith is still present, a ball shield of 40 seconds will be activated.