ZumaBlitzTips Guide version 1.0 February 5, 2010 by Gary Warner The ZumaBlitzTips Facebook group exists to help people improve their score in Zuma Blitz. Anyone is welcome to join, although we ask that group members remember to have the attitude that we are here to help each player achieve their best personal score and to encourage one another, not belittle or boast. There are many different strategies for getting high scores on Zuma. This document is intended to show some of them, giving some examples from our ZumaBlitzTips group of how they work and how they have scored big for some of our members. This document came about through collecting posts from our group. Tip: Don t Lose Heart! Our first tip to players is Don t Lose Heart! Some of our players can earn scores of 2 million points per game. That is not possible when you first start playing. As you advance through the levels up to level 80, the Golden Frog level, you are giving many bonuses along the way. Your shots go faster. You have a higher chance of Critical Hits. You regenerate hearts faster. You have powers at your disposal that will BLOW YOUR MIND when you receive them. Even playing with no powers, high level players should always be able to make more points than low level players. Playing the Game Before we get in to tips, let s point out a couple basic game play icons just in case. Our objective, of course, is to make the balls go away in a way that makes us points. In the picture to the left, the frog has a yellow ball in his mouth. We want to throw that ball so that it creates three or more of the same color, which will make that particular color sequence pop (or go away) and generate points for us. There are three places we can do that with a yellow ball in this picture. Two in the top row, and one in the bottom left corner right next to the X5 ball. In the picture to the left, I ve circled some of the primary targets that appear in a game. Circled in lime color are two hourglasses (both happen to be red they can be any color). When you pop a sequence containing an hourglass, more time is added to your game clock. 1
Circled in white is a Multiplier ball. If you shoot a multiplier ball, everything you do that generates points in the game is multiplied by that multiplier. Your current multiplier is shown in the top left corner. So, in this picture, everything I do is multiplied by 4. The multiplier balls are presented in order, with x9 being the highest possible multiplier. So, in this picture I ve already popped the x3 and x4 ball. Because I am using the Multiplier power, I began my game with x2 already in place. The yellow ball with the three balls icon on it in the bottom row, circled in red, is a Cannon icon. These icons are only in play if you are using the Cannon power. The purple ball with a Starburst icon on it is an example of the Bomb icon. Popping this icon results in an explosion that will destroy all nearby balls. The radius of the explosion is improved on further powers that you get at higher levels. (At low levels you won t have Super Cannon or Voodoo Bombs you would have Cannon and Bombs) The other thing on the board of value is the fruit (circled in yellow on the bottom left). Each piece of fruit is worth more than the previous piece of fruit, so at the beginning of the level, fruit is not very worthwhile, but if you can do it five or six times on the same level, it runs into major points! Tip: Hot Frog -- Be accurate and play fast! There are a number of reasons to work on your speed and accuracy. A theme to the game is that when you do things to please the Zuma gods, you get rewarded. The most pleasing thing of all is ACCURACY. If you miss two shots in a row, any speed bonus that you had is automatically wiped out. If you are playing fast, and not missing shots, you will see the speed indicator behind the frog in the top right of your game begin to show color. As soon as any blue color is showing, you are beginning to gain a speed bonus for every shot you make. As the color moves through yellow, orange, and red, your bonus goes up and up. If you miss a single shot, the bonus is not removed, but if you miss two shots in a row, you immediately are reduced to cold frog no bonus points at all. As your speed indicator moves to red, you will begin to notice that you spit balls much faster than normal. Ultimately, you will be transformed to HOT FROG which causes your frog to throw fireballs! Normally you will throw three fireballs and then return to normal. There are a few special hot frog tips. If you are using the Cannon power, and one of your fireballs hits a cannon ball, your next fireball will be a TRIPLE fireball! Also, you can use the power Inferno Frog to throw fireballs four times instead of three. The Sun Frog power allows five fireballs instead of three. For some players, Hot Frog is their main scoring technique. These players concentrate only on speed, and some of them are able to encounter Hot Frog as many as three times in a single game! Although you can 2
throw a single miss before your speed bonus is removed, it is better to not miss at all. Also, speed is not the only consideration. Any special moves accelerate the growth of your speed bonus. Gap shots and Combination shots both move the speed indicator up to Hot Frog faster. Tip: Use a Real Mouse We ve discovered that the greatest hindrance to high scores in Zuma Blitz is trying to play on a laptop without a real mouse. In most cases where someone has been greatly frustrated by their lack of high scoring games, we ve found that the problem was they were playing on a laptop trying to use the internal mouse pad built into their laptop keyboard. It can t be done. Switch to a real mouse and you will immediately increase your scores in a dramatic fashion! Likewise, we ve found that people using a wireless mouse also can t score. The degree of accuracy and control needed for a high scoring game just can t be accomplished with a wireless mouse. Tip: Shut Down Other Apps for Better Speed If you are having problems with the game being sluggish we ve found that having certain other applications open at the same time can really drag down the performance of your game. The worst ones seem to be streaming music. I know it s a big sacrifice, but if you are trying for a high score, pause any streaming music apps that you have on and you will likely find the sluggish game performance disappears. Tip: GAPS and Double Gaps One strategy for winning games is to go after gap shots. It s possible to get more than 500,000 points and more JUST on your gap shots! The key to really big gap scores is to have TINY gaps and to create situations where a gap can be left open to use many shots. When a gap is too big, the scores for using that gap are very small. Sometimes a gap shot is only 2,000 points. 3
When gaps are small, though, the gap points can be 20,000 points, or with a high multiplier, as high as 50,000 points. With double gaps, a single shot can be worth as much as a 100,000 points or more! Some of our group members had early success with extremely high scores at extremely low levels just by mastering the art of the gap shot. In the gap shot pictured below, we are going through one small gap, and one TINY gap. Popping the red ball in the top row in this circumstance was worth about 35,000 points at Multiplier x2. Repeating this at Multiplier x7 would have been over 100,000 points. Multiplier level, size of gaps, and double gap bonuses all are taken into account on calculating Gap score. Tip: Know Your Ball When you right-click in the game, the ball in your frog s mouth is swapped with the next ball. Right click again to switch it back. If your game strategy is based entirely on speed, you won t want to use this tip, but there are many cases, including Chain and Gap strategies, where knowing your backup ball color is critical. Consider the board just above. The frog has a red ball in his mouth. If we right clicked and found another red ball, we could do a very fast gap shot below, by shooting two clicks, as fast as possible, hitting the four-ball red chain followed by the two-ball red chain. Because the four-ball is a non-closing gap (green won t collapse back to blue) we may be able to leave that gap open to hit a yellow, purple, green, and blue gap shot before the gap is closed up just letting the bottom row slide behind. In order to do that though, we would be constantly rotating our mouth ball using the right click. If the ball is a color we need for the gap, we throw it through the gap on the bottom. If we don t have the gap colored ball either in mouth or in backup, then we throw balls at the top until we get a gap-colored ball. Tip: Combos of Opportunity If you are accustomed to playing the full Zuma game, as opposed to the Blitz version, you might be frustrated by trying to build combos. A combo is a shot where popping one color causes the surrounding colors to collapse back and also pop. In Zuma Blitz the game is too short to strategize on multi-level combo building. But we need to take advantage of Combos of Opportunity. In the game image above, do you see the combo? Throwing red to the bottom right of the board! Red pops and yellow collapses together to pop which causes green to collapse together and pop. While combos are not a strong path to high score in Zuma, they ARE a path to Hot Frog. Combos are rewarded very well on the speed indicator. When you are 4
playing for Hot Frog and don t have an immediately visible match, remember to ball swap for other options. When given a choice between a pop and a combo train yourself to ALWAYS take the combo! Tip: Blow Stuff Up! While several of our group members like the combo above, remember that any form of explosion can help you take out hourglasses. If you have an hourglass as a single ball, the temptation is often to try to match it with a second and then a third ball of the same color. Using any of the explosion powers can give you an alternative to that, but ESPECIALLY the chain power that you will read about below. The same is true for Fruit. It could be that there is no way for you to throw enough balls of the right color to get at a piece of fruit. Instead look to see if you can EXPLODE the piece of fruit. Triggering a bomb near the fruit or hourglass is one way to claim the prize. The problem with bombs is that they are limited in range. Cannons are much better, because a cannon can be aimed in any direction. In the picture at the right, the cannon is being aimed which will explode the fruit. When a Cannon icon is popped the frog transforms into a cannon which can then be aimed. When fired, the cannon throws cannon balls in the same direction, blowing up everything in their path, to the edge of the screen. By contrast, when a bomb icon is popped an explosion happens immediately, destroying all balls within a certain radius of the explosion. Any special icons that are triggered by either the cannon shot or the bomb explosion detonate and take their special action. In the picture above, the purple bomb will explode, and the fruit will be claimed. If an hourglass had been destroyed, it also would have granted extra time. If a multiplier had been destroyed, it would multiply your score. If a Cannon is used to shoot another cannon icon, the frog becomes a cannon for a second shot. Bombs that trigger bombs can cause chain reaction explosions, sometimes taking out very large portions of the board with one shot. Tip: The Power of Time Several players have found that one of the most useful powers has to do with the Hourglass. Almost any scoring strategy you use can benefit from your game lasting longer. As you advance through the levels, you will have ever powerful hourglass powers. Chrono Ball comes first, and changes the extra time per hourglass ball from 3 seconds to four seconds. Tempus Fugis changes that again to five seconds, and Time Lord changes that again to six seconds per hourglass. At high levels, a game may be able to be extended by more than an extra minute using the hourglasses! There are several places where that extra time is realized for huge bonuses. Perhaps the first is Multiplier bonuses. 5
Without extra time it is very rare to reach the highest multiplier, which is 9x. At 9x, a shot that should have scored you 2,000 points such as a wide gap shot now earns you 18,000 points! Can you see how that can help your score? In the same way, it is possible to get ridiculous fruit bonuses through time extension. Combinations that use Fruit powers with Hourglass powers can see extremely high fruit bonuses. Here s the highest I ve seen, posted by group member Bethany Burke. 731,850 points worth of fruit! Bethany is a level 80 player, and in this game used Chain, Multiplier, and Timelord powers. Tip: Chain Power A chain in Zuma Blitz is a series of hits where each resulted in balls being popped (the term I use for causing a three in a row color sequence to disappear). If you do this twice in a row, you have a chain of two. If you do this twenty-six times in a row, as Bethany did above, you have a nice bonus. Here are three games I played using the same combo as Bethany (but at a lower level. I have the x2 Multiplier, Super Chains, and Tempus Fugis, where she had Time Lord, x3 Multiplier and Mega Chains). You see that my best consecutive chain was 55 hits in a row with no misses, which lead to two Hot Frogs, and some nice speed bonuses. The benefit of the Chain powers is that when you hit 10 times in a row, it causes an explosion. After that, you get an explosion every fifth chain you hit. So, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, etc, each cause an explosion. When you have Super Chains the Chain explosions begin at 9 times in a row, and hit every fourth hit. So, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25, etc. each cause an explosion. The chain explosion is especially useful, because it can be used to strategically detonate nearby icons. After my chain is activated, I count to myself: one, two, three, BOOM, one, two, three BOOM. (If you have chains instead of super chains it would be: one, two, three, four, BOOM, one, two, three, four, BOOM.) By keeping a good counter on which ball is going to explode, you can try to make the explosion near an unpoppable hourglass, multiplier, or piece of fruit for maximum advantage. While my favorite power combo is shown above (Hourglass, Chains, Multiplier), on certain boards I enjoy playing an All Explosions power set of Bombs, Cannons, and Chains. (See Blow Stuff Up above.) 6
Tip: Fun Without Mojo Obviously when you play with three powers at the same time, you burn through mojo at a ridiculous rate. To make the time more enjoyable as you build more mojo, we have a few no power challenges for you to attempt. NoMojoChallenge: Longest Chain What is the longest chain you can get with no mojo? NoMojoChallenge: Highest Score OK, you can get a million points with your three level 80 powers but what can you do WITH NO POWERS? Share your best NO POWERS screen shot back to the ZumaBlitzTips group. Be sure to include your level so we can know how impressed we should be! NoMojoChallenge: Best Gap Shots What is the best Gap Shot score you can generate with no powers? Tip: Shopping Tips and Facebook Credit Strategy There are several opportunities to buy things in the Store to improve your game. One of the things we ve pretty much decided as a group is that it is never worth it to buy Mojo. Playing with No Power allows you to earn Mojo, and to practice the fundamentals of the game speed and accuracy that will help you become a better player. In the same way, we pretty much never recommend buying a Full Refill. What IS worth it is to buy 24 hour life, 24 hour mojo doubling, and 24 hour XP doubling. If you have a short time to play, let yourself regen and play again in an hour. If you have a LONG time to play, go ahead and buy the 24 hour life! Double Mojo means that you earn mojo at twice the normal rate. This allows you to earn enough mojo to play with powers twice as fast! Double XP means that you earn Experience at twice the normal rate. Experience is used to gain levels. Being a higher level allows access to much better powers, faster regen rate, and higher chances of critical hits. If you are addicted to Zuma Blitz, you want to buy higher level as soon as possible. Some people think it is unreasonable to buy Idols to improve your game. I ll share my rationalization, and the best way to use your shopping credits below. $1.50 gets 15 facebook credits $5 gets 50 facebook credits $10 gets 110 facebook credits $15 gets 160 facebook credits ($5 + $10) $20 gets 220 facebook credits ($10 + $10) We want to buy 800 idols, which costs 125 Facebook Credits. The cheapest way to do that one time is to buy $10 (110) + $1.50 (125). (Of course the ECONOMICAL way, if you are going to do this more than once eventually is to buy 220 for $20.) 24 hour life costs 100 idols 7
24 hour mojo costs 15 24 hour xp costs 100 If you've got an "all-day to play" day coming up, for 225 idols, you can get unlimited hearts, double mojo (good for powers) and double xp (good for levels). With 800 idols, you can do that three times (645) and have room to do 24 hour mojo ten more times. I enjoy going to the movie theater, and sometimes watch 3D movies. One ticket is $13. For less than the cost of one 3D movie ($11.50 vs $13), I could have THREE 24-hour days of rocking Zuma, plus TEN MORE DAYS of double mojo. That, my friends, is Economically-priced entertainment! This document is Gary Warner gar@askgar.com please don t plagiarize! The tips here are just a few of the things we ve shared in the Facebook Group ZumaBlitzTips if you love the game like we do, come join us! Watch for new versions and join the group and post your own suggestions for making this document better. This is just the beginning. 8