Introduction
Zuma Blitz is a popular game from PopCap and the successor to Bejeweled Blitz. First introduced in December 2010, It involves matching groups of three balls and preventing them from getting over to the end. It was recently updated in September 2012 with a visual rehaul and addding new elements that can shape the outcome of a game.
In the two years since Zuma Blitz was first released, there were groups fully dedicated for pure competitive play for those who didn't believe the game couldn't be taken casually. Weekly group leaderboards allowed players to compare themselves with others in order to both improve their score, and to achieve true glory. Soon the game got boring by many with the same boards... and a new island popped up.
Disclaimer: Most of the graphics contained in this guide are taken from the game, however I wrote all of the tips in this guide. All prices on these pages are provided as is and is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate due to the game being in the beta stage. The person writing this guide is not affiliated with Popcap, he's just another grad student with at least $50k left to pay off.
Changed Features in Kroakatoa
The island has introduced new and exciting features, but nerfed some of the score mechanics that paved the way between casual and hardcore players. This may be an incomplete list.
One Time Transfer
The following is for historial purposes only. Upon launching the early invite (either from header or email), you will no longer be able to play Classic Zuma Blitz.
- Any fortune cookies you have in storage will be lost, and any future fortune cookies sent to you will not be usable, so open them beforehand.
- You will get coins equivilant to the amount of mojo you had, plus 50 percent.
- 1250 coins for each idol collected. (The conversion rate is better than if you bought coins at the new island)
- If you have games left in your 3x mojo potion, each game nets you 1,300 coins. (24h mojo potions covert to 30 games)
- Any games or time left on your XP potion will transfer over.
- All coconuts collected will transfer over to extra lives.
- Any idols spent on Spinner locks, power slots, and unlocking the Last Hurrah power.
- You will get a permanant sticker on your stats page, based on your Mastery level as well as some rare food items. If you reached lvl 80 but didn't pursue mastery, you will get a 'Lvl 80' sticker. If you made it to at least level 5 and got at least one spirit animal promotion but never made it to level 80, you will get a 'Veteran' sticker.
- You are refunded 1300 coins for each idol you spent on treasure slots you purchased using idols.
- Extra coins up to 20% of the above total based on your mastery level.
- You will also get bonuses based on your level:
- Lvl 10 - Bomb powerup x20
- Lvl 20 - 375k coins (reduced if you're not level 80)
- Lvl 30 - 25x life
- Lvl 40 - 24hr 2x XP potion
- Lvl 50 - Cannon powerup x20
- Lvl 60 - 24hr life
- You will start on the new island at level 5.
- Any powers you had unlocked when you transfer it will be usable immediately without having to level up first.
Collecting Coins
- You can still collect coins (and coconuts) from feeds from the older version of the game.
- You no longer earn coins per game, instead you get coins per star gained. (This fixed an issue that allows people to set the MojoMultiplier value in Fiddler to extremely high values, causing them to earn millions of mojo per game. This however doesn't stop rapid XP gains)
- Coins earned from daily spin improved significantly, from 100/200/400/800/2000 mojo to 500/1000/2500/5000/10000, and can now share 1000 to friends per spin.
- Any treasure chests collected are now Zuma Spins.
Gameplay and Scoring Changes
Sorted from in my opinion the largest changes to the smallest. This doesn't cover score changes - See Score Mechanics for more details on this.
- Levels are now represented as stars and rank. There are 400 levels in the game, however powers are only unlocked up to level 108, and remaining levels will only give you coins. Level ups will only give you a few extra lives instead of maxing out your life bar.
- You can no longer double tap for max points - unlike the classic version where your second shot is guaranteed to get the max of 10,000 initial points from your gap, the second gap is scored based on the size of the gap it passed through. The gap score has been scaled up to compensate.
- Hot frog explosion radius is slightly larger, since it's possible to hit fruit with one hot frog shot instead of two on one board.
- Fruit scoring now changed, the bonus is fixed at 3000 points but each successive fruit is now 50% more than the previous one instead of 50% more from the base value (leading to a whopping 482k per fruit with eagle/kiwi after six fruits with 9x). The type of fruit that appears is randomized each game.
- Starting at level 8, you can equip an additional food items to buff up one (or two) of your stats (for any of the 150+ variables in the game that affect your frog)
- You can use a color guide to get an idea where your balls are headed. This is turned on by default but you can always turn it off in the Options menu. It is recommended that you turn this off as your shots will not fire any faster with the laser guide on, leading to more missed shots.
- The hot frog meter now drains gradually instead of fully emptying if you don't keep making matches. It won't drain as long as you keep firing shots at the fastest rate possible. (This is not linked to the speed bonus)
- Speed Shot powers now increase your speed bonus - and can also cause your score not to end in a zero. (This is gonna break some rudimentary score cheat detectors).
- Monuments can be used in a streak for a discount, however they are initially slightly more expensive.
- Ball knockback can be up to three times as great as it was in the previous version, the faster a ball rolls back the more the balls will be knocked back.
- Death by curve clear can no longer occur if you clear a curve enough times.
- Curve clears can only trigger once every second.
- There is an additional point bonus at a x10 chain and every 5x chain after that.
- If you blast a cannon powerup with hot frog, remaining hot frog shots will fire in multiple directions, but they will not penetrate balls.
- Two additional powers introduced, Color Nuke and Wild Shot.
- Last hurrah is auto-triggered at the end of each game.
- You can also score bonus points post-game (consolation bonus) based on one or more of the following:
- The last shot hits a time ball or triggers a combo with a time ball (low points)
- After a color is removed from a spirit animal blast, any combos that occur after matches with a time ball.
- Having a hot frog or cannon ball in the frog's mouth when time is called (surprisingly, more points if you have the last hot frog shot in the frog's mouth than if it was fired)
- XP based off of techniques pulled off, such as curve clears, hot frog, gap shots, and fruit, not score/balls cleared. It starts at 100 XP with 1 XP for each technique and has no upper bound.
- If you die before running out of time your XP for that game is reduced by 50.
Shop Changes
- Coins are buyable with real cash as usual, however they are more expensive and do not account for inflation.
- Lives are buyable using coins (ranging from 5000 coins / life to 4000 / life per 100). Unlimited play for a set time, however, requires actual cash.
- 2x XP potions for a set number of games use coins, but timed XP potions require actual cash.
- You can buy powers in bulk for a reduced price. (5% reduction for 20, 20% reduction for 100)
- Spirit Animals can be used multiple times in a row with a slight reduction in cost for each successive use. (This ends up to be slightly less in cost than Classic Zuma Blitz but only if you buy three in a row).
- Food is also buyable in packs of five. One food item is discounted at 20% off as a spcial.
- There are now 'Bundles' available in the shop to buy sets of powers and food for a reduced cost, this is the only way to get a very useful food item (Gapple Sauce).
Leaderboard / Misc Changes
- New spirit animals: Dire Wolf, Pegasus, Gryphon, Dragon, Giant Squid, designed for hardcore players. They are awarded at 2.5 million, 3 million, 3.5 million, 4 million, and 4.5 million respectively.
- All spirit animals are available from the start, so you don't need to worry about not getting one due to a low level.
- Leaderboard does NOT show how many spirit animal tokens a person has collected after reaching GOLD on a spirit animal.
- Leaderboard does NOT also show their past five week history, and API calls will not display a person's score, preventing collection of data used to create Top 200 Leaderboards.
- Music is adjustable. (This includes the 15 second warning too)
- You can send a life to each friend playing the game once every 12 hours, and a daily gift once per day.
- You can abort a game early and end the game with zero xp, however you can still share spirit animals and get high scores without having to advance in level.
Bugs Found
The survey only covers game failures and things that unbalance the game, not game bugs. As of March 1 2012:
- Powerups can still be collected well after they disappear.
- It is possible to fire normal balls when targeting the color nuke laser off the screen if you click fast enough.
- Your frog is fast enough to fire two shots that your second shot can negate a match that the first shot would otherwise make, and push balls that are being cleared.
- When you level up, The promotion / got a star screen doesn't always appear, although you will still get your coins.
- An additional multiplier ball can appear at x9, but it won't show anything. You can collect it but your multiplier doesn't go up.
- The MultiplierMax and HotFrogShots parameters at the end of the game isn't being recorded correctly, the first one being incorrectly reported in the Game Stats.
- Gap shot can still occur after Last Hurrah.
- Stuff from the old island may not transfer to the new island, leaving players empty-handed.
- Golden skulls do not face in the correct direction on the board.
Documentation Errors (on Popcap Help Page)
- Color Nuke III actually unlocks at lvl 102, not 98
- You can't hit fruit with a Color Nuke.
- Kiwi Kebab doesn't make fruit appear faster.
- The Last Bite power actually more than doubles your normal Last Hurrah bonus (consider the 'double' an understatement). The text was corrected to no longer 'double' in-game.
Features Requested
- Coins after each game (suggested to pay out equal to balls destroyed)
- Change the sound of hot frog fireballs, it sounds too metallic.
- Increase number of lives available and regen times, unless it's a level bonus.
- Back button on the food select
Noted Changes to Zuma Blitz
It's been heard of that the best time to do any major game changes would be in weekly installments when the new board is rolled out. Note: not really updated anymore
- Week of 9/18:
- The game now tells you when you hit a time / multiplier ball. The 'collect from disappeared powerup' bug still exists.
- Share high score feeds now tell you how many points you earned.
- Added new food in the works.
- Week of 9/25:
- Unique Board Change. (no version change)
- Week of 10/1:
- Fixed the Wide Gap Shots technique so it no longer gives ridiculous ammounts of points and scaled up single gaps. Multiple gaps are still an issue though.
- When scoring points, scores over 1000 are properly formatted.
- Added 'Bundles' and Food Items (some cost more)
- Score is now given with each monument share post.
- Food animation can be skipped
- Added Bundles. Note: Gapper's Delight is 15% off compared to buying items separately when you first unlock Speed Shot but at its max level, it equates to up to 40% off if speed shot is at its max level.
- Week of 10/29:
- Werefrog Week
- Added additional food and changed a few tooltips
- Additional ranks added up to level 400.
- Week of 11/5:
- Improved header
- Ability to change your frogatar (currently: Blue Frog and Werefrog). No extra powers with each of them. (except if you happen to manually change your frogatar to a spirit animal...)
- Fruit sound reverted to the one in classic Zuma Blitz by user feedback.
- Week of 11/13:
- Message Center now available replacing the redeem lives box, this allows you to send gifts to people who are otherwise off your Top 50 leaderboard.
- Daily Gift, gifts are intially valued at around 3k-4k coins in value, though this can change.
- Once you receive a gift and accept, you automatically send a 100 coin gift back to them.
- You can only receive one daily gift per friend per day.
- Daily Gifts change every day at 4pm.
- You have three days to redeem gifts.
- You can now only post a high score share once you have more than your high score. This fixes a loophole that allowed players to keep posting up zero scores indefinitely in order to share lots of coins.
- Pink Frog in the works as a frogatar.
- Gapple Sauce and Pyro Popcorn is no longer (individiually) buyable from the store.
- Four additional food items in production for Christmas/New Years, will have more info on it later.
- Powers says 'Equip' instead of 'Purchased' if you have some in reserve.
- Rank cap increased to at least 240 and now shows the correct level on the right side.
- Frogatar now displays correctly in the detailed player stats.
- Week of 12/4:
- Four additional food items have graphics and stuff.
- Spirit Turtle is operational, although the graphics are not finished yet.
- There is a Pink Frog available as a Frogatar.
- Week of 12/19:
- Extended Stats now available. Access it using the 'Stats' button after the game ends.
- Addition of Spirit Turtle Monument. Instant Hot Frog on collecting fruit and extra points for playing fast. Go for those curve clears.
- Slight increase in average ball cluster size.
- Additional possible frogatars available to choose from expanded to eight, and will unlock as more become available.
- You can no longer change your default frogatar into a spirit animal to bypass the monument cost. Full disclosure on this exploit is given in the 'cheats' section.
- The island girl now has earmuffs and a scarf... but it should probably be snowing as well.
- Speed Shot III changed: Ball Speed 50% -> 70% and Speed Bonus: 3x -> 3.5x
- Feberuary 2013:
- Pink Frog is now oficially available as a frogatar.
- Graphics are available for the following Frogatars: Dragon, Spiny White Frog, Normal Kitten.
- Additional food items were added with the Progressive Insurance theme, they might be sponsoring.
- An animation of you eating an invisible food item is now shown if you try to use a food item which you don't have any of.