Powers

Powers turn the tide of gameplay for the better, pointwise. This page covers both Classic and Kroakatoa versions.

Equippable Powers

Powers are sorted by how they appear in the Classic version of the game, as well as by power level. Numbers in parentheses indicate normal mojo / coin costs per game.

On Krokatoa Island, you can stockpile powers. Note:

Powerups Cost: Tier II: Tier III:
Bombs / Speed Shot 500 1000 2000
Fruit Master / Wild Shot 1500 2000 3000
Sands of Time / Multiplier / Cannon / Chain Blast / Color Nuke 3000 4000 5000:
Bombs (500 / 1000): Costs 500 mojo per game. Bomb powerups start appearing on the game screen over normal balls. Once matched, destroys any ball within a seven ball diameter (175 pixels). Unlocked at level 5. Remember, only ten of them can be on the screen at one time, although you probably won't see more than three in a typical game.
Tiki Bombs (1000 / 1500): Starting at level 38, tiki bombs replaced normal bombs. They appear more often (around 25% faster), but their price is doubled at 1000 mojo a game.
Voodoo Bombs (2000 / 2000): Available at level 59, the more potent Voodoo Bombs have the same frequency as Tiki Bombs, but they produce a slightly larger explosion radius. It does comes at a price of a large mojo cost (2000 per game), however.
Last Hurrah (500 / 0*): Costs 500 mojo per game. Once matched, two spirits come from the skulls to the start of the curve, and any powerups in their way are detonated with a five ball explosion radius, activating their effects. Available at level 7.

Automatically activated after every game at Kroakatoa at no cost.

Mega Hurrah (1000 / 4000*): At level 41, your Last Hurrah gets upgraded with double the mojo cost. However your points per explosion double as well. Despite that increase, you still don’t get a lot of points overall, so don’t expect to climb up the leaderboard with this.

Almost equivalant to using the food item The Last Bite.

Speed Shot (500 / 1000): Increases the speed of your shots by 10%. Not much but it could help when you are nearing max speed.
Super Speed (1000 / 1500): Increases the power of your speed shot to 20%. Shot speeds start to get more noticeable.

This power also increases the points from the speed bonus - however a post from Popcap Tara reveals that using this power may result in scores not ending with a zero. (Source)

Warp Speed (2000 / 2000): Further increases the speed of your shots to 30%. Despite their claims at balls flying at ludicrous speed, they are still not that fast, but its speed is noticiable enough to make leading balls a cinch, especially with the golden frog, where its speed effects are additive.

On Kroakatoa your shots are 50% faster and your speed bonus is more than tripled (3.5x to be exact).

Cannonball (1000 / 3000): Starting at level 16, it allows you to fire a controllable three way cannonball destroying any balls, powerups, and fruit in the way. Cannonballs can also be activated while in hot frog mode allowing you to unleash a flurry of ball destruction. It takes a while before another of these powerups appears again.
Cannon King (2000 / 4000): This upgrades the cannon at lvl 46, costing 2000 mojo a game to use. Cannon powerups appear 25% more often than usual, which means more time with the cannon, but only one cannon powerup can be on the board at any one time.
Super Cannon (4000 / 5000): Available at level 69, this modified cannon fires four of them (five with the weasel spirit animal). Make the most out of this powerup and combine Hot Frog with Cannon. Tip: Don’t expect to create small gaps when using this powerup.
Inferno Frog (750 / 2000): Starting at level 19, this power allows you to fire four hot frog shots in a row.
Sun Frog (1500 / 3000): This upgrades the inferno frog at level 50 and adds one extra shot, allowing you to fire five hot frog shots in a row. Now you have the power to clear an extremely long curve or a few short ones.
Fruit Master (750 / 1500): At level 23, this powerup becomes unlocked. Fruit appears somewhat more often by around 25%. At this stage the powerup doesn’t make much of a difference.
Juicy Fruit (1500 / 2000): makes fruit appear 50% more often. You get this at level 53.
Epic Fruit (3000 / 3000): makes fruit appear twice as often. For a huge sum of mojo, you can easily reach the maximum possible score you can get for one fruit. It might be expensive, but this comprises over a million points for many elite players at level 80.
Chain Blast (1000 / 3000): At level 27, this powerup is unlocked. For a mere 1,000 mojo a game, it causes a small explosion at x10 chain, and every x5 chain after that.
Super Chain (2000 / 4000): This becomes available at level 56. It causes an explosion at x9 and every x4 chain after that. Caution is advised when rapid firing and expecting make two matches in close proximity; the chain explosion from the first match that destroys nearby balls may cause your second shot to miss.
Mega Chain (4000 / 5000): At level 75, this power increases the chain explosion radius to that of a Voodoo Bomb. It's not advised to use since it costs 4,000 mojo a game and lots of speed is required to put it to good use.
Wild Shot (1500/2000/3000): Obtained fairly early on the new island, it allows you to fire off a Wild Shot every 15/13/11 normal shots. Unlike other powerup balls, you can swap the ball with the one on your back for delayed use. The wild shot will match any color it hits dead on, including single balls. If it doesn't, it picks the one with the most points (favoring powerups and combos).
Color Nuke (3000/4000/5000) The second of the new powerups. Like in Zuma's revenge, you have the ability to fire a laser towards a ball that wipes that color off a curve. The second upgrade increases their spawn rate by 25% while the final upgrade affects both curves.

Notes:

  • Unlike other powerups, laser shots are not used up until the last hot frog shot is fired.
  • Laser shots can accumulate if you happen to collect more than one during hot frog mode, and you keep firing lasers until you have used them all up.
  • Laser shots do not break your chain or your combo, so you can use them after a salvo of hot frog shots with Spirit Turtle to keep those high combos going (assuming you used the combo scoring glitch).
  • Laser shots are not hitscan so you might need to aim ahead a bit to get the ball you want. If you happen to miss a ball entirely the laser shot is given back to you.
  • You cannot hit fruit with a laser shot, it will go right through it.
Chrono Balls (1000 / 3000): This power becomes unlocked at level 30. With a cost of 1,000 mojo a game, it adds 1 more second for each time ball collected, for a total of six seconds per time ball. It might not be much, but it adds around 20% more time on average to your game than without the power.

On Kroakatoa Island this power is named Sands of Time.

Tempus Fugit (2000 / 4000): At level 66, your chrono balls get upgraded to Tempus Fugit (latin for 'time flies'). It adds two more seconds to time balls (total of 7 seconds). One minute of extra time is common with this power, but on average 70% more time is gained when using this power.
Timelord (4000 / 5000): At level 77, this is where the value of time balls increases dramatically. It gives you eight seconds per time ball, and can double (and sometimes triple) your normal game time. Some games last so long near the end that the gods playing the drums near the end of the game eventually got tired and stopped abruptly.

Expensive but it is hands down one of the best powers available, and a must-have for any high scoring game. You are almost guaranteed to top the leaderboard against players who are similar in skill to you if they are below level 77.

Fun Fact: There has been a report of a player getting 2:24 extra time from using the beetle monument (and 2:48 for Kroakatoa), and even higher when certain food items are used.

Multiplier (1000 / 4000): The last power (or not, if you bought it at a steep price of 150 idols) unlocks at level 34. Your multiplier starts at x2.
Multi Multiplier (2000 / 5000): At level 79, this power increases your starting multiplier to x3. With this power, double gap strategies can be started earlier. However there is still a default x9 multiplier limitation.

Frog and Passive Upgrades

On Kroakatoa, Time balls and Hot Frog are automatically active, and all Spirit Animals and Power Slots are unlocked. Treasure Chest becomes a free Daily Spin. All other passive upgrades are unobtainable. Mastery Mode on the previous island is saved in your extended stats, and cannot be leveled up.

Time Balls: This time ball becomes your first powerup ball you unlock at level 2 that appears alongside multiplier balls. Your ‘one minute game’ isn’t just a minute anymore, it’s much longer than that. You normally get 5 seconds per ball, averaging 30 extra seconds per game if you collect them all, but this can be increased later on via powers.
Hot Frog: Starting at level 3, you can pick up speed bonuses by making matches quickly, and the speed of your balls will increase after each match once you’ve maxed out your speed bonus. Once the hot frog meter is full, you enter hot frog mode, and can fire off three explosive shots, emptying your hot frog meter in the process.
Spirit Animals: Keeps track of your score achievements, each with six circles of mastery. Higher levels unlock more spirit animals allowing higher scores to be saved to your stats page as well as increasing the mojo value of each fortune cookie you open. Spirit animals go up to 2 million score on the old island, and 4.5 million on Kroakatoa.

(Personally, they should keep track of your scores even though you haven’t unlocked that spirit animal for that score bracket yet. )

Life Container: It increases your number of hearts by 1, meaning you can play more games in a single sitting. You can accumulate a maximum of nine hearts at level 33. If you run out of hearts, you have a chance of getting a refill via a coin flip once per day.

(The first time you lose, however, you will get a free refill, but it will cost 15 idols after that.)

Life Regen: Decreases the amount of time you have to wait before another life regenerates. The timer starts at 8 minutes but is upgraded in 15 second increments, up to a 6 minute wait per game at level 47.
Mojo Upgrade: The mojo upgrades permanently increases the amount of mojo you gain per game. You get 50% more mojo at level 20, 29, 40, 49, with the latter giving you 3x more mojo compared to level 1.
Critical Hit: One of the least understood upgrades, At level 14, it passively increases your score so that there is a small chance when you make a match it is worth twice as much. There is a 1-10% chance of triggering this, with 10% being at level 74.

The mechanic was removed on Kroakatoa Island, most likely because it confused many players.

Fruit: When you first get them, they start out at 3,000 points but increases in point value as you gain levels, up to a starting value of 5,100 points. They typically appear behind a layer or two of balls. Their score increases by 50% in a linear fashion each time one is collected up to 3x its original value.

Fruit value is not upgradable on Kroakatoa Island, though fruit value scales up exponentially instead (50% more than the last fruit instead) and some food items can boost the fruit value a bit, causing the score for each fruit to be higher in the long run than in the old island.

Treasure Chest: Ocassionally, the first fruit that will pop up will be a treasure chest, and once this is hit, you have a chance to spin the wheel for mojo or idols after the game is over (provided balls didn't reach the skull).

Prizes include decent sums of mojo (up to 8000) and idols (4 or 8), and additional slots are unlocked as you level up, or can be unlocked early (they are inexpensive to unlock, try unlocking the bottom ones first).

On Kroakatoa Island, they are replaced with an icon labeled 'daily spin', which gives you additional free Zuma Spins (payout limited to 10k). They can appear anytime instead of a fruit up to twice per game, and are saved when the game ends even if you lose.

x3 Potion: Immediately gives you 3x mojo for the next 24 hours (if you have a mojo potion active, it resets the timer to 24h). They are given instead of your normal power / treasure slot unlock if you bought them early using idols, so plan your purchases accordingly.

Mojo potions are not used on the new island because you are not given coins after a game; you will get a bundle of coins instead when you transfer.

Golden Frog: Achieved by reaching level 80, this upgrades your frog and increases your shot speed by 10%, and gives you a nice new look. You don’t get any more XP at this point, but you can pursue mastery as an excuse for the developers not raising the level cap.

The Golden Frog on Kroakatoa Island can only be unlocked by using Fiddler.


Mastery Mode: It’s originally supposed to be for bragging rights, but after many users declined this option because it would prevent them from getting top 3 for a while however, extra perks were added, such as bonus mojo, 24 hour life, and various potions.

At level 80, you can pursue mastery, allowing you to share 20k mojo to others and resetting to level 1, removing all your upgrades, but keeping your mojo / idol count, your golden frog, active potions,as well as anything bought using idols. This can be repeated up to six times.

(Note: Your profile picture will be used inside of the glowing frame.)