Silverball guide · Avengers: Infinity Quest
Everything runs through the disc
Infinity Quest looks like six modes and three multiballs. It is really one spinning disc and a decision about when to lock the portal.
The disc is the clock
Nothing in this game starts until you have spelled S-T-R-A-N-G-E, and you spell it by spinning Doctor Strange's disc. Complete it and the portal opens onto a gem quest; complete the quest and you take the gem.
So the disc is not a toy in the middle of the playfield, it is the thing that paces your entire game. The one accelerator worth knowing is the right inlane: come through it recently and the disc advances STRANGE at double speed. A player who uses that is starting quests roughly twice as often as one who does not.
Lock the portal first — this is the whole scoring game
Here is the piece that separates a big Infinity Quest score from an ordinary one, and it is a decision rather than a skill shot.
Portal lock is lit by combos and by the grid bingo award. If the portal is locked when a quest begins, that quest becomes a multiball — and every shot in it is multiplied. Two balls in the portal with two or more in play makes every quest shot double. Three balls with three in play makes every quest shot triple.
That is a tripled mode, not a tripled shot. Starting a gem quest with an empty portal when you could have locked it first is the most expensive habit on this machine. If the portal is available, fill it before you spell STRANGE out.
Six gems, and the one you must not lose
Each gem you collect gets placed on a playfield shot, and comes off Thanos' gauntlet as it does. Collect enough and you reach the Infinity Gauntlet finale, which runs in two halves.
The first half is defence: Thanos comes for your gems and you have limited time to make the defence shots and then the right ramp to hold on to each one. Drop targets buy you time. Lose a ball with no ball saver and that gem is gone.
The rule to carry into that mode is blunt. You must finish the defence phase holding at least one gem. Hold none and it is the snap — your ball is simply over, however well the rest of the game went. Defence shot values scale with how many gems you still have, so protecting them pays twice.
The second half is a four-ball multiball against Thanos himself, with two moving spans of lit shots — one advanced by clockwise disc spins, the other by counter-clockwise. Where the two spans overlap you get four times the jackpot and double damage. That overlap is worth hunting for rather than shooting whatever is lit.
The soul gem is a second life
Quests cannot normally be replayed, which makes a failed one permanent — except that the soul gem buys you one retry of a quest you lost.
Spend it carefully. If the retried quest fails as well, the soul gem goes back to the Black Order and you have nothing. It is worth holding for a quest you genuinely believe you can finish rather than burning on the first one that gets away.
Where the multiballs come from
Three multiballs run alongside the gem hunt and they qualify from completely different places, which is useful when the disc is not cooperating.
Iron Man Multiball starts at Avengers Tower and is qualified through the I-R-O-N inlanes and outlanes. It runs in phases, moving its jackpots from the ramps to the orbits, and if Iron Man is powered up to level two, everything he scores is doubled.
Thor Multiball starts at the captive ball and is a two-ball affair where the pops orbit and the side loop pay double jackpots and push the jackpot value up. Black Order Multiball needs a second set of Avengers collected and pays at the mini loop, with more lit jackpots meaning multiplied ones.
One edition note: the Captain Marvel count-up runs on the Premium and LE's loop ramp, so that particular thread of awards is not something to go looking for on a Pro.
The quiet things
Bonus X advances through the Captain America lane in the pop bumpers, and it resets every ball unless you have earned a hold. On a machine where a good ball can run very long, that is not a small number.
The Ant-Man mystery at the VUK is not lit when the game starts — you light it from the super skill shot, once per game, or at loop ramp thresholds, and the lights stack. Its awards include spotting three STRANGE letters and adding a ball, though the add-a-ball is disabled during a portal multiball. Which is another way of saying the portal stack has a cost, and it is still worth it.
Where this came from
Silverball wrote this, but not from scratch: it was compiled against the published rules below and checked against them, rather than written up from one person’s games. None of the wording is theirs. Machines get code updates that move the right shot, so a guide has a date on it for a reason.
- Stern Pinball, Avengers: Infinity Quest (Pro) rulesheet
