Silverball guide · Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eye
It is a campaign, not a game
Your character, your level and your position on the map survive between games if you are signed in. What you choose at the plunge is not a mode. It is where the party goes next.
Pick a character, then pick a town
At the start you choose a character, each locked to a class and carrying its own perk: bonus damage against dragons, better luck with treasure, bonus damage against the undead, a longer shield. Then you choose which of four towns the party starts in.
With Insider Connected the campaign is saved, so a resumed game starts wherever the party was when the last one ended and you do not get to choose the town again. Levels come automatically from experience, and the rest of your party is levelled to match you.
The map between the slingshots is the game
Each town has quests marked one, two and three, with coloured borders. Complete the colour-matched level one and level two quests, in either order, and that colour's level three unlocks at Dragonspear Castle or Gauntlgrym.
Travelling is itself a mode. You leave a town in travel mode with blue arrows lit, enemies spawn at random shots, and three blue shots or a cleared battle puts you in the new town. Harder enemies wait on the roads to the two castles.
Nothing can be replayed, which changes how you choose
A finished quest lights green if you cleared it and red if you failed, and either way it is done for that campaign. There are no penalties for most failures, but losing a level three mode costs you its artifact.
Fizmo, the shopkeeper, can give a second chance at an artifact you missed. Everything else you fail is simply gone, so it is worth starting the quests you are equipped for rather than the nearest one.
Battles are how you level
Shoot a yellow choose-action shot, pick a battle, then shoot the red shots to deal damage. Every red shot you make rolls a twenty-sided die for each of your four party members, so damage is genuinely variable.
The red arrows flash faster as a monster is about to hit back. Party members drop out as they run out of health, and a town mode fails outright if all four are wiped. This is the part of the machine that punishes shooting at whatever is lit.
The ranged attack is a spotted shot with a catch
Hold the action button and a blue arrow sweeps across the playfield. Release it and the shot it is sitting on is spotted for you.
It only works for battle damage, never for spotting shots in another mode, and it needs reloading with any lane or ramp shot afterwards. Equipment can slow the sweep down, widen it to two lanes, or briefly apply it to all of them.
The dungeon crawl is the deepest thing here
Light it with the dungeon standups or by spotting them at the centre spinner, then start it at the spinner. Orange shots move you forward, purple shots reach a junction where the flippers choose your door.
Behind a door is a hallway, another junction, a room of enemies, a trap that ends the run, an award room, a treasure room or the stairs down. Five levels, laid out procedurally, and the layouts reset every Sunday. Drain and your progress is held for your next crawl in the same game.
Legendary equipment, and what it costs you to get
Treasure rooms on levels two to five of the crawl award legendary items: a sword that removes any non-boss enemy in one shot, a bow that hits every shot at once, armour that cancels the next damage, a shield that lasts twice as long.
They come with ten uses, stack to twenty, and vanish at the end of the game rather than saving. They are also disabled entirely in competition mode, which tells you how much they are worth.
Dragon Multiball is the big one
Spell DRAGON on the three-bank under Rath and start it at the right orbit or the side ramp. Six balls on the Pro, eight on the Premium and LE, with an unlimited ball save, and the task is to hit Rath enough times before enough of your balls drain.
Beat him and Town Celebration Multiball begins immediately with whatever balls are still out, paying jackpots scaled to how many you collected fighting him. Lose and the flippers freeze, the balls drain, and the party stays where it was. Every dragon you beat raises your level.
Which cabinet you are standing at
On the Premium and LE, Rath moves on two axes rather than just up and down, and spits balls out during his multiball. There is also a scoop that rises out of the playfield to catch a ball, which is how the dungeon crawl starts there and which turns up as a shot inside other modes.
On the Pro the crawl starts with a second spinner shot instead. The campaign, the map and the battles are identical on both.
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.
- Dungeons & Dragons: The Tyrant's Eye rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
