Silverball guide · Oktoberfest
Choose the stein that matches the tent you want
Steins are permanent, they stack, and each one both makes a feature easier and multiplies one specific tent mode. Picking them at random is the difference between a pleasant game and a big one.
What a stein does
Bash the Bar doors open and shoot a ball inside, in single ball play, and you get to pick a beer stein with the flippers. Each one does two things at once: it makes some feature of the game easier or more valuable, and it raises one particular tent mode's score multiplier by one.
They carry from ball to ball. And you can take the same stein up to three times, improving its power and adding another multiplier to its tent mode each time. Three of the same stein before playing that tent mode is a plan, not an accident.
Read the pairs before you choose
The pairings are the whole point. One stein extends your playfield multiplier time and boosts the Rotor. Another gives more bonus multiplier and boosts the Stein Race. Others raise Corkscrew Multiball jackpots, or Beer Barrel Multiball jackpots, or make steins themselves easier to collect, or make OKTOBERFEST letters easier.
So the question at the Bar is not which stein sounds good, it is which tent mode you intend to play, and which feature you keep failing to reach.
Tent modes, and the doubling you control
Complete TENT across the inlanes and outlanes to light a tent mode at the scoop, then scroll the thirteen of them with the flippers and select with both. All but one run on a timer of roughly three quarters of a minute, and each asks for a set number of lit shots.
Every tent mode is paired with a beer stein. Play a mode holding its stein and all its scoring doubles; hold that stein twice or three times and it triples and then quadruples. Failed modes can simply be replayed by spelling TENT again, so there is no penalty for reaching for the one you want.
Some of them are genuinely inventive. Ring Toss alternates you between the two target banks and will not let you hit the same one twice. Stein Race switches the machine to one-handed play, restricting you to the right flipper buttons, and shooting a shot you have already made spills your beer and lowers its value.
The two multiballs come from opposite ends
Completing OKTOBERFEST on the crescent of standups lights the Corkscrew locks, which are collected up the steep coaster ramp, and it needs a firm shot to make it. Up to three balls travel to the lock area on the back panel.
The PROST five-bank lights the Beer Barrel locks instead, which are fed by the green side ramp off the upper right flipper. Balls ejected from the barrel drop into the OKTOBER standup area and are at the mercy of the hidden magnet there, so expect to lose control of them for a moment.
MagNabs are a held shot
The captive ball, the Test Your Strength game, can award MagNabs, and the right ramp collects them. A MagNab is a charge for the two player-controlled magnets, one of which sits above the A rollover.
With one in hand, the second right flipper button fires both magnets. That is a genuine save, and it is worth carrying one rather than spending it the moment you have it.
The TAP rollovers are the playfield multiplier
Both loop shots feed the TAP rollovers, and completing them raises the playfield multiplier.
This is the shot that makes everything else worth more, and it is fed by shots you are already taking. If a stein has extended your multiplier time, the loops become the most valuable thing on the playfield.
Ducks add up to a race
Ducks come from the four standups, from mystery awards, and from winning tent modes, where the first win on a ball pays five, the next ten, the next fifteen.
Every fifty ducks lights Duck Derby at the tent scoop, and tent modes are locked out until it is over. It is a two ball multiball where green shots advance your duck in the race, and hitting a duck standup selects that duck. When your duck is selected everything is green; when an opponent's is, everything is red and you should shoot your own duck's target quickly.
Win and you get victory laps until the multiball ends. Lose and the flippers are disabled until a ball drains, with a ball save covering you until single ball play returns.
Ducks are a background currency
There are four duck targets spread around the playfield, one between the left loop and the tent scoop, one by the captive ball, one in the bumpers and one between the right ramp and the right loop.
Ducks raise mode values and your end of ball bonus, and the question mark standup by the left drain can spot one when it is lit yellow, or an OKTOBERFEST letter when it is green. None of it is dramatic; all of it compounds.
Food stand modes feed the multiballs
Centre drop target hits and spinner spins qualify the food stand modes at the centre scoop. There are five, played in a fixed order, and each has a timer you can reset by shooting back into the same scoop.
What they pay is calories, and calories increase your multiball scoring. So they are not an alternative to the multiballs, they are preparation for them.
Two scoops, two jobs
The tent scoop, reachable with either lower flipper, awards the tent modes and the mystery. The food stand scoop in the centre, usually guarded by a drop target, starts the food stand modes and is where extra balls are collected.
Knowing which is which saves you from shooting for a mode and getting a mystery, which on a machine with this many features is easier to do than it sounds.
The ball save you have to earn
The Last Call standup above the left inlane can give you a save if you drain down the left outlane, and the outlane itself lights the first T in TENT.
It is worth taking early rather than late. The magnet in the OKTOBER area and the barrel ejects both create moments where the ball is not yours, and those moments tend to end on the left.
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.
- Oktoberfest rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
