Silverball guide · Scared Stiff
The spider is the shortcut
Six Tales of Terror stand between you and the big mode. Collecting them in order is the slow way round — the spider can do half the work for you.
Six Tales, one destination
Scared Stiff has a clear route through it, which is rarer than it sounds. Six Tales of Terror, each collected somewhere different, and once all six have been started the machine is ready for its title mode.
Stiff in the Coffin wants three balls locked. Night of the Leapers wants a hit on each of the three leaper targets. Return of the Deadheads wants the three deadhead rollover lanes lit. Terror From the Crate wants the crate count built up. The Monster's Lab wants jet bumper hits. Eyes of the Boney Beast wants three left ramps.
The machine does not then hand you the mode. You have to go and shoot the crate to start it.
Three you collect almost by accident
Some of the six barely need a plan. Let the ball do them while you concentrate on something harder.
Night of the Leapers is one hit on each of the three leaper targets and the tale is yours. Keep hitting them and Leaper Mania starts — five leapers inside the timer lights an extra ball, or pays 250,000 if you have already had that extra ball. Each squashed leaper is 100,000.
Return of the Deadheads just wants the three rollover lanes lit. The deadheads themselves start at 25,000 and go up by another 25,000 each time you collect one.
The Monster's Lab is the jet bumpers, and the requirement is set per machine — twenty hits is typical. After that the bumpers are worth 10,000 each.
None of these deserve to become a mission. They arrive if you are playing the machine at all.
The crate does double duty
The crate is both one of the six tales and one of the two most important shots on the playfield.
As a tale, it wants four hits the first time, and four more each subsequent time. The final hit sends the ball inside and starts a two-ball multiball, where you simply keep re-entering the crate for 250,000 a time.
But the crate is also how you start the title mode once all six tales are done, and the spider can hand you crate progress or extend crate multiball outright. It is not one of six equal objectives — it is a shot you will be coming back to all game.
The left ramp earns its keep
Eyes of the Boney Beast is almost entirely a left ramp job: each shot spots an eye, and the third awards the tale and turns the ramp into a points shot.
It is worth learning early because that one ramp keeps appearing. It progresses the eyes, it lights the coffin locks in the left loop, it can collect coffin jackpots, the spider can turn it into a hurry-up, and it is one half of the alternating sequence in the title mode.
Very few shots on any machine do five jobs. This is one of them.
Getting the coffin moving
Stiff in the Coffin is the game's main multiball and the one worth building around. Shoot the left ramp to light the lock in the left loop, then lock three balls.
Both ramps start lit for jackpots at 500,000. Collect one and only the other stays lit, so you are alternating left and right for the rest of it. Shooting the ramp that is not lit is not wasted — it raises the jackpot by 10,000. The multiball ends when you are down to fewer than two balls.
The part that matters is what the spider can do to it. If the coffin award is showing on the wheel, collecting it either locks a ball for you or, if you are already in the multiball, extends it back up to three balls. A longer coffin multiball is worth considerably more than a fresh short one, and it is the single best use of a spider spin.
The spider is your toolbox
The spin spider lives in the backbox. The right ramp lights the spider scoop; shoot it and the wheel starts spinning, and either flipper button stops it.
What you get depends on where it lands, and the useful ones are worth memorising. Eye collects towards the three that light an extra ball. Coffin lights or collects a lock, or extends coffin multiball. Skull spots a deadhead lane. Leaper starts Leaper Mania. Crate advances the crate and can extend crate multiball. Boney Beast lights the left ramp for a hurry-up starting at 200,000. Orb awards a telepathetic power. Boogie Man starts Boogie Man Boogie, where shots begin at 10,000 and climb by 5,000 every time the ball finds a sinkhole. And Double Trouble doubles the value of every shot for twenty seconds.
That last one is the reason to think before you spin. Double Trouble immediately before a multiball, or with several valuable shots already lit, is worth far more than the same award collected while you are wandering around the playfield with nothing going on.
The title mode is a shot sequence
With all six tales started, shoot the crate. The machine runs its animations and the Stiff-O-Meter lights up in the middle of the playfield with ten levels to climb.
The sequence is simple and completely unforgiving: ramp, then crate, then ramp, then crate, alternating all the way up. Each shot pays 250,000 plus another 50,000 for every shot you have already made. The last one has to be the crate.
Get to the top and Monster Multiball starts. Four balls, both ramps and the crate lit as jackpots at a million each, and five million just for arriving. It ends when you are down below two balls.
This is where all that tale-collecting finally turns into a number worth having.
Finish the wheel
The spider has one more thing in it. Collect every award on the wheel and Spider Mania begins.
The wheel starts cycling on its own, lighting whatever it lands on, which turns the playfield into a shopping list — extra ball, Double Trouble, Boogie Mania, jackpots and the rest all becoming live. Then it starts a four-ball multiball with everything lit, the three jackpots available and Double Trouble stacking on top of them.
It is the machine's other genuine scoring opportunity, and it sneaks up on people. If you are close to completing the wheel, finishing it is worth more than almost any individual feature you could chase instead.
The order to play it in
If you remember nothing else: extend coffin multiball with the spider whenever the coffin award is available, because a long multiball is where the jackpots and the progress both come from.
Chase the three eyes early — the spider can help, and the extra ball is worth having.
Let the deadheads, leapers, bumpers and crate accumulate as you go rather than turning each one into a separate mission. They are not hard, they are just slow if you make a project of them.
Save Double Trouble for when something is already lit.
Then, once the sixth tale is done, stop exploring. Go to the crate, start the mode, and alternate ramp and crate all the way to Monster Multiball. And if the spider wheel is nearly complete when you get there, finish it first.
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.
- Scared Stiff community rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
