Silverball guide · Venom
A lost battle un-buys your perks
The grid above the flippers is where Venom keeps its power-ups, and completing a square of four gives you one for the rest of the game. Failing a battle resets the inserts that earned them, and there is a safer way to beat a boss than fighting it.
The grid is the progression, not the battles
Each mini-mode you complete lights an insert on the host's path above the flippers, and those inserts form a grid. Complete a square of four and you are given a perk: longer timers, +1x playfield, web combos incrementing by two instead of one, the flamethrower that fires all three of a lit trio at once, longer ball saves, or double experience.
These are the things that make the rest of the game easier, and they are held against the inserts rather than banked. If a battle is failed, the mini-mode path that lit it is reset, and any perk whose inserts went with it is disabled. Defeating Knull resets the entire grid and disables all of them, which is the price of finishing the game.
So a failed battle is not a neutral outcome that costs you a mode. It can cost you a playfield multiplier you had already earned.
You can beat a boss without fighting it
Each of the four minor bosses can also be defeated by bringing it into Mayhem Multiball and scoring the super jackpot. The order they fall in is the order you locked the balls, so the choice is made at the locks rather than in the fight.
That route has a cost worth knowing: Change Host will not light at the left ramp if a boss is beaten this way. It only lights if you complete a column of mini-modes, once per ball, or if you play or fail the battle that follows. So beating bosses through multiball keeps your grid safe and your perks intact, but it does not give you the host change.
Note also what a lit battle blocks. While a battle is available at the centre ramp, Mayhem locks cannot be lit or collected and Carnage modes cannot be started. Anything that starts at the centre ramp is queued behind the battle, so leaving one lit indefinitely stalls half the machine.
Choose the host, because it changes the rules
You pick a host at the start of every ball, and it is not a skin. The host sets which two-shot combos your three mini-modes are, how many Mayhem locks you begin with, your combo level, your signature combo, your skill shot options, and on a Premium or LE it moves shots around the playfield.
The four starting hosts pull in different directions. Eddie Brock begins with two Mayhem locks lit and makes Mayhem Multiball more valuable. Gwen Stacy doubles infected defeated and makes Doppelganger attacks pay more. Peter Parker makes the Carnage modes easier and more valuable, and gives Miles Morales as a team-up from the start. Flash Thompson starts with no locks lit at all and a poor combo level, but unlocks Sleeper and, on a Premium or LE, a wider bell tower.
Default hosts need one column of mini-modes to qualify their battle; unlockable hosts need two. Changing host mid-ball is possible at the left ramp after completing a column, or after playing or failing that host's battle.
Level 10, 20 and 30 are the real gates
Battles are not simply lit by mini-modes. You need a completed path and at least level 10 before one appears at the centre ramp. Beating one minor boss and reaching level 20 qualifies Grendel; beating Grendel and reaching level 30 enables the final fight with Knull.
Experience is therefore a currency worth farming rather than a decoration, and levelling also increases the damage you do in battles, which shortens every fight you take afterwards. Double experience is one of the grid perks, and locking three balls in the left canister for Mayhem Multiball doubles it for that multiball. The level survives between games if you are signed in to Stern's Insider Connected, and resets to 1 once you beat Knull.
What the four battles actually ask
Every battle has two health bars and the second phase is the first one made harder, with fewer shots or tighter timers, and the timers shorten as you unlock more hosts. The bell tower adds time. The scoop is the Special Attack for five times damage, reached differently in each fight.
Riot moves a red set of shots left to right and a blue set right to left; hit either for damage, or hit where both are lit for large damage and a lit Special Attack. Agony wants two shots at the flashing red shots and asks you to stop the green shots taking over. Phage runs a combo sequence from the left ramp, with the right orbit lighting the bell tower to switch you onto the three centre shots. Lasher leaps between the orbits, so the shot is wherever the symbiote currently is.
Mayhem Multiball is two different multiballs
The first phase is single-ball. Alternate between the left ramp and the scoop for quick jackpots, each worth experience and spotting a jackpot for the second phase, with balls released from alternating canisters to keep it going. It ends after nine quick jackpots, a miss, or a timeout, and the ball save is live throughout, though draining times out the current quick jackpot immediately.
The second phase is the multiball proper, with the perks decided by which canisters you locked in and how many. Complete all the lit jackpots for a super jackpot, which also instantly completes one of the battles you brought in. Each subsequent super needs every shot made twice, then three times.
The detail worth using: hold the action button to abort the multiball and keep locking, up to six balls, if you are chasing the canister perks rather than the immediate points.
Carnage, Doppelganger and the odd one out
Carnage modes come from shooting the captive ball to lock Carnage back into Ravencroft, and they arrive in a fixed order: Carnage Multiball, then the Carnage hurry-up, then Blood Lust. Blood Lust is the exception to almost everything else here, being mutually exclusive rather than stackable, and it runs on a flip counter that drains constantly; you top it up by looping the centre ramp into the captive ball, up to three times, or by shooting the bell tower.
Doppelganger is the game's interruption. Shoot a flashing red target twice to defeat the Infected, and Doppelganger may attack on the right. On a Pro it is beaten virtually at the left loop and its scoring can be multiplied by web combos; on a Premium or LE it is a three-bank of flyaway targets needing one hit, then two, then three, up to four, and its scoring cannot be multiplied. Three Doppelgangers defeated lights Rampage at the centre ramp, which has no grace period at all: when the timer ends, the mode ends.
Where the cabinets differ
Venom stands on UK floors mostly as a Pro, with a Premium and an LE among them, and the differences are real rather than cosmetic. Doppelganger is a virtual defeat at the left loop on a Pro and a physical flyaway bank on the Premium and LE, with the multiplier rule reversed between them. The Premium and LE also have Quick Doppelganger Multiball, which does not exist on a Pro and is only available to Gwen Stacy or Venomized Wolverine.
Hosts also move shots on a Premium or LE: a 180 ramp shot for Eddie Brock and Peter Parker, a target in place of the left loop for Flash Thompson and Venomized Hulk, and various right loop feeds. On a Pro the layout stays put whoever you pick. Gwen Stacy is the one host whose positions are the same on both.
A note on this source
This was rewritten against a much fuller community rule sheet than the guide first published here, which was compiled from Stern's own how-to guide at v00.90.00. Both are credited above because both informed it, and where they cover the same ground the fuller sheet is the one followed.
Neither document is attributed to a named person in our copy. Venom is on live code that has continued to change, so treat the structure as reliable and specific values as worth checking against the machine. The sheet also documents the competition, cooperative and impossible rule sets available by holding both flippers in attract mode, which change how much of the above is random.
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.
- Venom rule sheet (author not recorded in our copy)
- Stern Pinball, Venom How-To and Rule Guide, v00.90.00
