How the table is laid out
A diamond of 4 pop bumpers fills the top: yellow, cyan, coral and yellow. The LIFT ramp climbs the left side and the CASCADE ramp the right, and the boss core sits in the middle of the table.
Coloured rings: yellow in the upper centre, coral on the upper right and cyan in the middle centre. The big bubbles are a heavy yellow in the lower centre with 3 shells, plus single-shell bubbles: two cyan on the middle left, two coral on the middle right and a yellow on the lower left.
The Mother Bubble blows in a heart-shaped, a star-shaped and a flower-shaped cluster of small bubbles, each hanging from a gold-ring anchor, with a bomb, a rainbow and a clock bubble among them. The invasion rule is on: bubbles sink towards the red tide.
The objective
Boss fight: get through PHASE 1: THE BOILERS (they change colour), PHASE 2: BUBBLE BARRAGE! (do not let them sink) and PHASE 3: THE CORE (final multiball), and pop everything before the clock runs out. Only matching colours pop; paint the ball in a top lane (flippers rotate them), a ring, a ramp or with the two-flipper swap. Pop an anchor to drop its cluster.
- PHASE 1: THE BOILERS
- PHASE 2: BUBBLE BARRAGE!
- PHASE 3: THE CORE
Strategy, step by step
- In THE BOILERS, the boilers keep switching colour. Keep a finger ready for the two-flipper swap and match each boiler at the moment you shoot, not a moment earlier.
- In BUBBLE BARRAGE!, take the lowest bubbles first and drop clusters by their gold-ring anchors before they reach the red tide.
- The three-shell yellow bubble in the lower centre is the slow one. Armed balls from LIFT or CASCADE burst every remaining shell at once, so save a ramp for it.
- The coral ring on the upper right and the yellow ring in the upper centre are far from the flippers; use the top lanes or the swap for quick colour changes instead.
- THE CORE ends in a final multiball: keep feeding LIFT and CASCADE, because each climb lights the super jackpot and the next pop on the Cauldron cashes it.
- Grab the clock bubble and the rainbow bubble early in the fight; time and a colour-blind ball are worth most against a very hard clock.
How to get 3 stars
QUICK: finish the boss with at least a quarter of its clock left. NO BALL LOST: beat all three phases without a drain (each costs 5 seconds). WHOLE CLUSTER: drop the heart, star or flower by its gold-ring anchor. Beating the boss with no stars still opens the next world.
Common mistakes
- Committing to a boiler's colour too early in THE BOILERS; it changes before the ball arrives.
- Ignoring the sinking barrage to chase high bubbles; the red tide at the bottom is what ends a run.
- Hitting the three-shell yellow bubble one crack at a time instead of with an armed ramp ball.