Zen Pinball

This is definitely not an easy trophy, but I’d say it’s doable. Here are the steps involved with casting a disaster:

1. Hit the ball into the left or right sink hole to lower the ramp for the mini playfield. These holes are outlined with flames so they should be easy to spot. I find the left hole is much easier to hit from a caught position consistently if you wait until the ball is almost falling off the right flipper to hit it.
2. You then have 10 seconds to hit the ball up the jump that was lowered into the mini playfield. The jump is marked by a red spear-head light to the right of the guy playing the drums. You’ll have to figure out the timing for this, but after the ball comes out of the sink hole you should nudge it to the right flipper and then nudge it back to the left flipper to get it in a caught position (it’s going too fast to simply catch with the left flipper and timing your shot while the ball is moving is tougher). From a caught position you should be able to develop decent timing to getting the ball up the jump before the 10 seconds is up.
3. Once in the mini playfield you have to spell out “ELEMENT” by hitting all the letters using the upper flippers. This takes a bit of practice to do without losing the ball down the center. As with the V12 table, hitting the ball later does a nice job of getting it from one flipper to the other. The toughest letters are the center ones because hitting these can make the ball tough to catch, but you should get used to it.
4. Once you have spelled “ELEMENT” successfully, the letters will be replaced by 4 elements, Fire, Water, Air, and Earth. You have to hit one of these elements with the ball until it is outlined with a box. I found that hitting these can be troublesome and doesn’t seem to register sometimes. If you hit one of the center ones they tend to register right away and then hitting the outer ones seems to work fine. After you have selected an element you can let the ball drain down to the main table.
5. The next thing you have to do is shoot a ball up into one of the sink holes at the top of the table. These holes are located right above the word “CAST”. It’s essentially the same shot you used to get the ball up into the mini playfield except this time you’re going under that jump. If you do this successfully, some bars will pop up and trap the ball at the top of the table (you should be able to see it resting between 2 bars). There are 2 positions the ball can rest in while it is stuck up there because there are 3 bars holding it in place. I’ll refer to these positions as left or right.
6. Once you have trapped the ball, a new ball will be launched for you automatically. What you have to do now is spell out “CAST” by hitting the trapped ball into one of the sink holes behind it. You have to hit it into a sink hole 4 times to cast the selected disaster. There are several techniques for this.

• I found that I had the most success by hitting the left ramp and then hitting the ball with the left flipper as it was moving. This did not lead to many scary center drain problems, but did take a bit of practice to do relatively consistently. For this maneuver you want to make sure you nudge the upper ball into the right slot or you won’t be able to get the right angle off the flipper.
• The other method I used was nudging the upper ball to the left slot and then shooting directly at it from a caught position on the left flipper. I was able to hit it pretty well doing this, but unfortunately slight missed led to immediate ball drains so I gave up on this technique.
• The last method suggested to me by sb59 was to hit the ball straight up from the right flipper when it was in a caught position. Apparently this works well and usually drops the ball right back down onto the flipper. This sounds promising so I thought I’d mention it as well. Since I have not done this, I can’t say which slot the upper ball should be in.

Once the disaster is cast you will receive the trophy. I should mention that on occasion the game seems to get confused as to which ball you are actively using and the camera gets a little screwed up so you can’t actually see your ball. If this happens you can change the view so that it’s zoomed out or nudge the table a little and it should correct it.