Zen Pinball

This is definitely the hardest of the bronze trophies for this table. It does not say this in the trophy description, but this has to be done with one ball. After you lose a ball, the quartz skulls get converted to points and you are reset back to 0. I’m not sure anyone really knows all the ways you can find a quartz skull, but there are 3 I will explain here.

• Mayan Challenge – There are 2 ways to start the mayan challenge, although I’ve only been able to get one of them to work.
  • If the idol is fully elevated, hitting the pyramid ramp several times is supposed to start the challenge. I have tried this many times without success, but this is according to the rule sheet so I assume I’m just doing something wrong.
  • There are two drop targets just to the right of the monument orbit with blue and orange lights in front of them. You can hit both of these targets by hitting early from the left flipper. After hitting both of these you can then head into the pyramid using the pyramid ramp. You’ll see a red triple snake light come on showing you the way. When you enter the pyramid you find 1 of 5 different artifacts. Keep doing this until you get the “Golden Bridge” artifact because this starts the mayan challenge.
  The mayan challenge is not too bad once you learn the technique. You have to jump over saw blades as they approach you. The trick is to jump over the first blade and then jump 2 more times immediately, hopefully avoiding the next blade that would be coming. The first blade seems easier to jump then the others so I wouldn’t recommend trying to jump them all. When you complete this challenge for the first time you get a quartz skull.
• Unexpected Treasure from “JADE” – The second way to get a quartz skull is to spell the word “JADE” when you already have ball save enabled. This will give you an unexpected treasure which is hopefully a quartz skull. If it’s not, then you’ll have to try again.
  
  Tip from steviej: It's been discovered that you can get multiple Quartz Skulls via an Unexpected Treasure on the kickback hole behind the upper left flipper. First, spell JADE to enable ballsave. Then hit at least one bumper with the ball. Once you do that, intentionally drain the ball if the ballsave is still active. Hold the left flipper up when the ball is shot back onto the table and it will go right into the kickback hole behind the upper left flipper. This will enable one of the kickbacks. Repeat this to enable the other kickback, making sure to hit the bumpers before draining the ball. Doing this same thing again when both kickbacks are lit will give you an Unexpected Treasure every time it locks into the kickback hole. You can get more than one skull this way if you keep doing it.
• Unexpected Treasure from ramp grinding – The third way to get a quartz skull is by building up ramp combos. I’m not sure precisely when you get the unexpected treasure, but I think you’re more likely to get a quartz skull if you build up more combos.
• Other possibilities – It has been pointed out that hitting bumpers lights up the orange skull in the center of the table. It has also been suggested that the more you light that up, the better chance you have of finding a quartz skull. I tried verifying that, but I was unable to make any correlation. It has also been suggested that you can get unexpected treasures by exploring tombs, the cave, or getting lost in the jungle, but I have not been able to verify this either.

My basic strategy when going for this trophy was to restart until I was able to get a quartz skull immediately by spelling “JADE” when the initial ball save was active from launch. I did this simply to save time rather than having to enable ball save manually again. Once I got this skull, I did the mayan challenge which is a guaranteed skull, and then I ramp grinded until I got the third one.