Yeah, it's pretty popular with the players at our location, and has been consistently since day 1.

For 2018 it ends up well established in "tier 2", together with LOTR, GoT, AFM and Spiderman. Tier 1 this year are Metallica, Star Wars LE, and MMr. Tier 3 would be Dialed In, WCS94 (pulled late autumn) and Tron (pulled early autumn). Too new to be tiered yet are JJP POTC, TNA and Iron Maiden, but I can say that POTC and Maiden look quite good so far.

What's the best way to do this? Does it need cleaning with anything first and what products do i use to clean and was.
Very new to all this.
Thanks

Any comments yet by the 3.10 Beta testers?

Welcome to pinball! Read through this thread https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cleaning-and-waxing-pinball-machines-vids-guide

Look up VID1900 for lots of other good maintenance tips.

It is not being beta tested like other recent releases so nobody really has it.

Wow thanks. The same areas I would have suspected. When the ledges broke on the drop targets were you able to fix it or did you need a whole new mechanism?

The first time it happened, we bought a new assembly, for two reasons: because just the bracket (which has the ledge) wasn't available to purchase separately, and to have some extra spare parts on hand for later. On later occasions we just super-glued the ledges back together, more or less. It looks a bit crappy, but has worked like a charm for 8+ months so far. If you want to solve it the nice way, the brackets are now available separately, for way less money than the assembly.

So my game was in route before I got it around 7K games played, the things that were broken were: (As told to me and found)

Axes on the slings 3 in total.
Some of the "trolls" had been replaced I think 2.
2 of the target assemblies had broken in a stand off spot, repaired
3 Roll over assemblies
B.A.R.G (I think) Small Led board had a blown fuse sent for repair, found shorted wire.
Dragons mouth had a wire break
Side Art was worn from hands only one side
Led spotlights were rather dim and I replaced

My Back from lugging it around.

dup

My Back from lugging it around.

LOL. Yep mine too.

I haven’t caught up on this thread and I’m just jumping in.
Does anyone know how many Smaugs were produced?

In the last 2 days I’ve had 2 faults. I think 1 is known about and will be resolved in the new code update, but not sure if the other is known.
1. Entered Smaug Multiball and it crashed the machine completely. Rebooted and brought up a Tilt Bob #D27 error. Nothing wrong with this at all.
2. Sat at about 800,000 in Smaug Multiball, killed Smaug and got the correct video sequence etc, flippers went dead as usual, but then it just continued to play the music, nothing else happened. The flippers never reactivated, it didn’t send a ball into the shooter lane.
I waited and waited, couldn’t even get it to register a tilt, so ended up rebooting the machine.
Is this one known about?

I think its just another smaug multiball crash.

very annoying.

I will have to turn off my game this year for the xmas party, or revert back to earlier code.

You never know JJP May release an update as a Christmas present for us

I have not had any crash issues on 3.0 but had to use rufus to install it instead of unetbootin. I wonder if this is related at all.

I can not get 3.0 on to my usb for update any tips??

Thx!

Assuming you followed instructions for full install. Try a different memory stick. USB 2 8GB or so should work.

LTG : )

I had to use rufus instead of unetbootin, you might try that also.

Jack once told me about 750 but he never confirmed. I asked him again at York show this year and had about 45 min conversation with him and he said that’s about right but still no conformation
Oh and his Mom loved Mrs pac man he still owns the game he gave her and he told me the serial number was the year he started pinball business my memory is not great but I believe it was 1975 Jack is a great dude and Smaug is the best version of Hobbit in my opinion! An actual confirmation would be great 750 1,000 or 1,500 either way Smuag is the Bomb after all the Hobbit is about the Dragon and re-Acquiring the arkenstone, and with new CODE it’s the BOMB! May be best game ever!

.

I will try today... thx.

Has Smaug production stopped?

3 years ago! SMAUG GOLD was only available to those that pre-ordered before (I believe) end of December 2015. Obviously there were some NIB ones being sold long after as distributors order extras.

Thx. I’m try to find production numbers for a spreadsheet I’m working on. So far it sounds like ~750.

Still no luck getting the download to the usb. Just Purchased a brand new 2.0/3.0 compatible 32gb and no luck.

I never have problems usually?

Any other tips

Thx frank!

Try a smaller usb stick. I use 8gb.

I use a Kingston 8gb stick.
Zero problems.
Got it from a fedex/office location.

Please elaborate. What do you mean? Any error messages? Did unibootin finished successfully?

So, you got the iso image and are having trouble making a bootable USB stick from it?

Use unetbootin or rufus to make the bootable stick from the iso image you downloaded.

Does this help?

Thanks for all for the help!! I finally got it!
3.0 .

F23B6347-17AB-449B-911A-697A0D32FB6B (resized).jpeg

100%

A quick question for everyone. I recently bought a THLE used. I swear that the bag had 5 balls when I got it, I only had 3 when it arrived. The game says to load 5 balls. However, I loaded 5 and the game started kicking balls into the launcher after game start and would not stop filling the launch lane. I didn't have time to look into why it was doing this or if errors were present as this is a family Christmas gift and kids were due home minutes later. Is there somewhere that other balls end up in a physical lock so that there are 5 present and when I added 2 more, the game registered 7 and tried to kick the excess out? New to pins and was unfortunately thrust into trying to set these games up on my own due to some unfortunate luck.

Thanks ahead of time!

I'd start over. Get all the balls out of the game/ball trough.

Put 5 in the ball trough. The sixth one goes under the plastic behind the ball fastened to the playfield - middle of the playfield towards the back between the ramps.

Then try it.

LTG : )

Depending on how new you are maybe check out an unboxing hobbit video on youtube.

Pretty close I'd say since I have #777

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That's exactly the count that I was expecting. Is there anywhere else in the game that has some sort of a ball lock that I am not aware of? I can't do all the stuff I wanted immediately to test to do as my kids are around and pinball testing is a noisy business. I am sending them out again in the morning for some last minute errands and I will be testing. Is there anything different between the actual pinballs that JJ uses and others? I have a new set of balls incoming from Amazon, since I only received 3 of the 5, I am replacing them all with new balls to maintain similar wear levels. The 6th ball is still in place without issue.

No, balls are not held anywhere besides the trough. Even locked balls are immediately sent Back to you during a game. You may have a bad option in the trough

Lift the playfield check carefully for any loose cables both under the playfield and in the back of the big silver box.

Wiggle and examine every single connector. If one is crooked, press it into place etc.

Go into switch test and check every single switch with a ball.

Not your finger.

Report back please with your findings.

I've had my brand new LE for about 8 months. Probably have played about 500 games on it.

I'm noticing that every now and then (maybe every 1 in 100 shots) that the flippers seem a bit mushy and won't flip with full power, especially when trying to make a ramp to the same side of the flipper.

I'm not mechanical at all, but was wondering.....do the small springs inside need to be replaced regularly and if it's not that is it something more involved?

Pull off the flipper coil stops with an Allen wrench.
Inspect the plunger and coil sleeves for dirt or wear.

Check the coil stop and plunger for mushrooming or concave wear.

Clean or replace any worn parts.

Apply blue locktite or thread locker to the coil stop screws upon reassembly.

Apron number is irrelevant to actuall production. You could have any number put there on the apron if you ordered the game. numbers that were not specifically requested are assigned by Frank.

Not Frank personally. Point is valid though. Game number won’t help - serial numbers are the key.

Agree, as I remember when I ordered mine I was told u could pick any number I wanted, even 1234 and as long as someone else didn’t already pick it, it was mine!

What is the range of known serial numbers? Kinda curious now.

I really want to like this game and am thinking about trading my AFM SE for one this summer. However, after finally getting some time on the game I am completely lost. Does anybody have a particular walkthrough or video they would recommend above the others that does a good job of explaining the pin? It seems like a really deep pin that would hold up well in a small lineup... but I gotta understand the rules.

To start, hit the rollovers, lock three balls to start Smaug multiball and hit the spinners. Everything else will happen on its own. After that watch the small playfield screen and learn some level 1 and 2 modes, left ramp changes modes. Get a copy of the rules online. Then move to qualifying modes and hitting inlanes for Beast multiball. Now you can start completing level 3 and 4 modes in order to earn more points in the wizard modes. Of course, you have to be able to play the multiballs with some control in order to kill Smaug. After that, playing for points gets a little more complicated.

Version 3.4 of the manual on the JJP website explains every mode and includes the super useful game flowchart.

I just did this trade, except it was my AFMLE for a Smaug plus cash - NO REGRETS! None.
I got bored of AFM fairly quickly. It’s just much of the same over and over again. I’ve had Hobbit for about a month and it’s a keeper. My wife, my kids - we all love it. I felt the same way you do now with regards to the rules but once you put some serious time on it you will realize it’s not nearly as complicated as it seems initially. I obviously wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger on that deal.

My 9 year old fully understands our hobbit and can reach into the fire mini wizard mode. It's not difficult to pick up once you understand the 5 stones on the screen. I like AFM, but no way I'd take it over hobbit. Make the switch and never look back.

Look at some of my past posts. At post #3861 I gave a basic how-to on the Hobbit. Hope it helps.