Thanks, I love papa videos!!

Best tutorial ending ever.

I just watched the whole thing. I've been very close a few times. Some good tips, I may have to be more patient and pay no attention to score. These videos are fantastic.

Oh man.......

Seriously..

i love the extra sound effects at the end , was it part of the mode? lol

That video left me with blue balls.

I drank all 54:38 of that Kool-Aid

Don't get any ideas so as to knock off my GC.

Thanx for posting...

Wow. Haha. What an ending

At just under 13 minutes in, you can see how long of a journey it is to get to Valinor. Very little had been accomplished towards the goal at that point.

I always tried to stack the MBs with a mode, but I never put nearly as much thought in to which mode I should try to stack with which MB as discussed here.

This is a superb tutorial and should help LOTR owners reach the ultimate goal of Valinor.

I've owned LOTR 4 times and never cheated to see valinor. i was finally going to take a peek this morning at adam getting there. being good sports about personal goals, competition, and just making everyone better pinball players, the PAPA guys didn't reveal. thank you for that and if you need a hug let me know, I'm sorry that happened. that was gut wrenching to watch….

Great video, great tips, but what an ending...

i have had that ending twice now! (not really as I see I have had only 6 gifts and not 7! why doesn't that make me feel any better!? lol)

Great tutorial! I leaned a couple pointers after watching it such as which modes are best to start with each multiball. I've been on Valinor's doorstep a couple of times so I can feel the pain of the guy playing.

I noticed the outlanes in the video were set on the easiest setting. Is this an acceptable practice for joining the Valinor club or is it frowned upon within the community Mine are still set at factory open although I've been really tempted to change them!

Pfff stupid DTR still evades me... I don't think you have to worry yet.

LoTR has to be one of my worst games I should be good at. It's generally forgiving, the layout is straightforward, most of the objectives are known to me, I really like the game, and I perpetually suck at it.

It does get said once in a while, but just to repeat... It is your game. Set it up exactly how YOU think it is the most fun to play. If that means closing down the outlanes to have a better shot at Valinor, close them down. If that includes opening them up all the way and playing like they normally do at PAPA, do it. Don't worry about anything the community says about your game. The only one that matters is you, and your level of fun with the game.

That's one of the things that I think makes this game so great. There are so many goals that players of any skill level have something to shoot for. For me, it's TABA. I've gotten there, but only by timing out the modes.

Playing for nearly an hour and maintaining focus is a major achievement in itself. I'd like to know what he thought of that extra ball sitting there.

If you didn't see the last post by Mark on the thread. This is crazy:

"Great tips. You are correct about the coin door. I had a fan laying in the bottom of the cabinet facing up at the flipper coils. In the first two or three attempts, everything got soggy, so that was a quick cheat to make it happen. It wouldn’t fit without the door being open."

Valinor is so hard to get to you need to cool the flipper coils so they don't overheat and lose power?! Geeeeez.

Yeah, and who's going to do that every time they play? Imagine how hard it would be to get that ring destroyed in two ball mode after an hour plus of constant play. crazy.

I wonder if anyone has ever made Valinor under PAPA conditions (no extra balls, wide outlanes, hardest settings)

I know, I know... I still struggle with this idea though when it involves changing something to easier than "default" settings.-Why oh why did LOTR ship like that I'd feel like I was cheating my way to getting there. A couple months ago at league I played a LOTR on easy settings that awarded extra balls at various scoring increments. I had all the elf gifts, DTR twice, defeated TABA, had 2 of the 3 multi-balls defeated by the end of ball one(after all the extra balls). I ended up draining my last 2 balls intentionally because I knew I would have reached Valinor had I continued playing and would have felt dirty doing so on such an easily setup game. I would have felt like I didn't really "earn" it and would have held my Valinor medal up in shame.

I guess in actuality the outlane setting is a pretty minor thing. I did upgrade the flipper coils in my game so I guess that could technically be counted as cheating already. I've almost convinced myself to change it but may have to sleep on the idea a bit more

I use a strange strategy of keeping The Two Towers Multiball from starting. I meticulously unlight keep letters so balls never lock. Two towers is the easiest to start and the easiest to complete. So, I leave it unstated while I accumulate everything else that is required. Once I have EVERYTHING IN PLACE, I start TTT, and then Detroy the ring. I think it's a solid strategy... But I've still never achieved Valinor. I have made this exact same scream many times. At least with my method, you only need to start all the MB modes to take another run at it.

It's going to work one of these days.

I really want one of these machines! Watching PAPA's videos has helped me become a better player and what to look for. I wish these didnt go for 5k , guess I will settle on JP for 2k.

Where's Eskaybee?

He was even closer than this to getting to Valinor once, as he had one shot left to the Ring before draining. That's gotta hurt!

I feel the pain. I truly do.

I never knew the tower kick out hole was supposed to feed Orthanc. Going to have to adjust my saucer.

It's not supposed to.

I'm certain I heard a few callous in here that I don't hear in my machine. Gimli saying "Minis Tirith is under attack" isn't something my machine says??!! There was something else too. Very odd. I'm pretty sure I have the 10.0 code. Is that LE code?

Mine says that and mine is an LE. Syrup, want to come get sparky now?

If you think that ending is bad, I had one trip to Valinor foiled by my sword lock misfiring and not allowing the penultimate DTR shot to drain so that Valinor could start. After ball search, it completely skipped Valinor. Thankfully, it was not my first time, or I might have broken many bones from hitting the pin.

I'm going to rip this scream sound, replace the "NOOO-UH!" in Metallica with it, and see how many of our league players soil themselves when they drain tomorrow night.

That was a rough ending for Mark. Not as rough as what I thought was going to happen. I was fully expecting his first shot at the ring to go halfway up the ramp and SDTM! Good job anyway, Mark!

Great video, I have soooo much work ahead of me. I've had my machine over a year. I can DTR fairly regularly, but have never got to TABA.

A few observations:

1. The outlanes must be set pretty narrow on that game, mine drains that way most of the time off the slings (see 2 below). That is not to diminish his phenomenal play. My lanes could be shut and I wouldn't come close to getting that far.
2. My slings are way more active and sensitive
3. His flippers were getting tired toward the end, needs upgraded coils.
4. My tower does not feed organic, is it really supposed to?
5. Did the magnet work?
6. Don't think I ever heard him get 500 in POTD.

Thanks for posting the video, very helpful!

This video makes me want a Lord of the Rings. Not that I didn't already want one, but having a better idea of what's needed to get to the end of the game makes me want one even more.

MHS is a good player, but he's not going to get to Valinor if he left that game set up for PAPA A competition (which is often no outlane posts at all). I assume he set the game up especially for this video.

3. His flippers were getting tired toward the end, needs upgraded coils.
4. My tower does not feed organic, is it really supposed to?

I'd be astonished if he didn't have upgraded coils in there. In fact, he had the coin door open to add a fan to keep the flippers cool, which is why the saucer fed orthanc. (great autocorrect there, by the way) With the door open it apparently feed orthanc, with the door shut LOTR will adjust the power until it consistently feeds the top lanes (per keefer).

6. Don't think I ever heard him get 500 in POTD.

He got 500 in POTD a few times, but in general you don't see tournament players try to nudge for a few extra souls.

You can thank Betson for this. They were going to return all xxx numbers of games they got originally because they were all "broken." Under normal behavior, the saucer starts as weak as possible, then gets stronger and stronger until the ball leaves the eject. It then remembers that setting and will adjust it one way or the other if it needs to if something else goes batty later on. The problem was Betson was checking the games in test without ever starting an actual game, and the game doesn't adjust the strength with the door open because for all I know power could be disabled at that point, so it would be solving a non-existent problem. But, this did make the game seem broken, because the ball wouldn't leave the eject. I didn't want to compromise the learning or the top lane feed, so the solution was if the door was open, kick the ball as hard as you can to prove the frickin thing works.

Well I wouldn't say THAT. But I would say that on Hard and Extra Hard, the soul lights don't start with any lit for 500, so it becomes much more rare. I'm pretty sure it promotes lights 100->250 before 250->500, so on multiball 3+ (on normal settings) you'd have to advance the potd 3 times before you started advancing to blinking/500 lights.

Keffer, thanks for the explanation of the door open vs. the eject. It had me quite puzzled.

Question: at the end of the video he starts fellowship, and then one of the modes starts as well (not sure which one)....I thought you couldnt start any modes after one of the 3 multiball modes.

That ending is hilarious in a sadistic way...the same exact shit that happened to me in DTR to get to Valinor a couple months ago.
The music really adds to the nerves. It is so perfect.

One thing I did not know about was the extra ball award at 47 Barad dur tower shots. I have had that many tower shots before but did not remember getting the extra ball.
Another thing in that video, the Barad dur tower was kicking balls all the way into the Orthanc tower, but is supposed to kick the balls into the pop bumpers. That certainly helped with collecting souls.

Read above about the coin door being open...

He hit the Frodo shot which started the mode and quickly made the orbit shot to start fellowship, so the animation for the mode came a little late because multiple things were happening close together.

Great video. Owned my LOTR LE for 3 years. I do not think I could achieve Valinore but will keep up the good fight.

Mine says that callout whenever the multiball starts. It's not an LE. It does have the version 10 ROM.

Yea......in my 6 years of owning it, there were a few times I choked on the final shot of DTR to get valinor; thanks for reminding me rob

But I did kill it at your house and finally got valinor

That anguished roar sounds a bit like Monger in IM... but even more authentic