Arcade Level

Overview

Your Arcade Level is the level of the ARCADE machine — not your player level, the ore-XP level on the top bar that prestige resets. There is one way up it: shooting the machine. Each shot costs coins, scores candy, and candy fills the level bar. Balls dropped on the board do not give candy — the board earns the coins, the Arcade turns them into levels. A prestige never touches your Arcade level.

The level bar has no rewards of its own. Every Arcade level you clear is one Marquee star, and the Marquee has a reward waiting on every level from 1 to 500: a few feature unlocks and a repeating rotation of permanent buffs — lock damage, gate damage, pet inventory, ball storage, pet item find, Coin Gain and launch speed. The bead at the end of the level bar shows the sprites of whatever the next level pays; it lands the moment the level clears.

Earning candy

A pinball lands in one of five bins. The four outer bins pay candy; the narrow centre bin is the ★ door: most of the time it deals a candy card, otherwise it is a MEGA WIN: the bins flip to balls, gems and a pet-item prize, and a mega ball drops into one of them.

Stakes

The stake chip (unlocked at Marquee milestone 10 (10★)) multiplies the cost and the candy of every shot, so candy per coin is identical at every stake — higher stakes only level you faster per minute. Stakes above ×1 open permanently as your Arcade level climbs (×2 at Arcade Lv 10, ×3 at Arcade Lv 30, ×5 at Arcade Lv 50, ×10 at Arcade Lv 70, ×25 at Arcade Lv 90, ×50 at Arcade Lv 110, ×100 at Arcade Lv 130); ×200 is researched. Stake also gates the rarest pet items a MEGA WIN can pay — legendary items need ×10 or more, mythic ×100.

Stake	Coins per launch	Outer / inner bin candy	Door card candy	Coins you must hold
×1	1,000	10 / 20	1,000 – 4,000	always available
×2	2,000	20 / 40	2,000 – 8,000	always available
×3	3,000	30 / 60	3,000 – 12,000	always available
×5	5,000	50 / 100	5,000 – 20,000	always available
×10	10,000	100 / 200	10,000 – 40,000	always available
×25	25,000	250 / 500	25,000 – 100,000	always available
×50	50,000	500 / 1,000	50,000 – 200,000	always available
×100	100,000	1,000 / 2,000	100,000 – 400,000	always available
×200	200,000	2,000 / 4,000	200,000 – 800,000	always available

Level rewards

Older versions of the game paid a "reward bubble" part-way along each bar — a Marquee star, ball power or Coin Gain in turn. Those bubbles are retired: they pay nothing now, and lock damage and Coin Gain are ordinary Marquee rows instead. What a level pays is exactly the Marquee row (occasionally two) that sits on it.

The rotation

Outside the pinned feature unlocks, the ladder cycles through seven buffs. Each appearance stacks with the ones before it.

Buff	Each row pays	Rows	Total at Arcade level 500
Lock damage	+1 per row	70	+70
Gate damage	+1% per row	69	+69%
Pet inventory	+5 per row	69	+345
Ball storage	+10 per row	68	+680
Pet item find	+0.5% per row	68	+34%
Coin Gain	+1% per row	68	+68%
Launch speed	+0.5% per row	68	+34%

Level curve

Candy needed to clear a level grows in segments: a straight ramp for the first five levels, a gentler line to level 19, a power curve to level 100 and a much steeper one beyond. The Marquee reward column is what clearing that level pays (feature unlocks in bold); names are the arcade attractions the Arcade Report shows for the first 50 levels.

What each star unlocks

The Marquee's feature unlocks are pinned to fixed Arcade levels; everything between them is the buff rotation above. Most game modes are no longer Marquee rows — the Bonus Wheel, Red Dice, Ticket Trove, Ball Grove, Boss Raid and the rest open by breaking Hoard gates.

Level milestones

The old Arcade level trophies went with the retired trophy system; a level now pays only its Marquee row.

Tips

• Candy per coin never changes with stake, so shoot at the highest stake you can hold — but keep a buffer, because falling below the hold line locks the stake mid-session.
• Rewards land on the level-up itself — the bead at the end of the bar previews what the next level pays.
• Lock damage for the next world lock and gate damage for The Hoard both ride this ladder, so Arcade levels speed up two other progressions at once.
• Coin Gain compounds with world multipliers and coin pets, so the ladder quietly raises your whole income as you climb.