Squawk! On this leaderboard scores obtained using character swaps are permitted, but scores using the Hammer Power Up are NOT (with the exception of level 13)! Please submit a strategy on our walkthrough pages explaining which characters were used and how you used them.

Don't like change? Show all leaderboards on one page »

Comments (37)

Rank: Master Slinger with 6060 points
By Plaistergal (@plaistergal)

Can we use the hammer for scores ended in leaderboards?

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@plaistergal No. It’s a power up, and those scores are not allowed. See this post: https://www.angrybirdsnest.com/angry-birds-stella-out-now/comment-page-1/#comment-1532762

The only exception is Episode 1, Level 13. Since the game forces you to use the hammer the first time, you can use it there.

Rank: Master Slinger with 6060 points
By Plaistergal (@plaistergal)

Thank you @kelani. I thought I was “forced” to use it in that intro episode. Will not/have not posted any scores with power ups!

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@plaistergal You and me both, although I must admit, after a hundred failures on a level, it’s really fun to whack it with the hammer. You just have to make sure to reset really fast :)

Rank: Deputized with 210 points
By PigCrusher (@pigcrusher)

Is there any easy way to see your high score for a level in Stella?

Or is the only way by beating the level and hoping the Facebook score thing pops up on the side. (Sometimes it doesn’t for me)

Rank: Sling God with 32120 points
By AMslimfordy (@amslimfordy)
Rank: Boss Hog with 14970 points
By bonneypattycat (@bonneypattycat)

If you are linking Stella to Facebook, or just want to know how to backup your Stella data, go to BirdLeader’s post

https://www.angrybirdsnest.com/forums/topic/how-to-make-a-local-backup-of-your-angry-birds-stella-progress/

If you link to Facebook and lose/don’t have Internet connection, you could lose progress.

Rank: Avian Overlord with 18470 points
By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

@amslimfordy Since swaps doesn’t function like in ABSW II but actually add extra bird to lineup are swaps still permitted? I assume not but ask anyway…

Rank: Sling God with 36930 points
By Bird Leader (@birdleader)

@cosmo2503 Yes, they are allowed. Last chance scores are allowed too. Hammers are not with the exception of E1 13. Regarding the last chance, it’s not quite like ABSW 2 so I don’t see last chance being used often to pump up ones score. At the end of the day, as much as I would like a leaderboard with no swaps, last chance, etc., it’s just not practical to maintain and police.

cc @admins

Rank: Avian Overlord with 18470 points
By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

Well, okay then. Thanks @birdleader

Rank: Sling God with 33590 points
By sparty83 (@sparty83)

@birdleader,
The main difference between stella and absw2 is that in absw2, you can keep adding birds/pigs to fling to destroy more of the level. In stella, when you use a swap, it actually adds another bird your you lineup and there fore possibly an additional 10k. On a level that has 4 birds, you can keep swapping out with others, clear the entire level and have the original 4 birds left over for a 40k bonus.

For example, Angry Birds Stella Level 51 Episode 2 has 7 birds in the lineup. It is possible to clear the entire level using swaps and get the 76k 3 star score (or even higher) and still have the original 7 birds avail for a 70k bonus making the current high score of 109k seem rather lame

With the way swaps are implemented in stella, it can most definetly be used to pump up scores. (and the score addict level for Stella Beach Day is way too low, even with out swaps)

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

I’ve been telling people that the first “free bird” swap was intentionally put in by Rovio, and therefore legal, but continuing to use it to preserve the lineup was not. I still haven’t heard back from Rovio on the subject.

Rank: Sling God with 33590 points
By sparty83 (@sparty83)

@kelani,
I’m not completely sure the “free bird” swap was intentional. I personally feel they meant to do it like ABSW2 where it’s a pure 1 for 1 swap. (but without any input directly from Rovio, it’s just speculation on my part)

The bad thing, after some more testing, it doesn’t matter which bird you swap. First, second, third, what ever, when you swap it out, it drops off the sling, and becomes the next bird in line. (found this out on the level 51 listed above)

I only have 2 more levels to 3 star, then I’m done with stella (until the next update). No more trying to improve scores or even trying to get above average.

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@sparty83 You could be right, but like I said in the report, if the behavior wasn’t intentional, why would they make animations of birds hopping off the sling? If those animations are used elsewhere in the game, I haven’t seen it. Either way, I asked Rovio, so I hope they get back to me.

That’s very interesting how you got the same result with subsequent birds. I just checked it, and you’re right. Every bird does it. When I tested it originally, I could’ve sworn I saw bird #2 vanish in a flashy animation, and the new bird appeared in her place. Unless I imagined it (it happens), it could be some factor affects whether the bird is swapped or displaced. I’ll let someone else figure that one out. :)

Anyway, good catch, and I’m with you. It was a fun game, and I’ll play the update, but I’m abandoning the leaderboard. Maybe people can use our non-swap scores as a handy reference for where flinging skill ends, and disposable income begins? :)

Rank: Avian Overlord with 18470 points
By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

May I feel free to enter scores obtained with Telepods’ swaps? i feel really bad, since we are not in same position.

Rank: Avian Overlord with 18470 points
By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

@birdleader I read in some comments that swap scores will be removed from the leaderboard. I asked previously if they are allowed and after you confirmed they are, I entered my scores. I use them only for my reference, I am not competing with anyone here and think it wouldn’t be fair from administrators to remove them afterwards.
I didn’t use any other power up except telepod swaps which allow to add one bird. I didn’t buy any additional birds nor use hammer to obtain scores I entered to leaderboard.
Finally, I have question – Did Rovio confirm “swap thing” i.e swap actually add bird to lineup instead of changing bird is bug?

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@cosmo2503 I am still waiting on a reply from Rovio about whether swaps are bugged or not. When (or if) they reply to me, I’ll update to the bug report and @mention everyone who posted.

What you were told is correct. The scores which will be removed are those which exploit swaps to add multiple birds. “legal” swap scores are allowed. However, this was before anyone knew that swaps had a problem. IMO, there’s not enough information to make a fair decision until Rovio answers us. If they announce that swaps adding a bird is a bug and will be fixed, that means the current swap scores would be impossible to beat post-update. Again IMO, it would be unfair to allow those scores. However, if Rovio says swaps are working as intended, then the question becomes: which swaps are allowed? The @admins may have that answer, but I don’t. I think we’ll just have to wait and see what Rovio says.

Rank: Avian Overlord with 18470 points
By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

Thank you @kelani. We will have to wait Rovio’s reply. Hope that will be soon.
I believe administrators will find the best solution for LB to everybody’s best. Maybe to create separate leaderboards?

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@cosmo2503 I’m a fan of separate leaderboards, but that’s been suggested many times before.
It won’t happen for these reasons, and probably a few others:

1. Too much work and overhead to create, maintain, police, and explain to users which board to use.
2. Some dishonest users would still post PU scores on the non-PU leaderboard.
3. PU and non-PU strategies combined on one walkthrough would be very confusing. ABN would have to create and maintain a separate set of PU video walkthroughs.
4. There’s so few players (169), splitting them in half would make both boards equally useless. Also, there’s just not enough people involved to justify all that extra work. The easiest solution is to wait for Rovio’s response, then re-evaluate.

Rank: Sling God with 21080 points
By aleksch (@aleksch)

@birdleader I have a suggestion. How about limiting number of “swaps” to no more than one on normal levels and no more than two on walls of pigs levels. Otherwise, with unlimited “swaps” scores will go wild and the game will be ruined much like ABSW II after “last chance” was introduced.

Rank: Avian Overlord with 16380 points
By burbman (@burbman)

I have no interest in using swaps, hammers, or other power ups to battle to be above average. Guess I’ll just have to play for three stars in each level, then move back to the other games. :(

Rank: Avian Overlord with 16380 points
By burbman (@burbman)

That said, we might as well go with the Facebook/Friends method in this game, and consider everything a legal score.

Rank: Pig Leader with 11705 points
By sheilahdb (@sheilahdb)

Same here…no interest in using swaps to get above average score. I’ll play with the line-up I’m given; otherwise it just doesn’t feel right. But there have been a few levels that whacking with the hammer would have been very satsfying

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@sheilahdb A lot of people feel the same way, and there are definitely a few hammer-worthy levels in this game. I’ve used it on them, and it is *very* satisfying. I highly recommend it. You just have to make sure to leave a pig alive, or reset before the level ends. :)

Rank: Champion with 3990 points
By Divelucaya (@divelucaya)

There seems to be a pretty good relationship between ABN and Rovio, such that I’m sure they are aware of the leaderboard and the interest of players to compete in trying to get high scores, or in my case, just trying to get close to the average. Maybe they would be receptive to a recommended change. It would be nice if scores would reflect when powerups and/or swaps were used, either by some indicator(s) or better yet, display both scores, regular and with “assistance.” I am not fanatical about trying to be the best and most times I am happy with my ranking. But it is very annoying to see scores 150 to 200 percent higher than the average, which alone drives the average much higher than many of us regular joes find obtainable.

You know, maybe better yet would be an option to upload “unassisted” high scores directly to ABN. If the game can be connected to Facebook to maintain scores, I’m sure there could be a way to upload scores direct to ABN. Then the playing field would be more level.

Thanks for letting me vent. Keep up the good work, ABN, especially the extremely helpful walkthrough videos.

Rank: Sling God with 44130 points
By annach (@annach)

Some observations here. Looks like there are many people who would prefer a “clean” leaderboard,  with swaps not permitted. Especially that swaps here are not really swaps, but add birds and can result in very high scores. This makes it impossible to compete if one prefers to play “clean”. Worse, one cannot even beat the average. Even though there are only a few people who enter “swap scores”, those scores are so much higher that they significantly change averages. It looks like the majority of scores in Stella leaderboards are “clean scores”, even though swaps are allowed. In general, I see that not so many people entered scores for Stella, only 131 user for episode 1 and 67 for episode 2. I thought the situation was bad in case of Star Wars II with not many people participating, but it is even worse here. I think more people would enter scores if the leaderboard did not allow swaps. It is probably not too late to reverse the policy and disallow swaps. A few users who entered scores using swaps could remove them (they probably have their regular scores, as many keep their scores written on paper). @admins what do you think? Would it be possible to change the policy and have “clean” leaderboards? I think the majority of nesters would appreciate it.

Rank: Pig Leader with 10850 points
By conehead55 (@conehead55)

I would echo what annach said. This board is currently a very uneven playing field, with most playing the game “straight” and only a few who seem to be taking advantage of swaps. It inflates the average scores, and makes shooting for that goal very difficult if not impossible.

I have no issue with people who want to use PU’s or other crutches… we should just have a level playing field on each board. Just create a separate board where “anything goes.”

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@conehead55 I wish that existed too, but it wouldn’t help much. First, you know a few less-than-honorable swap/LCS/PU users would sneak PU scores onto the “straight” board. Also, there’s so few players, the averages would be irrelevant even if all scores were non-swap. If we split the board (assuming 50%/50% swap/non-swap), both boards would be ghost towns: Ep1=66 players, and Ep2=35. IMO, the game would need 1,000+ players before the benefits of a board split would outweigh all the cons (especially the extra admin work creating and policing).

Of course, that begs the question, how many more people would post scores if the board was fair? I wish I knew. :)

Rank: Sling God with 44130 points
By annach (@annach)

@kelani – I think creating a separate leaderboard for swap scores as @conehead55 suggested would solve all the problems. I know our admins are not in favor of this and have never done it for other games, but for Stella this seems like an ideal solution. The reason is that unlike powerup/non-powerup scores in other games, the swap scores here are very different from non-swap ones, which will make it much easier to control. First, I strongly believe that most of the players who use swaps are honorable people and will not post their scores on a “straight” leaderboard. Secondly, even if an occasional swap score will get there, this will be very noticeable (at least 10k above with a single swap), and the users will notify the offender to place his score on the other leaderboard. In other words, I think the admins won’t need to spend too much time to police that.
It is indeed an interesting question of how many people would post their scores if the board was “clean”. How about putting up a poll and actually asking the nesters?

Rank: Avian Overlord with 18470 points
By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

WOW! @kelani @annach I haven’t played Stella for a long time, actually I played only in the first week after release. I am one of players who use swaps but never abused them. The only swaps I used are telepods. As I can see the first ranked person is 2.1 M ahead of second, while second person is over 400k ahead of me. All those nicks are known and players are respectable with lots of ABN exp points and many scores entered on their personal leaderboards, so what makes them to use real money on game coins only to climb on global leaderboards, I don’t know…
I did enter swap scores and I feel sorry for not keeping my clean scores recorded. I would gladly accept idea to enter clean scores to separate LB even if that means I play game again as guest player, signed out from my FB account.

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@cosmo2503 And that crazy leaderboard you see is after a few people were removed for apparently using the Hammer powerup in addition to the endless swaps. :) I’ve kept my promise that I’m not participating on it anymore. All of my non-swap scores were pretty good, so If nothing else, people can use my entered scores as the most likely spot where non-swap scores stop, and swap scores begin.

After all the confusion about this, I sent you a PM apologizing if I made it sound like your scores weren’t legitimate. Just in case you missed it, your swap usage was perfectly fine, and you followed the rules just like the rest of us. IMO, Your swap scores are just as “clean” as my non-swap scores. I’m very sorry you had to go through that. :o(

@annach Seems I owe you an apology as well! :) I never got the notification of your previous post. I agree with everything you said, except the part about swap scores being obvious on a non-swap leaderboard. I’m sure some would be, and those would probably be honest mistakes. In my experience, most cheaters try to stay under the radar. I think you’d find a lot of people posting top 10 swap scores on the non-swap board. Get enough of those, and you can easily top the episode leaderboard, without ever earning a top score, or attracting the attention that goes with it.

That’s a neat idea about the poll, and I’d also love to know what the results would show. I’d make one, but unfortunately, I just don’t have time. :( If someone else wants to do that by creating one on a webpoll site and creating a new topic in the Stella forum, I’d definitely cast my vote, and ask others to do the same. I may even be able to have the poll set as a sticky topic for a few weeks, so more people will see it.

With that said, I think the turnout would be disappointing. A month ago, there were 198 Stella players. Now there are 216. Given how many nesters are so AB addicted, they will play every title they can get their hands on, I think it’s likely that people aren’t playing because they’re just not interested in this game. Since it’s targeted at a specific demographic, that’s not really surprising.

It is unfortunate, though, because it is a good game. I’m about as far from the intended audience as you can get, and I enjoy everything about it (except for Luca’s annoyingly repetitive and piercing sounds) . :)

Rank: Sling God with 44130 points
By annach (@annach)

@kelani thank you for your reply. I find that all sounds become annoying after a while, especially sounds that pigs are making, so I play all AB games with sound turned off, that feels much better. :) In the beginning I enjoyed playing Stella very much, and after 3-starring everything I entered my scores. What I normally do next is improving my scores to beat the averages. However, for Stella it turned out impossible without using swaps, so I stopped playing it because swaps here are not really swaps, and I didn’t feel like messing up my clean scores. Because of this experience I thought that the main reason other users did not enter scores was also the fact that the leaderboards allowed entering “swap” scores. But now I think there are other reasons. In addition to the one you mentioned I think there is also the fact that the scores are not displayed. I think most of the users just play without writing scores on paper and then cannot easily look them up to enter. Actually, now I think this may be the main reason we see so few scores in the leaderboards. Probably, many more people play the game, they just don’t enter their scores. Let’s hope Rovio will fix this issue soon.

Rank: Sling God with 44130 points
By annach (@annach)

@kelani – by the way, there is no need for apology, something is wrong with notifications. I also did not get a notification about your message. I did get a notification from cosmo though.

Rank: Avian Overlord with 18470 points
By cosmo2503 (@cosmo2503)

@kelani sorry I didn’t get notifications about your message, therefore I missed it. I appreciete your opinion and you didn’t need to apologize to me anyway. I played fair to ABN rules and you as well as other members agreed. However, I still feel sorry because there are not two separated LB on the Nest. At first I was really enthusiastic about new AB game and purchased toys even before game was released. I guess nobody really expected that telepods in Stella would work differently then they work in ABSW II. If I knew that I wouldn’t buy them as nobody in my familly plays with them physiclly with them (they are cute and surely appealing only to 4-7 year old girls, especially tree house set.
And finally, I didn’t see how this leaderboard looked like before illegimate scores were removed, but as I can remember leading player , who overtook me on most levels (a person with “non power-ups in nick) was just 10-15k per level over me, and current leader has over 2,5 million points and although player is master slinger and his scores are great on the most of other AB games leaderboards, his Stella’s scores are result of accumulating too many bird swaps on each of game levels (of course this is only my opinion).

Rank: Sling God with 44130 points
By annach (@annach)

@cosmo2503 – you shouldn’t feel sorry you entered scores using telepod swaps. This is absolutely legit. I don’t understand what you and @kelani mean when you say you followed the rules, but some other users didn’t. There are no rules regarding swaps. According to the message above the leaderboard all swaps are allowed, no matter how many on a single level. The only rule is not to use the hammer. However, how do you know a user used the hammer? An additional swap or two will lead to the same result. Multiple swaps can lead to such high scores that the hammer is almost irrelevant. Unless the users themselves admit they used the hammer there is no way to prove it. The fact that all swap scores are permitted makes it hard to keep the leaderboard under control. I wish there were some rules, for example no more than one swap per level. Then, I would (may be) consider playing with swaps myself. Unfortunately, there are no any rules, multiple swaps are allowed, so all scores entered are legit no matter how high. Therefore, I don’t understand why several users were removed. I suppose they coudn’t provide the screenshots to prove their scores, otherwise I don’t see the reason for such removal.

Rank: Master Slinger with 7130 points
By Kelani (@kelani)

@annach Technically, when posting a swap score, you’re supposed to provide a list of swaps used and the strategy, or risk removal. Not many people bother to do that, though. In this case, the user admitted to using powerups in another game, so I guess the removed scores were collateral damage. Apparently it didn’t faze them, because they’re now doing it again in a third game.

What happened with cosmo was just the result of mass confusion. In the Stella early days, we were under the assumption that swaps were supposed to, y’know, swap. I was convinced that each swap adding a bird was a bug, and I sent a support request to Rovio to find out. But during that period of uncertainty, people were being a bit quick to point fingers at anyone getting great swap scores, assuming they were exploiting the “bug”. As I recall, cosmo used telepods, which only allowed one swap per level attempt, so in reality, she wasn’t even getting the full benefit of the multi-bird swaps. A few people voiced their opinions on swaps a bit too strongly, and I guess there were some hurt feelings. It was just a no-win situation.

Once I got the official word from Rovio that swaps were intended to be this disastrous, I made sure all of the accusations and innuendoes were removed from the leaderboards, and told cosmo if anyone accused her of doing anything wrong, to send them to me. Eventually, the whole thing just died down. I think those two weeks aged me five years :)

Rank: Sling God with 44130 points
By annach (@annach)

@kelani – thank you for explaining the situation, I understand it now.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *