Best way to Treasure Hunt?

[Jonathan]

A while ago I wrote a few things and put some forum links with TH advice in a channel on my Guild’s Discord server. I’ll paste it here (re-formatted).

My summary:

Some general tips I’ve found helpful in the past are to:

1. Make as many 5, and then 4, matches as you can, starting at the top of the board and with the lowest denomination - i.e. bronze coins.
2. If you run out of 4 and 5 matches, try to make a 3 match tending towards the bottom half and middle of the board.
3. Try to avoid (1) over-developing too quickly and (2) lower denomination treasures at the bottom of the board; aim for homogenisation. The treasures that fall from the top of the board range from bronze coins to money bags at the highest. You have a greater chance of something cascading down and matching if the other treasures up the top are of a similar denomination. If you have too wide a variety of treasure types in the same area, it can be very hard to get a match, particularly in the lower half of the board.
4. When you make a match, an upgraded treasure remains in the location to which you were matching. For cascading matches, the upgraded treasure appears in the middle of the match (or I guess probably randomised between the middle locations for 4, 6, 8 matches).

I’ve seen some threads on the forums with people much better than me at it posting videos and sharing the odd tip, so I’ll go fetch some of those now

Here are some links/videos (haven’t watched all of them, tbh, but have read all the posts ) (afaik boogafreak remains the TH champ):

1. Boogafreak (so you know he’s good), with what I understand to be the current highest (published) turn count in TH (700+!!!), posts videos (~3.5 hours) and small highlights of the matches on pages 2 and 3 of this Steam Community Discussion: What is your personal best turns on Treasure Maps? :: Gems of War General Discussions
   I found watching even just a little bit of one of his videos helpful to see how he approaches it.

2. A tip from Mr.Strange on the forums that helped another user breach 60 turns:

@Mr.Strange

Here’s a tip for increasing move count that really helped me:

Focus on eliminating TYPES of items. What you really want is a board that is 80% silver & gold coins - because that leads to lots of cascades & 5-matches. If your board is 15% bronze, 15% silver, 15% gold, 15% sacks, 15% chests, and 25% high-level stuff you’ll probably run out of moves soon. Avoid matching the things you have a lot of, to increase your odds of getting extra turns soon.

I 100% agree about homogenising (perhaps not the right word, here?) towards Silver/Gold coins for the greatest chance of ensuring matches.

3. Some great basic tips from Shimrra! Mostly covered in what I mentioned above, I think but also perhaps one of the better general guides for doing better:

Treasure Hunt high scores 1.0.9 (screenshots)

Very basic rules of thumb are to go for, in this order: 5-matches (duh) - but starting from the top so as to not ruin other ones 4-matches - if they are numerous, start from the top as above… … but if not, try to hit lower on the board to potentially trigger 5-matches 3-matches - lower on the board as above A major trick is getting used to the behavior of these things when they’re matched, since unlike gems they will leave an object behind. Other things to remember: A main goal is to (count…

4. More good tips!

@utfanx2

The biggest thing I believe is noticing patterns to match 5’s; not all of them are super obvious. For example, two gold coins up above a match three of silver coins with a gold coin on each side. It can be pretty easy to miss an extra turn like that.

My strategy is to play the center. It is harder to get higher matches on the sides, so I avoid them. Specifically, I play the bottom center, since it is also hard to get a higher match with a chest blocking the spawns on top. You eventually want to end up with all of the caskets and chests at the bottom where they are out of the way.

“Patterns” or “structures” (as boogafreak referred to them) seem to be the key to really high scores, kind of like how a very good chess player is familiar with lots of game boards/situations.

Part of a post I made in the Lounge category:

(Note that that ‘project’ hasn’t really gone any further, since Treasure Hunt doesn’t have much incentive …)

That thread has some other good pointers:

@Personette

One tip which I read somewhere else on the forum, and which I’ve found useful, is this:

(1) Match 5s first
(2) Match 4s from the top down
(3) Match 3s from the bottom up

I also try to think about whether, all things being equal, I should match the lower value or higher value gem. Lower value gems make more matches; higher value gems allow you to push chests down the board or clear space.

Good, easy rules of thumb to get more moves (what I’ve seen described as a ‘heuristic’ style of play).

5. Tacet, the most prolific GoW streamer, with a how-to (28 mins): https://youtu.be/A07YnmpWS7g

6. Tacet, aiming for the 2 vaults achievement (15 mins): https://youtu.be/VlxpMfh-sj8