Everyone loves Pros and Cons lists so let’s get going! Treasure maps… oh god. My wife plays this game and she’s pretty new to it, and one of the “Adventure Tasks” she hangs up the most on is ones telling her to do treasure hunts. Why? Probably because it’s the one mini-game that is the most unlike Gems of War gameplay.
It’s funny because, when you’re first starting, treasure maps are actually pretty hard to get. They really are, especially when you use them when you get them. I remember when I first started playing I had this crazy notion that it was important for me to “break even” with Treasure Hunts, so that I could buy more treasure maps using the Glory I made from the treasure hunts. Yes, I really did that.
Now I have over 5500 treasure maps, and I keep getting more. But let’s start with the pros, so we can end on a negative note…
Pros on Treasure Hunt/Maps:
- Gems: source of free (no $$) and repeatable (1 from Green chests, 2 from Red, and 5 from Vaults)
- Relaxing: albeit subjective, treasure hunts have no “bad” outcomes, you can’t “lose,” you just run out of turns eventually
Cons on Treasure Hunt/Maps:
- No Hero/Class experience
- Matching can be confusing compared to normal gameplay for new players because in every other game mode, the “enemy” gets a turn, so the board state changes when you don’t have extra turns. In treasure hunt, there is no “enemy” turn, and the board state always remains under your control.
- Matching can be confusing compared to normal gameplay for new players because in every other game mode, when you combine gems, they completely disappear. In Treasure Hunt, another gem is created in place. This affects how the gems fall. If new players are being told to do Treasure Hunts, then they go back to normal gems of war matches, it can be confusing when the act of combing gems has a different outcome. I’m level 1416 and I have the opposite problem. I almost never do treasure hunts but when I do, I forget that when I’m making a match, gems aren’t going to fall like they normally do, because a gem is going to be created where in normal gameplay it would not.
- Treasure Hunts have no scaling with player level. There is no difference in rewards in Treasure Hunts for a level 1 player and a level 1400 player. While this might seem “balanced” it is actually quite frustrating, because it means I’m getting rewards that I don’t want (paltry amounts of gold, useless souls when I have nearly 4 million of them), and small chances at glory/gems/glory keys/gem keys, the same chances that a new player has.
- In fact, the only difference in Treasure Hunt between a new player and an end-game player is not in the Treasure Hunt at all, it’s outside the Treasure Hunt, and that is how many maps you have. A new player may have a Daily Adventure to finish 2 treasure hunts and they may have no easy way to acquire them outside of maybe redeeming a code or getting a 10-cascade in a match (which is nearly impossible if you don’t have certain troops), whereas I have so many maps I could spend all day doing treasure hunts and never run out of maps. I could do literally do 15 Treasure Hunts a day for a year and still have maps leftover.
- Treasure Hunts don’t reflect the changing of the game at all. It’s called a Treasure Hunt but there’s no connection between it and Vault troops, for instance, even though the most difficult reward from treasure hunts is a Vault, there’s no connection between that Vault and any of the Vault troops. Similarly, the greatest rewards you can get in Treasure Hunts are gems and gem keys, but we’ve have things like Chaos Shards (please don’t give me anymore…), Deeds, and Tokens come out.
- Treasure Hunt rewards of Gold and Souls don’t scale at all with player bonuses. I have a 205% Bonus to Gold, 305% Bonus to Souls, and 345% Bonus to XP (thanks GW!), but all of that is useless in Treasure Hunt, it doesn’t mean anything.
- Currently the best strategy for Treasure Hunts is actually to play as quickly as possible to get as many Green Chests that you can and end the hunt. Why? Because it maximizes your Gem rewards. Green chests have a chance of rewarding 1 gem, but it costs 3 green chests to make 1 red chest, which only give 2 gems. The faster you play, the faster you get into the next map to make more matches. Stretching out games to get Vaults is not advised, because the rewards don’t match the time invested (unless you really, really want gem keys). This seems rather silly – you should be rewarded for “surviving” longer.