Treasure Isle Tips and Tricks!

Treasure Isle is Zynga's newest game on Facebook. Fans who already loved other Zynga games like Mafia Wars, Vampire Wars, Farmville, and Cafeworld are now thrilled with Treasure Isle. It already has over 8 million users!! I found myself easily enchanted and usually play every day for a bit.

The basic concept is this: You go from island to island using maps and you search for treasure. You dig for treasure, you use a machete to wack away at shrubs and rocks, and you use dynamite to blast your way to the treasure. Inside the treasure chests you find collectable treasures that you can trade in for money for and experience points. Along the way you can find money (coins and dollars) and fruit for energy so you can keep digging.

When you run out of energy you can return to your home island. On your island you can plant different fruit varieties in two garden beds, check your "home" treasure chest, and you can decorate with purchases made at the island shop using money earned while digging or gifts sent to you by your Treasure Island neighbors. As you gain more experience points you level up and earn more energy and more purchase options in the Island shop. You are also able to give progressively better gifts to your friends.

Each home island also has a gem tree and yours will be a specific color (blue red, orange, green, or purple). You can collect from your tree once per day and you can collect one gem from your neighbors trees if there are any left. You use gems of each color to unlock tiki statues. If you don't have the required gem, you can't advance on that island until you do.

Like the other Zynga games it is incredibly fun and an addicting!! Check out my best hints, tips, and tricks below!

Photo Source: Zynga

Treasure Chests are filled with all sorts of wonderful things... Tiki Masks, Royal Dinner Settings, Navigation Artifacts, Chess Pieces, and much more. Each collection requires like pieces and when you find them all, you trade them in for booty! You can click on the treasure chest in the lower right hand side of your screen to check your progress and you can add up to 5 items to your wishlist so that friends who have an excess of certain items can gift them to you to help you complete your collection. Be a good friend and gift your unwanted items whenever possible and your friends will return the favor!

Below you can see my treasure chest at one point. My wishlist is at the top, a complete collection is underneath, followed by an uncompleted collection.

When you begin playing Treasure Isle you start out with roughly 100 energy points. It requires 5 energy points to dig one square, 7 energy points to take a machete to a bush, tree, or rock, and 10 energy points to hack away at really big rocks. On or around your third map of islands (each map has around 7-8 islands) you will also encounter shrubs and rocks that are "multi-dig" and it requires 3 attempts to clear those spaces. As you advance in the game you do get more allotted energy. At level 23 for instance your energy allotment is 122 points. But regardless you need energy to play the game! As you can see in my screenshot above I had 6 out of 122 energy points when I took this screenshot. I had energy enough to dig in only one more spot.

When you run out of energy you can do several things:

* Get fruit from your backpack (accumulated while digging, from your garden, and from friends). See below a garden with Pineapple at various stages of growth. Each pineapple plot is worth 15 energy points at harvest.

* Request or use an energy pack. This must be given to you by friends and it will completely refill your energy but you can only use one per day.

* Send a request to your friends for more fruit. If you have over 30 friends (the maximum number of requests you can send) then you must be selective and choose friends who are at higher levels. At level 15 and above you are able to send mangoes to your friends and they are worth 15 energy. Under level 15 and the max you can send is a fruit worth 5 energy. So be smart and ask the "right" friends.

* Level up to refill energy. This requires experience points but by visiting friends and doing odd jobs on their home islands you can earn 5 experience points per friend. That really adds up!

* Unlock the Tiki Head Statues that require gems. To unlock the tikis all you need is the gem or gems. You get 5 experience and no energy is expended so never leave an island due to lack of energy without first unlocking those tiki heads and getting the experience points. This can help you level up without expending energy.

* Blow up the rocks that require dynamite. To blow up specific rocks you need dynamite that costs 250 coins only. You do not need energy, so before you leave and island for lack of energy at least blow up these rocks and get the experience points that will hopefully enable you to level up faster.

* Get fruit from your friends by using the Facebook news feed. Sometimes while digging you come across baskets of fruit and you are prompted to share those with your friends. By keeping an eye on your Facebook feed you can often snag some fruit from your friends.

* Wait. Your energy refills one point for every 5 minutes that passes. After 25 minutes you would have 5 points and so forth. Sometimes your only option is to wait.

Gems are important to the game because you can't complete many islands without them. Tiki head statues will block your path and you must unlock them with gems of a certain color. Your gem tree will give you a gem of a specific color daily and the rest you must get from friends. So again... add friends who play Treasure Isle!

In the picture above you will see an orange gem tree on the right side of the island.

Each day you can visit each of your friends home islands and possibly collect a gem from their tree. You can also get gems in treasure chests sent to you by friends. The more Treasure Island friends you have, the higher the possibility of getting these chests.

Also when you are digging you will often find a collection of gems that you are prompted to share. You are also prompted to share all but one of the gems collected on your gem tree. When your friends share their gems it posts on the Facebook News Feed, so keep an eye on that and you can get gems. I often watch this feed and accumulate a lot of gems so that I have some stockpiled.

If you run across a Tiki Head that you cannot open because you do not have a gem of that of that color or "enough" gems of that color (some require multiple gems), then you can request that friends send you one. Your friends with a gem tree of that color can send you a gem of that color and usually one other color via the gifting area. While you wait, go work on another island.

All that is required is a FREE Facebook account!