Below is a list of what you need to do to earn a Gold Spin for the games in Treasure Quest on Facebook. Also listed are the amounts of gold you can win per spin before modifiers (like 2x, 3x, free spins, etc) and how much experience (xp) you earn per spin.

Daily Detective 15-1500 gold, 15xp
- Daily: Find all of the hidden objects and solve the daily case (answers)
- Solve older cases (cost 200g each)

Deuces Wilder 3-300 gold, 3xp
- Earn 2000 points (countdown at top of screen)

Fairway Solitaire 2-200 gold, 2xp
- Find a Gold Spin card (random)

LOBE 7-700 gold, 7xp
- Fill up the gold spin bar (50 stars)

Mush 7-700 gold, 7xp
- Win the game

Oz Video Poker 4-400 gold, 4xp
- Move forward to middle of each chapter (4 of 8 steps)

Plunder 3-300 gold, 3xp
- Find a Gold Spin doubloon in a chest

Riddle O’Day 3-300 gold, 3xp
- Daily: Solve the Riddle (answers)
- Find a shamrock

Snow Globe 3-300 gold, 3xp
- complete a stage of Jack’s life (i.e., find all the gifts of baby stage in the bonus rounds)

Suits Me TriPeaks 1-100 gold, 1xp
- Win the game

Suits Me Yukon 10-1000 gold, 10xp
- Win the game

Thunderbolt 21 2-200 gold, 2xp
- Make 14 or more 21′s

Unwell Mel 7-700 gold, 7xp
- Daily: Complete the Daily Dose

Big Sea has finally posted How to Play Plunder! I know a lot of you were waiting for this one!

Also, don’t forget that wayyy back on Talk Like a Pirate Day 2009, we shared a few hints and tips for Plunder.

If you have any other hints or tips, feel free to add them in a comment below. Thanks!

Big Fish Slots is a multiplayer team game with team bonuses, three completely different rounds, and even trivia. Each of its three rounds is played a little differently. With a little practice and our game tips, you’ll be scoring in the top ten in no time!

Round One – Go Fish

In this round you are looking for four creatures per game board: the starfish, a school of little fish, a seahorse, and an eel.

Since you’ll get bonus points for finding all four (and a new set of bubbles and fish to find), it makes sense to focus on finding fish as efficiently as possible. Memorize the four fish you’ll need to find (school, starfish, seahorse, and eel) so that if you’ve only got a certain type left, you can strategize your pops, multipops, and blowfish to find it. For example, if you only have an eel left to find, you only need to remove one bubble out of every three horizontal bubbles in a row to find a part of his body.

Each creature has a different shape and is hidden underneath a different number/shape of bubbles. While you’re popping bubbles take a close look at the left, right, and top edges of the bubbles that remain.

Sometimes (but not always) part of the school of fish can be seen on the left side:

or the right side:

or the top:

The starfish can be seen on the left:

The seahorse can be seen on the left, top and bottom:

The eel pokes out from the top of its middle bubble and on the right side:

If you get a yellow pufferfish, you might try placing him near the middle of the game board. He’ll deflate and pop bubbles on his way off the screen. This will maximize the bubbles he pops before he deflates completely.

Our friend b3achy has pointed out that there is a ‘glitch’ with the shark in this round:

When you get the shark in Round 1, in the old game, he would reset the board completely. In other words, you’d get a completely new board and have to start over to find the four critters (and they’d be in different locations).

Currently, in this new version of the game, if you get the shark in Round 1, he just replaces the missing bubbles of the board you are currently playing. To clear this board, you only have to find the remaining critters, and they seem to stay in the same location as prior to getting the shark. So, if you saw some of the critters poking out from behind the bubbles, they are still in that same location. If you only needed to find one critter prior to getting the shark, then that is all you will need to find to ‘clear’ the board after he fills in the missing bubbles.

When she wrote to Big Sea about this, they responded that it was working as intended. This will be something you’ll want to pay attention to as it makes recovering from a shark round that much easier.

Round Two – Fishfood

This round is most like a match-3 game (like Unwell Mel). Your goal is to match (at least) three of the same type of fish to remove them from the game board, but when you do more fish will fall into their places. Pay attention to which way the fish are facing — wherever you place them, they will eat any smaller fish in the direction they are pointed. Red fish are obviously your best chompers as they can eat up both green and blue fish.

Look for patterns of fish in the shape of an L, a T or a +. It takes a little practice but if you start looking for patterns of three or more you can also start seeing where, if you get a larger fish to chomp away other fish below, a pattern will form from the remaining falling fish.

To maximize your points in this round, you’ll want to focus on getting chains. If you can remove a set of three or more of a specific type of fish so that it sets off a chain reaction of other types of fish falling into place and matching up with other like fish. Tokens add up quickly if you can get a long chain reaction.

Round Three – Fishinko

Watch the launch lane — you can launch a pearl (or pearls) as soon as it is loaded. It’s easy to get caught up in watching pearls fall, but you need to stay on top of the launch lane, because time runs out quickly (especially if you get five launches in your spin).

The golden pearls seem to be ‘heavier’ than the regular, single ones. You will have to launch them harder to make it to the farthest oysters.

The multi-pearls seem to be ‘lighter’ than the regular, single ones. If you launch them too hard, you’ll lose all of them along the left side of the tank (and that’s no good)!

If you have a closed clam next to an open one, aim for the slope of the closed clam nearest to the open one. A pearl can easily get a good bounce off the slope and land right in the open clam next door!

The right wall’s bump-out (from the plunger button) can be used to ‘bounce’ pearls into the rightmost clam shell. This seems to work best with either the golden pearl or a set of multiples falling close together.

Pliers can be used to remove pegs from the game board. When you remove certain pegs, they may fall into an open clam shell. In addition, if you have a peg that is constantly knocking pearls away from an open clam shell, you can use the pliers to remove the peg to make future rounds easier.

If all else fails and you have a hard time getting your pearls into the clam shells, try aiming just for the other items in the tank. They’ll net you 50 points a piece and will help you learn to launch and aim more accurately. The golden pearls also have a point bonus with them — 150 points for hitting a critter/object (up from 50 for regular pearls) and 75 for landing in a clam (up from 25).

Should I take the Chance?

It’s up to you! If you enjoy the team aspect, everyone in the room will be thrilled at a few extra points if you win the team bonus. However, be aware that you may lose points (and if you have received more than one ? in your spin, the number of tokens you lose will be multiplied). The chance of getting at least 200 points is higher than the chance of losing tokens, so we always choose the Chance. And don’t forget, earning team bonuses, answering trivial questions correctly all earn you progress towards the new awards, so go for it! If you need help answering the trivia questions, we’ve compiled a list here.

Earning Awards

If you’re into earning awards, the ones for this game can be earned just by playing normally (and sometimes getting very lucky). To get Teamed Clams and Straight A Sturgeon faster, you’ll want to always take the chance. You might find it easier to earn a place in the top ten or win (Goin’ Topside and The Big Fish) if you play in a lesser-populated hall.

Related Posts:
- Big Fish Slots Trivia
- Big Fish Slots Ranks & Awards

I’ve been getting a lot of hits from people searching for information on how to Raid the Monkey Lair in Oz Video Poker. For those of you not familiar with it, it’s for the Raiding Places award:

Oz Video Poker – Raiding Places Award
Raid the Monkey Lair

Have no fear, this is a game event that happens randomly while you’re playing, so just keep playing and hope it happens sooner — rather than later!

Check out our list of the ranks and awards for Oz Video Poker and please feel free to share your comments, hints or tips on earning any of the awards available in the comments below. Thank you!

It’s only fitting that Big Sea is celebrating International Talk Like a Pirate Day today! Check out their latest news post for more information. You can learn about the history of the day, use an English to Pirate translator, and then join your friends in Plunder for some good old fashioned Pirate Fun!

While we’re on the subject of Plunder, I’ll admit I never actually played it on the old site (and have so far not tried to learn how to play on the new site, I guess I was waiting for a help file) — do you have any Plunder hints or tips for a new beginner?

We’re all so anxious and excited for the upcoming new community site, this doesn’t really seem like news anymore (well, that and the fact that in April Big Fish started recycling all of the riddles from last year)! However, there are still people needing help with riddles and still people who want to help them, so here you go!

June 2009 Riddles & Answers for Riddle O’Day

Enjoy! And don’t forget: you now can tell your friends about these riddles by giving them the easy-to-type and easy-to-remember web address of just bigfishgamer.com/riddles. Thanks!

It’s that time again, May 2009 riddles are here! I’ll be working on the list this morning.

As I’m starting, I am having a sneaking suspicion that the riddles and answers for this month are exactly the same as May 2008.

If you find one that’s not from May 2008, please let me know in a comment below. Thanks!

I’ll update this post as I get more information — as with last month it seems that Big Fish Games is reusing the riddles from each month each year.

I’ve posted the April riddles and answers. Thanks to everyone who sent in answers early this morning while I slept in! This month’s set of riddles and answers all seem to be repeats from April and December 2008. If I missed one, please feel free to post it in the comments below (but please check the list to see if I have found it first, it’ll save us both a lot of time). Thanks!

Did you know, Riddle O’Day turned 1 year old this month! That’s a lot of riddles and creatures, huh?

While we’re all eagerly anticipating the upcoming change to Riddle O’Day, Big Fish is still cranking out new riddles for us to enjoy:

March Riddles

If there are any I’ve missed, feel free to post them in the comments section below. Thanks!

I always look forward to the first of the month; the new riddles are always so fun! I archived the January riddles and am posting the February ones today.

Riddles for February 2009 are being posted here! If I miss one, go ahead and post it in the comments so I can add it to the main page. Thanks!