Game information

• Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9.1
• Starts from a fresh save
• Genre: Puzzle

Comments

• Alchemy: Turn every row and column into gold by matching gems in those spots respectively. These can basically just be brute forced with 3-gem matches as long as they're all in unique rows, as a result they're the quickest.
• Stratamax: Clear a minimum amount of gems with a limited amount of moves. At least some special gems and cascades are requires for the higher tier levels without of moves.
• Balance: Clear a minimum amount of red and blue gems while not matching too many of one type at once. Just like Stratamax, specials & extra combos are pretty beneficial here.
• Buried Treasure/Sandstorm: Clear gems to unravel artifacts from the sand. Getting specials isn't necessary but helpful to clear large spaces covering the artifacts.
• Butterflies: Match gems as some of the gems turn into butterflies before the butterflies reach the spider at the top. These levels are way more efficient than I thought they'd be at first since butterflies seem to spawn more often depending on the total number of matches you make.
• Gold Rush: Earn gold pieces by matching gems near the soil at the bottom. Specials help a lot here for clearing the bottom, especially lightning gems and supernovas.
• Time Bomb: Destroy bomb gems by matching them before you run out of time/moves. At least one bomb gem (two in rare scenarios) will show up if no others are onscreen so matching them immediately is vital for speeding these levels up.
• Avalanche: Match enough gems before the board fills up completely. These levels are usually slower since you have few possible matches to make early on, specials are helpful wherever.
  • There's an internal timer that only drops each set of gems after no other matches are currently being made which is why the delays in matchmaking here matter.
• Poker: Make hands worth high enough amounts of points to win. The slowest levels by far due to having a long animation play out after every hand, winning in as few hands as possible really matters since each less hand saves about 10 seconds.
• Ice Storm: Match gems before ice fills the screen. Specials aren't required but helpful on occasion for increasing the counter.
• Wall Blast: Match special gems to destroy the wall. Flame gems and lightning gems are great here for their areas of effect.

• Starting Board RNG Manip: The times you pick quests at from the menu screen determine the starting board of gems you get when entering them. This makes it possible to route levels in a way where you get above average luck at the start, which is great especially for ones like Stratamax where you typically want to start off with special combos that can be immediately made or Balance where you want to start off with more red/blue gem combos. This was the way I ended up ordering the quests based on the starting board luck:
  • Relic 1: Alchemy I, Stratamax I, Balance I, Buried Treasure, Butterflies I, Gold Rush I, Time Bomb I, Avalanche I
  • Relic 2: Poker I, Balance II, Sandstorm I, Ice Storm I, Sandstorm I, Time Bomb II, Avalanche II, Stratamax II, Butterflies II
  • Relic 3: Wall Blast I, Time Bomb III, Alchemy II, Avalanche III, Poker II, Gold Rush II, Stratamax III, Butterflies III
  • Relic 4: Ice Storm II, Balance III, Alchemy III, Avalanche IV, Butterflies IV, Time Bomb IV, Stratamax IV, Gold Rush III
  • Relic 5: Poker III, Sandstorm II, Gold Rush IV, Avalanche V, Wall Blast II, Balance IV, Stratamax V, Ice Storm III

• Gemswap RNG Manip: Depending on the specific frames that you make gem matches on (they don't have to be valid matches), different gem colors will drop from the top of the board, allowing for more beneficial colors to drop when you want them. This is great for getting longer cascades, more special gems, and some more specific things like better hands in Poker and instant bomb matches in Time Bomb. It might be possible to get 100% perfect luck with this manip, but it would probably take an unrealistic amount of time to figure out frame-perfect inputs for every gem drop in the game.
  • For the ends of levels, gemswap manip is helpful for intentionally making as close as possible to zero extra matches in order to not waste time with extra cascades.

Other comments

Thank You