Treasure Isle, the new Facebook game from the makers of FarmVille,  puts you in the boots of an explorer hunting for buried treasure across  a series of tropical islands. This game combines harvesting aspects of  FarmVille with a more adventure-filled theme, and that seems to be a  killer combo -- attracting roughly 20 million players in a matter of weeks. Here's six ways to get your hands on Treasure Isle's fortunes as quickly as possible. 
1. Plant Watermelons
Your home island will feature two small plots of farmable land when you  first begin the game -- you'll have a choice of four different fruit  seeds to plant. You'll get the best return on your time by planting  Watermelons. We've been finding that we play Treasure Isle in very short  bursts, using up all of our energy hunting for treasures in one go,  replenishing with any fruit we found, and then depleting our energy  again.                                 
Bear with us as we do a little rough math -- the energy cap starts off  at 100 and increases only a little with each level. Since energy  replenishes at 1 point every five minutes, it'll take just over eight  hours to completely fill up again, which means in about eight hours, we  can come back and have another short play session. And what do you know,  Watermelons take eight hours to mature -- perfect.
2. Ask friends for missing items in your collections
This is crucial, moreso than in other Facebook games that you may play.  In Mafia Wars, you can complete item collections by redo-ing the same  tier of missions that grant those items until you finally complete the  set. In Treasure Isle, you can't return to an island once you've  dug/searched every grid -- this means that if you weren't lucky enough  to complete the Hulu Outfit set on Guarded Shores, you won't be able to  find those items yourself. 
Luckily you can list up to six items at once in your Wish List and ask  friends to send you any extras they may find on their treasure hunts.  Complete collections yield a massive amount of gold coins, so they're  well worth the time invested in tracking down each item.
3. Don't buy trees/plants or gems in the store
Unlike trees in Farmville, Treasure Isle's store-bought trees don't  produce any goods, experience points or money. They're purely for  decoration.
The trees that *are* important are the Gem trees that you'll find on  your and your friends' islands. There is one per island, and the color  gem that it bears is automatically decided for you when you first start  playing Treasure Isle. Make sure you visit your friends' islands  frequently to harvest gems, especially if theirs produces a different  color gem than yours. You'll need an assortment of them to open gem  gates later on in the game.
4. Buy tools as soon as you can
You'll find the Machete, Pickaxe, Dynamite and Bug Spray items in the  'Tools' section of the Store. While you're likely to be prompted to  purchase each tool as you need them (Machete is needed to search for  treasure in trees, for example), having them on hand boosts the chance  that you'll find fruit or additional gold during the course of treasure  hunting.
 5. Get 100% on each island
This should be a no-brainer, but in the event that you end up finding  all of the treasures on each island before actually searching each grid  -- don't stop! You'll get a major experience/gold bonus for completing  the island itself, not to mention those last spots may hide fruits and  other gold stashes. Energy points replenish eventually, so you have  nothing to really lose by digging on those last few spots.
6. Add friends early and often.
We're not huge proponents of spamming non-gaming friends with  invites/gift requests but in this case, having an extra friend around  may mean more than just a handful of additional coins each day. Since,  as mentioned earlier, each friend will be assigned a Gem tree, you'll be  dependent on them to provide you the necessary Gems to unlock certain  areas of later islands (unless of course you want to shell out real  currency to purchase Gem packs). And of course, there's also the added  bonus of XP and coins just for visiting daily.
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