Two Dots | Mini-Games | Expeditions

Expeditions are a relatively-new addition to Two Dots. They’re a lot more fun than Treasure Hunts, and there’s an added bonus: you can earn power-ups and booster boxes simply by playing the game.

Expeditions appear on Mondays around 3:00 Eastern (US Time) and end Thursdays around 1:00 Eastern (US Time).

Tickets: 

To play an Expedition, you must use a ticket. Tickets are awarded every 30 minutes, with a maximum of three, and the counter does run concurrently with your lives counter. You can purchase an additional three tickets for $2.99, but given that you can go play regular Two Dots while waiting for your tickets to arrive, there’s no real reason to do so. If you finish all your tickets and all your lives, you should probably put your phone down and go outside.

Zones and Types: 

An Expedition has three zones, each one ending at a Base Camp. To reach each Base Camp, you’ll have to clear a certain number of obstacles based on the type of the Expedition.

• Anchor Drop: You have to drop anchors.
• Beetle Hunt: You have to clear beetles.
• Cloud Burst: You have to clear clouds.
• Gem Smash: You have to clear gems.

In each type of Expedition, a level will contain the specific obstacle that you need to clear, along with a combination of lotuses, balls, gems, beetles, blocks, one-sided blocks, and trapdoors. Some of these are helpful, while others are not.

Base Camps:

The first Base Camp will probably require 250-800 clears, the second 800-2000, and the third 1500-4500. Each Base Camp will give you a combination of bonus tickets, booster boxes, power-ups, and extra moves (for this Expedition only). The third Base Camp used to give a larger amount of prizes — I think one that I played gave me seven booster boxes, seven shufflers, and seven erasers — but in the most recent Expedition that I played (12/12/16 – 12/15/16), the third Base Camp just gave me a medal and the knowledge that I finished before my friends.

Hooray.

Competition:

The main ways you compete against your friends in Expeditions is by finishing sooner than them or completing a longer run than them. A run is the number of clears you get with a single ticket.

Stages:

Each type of Expedition has a set of about half a dozen stage designs that you’ll see randomly as you use your tickets. Each ticket will give you one stage design that doesn’t change as you reach each treasure chest; once you spend a ticket, you’re stuck with the stage you’ve been given. You’ll start with anywhere from 10 to 30 moves, plus however many bonus moves you’ve earned from Base Camps this time around. When you run out of moves, as with normal levels, you can pay 99 cents for five more moves plus a little bonus item.

Treasure Chests:

As you play through each stage, the way you keep going is by unlocking a treasure chest. To do this, you clear a certain number of obstacles. Once you’ve done so, the stage will pause and your chest will open. In each chest you will definitely find:

• A small number of moves to be added to your move counter.
• A number of obstacles (anchors, beetles, clouds, or gems) that are added to your total for free. You’ll be responsible for clearing the rest of them. As you go, the cost for the next chest increases, but so does the number of free obstacles.
• A booster box reward that fires off automatically.

There are also lucky chests (you can tell these from the others because they have a camel hump shape at the top) which may contain power-ups, booster boxes, bonus tickets, or any combination thereof. Lucky chests also usually contain more moves and more free obstacles than normal chests.

The chests have various names, but they don’t mean anything.

Strategy:

As with the Treasure Hunts, the strategy for each Expedition depends upon what stage you get, what obstacles you face, and what other items you’ll find.

I will say this, though: when your goal is to clear clouds, ignore everything else — including making boxes — in favor of getting more clouds to show up. Remember, clouds appear on alternating sides of the board, so clear dots on the side that doesn’t have a cloud so you can get one to show up faster. This is a bit of a pain on the stage with portals, but you’ll figure it out.

If this guide helped you out, please consider buying one of my stories from Amazon. Here’s one: Bring on the Rain, originally published in Asimov’s, is a post-apocalyptic tale of wanderers seeking water, and the war they must fight to survive. There’s a giant battle scene at the end, if you’re into that.