Hexic HD

Definitely one of the hardest achievements around, but if you decide to keep playing Hexic to become good, this should come around in time.

Remember, the game is NOT about matching groups of hexes together. It's about creating starflowers, then pearls. That should be your mindset. Every move should work toward creating a starflower, maneuvering stars together to create a pearl, grouping pearls, or defusing a bomb. Everything else is a bad move.

Things to keep in mind:

1) Defusing bombs is always the top priority. Always.

2) You should always have lots of stars on the board. They allow a lot better maneuvering and piece movement. In fact, until it's hard to move without comboing stars, keep making them. Make the pearl when you pretty much have to do it to clear out some of the stars.

3) The best place to make a starflower is centered on a star. It's easier to move pieces into place, you get more points, and the new star is dropped from up above, where it's less likely to result in comboing stars.

4) Think through your moves before making them. It's not a timed game - make sure you're not going to accidentally make a combo before moving. Accidental combos are the quickest ways to wipe out clusters of stars.

5) Be extremely careful when going for the pearl flower. Use a star as the center, and double and triple check each move once the pearls are nearby. Nothing worse than accidentally comboing three of them when you're close. Don't even move the pearls close together until you have all six to prevent a runaway cascade from comboing them on you.

UPDATE: 10/14/2016 - The bomb-defense video I linked was missing; replaced it with a video showing the same technique

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The key to this achievement for me was creating a Master Grid. There's a great picture of it on hexic.info. IMO, don't bother with the 4x4 grid. It's vulnerable to accidental combos, whereas the Master Grid protects you from them. I failed quite a few attempts at this achievement because I'd lose starflowers while trying to repair a collapsed 4x4 grid.

Before even thinking of starting the grid, you'll need to develop a few skills:

1. Making Starflowers
To make a Starflower you must surround one tile with a ring of 6 tiles of any same color (except the color of the center tile). This takes some practice, but it gets easier. Look for places where you think you can make a starflower, then look nearby on the board for places you can make simple combos (3 tiles) that will rotate pieces near or into position for your Staflower.

2. Learn how rotating Starflowers triggers combos
Really what you want to do is learn how to avoid making combos. First, look at the ring of 6 pieces immediately surrounding your star. Next, look at the ring of tiles immediately outside of the ones you can rotate with your star (it's a bigger ring, with 12 tiles). Anywhere you see two of the same color touching on the same ring is a place where a combo could be triggered. For example, if you have two blue tiles touching on the outer ring, watch out if you have any blue tiles on the inner ring.

If you have two of the same color on the inner ring, pay close attention to any tiles of that color on the outer ring. If the tile has a corner pointed toward the center of your star then you'll make a combo if you rotate. If tile on the outer ring has a flat egde pacing toward your star then it's safe to rotate.

3. Star-walking
When you get two Starflowers touching you can use them to rotate each other and move around the board. This can help you to create more Starflowers, which is the key to starting your grid. Star-walking is decribed on hexic.info and is shown in the videos I've linked, so look on of those places to see how it works. Practice Star-walking while avoiding combos and you'll be able to make the Grid and get this achievement.

There are several tutorials on YouTube on how to set up the master grid. The one I found most helpful is the linked below (first link). Pay particular attention to the two key moves: the Parallel Turn and the C-Turn. These are absolutely key to moving stars into position with minimal risk. You're most at risk of an accidental combo / grid collapse when doing these moves, so look carefully before you move.

If you manage to get a grid built, you've got most of the hard work out of the way. Your biggest threats at this point will be rebuilding your grid after you make pearls and bombs. Repairing your grid is exactly the same as building it, so just keep at it. And for bombs, check out the second video for a way to instantly kill any bomb by setting up "Multipliers" in the top-left corner (the video explains this well). Just make all of your new Starflowers on the second-from-left Starflower. The video just shows making simple combos there, but if you make Starflowers then the bombs will still always drop in the right spot.

If you make it this far, you should have "no trouble" making enough Pearls for your Pooh-Bah. Just be careful rebuilding that grid! Good luck!

the grid method works but for less experience players may be harder than the 6 black pearls to set up. my advice to anyone trying to get this achievement is to follow these guidelines.

1. work a star flower to the bottom left hand corner so it is above one hexic piece and has one to the left so it is in the corner as far as it can. this is where you will bring your black pearls and put them around this star flower starting by puting your first pearl under the star. this way if a color gets erased from the board your star flower with the pearls will be unaffected.

2. "starwalking" is a method that benefits you the most by giving u control of all peices on the screen. this is done by having two or more starflowers and using them together to manipulate the pieces and travel across the board.

3. using the starwalk with two or more starflowers, move pieces of a same color on a single starflower. you can easily make more starflowers this way. but do not get cocky and start making moves fast because u can easilyu loss 3 to 5 stars by collapsing them together so check your moves thourghly before making them.

4. have atleast 9 starflowers before making a black pearl so that you can continue to make them without losing momentum.

5.you can stack starflowers in a strait vertical line to avoid the risk of collapsing them.

6. keep a few starflowers at the top of the board to have a easier time with the bombs.

7. most of all be patient because it takes a little time to learn how to control all the pieces in a efficent manner and thats what practicing helps with. making efficent moves and not "randumly" mashing the x button will benefit you.

good luck and i hope this helps, if you have questions about this guide then send me PM and i will get back to you with an answer or send a party inv on xbox live.

I found this video on youtube and it's a godsend. He takes you from the very beginning, and covers everything. How to go about making starflowers. How to arrange them in a grid. Talks you through the patterns of movements. It's over an hour, but extremely helpful!

When i finally earned this achievement it took 90min, 2380 tiles, 31 bombs, 45 stars.

Keep a cool head, and dont move without double checking what will happen.

I didnt make much of a grid, but its real easy to make flowers when stars share tiles.
(When at least one tile can be moved by two seperate stars, it becomes a bridge between those stars allowing you to move tiles back and forth, thats why the grids are so effective if you can set it up)
Have at least 9 stars before you make a pearl. Not counting one in the bottom left corner to hold your pearls.
Making stars gets harder in later levels as partial flowers are less common. Pick a color first. I walked a pair of stars around(think leap frog), herding tiles to single stars. Or just regular tiles if there was already a partial flower. Just watch out you dont make star clusters, any clusters really. But you will, dont freak out though, i made 45 stars before i got my 6th pearl, it only takes 36. Once you make enough mistakes you will become more cautious.

Bombs are like herpes. Stop when one appears. Since any movement makes them tick. Visualize what moves to make to move the bomb to its colors or colors to the bomb. Once you worked out which moves to make proceed with caution. If it's out of reach try making combos beneath or above and hope the right colors fall. If detonation is inevitable profanity is a must.

Practice makes perfect, the only thing you cant control are what colors fall and when the bombs fall. But you can anticipate where.

Its all up to you what strategy to use, i read em all. In the end i did what worked best for me.

Stay determined and plan ahead.

You will definitely need to understand the following concepts.
- Grids.
- Starwalking.
You get those sorted, and you'll do just fine. Patience will be necessary as one (Just one!) wrong move can really make your heart drop.

Aim to get at least 5 stars before the end of round 1.
Don't make any pearls until you have at least 3 - 4 levels of stars, as you will have huge control over your grid, and will be able to send any colour where ever you need it.

Starting the grid is always hard, but it gets a heck of a lot easier once you've got several in position

Also, as soon a bomb drops, GET RID OF IT! Even if it wrecks your grid, you can repair it.

One thing that stung me once or twice, if you know you're about to drop a colour clear (ie: all of one colour will disappear) rotate that colour out so that your bottom stars don't drop to the bottom!

It has been stated, questioned and queried that this solution may NOT work on the Xb1 BC since you must play online and while connected to the cloud.

Okay... Here goes. This should lower the ratio of this achievement.

I hold no responsibility on what happens after reading this solution.

Here is a method that will make this achievement a bit easier. However, for some reason I was always worried anyway.

First. You MUST know how to make a star grid. I suggest you have a few stars within the first 20 moves or so.

Now here is the part that will ensure the lowering of this achievements ratio.....

I found a way to save your progress and make a back up. No USB required.

Through several tests, I discovered that this game does not save. You cannot make an image of the game! The game on your console is JUST THE GAME. I found that it saves your game data on your PROFILE (as does Hexic 2 and Bejewelled..)

Therefore, if you want to help get yourself this achievement, then what you need to do is play offline... DISCONNECT YOUR INTERNET from your console. When you get to a place that you are happy with, make a back up.

TO BACK UP HEXIC

Log back online. As soon as you do, your game profile will update your game save on Hexic HD on microsoft servers. Then disconnect from online again, and return to playing the game.

Keep playing until you want to save again. Repeat. reconnect, update, disconnect.

Now, if you are playing and you make a blunder... then simply...

1. close the game
2. delete your profile from your console
3. log back online
4. download your profile (you will need the email and password)
5. load the game and your previous save will load
6. disconnect from the internet and continue playing.

ONLY start the game when you are online if you want to update your backup. And REMEMBER - ALWAYS EXIT THE GAME PROPERLY, never just dashboard.

Everyone looking here has probably already seen this but check out the link posted by sadelack in his solution for "Big cheese of the South Seas" http://www.hexic.info/grid.html

Link no longer works as the sites domain has expired

I Used the guides and tricks from the solutions here (they are all very good) plus the page at the above link.

If you can master putting the grid together you have already won its just a matter of time.

Start by getting 5-6 star pieces on the board. I was able to get 7 before the end of level 1. try to have them in different groups of 2 or lines of 3 I recommend as many separated groups of 2 as you can. If you have a line of 3 be EXTREMELY careful when moving groups/lines of 3 around as one unseen combo could cause you to lose all three at once if they combine. When you build the grid try to do it from left to right and bottom to top. take the first group of 2 or 3 stars to the bottom left corner and get one of the stars into the first corner of the grid. once you have that in place bring your other group of stars over to retrieve the star that helped move the first star but is not in a grid position yet. move them to the next grid position and retrieve the "helper" stars carefully. once you have your stars in place (keep 2 stars off the grid to help make more) once you are down to 2 -3 extra stars start making new ones by gathering like pieces around a grid positioned star. (try to use the stars already in the grid to move pieces into place) once a new star is created the old one will drop one space. use your two extra stars you saved to go pick it back up into place. don't worry about the stars at the top for a while. just focus on cranking out new ones from the bottom row ones you have in place. make/break/fix. after 5 have been made carefully use your stars not on the grid to form the next line of the grid. repeat this process row by row until your grid is full. (NOTE: always use the top most star in your grid to make new stars around, otherwise you will collapse more than the star that made the newest star. i.e. ones above you). The rest of the tips I got from the other solutions and that grid link posted at the beginning of this solution. just remember to make as many stars as you can before making a black pearl so you can rebuild the grid quickly.
Also there is a bomb defense strategy that is very good here http://www.hexic.info/bomb.html
Link no longer works as the sites domain has expired

For me, once I had the Master Grid, with a bit of caution, I couldn't really lose. If you set it up early, bombs aren't really a problem.

The biggest piece of advice I'd give to someone new to Hexic is that YOU CAN MAKE A STARFLOWER AROUND A STAR!
Also, if you have the Master Grid - you can make 2 pearls at once, only using 10 starflower instead of 12.

http://wn.com/Hexic_hd_how_i_get_from_new_game_to_master_gri...

Here is a useful video which shows how to make flowers and pearls in the Master Grid.