Bloom Haven advanced tips: medals, combos and leaves
Once you know the basics, Bloom Haven has three bigger goals to chase: a medal on all 60 puzzles, smart power-up chains, and a garden built without waiting for leaves. This page explains how each one works, with the real rules behind them. New to the game? Read tips for new gardeners first.
How to earn a medal
A medal is the ✦ next to a puzzle in the Puzzles list. When you earn one, the win card says A clever clear! instead of Complete. Finished puzzles without a medal show ✓.
You earn a medal when you reach the goal on a try where:
- you did not use Try with 5 extra moves;
- Relaxed play was off for the whole try;
- you did not use Finish and carry on.
Show a useful match is allowed. Use as many hints as you like.
Medals are only for fun. They do not give leaves and they do not open anything.
Medal tricks
- Replay for the medal. Finished a puzzle with help? Open it from the Puzzles list and play it again. A replay gives no second leaf, but it can still earn the medal.
- Try again clears the slate. If you used Try with 5 extra moves and still want the medal, press Try again next time instead. A normal restart gives you a fresh chance at the medal, as long as Relaxed play is off.
- Switch Relaxed play off before you start. If it is on when a puzzle starts, or you turn it on during the puzzle, that try cannot earn a medal.
Learn the board with Try again
Every puzzle starts from the same board each time you try it. The new flowers that fall in also come in the same order, as long as you make the same moves. So a puzzle is not luck: it is a puzzle you can learn.
- If a great power-up appeared on your last try, you can make it again.
- If you ran out of moves by two or three, you know where the slow part was.
- Your board is saved after every move. If you leave and come back, you get exactly the same board, not a new one.
Count your moves
Look at the target and the moves together. Puzzle 4 asks for 27 violet flowers in 28 moves: about one per move. Puzzle 1 asks for 8 coral flowers in 24 moves: lots of room. On a tight puzzle, spend your first few moves building a power-up rather than taking small matches.
Each of the five tile kinds makes up roughly one fifth of the board, so on a board of 64 tiles there are usually around a dozen tiles of your goal colour. That is why a colour clear of the goal colour is so strong.
Build power-up chains
A chain is when one power-up sets off another inside the same move.
- Row plus column. Get a Clear this row and a Clear this column in the same line, then use one. It clears 15 tiles in a cross.
- Burst plus anything. Clear the nearby flowers clears a 3 by 3 square. Make it next to another power-up, and that one goes off too.
- Colour clear plus power-ups. Clear every flower of this colour clears every tile of its colour. Any power-up of that colour on the board goes off as well.
Remember the order the game uses when shapes mix: five in a line always wins and makes a colour clear, then crossing lines make a burst, then four in a line makes a row or column clear. A long L with five in one arm makes a colour clear, not a burst.
Beat each covered pattern
The five patterns are listed on all 60 puzzles.
| Pattern | Plan |
|---|---|
| Two rows | Make a Clear this row on row 3 or row 6. Each one clears 8 covered squares |
| Two columns | Make a Clear this column on column 3 or column 6 |
| Centre square | Matches in the middle work best. A Clear the nearby flowers in the centre clears up to 9 covered squares |
| Wide diagonals | Every row and column has covered squares. Row and column clears each hit two |
| Diagonal stripes | The busiest pattern, with 21 squares. Row and column clears hit two or three each, and normal matches often touch several |
The last few covered squares are often the slowest. When two or three are left, stop chasing power-ups and use the hint, which is good at finding moves that reach exactly those squares.
Use the hint as a teacher
Show a useful match first looks for a move that wins right away. If there is none, it picks the move that helps your goal the most, also checking the best move after it. Watching which move it picks can teach you how to set up a power-up or reach a covered square. And it never costs your medal.
Plan your leaves
Each area has 20 puzzles and its projects cost exactly 20 leaves. A new area only opens when every project in the area before it is built. Some things follow from that:
- You never run short. After all 20 puzzles of an area, you have exactly enough leaves for all of its projects.
- Leaves do not carry over. At the end of an area every leaf has gone into its projects, so each area starts from zero.
- The pond starts slow. Its first seven projects each cost 2 leaves. Expect to play two puzzles per project at first.
- Build as you go. There is no reward for saving leaves. Building right away lets you see the garden grow.
| Area | Projects you can build after 10 of its puzzles |
|---|---|
| The welcome garden | 7: up to A home for birds |
| The dragonfly pond | 5: up to Willow shade |
| The glasshouse | 5: up to A citrus tree |
The full cost list is on all 40 garden projects.
See also
- Power-ups: exactly how each one is made.
- Play at your own pace: every helper and how it affects medals.
- Glossary: medal, cascade, chain and more.
- Back to the Bloom Haven guide, or play Bloom Haven.
