Pearls are Zen Koi‘s primary, currency and they are used for so much you need to spend extra time racking them up.
During your first few hours with Zen Koi, it can seem like Pearls are mostly used for expanding your koi and egg slots, but their biggest purpose lies in duplicating koi. Duplicating koi makes finishing each category easier and becomes a big part of the game once you’re in deep.
Collecting Pearls isn’t an easy task. They don’t show up in the pond during gameplay and can only be obtained via a few ways:
- Watching ads for effort-free Pearls
- Ascending koi into dragons
- Completing a koi collection
- Completing a dragon collection
- Obtaining awards
The overall goal of the game is to obtain every koi. It’s a long climb to that goal because of the game’s slow Pearl gains.
So how do you rack up Pearls?
The methods for obtaining Pearls are listed above. Getting Pearls for watching ads is by far the easiest method, but you can only get so many a day.
The second easiest option is to simply ascend your koi into dragons, and this has the added benefit of progressing your koi and dragon collections to receive extra Pearls and Dragon Points on top of the default rewards.
Koi collection rewards vs. dragon collection rewards
The ‘Collection’ and ‘Dragons’ sections of Zen Koi’s main menu take you to their respective collection lists. Here you can not only see your progress toward each collection, but also see the rewards.
The lowest koi collection rewards are 5 Pearls and 5 Dragon Points for common color fish. Rare fish have a minimum of 10 Pearl and 15 Dragon Points rewards.
Common fish collectors are far easier to complete. Not only because the colors needed are so easy to get, but because you can clone a common fish you’ve already hatched for a mere 1 Pearl. You can use these fish to breed with others and (hopefully) get color combinations you’ve yet to unlock.
Dragon collection rewards are much higher. Completing a common dragon collection gives 10 Pearls and 30 Dragon Points. A rare dragon collection pays out a whopping 20 Pearls and 90 Dragon Points! Imagine all the collector’s koi you could invest in with that.
The rewards between the two types of collections are so different because it takes more time to ascend a koi into a dragon than it does to simply hatch a fish and have it added to your koi collection right away. Ascending 16 dragons of the same type but different colors is not easy.
Speed-filling your collections
Leveling your fish to ascension is the best way to make Pearls because of the koi and dragon collections. There aren’t a ton of ways to speed up this process, but it doesn’t have to be grueling.
There are a few things you can do to make the collecting process faster and easier:
- Only level koi you’ve never ascended before
- Always ascend koi you’ve never ascended before
- Make a mental note of the prey needed for each gem each time you expand your pond so you can hunt those prey and not waste time on others
- Put all of your koi’s stat points into Speed and Agility until both are maxed out, then do rarity if you want to breed that fish. Keep Speed and Agility close to even, but adjust to your tastes
- Manually navigate your koi around the pond to minimize lost time
- Clone fish you don’t currently have but have one color you need, to potentially mate with koi that have the other color you need
- Look out for mates every half level or so if you need to mate with other fish with certain colors
- Have a friend send you the koi you need (Super fast!)
- Buy random koi variations in the shop and hope for the best
There’s no need to go overboard — don’t ever level and ascend a koi you’ve already got. Make sure you pay attention to your and potential mates’ colors by checking your collections before mating, and don’t mate when you don’t need to so you don’t waste egg slots.
You can whittle leveling down to a science if you follow the tips given to rush through your ascensions and get those dragons to start making some real Pearls and Dragon Points. You can skip the random mating process by having generous friends who are willing to share the koi you need or you can buy a random koi from the shop.
Progressing in Zen Koi takes time, but it is possible. The point of the game is to relax, so don’t stress too much during casual play. Just have fun and bear the above in mind as your dragon collection grows.
