Can absolutely use a thing to look for chess piece heads quickly. At least the way we looked for portal pieces in DS. Perhaps it can be crafted out of the Iridiscent gem to spicy things a bit? Id hit on that.
Also can use a thing to actually tell if the chess-piece party have been defeated already (crushed version of marble object or something). Spent like 5 days scounting entire map last match only to understand that the entire pack was annihilated on public server on day 11, once the whole map was revealed; and that someone pitch-forked the ground so I have extra fun getting the knowledge of that.
Or at least can use guaranteed two chess pieces generated on the map to begin with, since those heads make early game very RNG-dependant.