Foraging in the Cursed Isles

Sometimes, playing a puzzle calls for different strategies depending upon what you're trying to accomplish. Foraging for a high standing and foraging in the Cursed Isles is one of those cases. When foraging for a high standing, I tend to play slowly and methodically, looking for ways to set up combos. When foraging in the Cursed Isles, however, it's about as frantic as you can get. In the Cursed Isles, foraging is all about speed. Likewise, making money in the Cursed Isles is all about foraging so, if you're not prepared to forage well, what's the point in going? My goal with this post is to point out some of the techniques I use when foraging in the Cursed Isles. As a point of reference, I'm normally scoring frenetic when CI foraging and seldom, if ever, score below Swift.

Get Started Right Away!

In the Cursed Isles, you alternate between massive frays and foraging. As soon as you win a fray, you get a chance to forage for a limited time until the natives regroup and haul you into another fray. This is the only chance you have to make money in the Cursed Isles, so make the most of it.

When a fray ends, everyone stands around looking goofy for a while until the foraging session begins. Don't let this time be wasted. As soon as the fray ends, you can click on the foraging pit to begin foraging immediately - this technique can easily get you 3-5 (or more!) additional seconds to forage. It may not seem like much, but when your foraging session ends and you had a Cursed Chest one row from the bottom of the board, you'll be wishing you had 3-5 more seconds.

Also, stay focused during this part of the CI run. I'll reiterate - this is the only chance you have to make money on your journey - this is what it's all about. You're relying on your crew mates to forage well and they're relying on you, too.

Be Comfortable with Moving Pieces

The more comfortable you are moving pieces about in the foraging puzzle, the more efficient you're going to be. You really don't want to be in the position to have to sit and think about what the pieces will do if you rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise - you really want that to become second-nature. I can provide some tips but, in the end, you may just have to (*gasp*) practice the puzzle a bit.

For one, get used to making clears of size 3, 4, and 5. Know what the patterns look like and how to set them up quickly. This will come into play in just a bit.

When you're looking to make a 3-piece match, there are a number of patterns to look for. Here are a few:



In the green box, you can see a set of three red blocks in a straight line. You can rotate the outlying red box into the others to make a match. In the blue box, you have three green blocks jammed on top of one another. You can rotate two of the green blocks to create a match. Finally, in the red box, you have three tan blocks next to each other, but one is off-center and needs to be brought in.

When looking at 4-piece clears, you have only two options, and with a 5-piece clear, you have only one option. This image displays those possibilities.



In this case, the red and blue blocks represent the two ways to create a 4-piece clear. The green block shows the only way to create a 5-piece clear. Keep in mind that all of these possibilities can be mirrored.

Get very used to making these varying length matches. Make sure it's comfortable for you to do because in the next section, I encourage you to...

See in Groups

When you're looking to clear a chest, you generally want to do it in as many clears as possible. That means you want to focus on vertical clears that can move a chest 3, 4, or 5 spaces down the board at once, as opposed to horizontal clears that will only move a chest 1 space at a time. For example, when a small chest enters the board, there are 9 blocks beneath it (the board is 10 blocks tall). If you look at the board in groups, you'll see three three-piece groups beneath that chest:



To clear that chest as quickly as possible, try to make three three-piece horizontal clears as quickly as possible. That will move the chest down the board very quickly. If, for example, you make a 4-piece vertical clear beneath it, you're now left with 5 blocks left to clear it. You could try to arrange a 5-piece clear, but they tend to be more time-consuming than quick 3-piece clears. If you can do it with 3's, make it so.

With larger chests, though, you only have 8 pieces beneath the chest. Now you need to start considering clears of 4 or 5 pieces. If you do two 3-piece clears, you're left doing two horizontal clears. Going that route increases the number of clears required to remove the a column from under the chest from 2 to 4.



Always try to keep the number of clears to a minimum. In general, when I'm foraging, I'm always looking to see what combination of clears will get a chest to the bottom as quickly as possible. Is it 6 blocks needing a couple threes? Is it 4 pieces needing a single four? Try to learn to "see in groups" and concentrate on those vertical clears. Horizontal clears will always be necessary, but they're not as beneficial as vertical clears.

Keep Moving!

You're under pretty serious time constraints here so you want to be going as quickly as possible. Don't get all tied up trying to count the number of clears it's going to take you to get a chest off the board (this is why I recommend lots of practice, by the way, so that seeing the clears becomes second-nature, much like dribbling for a basketball player) - just keep moving - not every move I make it perfect (by a long shot).

The one caveat to "keep moving" is to try very hard not to get stuck. You want to go as fast as you possibly can, but never lose control of your puzzle. Work from the outside in (see this lesson for more details) and always have a priority in clearing columns. Make sure that each successive column clear will leave you room to clear the next.

Should you get stuck (and it does happen to everyone), you have two options. If possible, work a different part of the board. For example, if you get a chest stuck against the left wall, perhaps you can work on the right side of the board. While doing so, you may get a handy earthquake and be able to "unstick" that chest. To know if you can work elsewhere, you need to be aware of the circumstances of the puzzle.

For one, if you only have one empty banana left and one chest on the board, no more are coming - there's no point in working elsewhere because nothing else is coming. Similarly, if you already have the maximum number of chests on the board (1 large and 2 smalls, for example), you're not going to get any more chests to appear. Only work a different part of the board if it makes sense to do so.

If you're stuck and you can't work a different part of the board, dump the puzzle! It's better to restart the puzzle and lose a little time than to waste an entire foraging session trying to get that chest out when it may never happen. To restart the puzzle, simply dismiss it and click on the foraging pit to start the puzzle again.

When Chest Are Low, Work Smart

When large chests get near the bottom of the board, work smart to make sure you don't get stuck. In theory, you want to clear the outside columns before the chest gets anywhere near the bottom of the board but, sometimes, that just doesn't work out. If you have to slow down a little to make sure you don't get stuck, it's worth it.

One of the most useful techniques to know is what to do when you've got a medium chest two spaces off the bottom and 4 blocks under it. Clearing a row when you don't want to can leave you with a stuck chest. I've created a short video of how to deal with such a situation. The video goes pretty fast, so I'll try to explain (I don't think I could fit the narration in such a small time).

1. I'm just about to finish clearing a 2x2 chest when another 2x2 chest appears above this one.

2. As soon as I clear the lower chest, I'm left with a 2x2 chest sitting 2 rows from the bottom. This will require two horizontal clears to finish off.

3. The key to getting out of this situation without getting stuck is to ensure that, when you're down to one row beneath, both blocks beneath the chest match. That way you can clear them out from the side. To handle that, I actually start my making two 2-piece "columns" under the chest. I make sure that the two piece on the left match and the two pieces on the right match. When you watch the video, you'll notice that I put two reds on the left and two greens on the right (0:14 mark of the video).

4. Once you have the two columns, rotate those four pieces either direction. What you're left with is two rows of identical pieces. In my case, I make a clockwise turn and it immediately clears the bottom row of greens (so you have to watch carefully to see what happens). What's left is a row of red pieces beneath the chest that I'm easily able to clear.

Know this move. Love this move. Live this move.

Other people may well have different techniques but the moral is clear - when the chests get low, work smart to keep from getting stuck.

About Those Special Pieces...

Some of them can occasionally come in handy but, all too often, they get in the way. Let me discuss the various pieces.

Ant

This one is easy to discuss - kill it! The animation is so slow that these quickly become the bane of anyone trying to forage quickly. As soon as an ant enters your board, turn it to the nearest wall so that it vanishes quickly. If you can kill an ant with a shovel, machete, or money, even better.

Monkey

The monkey has a long animation time but you only suffer from it if you activate it. As such, I tend to avoid touching the monkeys unless I have to. If you get a chest above a monkey, activate the monkey right away to get it out of your way. There isn't much that will frustrate you more than clearing out a bunch of space underneath a 2x2 or 2x3 chest and then have to activate a monkey which then refills some of that space.

Monkeys can be useful in that they can help get chests unstuck if they come close enough to the gap. While this does come into play for me occasionally, it's not often that I find a monkey useful so, if I have a chance to kill one with a shovel or machete, I'll take it.

Machete

One of the most useful pieces in foraging when you're looking for a high score, they're not so useful when foraging for speed. I'll try to use them to clear rows beneath chests to move them down, but they only clear one row so, quite often, you can move chests faster by making vertical clears than using machetes.

Still, they're useful if you can get them to the bottom to keep chests from getting stuck, so I don't wipe them out unless they're in my way.

Shovel

The shovel can be very useful, but only if it appears in the correct column. Watch for shovels appears directly above or below chests as it can instantly clear the chest. Just watch out that you don't clear an inside column, thereby leaving the chest stuck.

Earthquake

The animation time on the earthquake isn't too bad and it can be very useful. Nothing can help unstick chests as well as an earthquake can. As such, I keep them around unless they're in my way.

Overall

Aside from the ants, I treat most special pieces the same way. I don't worry about them unless they get in my way. I'll never hold on to a piece thinking it may be useful to me later if it's in my way. As soon as I see a special piece as a "problem", it's gone.

What does frenetic foraging look like?

About like this (I've got two samples):

Larger Version

Larger Version


Summary

Looking back at my videos, I see a lot of moves that could have been improved. That's okay - when you're working as fast as you can, you're going to make some "less than optimal" moves. Just keep moving and don't get stuck.

Good luck!

Foraging: Tricks of the Trade

With the new release of foraging, a new lesson has been requested in FU. Unfortunately, not a great deal is yet known about this puzzle. As far as I know, the exact scoring is still up for debate, but there are some things that seem to be agreed upon and well understood - I'll try to stick to those things, and let you know where I add conjecture.

The Basics

If you want to learn the basics about foraging, I'd suggest taking a look at the YPPedia Articule. This will give you all the information you need regarding controls and pieces. I won't go into those bits in detail, but I'll try to stick to the strategy of things.

Piece Combos

You clear pieces by matching three or more like pieces in a row. Because you're moving four pieces any time you rotate them, it's obviously very possible to clear more than just three pieces at a time. Any time you clear more than three pieces in a single move, you get a "piece combo". Take a look at the following image - you can see a good example of a piece combo:



Moving the pieces counter-clockwise, as shown, would lead to a triple piece combo (you'd clear nine pieces at once).

As far as I can tell, scoring piece combos in this way has nothing to do with your final score. The only thing it does for you is to increase the number of special pieces you get to appear on your board. I'll discuss special pieces a little later in this lesson.

Crate Combos

So if clearing pieces doesn't impact your score, what does? As best I can tell, the only impact on your score is which crates/chests (from here on, I'll refer to crates and chests collectively as crates) you clear and, more specifically, how you clear those crates.

There's the possibility of clearing multiple crates at the same time with a single move. I'll call this a multi-crate clear. Here's a good example:



Making a single move will clear two small baskets at the same time. When you do this, you get a message that says "2 crates cleared!".



This is a good move, but it's difficult to set up and impossible to do with anything larger than 2 small crates without the use of a special item. Nonetheless, if you can clear multiple crates with a single move, you'll dramatically improve your score.

Notice that, in order to pull this off, you need to make sure that the pieces under both crates match. In my case, I had two brown pieces beneath them so I could clear both brown pieces with a single move and thereby clear both crates at once. If the pieces don't match, you can't pull off a multi-crate clear without a special piece. And, because you need to have two rows of space to move pieces, you need to plan this move out before you reach the bottom of the board.

Another combo is a sequential combo, or a "combo clear". A sequential combo is similar to a multi-crate combo in that a single move removes multiple crates from the board. However, the difference is that, rather than all of those crates being cleared at the same time, you clear one crate, which leads to another crate clearing, which may lead to yet another crate clearing. Take a look at this scenario:



The two crates of limes are stacked directly on top of one another. Clearing the brown pieces beneath the bottom crate will cause the bottom-most crate to be cleared from the board. As soon as that one is cleared, the one stacked on top of it will also be cleared. This results in a crate combo, and you'll see a message like this:



Rather than a single message saying that you cleared two crates, as we saw earlier, you get one message per crate and, once all crates have been removed, you get a message such as "Double" or "Triple". Again, these combos help your score significantly and are much easier to set up than the multi-crate clears.

And, of course, you can combine those different combo types into a single clear, like this:



Clearing the three stones at the bottom will clear both crates at once and the little crate stacked on top will clear afterwards. As you'd expect, you get a mixture of messages when you make the clear:



Crate Size and Scoring

I do believe that the size of the crate cleared has a direct impact on your score. However, I do not believe there's much you can do to determine what size crates come onto your board - it seems to be random. As such, I don't worry about the size of the crates, except for one aspect...

I'm much more concerned about making sure I get the larger crates in combos, as opposed to the small ones. For example, if I get a large crate on one side of the board and a small one on the other, I might just clear the small one by itself, hoping to get another crate on top of the large crate so that I can include the large crate in a combo.

One additional tactic I use has to do with how crates enter the board. To facilitate combos, you want the crates to appear as close to one another as possible (preferably beside or right on top of one another). Crates "force" their way onto your board - by that, I mean that they'll displace pieces to make room for themselves. That said, I've never seen a crate displace another crate to make room. So, if you have a crate at the very top of the board, there's no way another crate could appear above it as long as it's there. Because of this, as soon as a crate appears on the board, I'll try to get it at least a few rows from the top immediately, even if I have no intention of clearing it any time soon. That, at least, gives me the opportunity of having another crate appear directly above it.

Along with that, let's say I have on crate about half way up the left hand column and no other crates on the board. I'll try to make clears above that crate to "encourage" another crate to appear there. I have no evidence that this actually works, but it makes me feel better, so I do it. ;)

Setting Yourself Up For Success

There are a few basic rules of thumb to live by. For one thing, always work from the outside in. You want this:



In this case, I have an empty column, but it's way on the outer edge and I can still get to all the pieces I need to get to in order to clear these two crates. This is what you do not want:



In this case, I can't get to any of the pieces I need to reach in order to clear the crate on the left side. I'm now stuck at the mercy of special items to get through this board. This is the absolute worst case because, the more moves it takes to clear that crate, the worse your score is going to be - and it's pretty much impossible to come up with any sort of combo off that crate.

Special Pieces

Of all the special pieces, I find most of them to be a total nuisance except for the machete. In my opinion, the other pieces exist only to save you from screw-ups (like my previous situation). In such a case, only a special piece like this case save you:



Unfortunately, when you get in such a situation, all you can do is hope for the correct special piece to appear. To help move this along, try to make piece combos and do it in the correct portion of the board. For example, if you need a shovel on the far left (as I did), there's no real point in making a clear on the far right. Unlike crates, special pieces do not force their way onto the board - you have to make room for them with clears. The more piece combos you make, the better the chances of generating a special piece.

The machete, on the other hand, is a great tool for helping you score well. Like Treasure Haul, where it's beneficial to have a red gem in the top row to help clear chests, it's very useful to have a machete in the bottom row. This can help you generate some very high-scoring combos. Take a look at this situation:



Because I have a machete in the lower row, I can line up multiple crates that, without the machete, I'd have no hope to clear. I would certainly not recommend getting all these crates lined up and then hoping for a machete to come along but, if you get a machete and can get it to the bottom of the board, you can do things like this to improve your score considerably.

I won't discuss the other special pieces much except to mention that the earthquake is an excellent way to get a machete against one of the walls, where it can do you the most good. ;)

Conclusion

Questions? Comments? Let me know. Otherwise, happy puzzling!