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!

Distilling: Sonnyz' Videos

I've been working on creating some videos for distilling but, while those are in process, I'd like to refer you all to these well-known videos produced some time back by Sonnyz:

Forum Post

In particular, the second video is great for showing you some of the common moves you'll need to master in order to distill at a high level. Unfortunately, at the time these videos were made, you couldn't go past a CC^12 - the game simply stopped at that point. While getting beyond a CC^12 may not matter if you're only interested in getting Renowned standing so you can provide expert labor, it matters a great deal if you're trying to crack the Ult list and/or get the #1 spot.

One thing I notice in Sonnyz' first video is that, during the first phase of the puzzle, in which he's trying to burn off as many browns and blacks as he can, he regularly moves any and all pieces from the left to the right. When I'm working this phase of the puzzle, I want to keep burning off full columns of colored pieces as long as I possibly can. As such, I don't want to get to the point at which I'm stuck with lots of browns on top or blacks on the bottom. In order to prevent that, I tend to save blacks at the top and browns at the bottom of my board. These pieces will help you move bad pieces across the board more easily and, when it comes time to finish up this phase and move on, it's very fast and simple to drag these pieces straight across the board.

That said, Sonnyz' videos really are excellent and worth watching.

Distilling: Basic Strategy

I've been asked a number of times to add a lesson regarding distilling. I've said a number of times that, if you want to make money with your labor, distilling is where it's at. It's really the only industry in which expert labor is used as often as basic or skilled, expert labor is readily needed (because virtually everyone uses Fine Rum), and not everyone can provide expert labor, meaning you can get more of the pie to yourself. On Midnight, I routinely bring in 1200+ PoE per day from my distilling jobs. The trick, of course, is being good enough at the puzzle to get yourself at least to Renowned. Hopefully, with practice and the tips I'll lay out here, you'll be capable of going well beyond Renowned, but that's really for those masochists, such as myself, that can't settle for just Renowned. ;)

Three Phases

When I think of distilling, I think of three distinct phases of the game: the Intro, the Bridge, and the Finish. All three phases are part of the same goal - getting as many crystal clears in a row as possible - but the strategies and techniques you use in each phase are different. In this lesson, I'll briefly discuss the different phases and then I'll go into more depth later.

As you read through this, you may see me refer to "colored" pieces - this is a reference to blacks and brown pieces, in combination, with no distinction between the two.

The Intro

During this opening phase, your goal is to prevent the whites near the right side of the board from being burnt. As such, what you're after here is moving those whites to the left as quickly as possible. Personally, I think about pushing the colored pieces to the right more than pulling the whites to the left, but it's two different ways of thinking about the same thing. You don't need any particular skills to get through this section. Of course, you need to have a good understanding of how the pieces move in relation to one another, but you really need to have that through any phase of the puzzle.

Try to build evenly - finish one column before moving on to the next one. This can really help prevent problems with getting pieces stuck and eating up time - more on that later.

This phase doesn't have a strict "end" to it. In fact, the Intro and the Bridge both have the same goal - to push colored pieces to the right and get as many white pieces on the board, at once, as possible. The difference is the number of white pieces on the board. When you first start, you're going to have a relatively small number of white pieces are compared to your colored pieces. Moving colored pieces to the right is done through small movements of each piece. Eventually, however, you're going to end up with a large number of white pieces bunched up near the left side of the board. At this point, moving colored pieces to the right takes longer movements and different techniques and is what I refer to as "the Bridge".

The Bridge

Why do I call this section the Bridge? It's just a term I came up with, but it seems fitting. You're bridging the gap between the Intro and Finish phases while, at the same time, you need to get the colored pieces on the left of the board across your "river" of whites and over to the right side of the board, as if you're making a bridge across. It makes sense to me, so we're going with it.

What makes this phase distinct from the Intro is that, in general, you can not move the pieces from left to right in a single motion. Many blacks would get stuck at the bottom and, likewise, browns would get stuck at the top. Because of that, you need to use some very special strategies during this section to make sure you get the colored pieces across. I'll get into the details about this phase in a later lesson.

That said, there are a couple "rules of thumb" that you can use while playing this phase.

1. Continue to build evenly. Finish one column before moving on to the next.
2. Save blacks on top and browns on the bottom.

Regarding number 2, let me explain. As pieces come in from the left, you'll want to move all colored pieces to the right. Well, what happens if you get a brown piece near the top left? You can't just slide it all the way across because it'll get stuck at the top of the board. To get it across effectively, you're going to need at least one black piece nearby. So, if you have a black near the top left, leave it there. Likewise for browns at the bottom. The great thing about these pieces is that, when it's time to switch to the Finish, it's very fast and easy to slide them the length of the board and get rid of them.

Unlike the Intro, the Bridge has a very definite end to it. The end of the Bridge phase occurs when you don't believe you can complete another fully colored column before it's burned off. When you think that's going to happen (and you'll learn with experience when that's the case), you change tactics and move to the Finish.

The Finish

In this phase, your goal is reversed. Rather than trying to burn off entire columns of colored pieces, you're trying to make full columns of white pieces - as many in a row as you can. If you've played the first couple phases well, this is actually the most relaxing part of the whole puzzle. In general, you're only going to get a few white pieces with each new column so there isn't a lot to do. Again, build evenly and you're pretty much set to go.

Conclusion

This was just meant to be an intro to the strategy of distilling. Look for future lessons for details about the phases and techniques for each one.

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!

Shipwrightery: Reaching Ultimate and Beyond

In my last article, I tried to lay out basic strategies for playing shipwrightery. I'll try to point out a couple things that might help you advance up the ranks and into an Ultimate shipwrighter, but there isn't a lot more to know. Master the strategy that I laid out last time, and you'll find yourself doing very well. Just keep in mind that, as your skill in the puzzle progresses, you'll get larger patterns to try to match. At top form, you'll be getting two 5-piece patterns, two 4-piece patterns, and two 3-piece patterns. Not until you reach that level will you be generating the best scores in shipwrightery. If you're not there yet, just keep practicing and working at it - as your standing increase, so too will the size of your patterns.

Set Up For Extra Matches

As you play shipwrightery, you'll begin to recognize many of the patterns that you see. While I don't have all of them memorized, I know quite a few. If you want to see them all, look at the YPPedia entry, here. Knowing the patterns is important because you're working on a 25 piece board and, at top level, your patterns will take up 24 pieces. That means, in order to get every pattern in your tray set up and ready to go, you're going to need perfectly matching pieces and a board with just the right number of each type of piece. In other words, it takes a lot of luck and very, very rarely happens.

One difference between a good shipwrightery player and a great one is what they do with those "extra pieces". Extra pieces are those pieces that are left over after you've set up as many pattern matches as you can. Like I said, unless you're very lucky, you're going to have some.

Worry about getting your combo of patterns set up first. Then, with whatever leftover time you have left, consider trying to create "parts" of other patterns with the extra pieces you have. Perhaps you can create a part of one of the patterns you already have in your tray, or perhaps you can create a pattern that isn't currently on your tray.

Let me steal this image from my previous article:



Notice the five "extra" pieces I have near the top-right corner. If you look at what I did with the two whites and a brown, you may recognize this as one of the 3-piece patterns, the Batten. Granted, the Batten isn't in my tray, but I have set up to clear the Halyard and the Cleat and that will give me two new 3-piece patterns. What are the odds of me actually getting the Batten? Not very good - only 2 in 16. However, a 12% chance of getting an extra match is better than the 0% chance I'd have had if I hadn't arranged these pieces in this way.

If you can't make a complete pattern, try to create part of a pattern, particularly if it's a pattern that's already in your tray and you can't fit into your combo. Have a Ballast (4 blacks) in your tray but only three extra blacks on your board? Set up the three blacks around a match that you've got set up so that, when you clear that match, if a black appears in the right place, you get a free match. What are the odds of getting the right piece? A little better than 25% (don't forget about the gold pieces). Again, not great odds, but far better than 0%.

Taking care with your extra pieces can really help you extend your combos and squeeze out some additional points.

Understand the Scoring System

Probably the biggest leap that took me from Legendary to Ultimate was gaining a better understanding of the scoring system behind Shipwrightery. Once you know the scoring system, you can actually put a value behind a puzzle attempt, and you can determine if one attempt was better or worse than another.

While the scoring systems for any of these puzzles are never revealed to the public, testing leads us to get pretty good approximations of the scoring systems. This forum thread that I started some time ago goes into a lot of great detail for the scoring system. Probably the most important bit of that thread is this table:

Step    Combo     3-Piece      4-Piece      5-Piece
----------------------------------------------------------------
1       N/A       Fair         Good         Great
2       Double    Good         Great        Excellent
3       Triple    Great        Excellent    Admirable
4       Bingo     Great        Excellent    Superior
5       Donkey    Great        Admirable    Magnificent
6       Vegas     Excellent    Superior     Artisan
7       Vegas^2   Excellent    Superior     Artisan
8       Vegas^3   Excellent    Magnificent  Paragon
9       Vegas^4   Admirable    Artisan      Paragon
10      Vegas^5   Admirable    Artisan      Master
11      Vegas^6   Admirable    Artisan      Master
12      Vegas^7   Superior     ???          Master
13      Vegas^8   Superior     ???          Master
14      Vegas^9   Superior     ???          Master

From this, you can start to see how well various combos will score. Always keep in mind that the score of a combo is the average of the scores of the individual matches of that combo.

For my own benefit, I assigned a point value to each score, like this:

Fair          1
Good          2
Great         3
Excellent     4
Admirable     5
Superior      6
Magnificent   7
Artisan       8
Paragon       9
Master        10

So, if I wanted to score a combo, I'd take the scores for each match in that combo and average them. For example, a 3-4-5-5 combo would score Fair-Great-Admirable-Superior or 1-3-5-6 for an average score of 3.75. When I last tested, you needed to be able to score about a 4 (Excellent) to reach Ultimate on Midnight. That may have changed since, but I'm guessing it's probably still pretty close.

This scoring system is probably oversimplified in the fact that it assumes all matches with the same descriptive word are worth the same amount (i.e. All 3-piece matches that score "Great" are considered equal, regardless of whether that move was a triple, a bingo, or a donkey). My guess is that those scores are actually a bit different, but my approximation seems to work pretty well.

To help me see just how well I was doing, I created an Excel spreadsheet in which I had boxes for each score. As I was playing, I'd make a match and put a tally into the corresponding cell in my spreadsheet. Those cells would automatically tally up my average score and tell me how I was doing. That way, when all was said and done, I knew just how well I was doing.

While this may not make you a vastly better puzzler by itself, it will help you see how you're improving.

Gaming the System

As of the time I write this, there is no penalty for dismissing a shipwrightery puzzle attempt. At any point. That means that you can play all the way through the puzzle and, if things aren't going the way you want them to, you can dismiss the puzzle right before the end and suffer no penalty.

I'm not going to get into the ethical debate over whether or not this is a good practice, or not. I have my own opinion and I'll keep it to myself. If you want to debate it, the forums are a great place to do so. What I will say is that you absolutely *do not* have to use this "feature" to make Ultimate on Midnight. It's quite do-able without using this technique.

You see, the problem is that, in general, you're not going to consistently get more than 3-4-4-5-5 combos (often, these aren't even possible). Those combos score about 4.2, using my system. That's good enough to get you to Ultimate, but probably not good enough to get you to #1. However, the only way to get above that score is through pure luck - you need additional matches to "appear" and lengthen your combos. Sure, you can use the techniques I described above to give yourself better odds of having these things happen, but it still comes down to luck. If the right pieces/patterns appear, you score better, but you have no control over what actually appears.

So how do you increase your score? You play the puzzles in which luck is on your side and you score exceptionally well and you dismiss when the luck of the draw doesn't go your way.

Like I said, I won't go into my personal feelings about whether this is an ethical way to play, or not, but I will point out that distilling used to exhibit this same behavior and now no longer does. Now, when you play distilling, once you've started playing the puzzle, if you dismiss, you damage your score - severely.

I'll just reiterate that you do not need to use this technique to reach Ultimate, but you may very well find the #1 spot very difficult to reach.

Conclusion

As with all crafting puzzles, there's no inherent benefit to reach the Ultimate level of play. Once you've reach Renowned standing, there's no need to advance further. Those that do advance beyond Renowned do it for pride or a love of the puzzle, or both. Given that, not everyone will need the tips listed here. But, if you're looking for a goal to shoot for an Ultimate shipwrightery is that goal, I hope this article helps you along your way.

Happy puzzling!

Shipwrightery: Strategy and Scoring

When discussing shipwrightery, I tend not to talk about how to move the pieces around the board as I find that to become trivial for anyone with a bit of experience. Rather, I like to discuss two aspects of the puzzle: your strategy and the scoring system. I'll actually begin with the latter because understanding the scoring strategy drastically impacts your strategy.

Scoring

The scoring system in shipwrightery isn't always obvious to everyone and it really dictates the way one should play, so I'll talk about it briefly.

Every time you "match" a pattern, you get a score for that match. The score is determined by two things: the size of the pattern you matched and the position in the chain in which you made that match. The larger the pattern, the better you score (i.e. a 5-piece pattern will score better than a 3-piece pattern). Also, the later in a chain you make a match, the more it's worth.

Given that, there are a couple rules of thumb that you'll want to take forward:

• Build the longest chains possible


• Use your biggest matches last

While this may not be exactly accurate, I like to think of it this way (for the more mathematically inclined) - each match is worth a given score - each sequential position in a chain has a higher multiplier. By placing your best scoring matches (those with the most pieces) later in your chain, you're multiplying your biggest scores by the biggest multipliers, which results in a largest product possible.

Another thing to note about shipwrightery scoring is that your final score is the average of all your match scores. So, if you had three matches that scored Fair, Great, and Admirable, your average score would be "Great". (See the wiki for a complete list of scores.) On Midnight, it seems that you need to average approximately "Excellent" in order to score Incredible.

If you're really interested in digging into even more details about shipwrightery scoring, have a look at this forum thread.

Strategy

In terms of strategy, I find shipwrightery to be more like carpentry than any other puzzle - it really takes good "spatial organization" to do well with this puzzle. When I play this puzzle, I generally do the same few steps over and over again:

1. Plan Layout


2. Look for Shortages


3. Move Pieces


4. Execute Combo

I'll go into each step to give you a good idea of the things I look for.

Plan Layout

This is the part of the puzzle that I really find to be a lot like carpentry. When puzzling at the highest levels, you'll have two 5-piece patterns, two 4-piece patterns, and two 3-piece patterns. That's 24 pieces worth of patterns. The board is only 25 pieces large. That means it's going to take a whole lot of planning and quite a bit of luck to get them all on the board.

There's really nothing you can do about getting patterns that all fit well together or getting the correct pieces on the board to match the patterns you have. What you can impact is how you arrange these patterns on the board to maximize space. The largest patterns are the most important, so make sure you get those placed first - I'd suggest building around the outside edge to save you as much room as possible. Then move on to the next largest patterns, and so on, until you've run out of room.

Here's a picture of a typical starting board:



The first step is to look at my patterns and try to determine where they'd best fit on my board. Given the pieces I have, this is how I think I'd like to arrange them:



So the next logical question is, how the heck did I come up with that?

My approach is pretty simple. Start with the biggest patterns you have, whether those be 5-piece patterns or 4-piece patterns. These are the most important pieces to place (because they score the best) and they're also going to be the most constraining. Once you have those placed, your options for the smaller pieces will be more limited and it'll take you less time to decide where to put them.

When determining where to put your largest patterns, try to find ways to put them together that won't "waste" any spaces. Notice how I put together the berth and the gangway in the example above. The two pieces fit together in such a way that no spaces are trapped where they can't be used.

Some patterns fit together better than others. The berth and gangway work quite well together. In other cases, like the helm and capstan shown below, there aren't always good ways to put them together. Notice the green block that's been trapped in the upper-left corner - that block can't be used in any other patterns and thereby limits your options for additional pattern matches.



Other pairs, such as the mooring with the nest can be downright awful. Which two patterns you get isn't under your control. How you try to arrange them to save the most space is up to you. With ten 5-piece patterns available, I won't go into the best way to match them all, but here are a few examples of useful ways I've found to match patterns. Note that the same pattern may get moved around the board based on the pattern it's paired with. For example, the shot works best in the lower-right when paired with the nest, but it works best in the lower-left when paired with the mooring. Here are a few arrangements to help you get the idea - remember, the goal here is to fit your largest patterns on the board and leave as much space as possible for other patterns.



Once you have your biggest patterns in place, move on to the next largest patterns (the 4's, generally), and so on until you've placed everything you can. By placing the largest patterns, which have the least options available to you, you make it easier on yourself when placing the smaller patterns.

Look for Shortages

I kept this as a separate step, but I really do this while performing steps 1 and 3. Once I have my plan set from step 1, I usually start moving pieces around. While I'm doing this, I'm looking at the pieces I have on the board - will I have enough to complete my patterns? Am I going to be short a specific color?

If I go back to my original example, I wanted to do this:



If you look close enough, you can see that I can't possibly do this. The berth requires 2 wood, the gangway requires 2 (it would normally require 3, but I'm using the gold for that), and the halyard would normally require a wood, but I'm using a gold there, as well. So that means I need 4 wood for these three pieces. Take a look at that picture. There are only 4 pieces of wood on the entire board. That means I have no way to create the pattern for a yard, which would require two additional pieces of wood that I simply do not have.

So what happens? I revise my plan.

While moving pieces about to fit my plan as best I can, I have to determine what I can do with that upper-right corner where I had been planning on putting the yard. Fortunately, because my plan already accounts for all the other patterns, I only have one option to evaluation - can I get a cleat in there? Every other pattern is done and the yard won't work due to lack of wood so the cleat is my only option. Does it fit? Certainly. This is what I ended up with:



Not far from the original plan, but it does show that it's important to be flexible while implementing your plan.

Move Pieces

Once your plan is in place, begin moving your pieces to implement that plan. I won't get much into the actual moving of pieces around. The basics are simple - getting good and efficient at it simply takes practice. Practice makes perfect and, once you get used to moving the pieces, you won't even really think about it any longer - then you can dedicate yourself to thinking about your plan and how to get those most out of the patterns and the board in front of you.

When you're moving pieces, you're constantly looking at your plan. Will it work? Do you have all the pieces you need? Do you need to modify it? While I have these first three steps separated, they really all happen together. Often, I plan for a couple seconds and then immediately begin moving pieces. While moving, I'm revising that plan and looking for shortages and adjusting accordingly.

Execute Combo

Finally, after all that work, it's time to sit back, relax, and build your combo. While you might feel stressed and pressed for time during the previous segment, this is a part of the puzzle you simply should not rush. Every time you clear a pattern, your timer starts over. Your board is already set up for the next pattern, so take a moment and slow down.

Rather than simply firing off your entire combo in one fell swoop - you should be looking for new, "intermediate", clears that crop up after clearing existing patterns. These intermediate clears help you push those ever-important big patterns further and further back in the combo. The longer you can hold those big patterns, the better off you'll be.

Here's an example:



In this case, when I clear the nest shown in the left image, it leaves a piece of cloth in just the right place so that I can now clear a boom. When these happen, you don't want to miss them. Try to make your chains as long as possible and keep the biggest patterns as far back in the chain as possible.

So, when it comes time to execute your chain, take time after each clear to see if something new has cropped up. If it has, lucky for you! Take advantage of it and get yourself a better score!

When you simply can't match any more patterns, your chain is over and you have to start over at step 1. Rinse and repeat until complete!

Shipwrightery: Required Reading

Shipwrightery is a puzzle that I feel is often overlooked. It doesn't seem to have a large following and the pay you get for excelling in the puzzle is usually overshadowed by the pay you might get from distilling. Nonetheless, I've had some requests asking me how to perform well at this puzzle so I'll do my best. Here are some basics to get you started:

Shipwrightery Basic Info
Shipwrighting Scoring Discussion

Great Ways to Lose Money Running a Stall

Here are some of the best ways to lose money while running a stall or shoppe. There are probably plenty of other perfectly good ways to run yourself dry, but here are a few of the most famous.

Underpay Yourself

Labor costs are always an issue. Pay too little and you don't get enough employees. Pay too much and you can't make a profit. A great answer is to work at your own stall for very little pay. Perhaps 1/1/1 for Basic/Skilled/Expert labor. That way, you get to tap in to all of your own labor, but pay next to nothing for it!

Just forget about the fact that you can make over 1,000 PoE per day on your own labor, working elsewhere. Absolutely do not track the loss of 1,000 PoE each day as a loss against your net gain. Your profit margins will soar because of your incredibly low labor costs. This is a very useful technique to distort your actual gains and should be used all the time.

Move Small Quantities

Nearly every shoppe owner has to deal with the joy of moving commodities. Sooner or later, someone will actually expect you to "make" something for them or they won't pay you. It's total nonsense, but that seems to be the way some people think. When that time comes, you'll have to hop onto your trusty ship and go pick up the commodities and bring them back to your shoppe. I'd suggest using a sloop - for everything. The small cargo size is somewhat of a hindrance, but the ease of which they can be sailed by yourself makes up for that and then some. Moving wood? No worries - only 7 trips with your trusty sloop will carry as much as one trip with those clunky merchant brigs. And those 7 trips are so easily done that it just doesn't make any sense to do it any other way. It's certainly not worth asking for a bit of help from a good mate to move one of those big ugly beasts.

And, whatever you do, don't bother to track the cost of the rum used on those voyages as costs against your shoppe. After all, it's just a bit of rum and it would make your profits look worse. No reason to include it. No reason, at all. Moving in bulk might save you a bit on rum but, pfft - it's only a bit of rum!

Never Plan Ahead

Some people get so tied up with how commodity prices fluctuate over time. Personally, I think they're all well on their way to getting coronary diseases. There's just no reason to fret over things like that. When you need a commodity, go buy it! You can try finding somewhere to bid on the item and save yourself a bit of PoE, but don't overlook an opportunity to purchase something dockside. Nothing like instant, overpriced, gratification!

Don't bother trying to build up a surplus of commodities when their prices are low. It's just too much headache and it requires you to have too much money tied up in your inventory. Those times that everyone worries that commodity prices are too high? I don't believe they exist.

Bid Fees, Bid Shmees

Okay, so despite my recommendation to purchase things dockside, you've decided to try to save a few PoE by bidding on commodities and then waiting an excrutiatingly long time for that bid ticket to fill. Fine. I can't save everyone.

When you bid on something, there's a bid fee attached. It's such a rip-off. You know who gets that PoE? No one! It just vanishes! Stupid Three Rings. Nonetheless, it's such a minor amount compared to what you're paying for the commodities that there's no reason to track that as a cost. Sure, that bid fee could be thousands of PoE, but, if it is, you're paying so much more than that for the commodities, itself, that it just seems insignificant.

Don't bother tracking it as an expense. It'll only make your profit numbers look worse. Save your energy for pillaging.

Booch Your Order Prices

In most industries, such as distilling or iron mongering, you sell virtually everything dockside (except swords, I suppose). As such, you really don't need to worry about properly setting your order prices. No one will come along and order your goods at far below market value and then sell them off to make a profit on their own. It just doesn't happen. Seriously. People are too paranoid.

Ignore Rent

You ever notice how once a week, some invisible tax collector comes by and takes PoE out of your coffers? If he doesn't find the PoE lying around, he cuts the power! What a total jerk! There's nothing that can be done about this guy. He's just too wily. I've had pirates try to hunt him down. I've hired the mates of El Pollo Diablo to get after him. I've even tried ninja assassins. He can't be stopped!

As such, best to just ignore him. Just forget about the PoE he takes. It's better to just let him take it and ignore the lost PoE than to spend hundreds of thousands of PoE on good-for-nothing skellies that can't catch a stupid invisible tax collector. As you can't do anything about it, don't bother to track rent as an expense. If you do, it'll make your profit numbers look worse than everyone else's because everyone else ignores it. Trust me - they do.

Conclusion

Those are some great ways to grind your stall into the ground. There are others out there, but this help you get started. See you on the high seas, pillaging to keep your stall running!