From Puzzle Pirates
[edit] How to play
The goal of carpentry is to fill your four holes without wasted space. You have four irregularly shaped holes, and 3 pieces you can place in the holes. You must distribute your moves among the uncompleted holes. If you leave a hole alone, and it has a piece in it, on the fifth turn, the piece will rattle, on the sixth turn, it will rattle harder, and on the seventh turn it will fall out. Falling out is very bad, so always place a piece before the hole reaches the seventh turn. If the hole is empty, on the fifth turn it will flash red, on the sixth it will flash harder, on the seventh it will flash even more, and on the eighth it will grow larger.
[edit] Neat tricks and Controls
Here are some great tips and tricks to help you do well!
You can use the keyboard to flip and rotate pieces. (Actually, you can play the entire game from the keyboard, but I'm not insane enough to do that :)
The Z key flips the piece, and the X and C keys rotate it. You can also right-click to flip, and middle-click or scroll to rotate.
If you misplace a piece, you can pick it up again if you do so before you pick up another piece. You can only flip or rotate it, or shift it by one position, but it is incredibly helpful when you drop a piece in the wrong spot.
[edit] Initial goals
Carpentry Shapes and Frequencies
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Bucket - 1
|
|
You want to fill the holes from the outside in, to leave yourself as much slack as possible in terms of what pieces you can use. Try to leave yourself spaces which can be filled by the commoner pieces. Here is a frequency table, plus the letter abbreviations I'll be using later:
The Paste Bucket is the final and rarest piece which will fill in from 1 to 5 spaces, but no more. It cannot be used if the gap to fill is larger than five spaces.
Notice that V and W can both be flipped and rotated to line the grain bonus up horizontally regardless of how the piece is placed. Get in the habit of always placing those pieces with the grain horizontal. In addition, since you never need to rotate the X piece, it should always be placed with horizontal grain.
Even if you can't fill in a hole with no wasted spaces it's important to use as few pieces as possible. Make sure that there's only one empty area in each hole as you fill them. That way, if you don't get the pieces you need to fill the final space exactly, you can usually fill it with only one extra piece. A space for 2 pieces can usually be filled with 3 pieces, and so on. It's important not to give up on holes - always try to fill them as efficiently as possible.
Again - never let a hole grow larger. Finally, if you place all the pieces in a hole such that the grain is horizontal, you get a grain bonus. The grain bonus is not as important as piece efficiency, so don't concentrate on getting the grain bonus at first.
[edit] Scoring
Scoring is based on how many pieces you use to completely fill a hole.
- Masterpiece! - No extra pieces. Consecutive masterpieces are denoted with Masterpiece!^#, with # indicating how many in a row have been done.
- Craftmanship! - 1 extra piece.
- A Fair Job. - 2 extra pieces.
- Sloppy Work. - 3 extra pieces.
- A Pig's Breakfast! - 4 or more extra pieces.
Additional bonuses are available.
- Grain Bonus. - All pieces are aligned with a horizontal grain.
- Nice Set. - All pieces used were of the same type.
[edit] The Grain Bonus
If you fill a hole with pieces which all have their grain running the same direction, you will recieve a grain bonus. Piece efficiency is usually more important, but if you want to achieve Incredibles, the grain bonus is helpful. Worrying about grain when you aren't consitantly earning Craftsmanships or Masterpieces is basically a waste of time. When pieces first appear in your toolbox, their grain always runs left-to-right. For this reason, it's usually easiest to try and keep your grain running in that direction.
All of the pieces 4 squares or more long (Y,L,N,I) only come with the grain running in one direction: along their lengths. (presumably trees are only ever 3 squares wide. :) This means a board with a tall narrow space can not be finished with one of the longer pieces unless you have your grain running vertically. There is only one exception to this - the bucket will never prevent you from getting the grain bonus. If you're down to vertical L space, you can still get the grain bonus if you complete the puzzle using a bucket.
When the hole is still fairly large, it's usually pretty easy to place the pieces with the grain in the same direction. Eventually you are going to get to the point where you have to make a choice: you can either complete the hole with the grain bonus and a Craftsmanship, or you can complete it without the grain bonus, but with a Masterpiece. If you are sure that you can get it, a Masterpiece without the grain bonus is better than a Craftsmanship with it. (see http://www.puzzlepirates.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=4827#4827 ) However, if the Masterpiece is uncertain, it's probably better to take a relatively certain Craftsmanship with the grain bonus. For example:
|
|
|
| with F,L,L are available, The grain on the F would prevent you from getting the grain bonus if you use it as on the left. Your other choice wrecks the chance of getting a Masterpiece, but allows you to get a Craftsmanship with a grain bonus, such as on the right.
|
In this situation I would choose the second option, since Us are relatively infrequent. You're likely to get a Craftsmanship regardless of what you do, so it would be better for you if you kept the grain bonus.
Keeping the grain bonus places more constraints on where you can place pieces so I find that I usually run into trouble even before I've gotten the hole down to a 2 piece space. When that happens I make one of my holes a grain-booched hole, and try to place pieces there when I can't keep them horizontal. More generally, if a hole will need more than 2 or 3 pieces to complete it, I will usually choose to lose the grain bonus before I choose to lose the Masterpiece.
[edit] Nice Set
If you fill a hole with pieces which are all the same type, you get a Nice Set bonus. It appears to be about as good as a Grain bonus. This is generally possible on holes which are 4x5, filled with Ps or Ls.
[edit] Some tricks for filling holes
Firstly, practice hole management. When I'm playing, I try to have one hole filled, one hole almost done, and 2 holes mostly empty at any given time. That way I have the greatest degree of choice about where to put pieces.
Secondly, instead of waiting for pieces, wait for combinations of pieces. Once you've gotten a hole down to the point where it will take 2 pieces to complete, wait until both of those pieces are available before you complete it. Be aware that some shapes can be filled with many different combinations of pieces - do your best to finish on shapes like that. Here are some good shapes to finish on:
|
| The space to the left can be filled by: PL, PY, PT, PV, PZ, YU, and FU. This is the best shape to finish on. Notice that 5 of the combos take a P, which means you can get a P in your bucket, and then wait for one of 5 different shapes (with a total likelihood of 37) to show up.
|
|
| This can be filled by: PP, PL, PW. Not as many combos, but again is a matter of getting a P and then waiting for pieces with a total likelihood of 34 to show up.
|
|
| Can be filled by: PF, PN, UX. Not nearly as good as the first 2, but for some reason I keep on getting these. :)
|
|
| Can be filled by: PP, NN, UU. Not great, but 2 Ps is pretty good
|
|
| Can be filled by: PP, FV, LU. Again, when I get this, I'm usually shooting for 2 Ps.
|
A paste bucket makes it much easier, since then you only have to wait for one piece. Still beware of saving paste buckets too enthusiastically - I read on the forums about a guy who got 3 paste buckets when he couldn't use any of them, and had to quit the puzzle :)
[edit] External links
