Carpentry for the Pirate Who's All Thumbs

[Garibaldi]

Carpentry for the Pirate Who's All Thumbs
or
How to Fill Holes for Fun and Profit

The idea of carpentry is to use the pieces you have to fill the 4 holes. To score well the pieces will have to overlap as little as possible. The fewer overlaps you have, the better your rating will be. If you successfully fill a hole with no overlapping pieces, you’ll receive a “Masterpiece”.

You pick up the pieces by clicking on them, and place them in the holes by clicking again. You may also put a piece back in the rack if you haven't placed it in a puzzle yet. It’s important to note that you can flip the pieces by using the right mouse button or ‘z’ key, or rotate them by using the mouse wheel or the ‘c’ and ‘x’ keys.

After you’ve place a piece, you have one opportunity to change its position a little by clicking on it again, and then moving it (It won’t move very far). You can also flip and rotate the piece. You can only do this one time or until you pick up your next piece. This is very helpful if you misclick a bit when placing.

As you fill the holes, you may notice that one will flash red and make an annoying noise at you, or a piece you have placed starts to quiver (there’s that noise again). This means that you need to give that hole some attention. If you let it go too long, a bit of it will expand, making it impossible to get a masterpiece. If you let a quivering piece go to long, it will pop off, and “Wasteful!” will appear on your screen.

These terrible occurrences aren’t time based, but rather based on how many pieces you’ve placed. Don't get scared if one starts shaking... you have at least 1 or 2 more moves before anything happens. If you have only one more piece to go to fill the hole for a Masterpiece, wait until the last turn before the hole pops to place a piece. There’s always a chance you’ll get the one you need so don’t despair.

As you fill holes, try to complete 2 adjacent holes so you’ll get 2 new holes to work on. Otherwise, you’ll have fewer options to place you’re pieces.

Once you've figured out how to fill the holes, you might notice that even though you've filled the holes pretty quickly, you're only getting a "Good" rating. Here are some ideas that might help you get “Excellents” and maybe even an occasional “Incredible”.

Getting several Masterpieces in row seems to be the trick. 5 or 6 in a row before getting a Craftsmanship should do it.

You’ll have your best chance for a “Masterpiece” if you keep the sides of the hole as straight and regular as possible, and never (well, almost never) place a piece such that it makes one big hole onto 2 smaller holes.

2 techniques you can use are “Stalling” and “Discarding”.

Stalling
If you need 2 pieces for a “Masterpiece” and you only have one, hold on to that piece until you have the other one or until the hole begins to quiver (there’s that annoying noise again). That way you’ll have more time to get the pieces you need. Use the time to work on another, preferably adjacent, hole.

Discarding
While you have 4 holes, try to make “Masterpieces” from all of them until you don’t have any of the pieces you need. Pick the hole that’s going to be hardest to deal with and turn that hole into your “Discard Hole”. Put the least-likely-to-be-useful pieces in the discard hole. As pieces come up that you can use in your “Masterpiece” holes, use them. The discard hole will stay on the screen as you complete the other holes to be used again.

After you’ve carped for a while, you’ll probably notice that some pieces appear more often than others. Always try to use the least common pieces as soon as they appear if you have a good place for them. Also, try to leave your holes so that the last couple pieces you need for a “Masterpiece” are the most common pieces.

After you’ve carped for a while you’ll, also, start seeing some bigger holes. Filling 3 or 4 of these to “Masterpiece” standards should give you a very sparkly hammer. Then even a “Fine Job won’t hurt you too much. Conversely, if you “Masterpiece” 4 or 5 little holes, then booch a big one…. I shudder to think.

These tips were gathered from various sources. On a more perrsnal note, I find that if I can get a rythm going and not over think the situation, I do better.

Now go forth and mend holes.

[DeltaQ]

Excellent post, Gari.

I will only add that the tutorial in the game (at the right of the holes, and in the same place of chat) you can see that there also are the "How often a piece can appear", so you can see also wich kind of hole you can left, thinking (and hoping) that the piece you need is the next

[raesene]

This is a puzzle that I was much much better at back in the day, but I find myself constantly frustrated in now that I'm back to the game.

I think the greatest mistake I've been making (and the next opportunity I have to do some carp I'm going to try to revert this behavior) is taking the 'work on all squares at once' tip too literally. When you fill everything too evenly, you end up with very few options to place pieces. I can find myself in a ridiculous number of situations where I have managed to get all four holes down to the 'just need one very common piece' level, but ... whoops, I don't have anywhere to place a piece that isn't one of those. Or, I've set them all up to require all the exact same piece!

Next time I carp I'm going to focus on quickly filling out two adjacent holes and only fill in the others to enough to keep them steady and handle bad pieces. Also, I have been bad about following that 'save the second to last piece' trick. Hopefully I can bump my standing back up to a good level.

[raesene]

Refocusing my efforts in filling only 2 squares at a time, as well as trying to finish up only when I have the last TWO pieces improved me a ton last night. I managed to roll in with a Master^6 right off the bat when previously I was only getting Master^2 if I was lucky.

Of course, the board can still hate you in this puzzle, and later in the night I had to swallow 4 craftsmans in a row.

[Linkinparkey]

Here's the next tutorial in the line

s1188.photobucket.com/albums/z413/Linkinparkey/?action=view¤t=movie3.mp4

Enjoy ^^

P.S. May be a little confusing, but I tried to keep it simple

[Kindhattie]

I never knew you could FLIP the pieces! This should improve my carping somewhat...
Thanks!

[Linkinparkey]

haha, yea, took me a few months figure this out at first as well XD

U can flip on right mousebutton or on Z

[Linkinparkey]

Yea, sorry, forgot to check if there was already a carpentry thread XD
Gonna gather all my videos in a single thread when I'm done making all the tutorials

[DeltaQ]

Now I have seen it
Excellent and clear.

I normally mess with the piece I'm keeping while waiting the other, putting it in any place... The solution of that is concentration, but, lol, it's quite difficult to concentrate while chatting, laughing, TS, and family.

One more tip: If you can make the smaller MP soon, the hammer starts sprinkling, and you can get a good DR (Duty Report) in the first LP (League Point)


Linky said:

Gonna gather all my videos in a single thread when I'm done making all the tutorials

Personally I prefer to have the videos with the written instructions all together... that means a thread for each puzzle (as I said: Personally)

[DeltaQ]

Excellent video Linky
btw (by the way), how many times happened that the most common piece becomes the most uncommon and Vice versa?

I can't find now the picture where I had 2 large I pieces in the box and 1 more just inside the hole

[Linkinparkey]

haha, like I said in the video, carpentry is a game of luck XD All you can do is to improve your chances

[nothegreat]

aye i have had many times were i was stoling on 2 puzzles waiting for the 2 mostt common peices and i filled up the other bord and had to take crafsmans on them...

[DeltaQ]

Just another tip, but for the mates that are looking for the Grain Trophey:

The Grain is horizontal when the piece appears in the box.