Talk:Distilling

I removed the following paragraph because it was hard to understand (and in the first person):


 * I have noticed through the many rounds of distilling that if you are moving a black or brown piece while the row nearest the "furnice" burns the brown/black piece which you would be able to move normally will get "stuck" and you will have to move another piece to get the piece out of the stuck position. It is complicated to explain but it happens to me from time to time.

--Barrister 23:31, 28 January 2006 (PST)

I think I understand what that paragraph was getting at, and I've attempted to explain it at the end of the control/technical issues section. As well as adding to and editing a lot of the article, I've also removed the link to Sart's Distilling Video, since it doesn't appear to be there any more. --Ruby spoon 12:26, 6 June 2006 (PDT)

I request that the following be changed or deleted:
 * "Such pieces are completely immobile and such pieces may make earning an Incredible score during that round impossible."

Nearly every time the previously mentioned situation has happened to me I've gotten twelve crystal clears, which has in turn given me an incredible on the report. --Hydranoisp 7:48, 15 August 2006 (PST)
 * I reworded it. I'm opposed to specific scoring references on the wiki, in general. What it takes to get a certain duty report is determined dynamically based on the overall performance of the puzzlers on that particular server. --AtteSmythe 08:20, 15 August 2006 (PDT)

Isn't the following statement not accurate for the Alchemistry puzzle? I do believe that it is true for the other two though:


 * If you quit a labor puzzle midway, the cancelled attempt does not count against your puzzle standing.

--S0mnus 03:44, 4 February 2007 (PST)

The following also seems confusing, perhaps a link to an explanation would be very helpful (I am not aware of where an explanation might be found nor can comment on the validity of this assertion):


 * It should be noted that due to the way experience is taken into account when calculating one's ranking, it may be inadvisable to abandon a puzzle just because it is not going quite as well as you would like.

--S0mnus 03:47, 4 February 2007 (PST)

I also removed this sentence (before it was reverted) for the same reason:


 * It should be noted that due to the way experience is taken into account when calculating one's ranking, it may be inadvisable to abandon a puzzle just because it is not going quite as well as you would like.

I believe that it is hardly ever advisable to not abandon the puzzle because it is not going well. Not abandoning it would have a detrimental effect on your score and standing, while abandoning it would have 0 effect (which is almost always better, and yes, I understand how standings are calculated).

Again, the reason why I am removing this and the other sentence is that it confused me, it seems like I understood what it was saying, but it was difficult to be sure. On conversing with other experienced distillers, most of them were unsure of it as well, so it seems like the confusion is universal. I don't think we need a confusing sentence that is quite possibly giving incorrect advice and/or is quite pointless here, I think.

--S0mnus 19:51, 20 February 2007 (PST)

I removed the following sentence: (before it, and other additions were reverted by Barrister)


 * On the other hand, obtaining a CC^12 in a faster time will improve your ranking more than a slow CC^12, even though the score for an individual game is the same no matter what speed it is completed in.

I might have discussed this here first, but because I felt fairly strongly about it, and because nobody has answered my messages below, I just went ahead and did it.

So, this sentence is badly written. It can be accidentally misread to imply that speed is a factor in the puzzle's scoring, which it is not. This fact is implicitly covered in the scoring section, although I could be redundant and say it more explicitly in the paragraph I added following this. It looks like the sentence is saying that your standing will change faster, assuming that the plays record will actually affect your standing in a particular direction, if you play the puzzle faster (and with the same aptitude as otherwise), simply because then you would be recording more games in a time interval. This fact is a pretty obvious universal fact to crafting puzzle scoring, I think, and is easily deduced from the established fact that time has no effect on the score.

At first, I was only thinking to change the wording of this sentence. As stands, it says obtaining a CC^12 in a faster time will improve your ranking __more__ than. Now that's blatantly false, as far as I know, and I doubt that that is what the sentence is intended to be saying.

So, what I am going to do is put the rest of my changes back, then rephrase this sentence in a less confusing way. But I do move that the sentence is completely unnecessary and should be entirely deleted.

Also, I feel that I am somewhat qualified to make opinions on this article as I am currently the #1 distiller on the Hunter Ocean (Sordid), and have read this article thoroughly before getting there. All it did was confuse me on several points due do bad phrasing.

--S0mnus 19:45, 20 February 2007 (PST)


 * S0mnus, thanks for clarifying your edits. I'm not sure about the time-based scoring issue.  I know one player, Rubyspoon, strongly believes that time to complete crafting puzzles plays a role in scoring, but I haven't seen empirical evidence of that.
 * Also, please add new comments to the bottom of the Talk: page. It's easier to see the evolution of the discussion.  In particularly, I was confused to read you 20 February comments and then your 4 February comments.  I've rearranged the page (without editing anyone's actual comments).  --Barrister 13:42, 22 February 2007 (PST)


 * Barrister, thanks for polishing my edits. I was not aware of the Talk posting convention of adding to the bottom, apologies.
 * While it is difficult to be absolutely sure about the effect of time, I think that there is plenty of evidence to say that if time matters, the effect is negligible. It seems improbable (thinking in the shoes of a puzzle designer) to only assign a small, barely noticeable bonus for time. And surely if the bonus is significant, it would be much easier to demonstrate by people who can at their leisure decide whether to play a 4 minute game or an 8 minute game. I have attempted to establish a difference, but have seen none. I certainly would be interested to see statistically significant evidence to the contrary though. --S0mnus 07:59, 23 February 2007 (PST)
 * There are these two threads (1st, 2nd) where Rubyspoon goes into in-depth analysis about how time affects ranking. They may be relevant here, or not, but her data does seem to show that time has a distinct factor in ranking.--Fiddler 13:11, 23 February 2007 (PST)
 * I see. Thanks for the links.
 * I am going to attempt to verify/debunk this data when I find the time. I've made quite a few new characters and have observed no notable difference in speed, but I was not very systematic about it. I personally believe that there are other factors that are unaccounted for in Rubyspoon's data that explain the difference, but it's worth more experimentation. Her data is not very complete. Notably she does not include spice use/waste, the report, or the time of day.--S0mnus 02:06, 24 February 2007 (PST)
 * It might be better to ambiguate the article, mentioning that this is an uncertain possibility.--S0mnus 02:08, 24 February 2007 (PST)

Regarding the reverted self-linking in the Immovable Pieces section of the article: that was supposed to be a link to Scoring but I accidentally confused it while looking up the correct syntax. I would correct it, but I am not sure if self-linking to a different section of the same (short) page is good wiki etiquette. --S0mnus 14:05, 23 February 2007 (PST)

Is it known whether burning a white piece (but not sending it up) is detrimental to the score? Shrdlu 14:13, 6 June 2007 (PDT)

According to the game documentation, it isn't detrimental to the score (except for its indirect effect of making it more difficult to manage your board for later columns...): "Pieces sent into the furnace aren't scored, but wasted white pieces recycle into the puzzle as bad, burnt white pieces." ~ Sweetiepiepi
 * The article seems to be suggesting that the only detrimental effect burnt white pieces have is the disqualification of an all-white column from CC classification. Although, I did just add a mention that it also breaks "Smooooth" columns. Now, I'm not sure, but I thought that sending up a burnt white piece does, in general, score less in the column than a regular white piece. If this is true, it should be noted in the article's scoring section as such. --S0mnus 04:38, 6 August 2007 (PDT)

I've updated the scoring section to reflect the newest release regarding abandoning the puzzle. However, I do not know the specifics of this - how many moves, exactly, are required (it may not be the same as listed in the Ice changelog), and I have no idea how this affects the statements already in the article regarding the impact of abandoning on labor hours. It would be good if somebody could research these things and update the section. S0mnus 03:34, 19 July 2007 (PDT)


 * It's actually after moving 10 pieces, as I've tested it quite a few times and came up with that #. If anyone else would like to test this, it'd be much appreciated. Klostro 23:07, 30 September 2007 (PDT)

Edits to CC^12 and beyond
I was looking through this page and noticed that the CC^12 and beyond section was internally inconsistent; the first two paragraphs were clearly written back when CC^12 was the max, while the last paragraph was clearly tacked on after the release that kept the puzzle going past CC^12. I rewrote the first paragraph and merged the third paragraph into the first to make it so that it (hopefully) follows logically. It's a bit of a longer paragraph though, so if anyone wants to edit it down, go for it. Scm621 06:03, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

Immovable Pieces change
I've removed this following from the section on Immovable Pieces: "It is thus advisable for advanced distillers to examine the beginning board before starting to play it. Quitting a distilling puzzle without moving any pieces does not count against puzzle standing, but may waste labor hours."

Two reasons: 1. It would be more useful for a tutorial rather than an article on the puzzle itself. There are other things in the article that should probably also be removed under this guideline, but I don't think that's a good reason to keep this here. 2. It's not really true either; any advanced distiller is going to burn more than 10 columns before sending up a single column. Unless a board is monstrously booched in a way that I've never seen happen (basically, unless half the board is blocked from the other half by a massive quantity of spice, so you're literally forced to send up columns early because there are two many whites in the front half), the worst case scenario on start is usually a trapped white piece (if it's any other piece trapped by spice, it doesn't matter since it's getting burnt anyway). But a single trapped white has no negative outcome on the puzzle, and even if you're worried about having only one white to burn before generating a burnt piece, it's easy enough to burn one more white early, then cycle your burnt piece to the front and get rid of it for no net effect.

In the end, the above advice is inadvisable because the effect is unnecessarily wasted labor hours. Searmin 16:38, 17 February 2010 (UTC)