Rigging

A typical rigging board

The rigging puzzle is a duty puzzle. Players' performance at the puzzle will accelerate or decelerate a vessel. It is an alternative to the sailing puzzle, and is started from the same place on a vessel. Sailing stations on a vessel are considered occupied while a player is using that station for sailing or rigging.

Basic gameplay

The board is a hexagonal grid of pieces, which can be moved in straight lines in one of six directions. There are 6 pulleys, one of which will always be active. The objective of the puzzle is to create large chains of pieces in front of an active pulley so they get pulled off the board. The active pulley changes in a clockwise direction after each move, regardless of whether a pull was made.

Controls

Mouse or W,E,A,D,Z,X keys: Move the cursor
Left click, S or spacebar: Select pieces
Right click or spacebar: Deselect and reset row of pieces

Scoring

Scoring is primarily based around creating large pulls, while avoiding lots of small pulls. Efficient clearing of pieces will produce the best scores, and a performance indicator in the upper-right-hand corner is a good indication of how well a pirate is currently doing.

The sail on the left does not add much to the speed of the vessel, but the sparkling, golden sail on the right adds full speed to the vessel.

Clearing pieces faster does not necessarily affect scoring, but taking a long time between moves will decrease the score. "Looping" pieces, by surrounding them completely in a pull, adds a bonus to the score as well as additional loops to the rope coil. It is thought that not making a pull 3 times in a row does not penalise the score - but 5 loops are lost from the rope coil.

Pieces

There are 8 normal pieces in rigging, two of which appear after the puzzle has been played for a while.

The rigging pieces

Rope coil

The rope coil with 8 loops

As pieces are cleared from the board, loops are added to the rope coil at the bottom of the board. When the coil is full (20 loops), a wild piece is added to the board and a new coil is started. The wild piece counts as any color in a chain. If no pull is made 3 moves in a row, 5 loops are lost from the rope coil.

Special pieces

There are several special pieces in rigging which are obtained in different ways. These pieces will not be pulled by a pulley if placed directly in front of it.

	Wild - The wild piece counts as any colored piece on the board. It is obtained by completing a rope coil with 20 loops. This piece will also appear in place of another special piece for lower level boards.
	Gaff - The gaff piece will pull all surrounding pieces when included in a chain, regardless of their color. It is obtained by surrounding a non-matching piece in a pull.
	Tar - When pulled from the board, the tar piece causes the replacement pieces in that area to be the same color. It is obtained by removing all of one color from the board in a pull of 5 pieces or more. If two or more tar pieces are in the same chain, they will both use the same color for their replacement pieces.
	Splice - The splice piece causes a second adjacent chain to be pulled. The two chains currently linked is shown by the color of the interlocking ropes on the piece itself. It is obtained by linking an inactive pulley to a chain when it is pulled. The inactive pulley cannot be the ones either side of the active pulley. There can only be one splice piece on the board at a time. Subsequent moves that would earn a splice will award a wild instead.

Blockade rigging

An activated pulley

Blockade rigging is a variation of rigging, played by puzzlers during a blockade, flotilla or sea monster hunt. Scoring maneuver tokens in rigging is a two-stage process. Bonus shapes appear on top of the normal rigging pieces. If the player makes a clear involving a bonus shape, the next pulley will be activated for that shape. Making a pull with the same maneuver as the activated pulley scores a token. If a pull is made which does not use that maneuver, or no pull is made, the maneuver is simply deactivated.

More than one maneuver can be activated at the same time, and any maneuver cleared while activated will score a token. If an activated pulley is used to pull a different maneuver, that maneuver will be passed on to the next pulley in line.

Bonus shapes only appear when a puzzler is performing well at the puzzle.