Carpentry

A typical carpentry board

The carpentry puzzle is a duty puzzle. Players' performance at the puzzle can repair a ship's normal wear and tear, as well as sea battle damage, and keeps bilge from rushing more rapidly into the ship.

How to Play

The goal of carpentry is to fill your holes quickly and efficiently with five-block pieces. You start with a hole, and three pieces to choose from. As your skill improves, the game gives you up to 4 different, randomly shaped holes. If you work too slowly, your rating will go down. If you neglect a given hole for too long, chunks will fall out and your score will go down. A finished hole is scored based on how many extra pieces were used. There are also bonuses for grain alignment and using only one piece in a whole hole.

Controls

Using the mouse, you can:

• Click/hold, drag, and release a piece where you want it
• Click a piece attaching it to your cursor, move it around, then click again to place it
• Use the mousewheel to rotate a piece currently attached to your cursor
• Click the mousewheel to horizontally flip the piece currently attached to your cursor

On the keyboard:

• Z and X : rotate the piece CCW and CW
• C : flips pieces horizontally

• 1 - 3 : Select one of the corresponding three pieces from the toolbox
• Space : picks up and puts down pieces
• Q W A and S : Center the selected piece over the corresponding four holes
• Arrow Keys : Move the picked-up piece

• For the bucket of glue, simply clicking on the hole (or pushing space above that hole) will fill the hole, up to 5 squares.

Scoring

• Masterpiece! - No extra pieces used.
• Craftsmanship! - One extra piece used.
• A Fair Job. - Two extra pieces used.
• Sloppy Work. - Three extra pieces used.
• A Pig's Breakfast! - Four or more extra pieces used.

Additional Bonuses

Scoring also incorporates a few additional bonuses which help to increase your score.

Sequential Masterpieces

Masterpieces can be repeated (Masterpiece²! Masterpiece³!...) for a bigger bonus (the combo counter resets when the star meter is filled and a new round begins)

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.^[1] 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.

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.

Tips and Tricks

Carpentry Shapes and Frequencies

P - 22	F - 14	Y - 14 asym
T - 7	W - 4 sym	N - 8 asym
U - 4	V - 4 sym	L - 8 asym
Z - 4	X - 3 sym	I - 2 asym
Asymmetric pieces only come with one grain direction. Symmetric pieces have both grains in one. Others have 2 kinds of grain direction.
Bucket - 1
A selected putty bucket will be outlined in blue if a space is fillable and red if a space cannot be filled by the bucket.

Generally, you want to fill holes from the outside in.

Generally, you want to avoid splitting the hole into two pieces as long as you have not made any overlap. However, if you have a putty bucket, a hard hole requiring multiple specific pieces, and no other holes close to completion, if the piece in the middle comes, place it, knowing you can use the bucket to extend the lifetime of that hole.

If you have a hole requiring two specific pieces to fill, and one of them comes, hold off playing it as long as you have other good plays. But if you only have one piece to play in the hole, fill it to open up your possibilities for other holes.

Try to solve two holes at once, rather than one. And not two that are diagonally apart..

You can adjust a pieces once you've set it down. As long as you haven't picked up another piece, you can click again on your last piece and move it

Place the rares, then place the common pieces around them

Try to fit all the pieces so that (ideally) the top 3 most common pieces will finish for my masterpiece.

And remember all holes could be solved perfectly if you had all the pieces. So try not to let a puzzle expand by a piece, you can then never get a master piece for that hole.

Example Two Piece Holes

When you have 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. A paste bucket makes it much easier, since then you only have to wait for one piece. 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, PV, UX. Not nearly as good as the first 2, but for some reason I keep on getting these. :)
	Can be filled by: PP, NN, WW, 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.

External Links

• Puzzle Pirates Official Carpentry Docs
• The Carpentry Tips Thread
• Grain Bonus Thread