Firstly I'm going to start with my favourite puzzle, swordfighting.
You should all know how to do swordfighting, but heres some tips to do even better!
Know your opposition - look at what sword they have, where do they put there blocks?
Don't judge your oppositon on their sword - just because they have a good sword it doesn't make them skillful. If they a have a stick they could be incredibly skillful with it. But normally sticks are alot harder to use. But I was once in a big tournament and all I had was a stick, and I bet the third best swordfighter in my ocean who had a backsword.
A foil sword is your friend - although foil sword is the started sword, and looks pretty bad, it can be one of the best swords in game! I have fought falchions and skull daggers, and I can still win with a foil. If you use the foil correctly, it can be a great sword.
Place your blocks carefully - look at their screen, where are they putting there blocks, where would there biggest smash be? Where should you put your blocks if they smash a certain area of theirs? Where are they most likely to smash blocks? If you smashed your blocks, where would they appear on their screen? Will this maybe block off one of their big smashes?
Never give up - Sometimes when it looks like your about to lose, you get the thing you need, I had 2 bits of space left, I got a small smasher, then another one that smashed almost my whole entire screen, and I won.
That's all the tips I have for swordfighting, now to drinking.
Alot of people like to do drinking, to earn money when wagering. Unlike swordfighting where a sword makes difference, but not the difference of whether they win or lose, in drinking a good mug can easily decide who wins. You must be careful on how you place your drinks. You need to think about where the opposition will place there drinks, but alot of the game is based on chance, on what drinks come up. But think, what will happen if I place a drink here? Will I clear a row?
I don't really have any tips for rumbling, as I wasn't much of a rumbler so I'm going to move onto the ship duties.
Firstly, bilging, probably the most simple puzzle in the game. Try to make matches uses no more than 2 swaps, if you a 3x3 or more, do it if it takes less than 4 swaps. You must be fast to do the swapping and look quickly, and find where you can make matches or sometimes huge matches. After you do bilging for a while, you are a more quick swapper, and get do a great job in bilging.
Now, carpentry, my favourite ship duty impart from battle navigation and gunning, never, ever fill holes randomly with random pieces and not caring what overlaps. You will get a bad duty report, get your rank down, and won't do anything to help your ship, sometimes it even makes it worse. Think about where the pieces match up and only over lap if you absolutely have to, if you are about to fill a whole with a piece and will only need one peice afterwards, make sure the last piece needed is a common piece, not a rare piece. If you have mucked up one whole badly, fill it with pieces you don't want, but still try not to overlap.
Sailing, a more complicated puzzle than bilging and carpentry, do not try to finish the puzzles incredibly fast, as you will not do such a great job, instead make big rows, and then make it disappear, so one part falls onto another one making a match, and that falls into another, and in the end make it fill up the squares, so you fill it up with doubles, and that sort of thing, you then do a much better job and make the ship go faster, and you will get a better duty report.
Gunning, you need the cannons loaded when your ship is in a battle, so someone has to load the cannons. The higher your rank in gunning the higher the pieces move around, so master ranked gunners have their pieces move around faster than respected. You must load the cannons by placing arrows on the board, and when a piece lands on the arrow it moves according to the direction of the arrow, you must fill the cannons using different pieces in order. First the red bag with ! on it (gunpowder) then a rag, then a cannonball, if you get it wrong, then you must wash it out with water, which is another piece that moves around the board. After a cannon is fired you must wash it out then reload it, different ships have different amount of cannons, so different amounts of cannons can be loaded. Sloops can only have four cannons loaded at a time. When you load all four cannons on the board, leave the duty and go back onto it again to load any other unloaded cannons, you do not have to be in battle to load them, normally people will load cannons while sailing so they are ready to fie in battle, cannons can also be reloaded in battle when needed.
