Here be helpful hints on the somewhat useful duty o' bilging, which involves emptyin' yer vessel o' water and sea creatures by pumping efficiently, not wildly. Bilging is accessable only in the lower decks, and you should know what the station looks like from the tutorial- a bucket and a pump.

I say somewhat useful, because although it is needed to stop your vessel from slowing down, carpentry also prevents bilge from entering, as bilge seeps in a lot faster in a damaged ship. Also, most experienced players can bilge well enough to clear the decks on a sloop or cutter, so dedicated bilgers are really best on large ships.

If you haven't bilged before and want the basic tips, click here for basic combos and an explaination of critter types.

If you just want some advanced hints on how to do combos, and what they look like, click here.

If you're looking for the hints on the really big combos, they're right over here.

This tutorial will use the same format as the bilging puzzle itself, except without the actual background that the bilging puzzle might use.

In bilging you move the cursor around the screen, and when you've found an appropriate (set of) move(s), you click or press enter to swap two pieces horizontally. Pieces do not swap vertically, and special pieces are activated by swapping them.




Bilging reduces the amount of bilgewater (or just bilge) in the ship's lower deck. This reduces the weight of the ship and allows you to travel at your ship's maximum speed. Bilge will trickle in to the ship slowly, meaning this station usually has to be manned. Sloops and cutters usually only need one bilger, wheras bigger ships may need anywhere between two and ten.

The Mechanics:

Bilging, as you will know if you've played before, involving swapping pieces horizontally (not vertically) in order to eliminate them in groups of 3, 4, or 5. However, the real scorers are so called '3x3s' or '3x5x5s', where you break two threes, or a three and a four, or a three and two fives, at once. This has to be done with as few moves as possible, so a 3x3 needing one move could score the same amount as a bingo needing seven moves.

In bilging, the pieces float upwards, and pieces under the waterline move more slowly. (making it harder to pump when there's a large amount of bilge about) If a line of three is made after you've already cleared a line or combo, then it counts only for a little score, and additional pieces float up.

At the moment, as your bilging rating increases, you have to deal with more piece colours.

The Basics:

Bilging is one of the most ruthless puzzles for efficiency in the entire game. Seing it is quite possible to accidentally start a 'cascade,' where other blocks line up and break after the initial one, these aren't scored very highly. A good guide to go by is averaging breaking a three each turn. A 3x3 will last a bit longer than two threes, but a 4 isn't much better at all.

While it used to be possible to do this puzzle based on cascades, (a cascade is when pieces floating up after a clear set off another clear, and so on) easy 3x3s, and many other factors, it now requires a very efficient usage of combos to get a good rating.

If you want to be able to clear the bilge fast whilst the others work to speed up your vessel, knowing how to bilge reliably also becomes important. Also note that the scoring for chained moves has now been quite largely reduced, along with the scoring for smaller (3x[3/4/5] combos. This means you ideally want bingos and above when you are playing, and you can risk more moves to get them.

Scan your board for a decent (at least 3x3) combo before you start. If you can't find one, it's worth two, porhaps three moves to set one up. If there's still nothing, you can resort to looking for 3s or 4s. 3x3s look like this:

   















There are also two harder ones, that need all the same type of pieces. You'll need these to make larger combos:











Let's take a second to introduce you to the special pieces that appear during tho bilging puzzle, so you know what happens when you swap them.



This little critter above is a crab. They will only stay on your board if they land belw the water-line, so they're pesky when you've got a lot of bilge to clear. They can't be swapped- at all. What you have to do is clear a line or combo above them and watch them float up out from the water. Seeing they like water, they scuttle off, and you get a bonus for getting rid of them. Clearing a crab not only gives you better control of your board, but can also give you a good scoring bonus. To the experienced bilger, a well-placed crab means extra score.



This creature is almost always bad. Unless there's a clear you can make before you set them off, swap them as soon as you can. They puff up and clear all nine squares around them, wasting a swap and only getting you score from any cascades that happen.



And this one is a jellyfish. They don't give you any score on their own either, but they can be the most helpful of all the special pieces. They temporarily clear away all pieces of the type that they are swapped with. (prepare for dissapointing results if you swap them with another critter though) This allows you to make good cascades or easy combos. When swapping with a jellyfish, try to use a piece which you have a lot of, or which is stuck in a few very inconvenient places.

The Combos:

Building off this, you can get a one-colour 3x4s, and one one-colour 3x5. These, and the 3x3s above, are the basis for the larger 3, or 4 line combos.












The smallest combos you want to (ideally) get are bingos (3x[3/4/5]x[3/4/5]s):









The reason for this is that when you get to bingos, the amount of "pumping power" you get (especially if you do the bingos in just a few moves) starts becoming worth more than moving just one or two pieces for. A bingo (even a 3x3 or 3x4) within two moves of your start will give you a lot more breathing room.

To set up your own bingo, here's what you want at the minimum:





From there, you just need to move enough pieces to make another vertical.

And if you're really enterprising, you can make one from just this:



Although that's really thinking long-term, and you need to be careful not to waste a lot of moves on it without payoff.

The Large Combos:

Now, let's step it up a bit. What happens when you get two three-by-threes, instead of just a three and a 3x3? Bilging follows roughly the same naming scheme as the other puzzles- it's a "sea donkey."




Following the format of the other combos, this is a 3x3x[3/4]x[3/4]:





Here's a vegas, that is, a four-line combo including at least one five. (3x3x[3/4/5]x5):






A vegas is a pretty exceptional move to set up, and most players won't need to (or manage to) set up a vegas.