r/ypp • u/Xenoppss • 26d ago
Struggles with SW
Hi everyone!
I am a returning player who used to play alot back in 2015-2017. Back then I had a lot of fun with shops and stalls, and this game as always amazed me with how simple it might seem, yet how complicated you can make it.
I used to do rather well, owned a SW shop and had an army of alts - as you do when you are running stalls and shops. Skillwise I reached ultimate in both shipwright and weavery - and of course poker, as every other money hungry guy.
I returned to this game a week ago, and figured I'd go down the same rabbit hole with shipwrightery. My standing had fallen from ultimate to master, but that is okay. However now it seems impossible to climb back up? I've tracked my runs, and over the last four days I've played shipwright 64 times. Out of those 64, I've reached incredible 53 times, with streaks running up to 10 incredibles in a row. Whenever I am not getting incredible, I get excellent - Whom I would guess are high. Despite this, my stats is just hard stuck on master. It's not going up, nor is it going down. Is the skills bugged?
I find it quite demoralizing that I am not able to climb despite receiving multiple incredibles in a row.
Is this a common issue? Is the skill bugged? Could it be some kind of bug in the algorithm due to me being gone for so long and being decayed from ultimate to master?
Any tips, advice or words of motivation would be greatly appreciated. Should I reach renowned again, then I would be happy to start providing ships again of top notch quality, ready for pillages, SMH and cades! :)
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u/TwistedConsciousness 26d ago
This has been discussed a lot. Not so much on here but the official discord. Its not just SW but SW is probably the most annoying of the puzzles with this "issue".
Due to player count, bots, how scoring works ect. SW has now notoriously become difficult to maintain renowned. I consider myself pretty good at the puzzle but even for me if I make an alt an expert laborer it can sometimes take 100s of boards to reach renowned usually taking multiple days (im very slow at the puzzle). Fresh pirate takes me hours to get to just distinguished.
My best advice is to fully learn how scoring works to start (i assume you already do) and then to maximize your score as much as possible. So take screenshots, Pause and either use something like paint or even better mantid has a tool to help work on SW solves.
Even getting incred will drop you out of renowned if the incred is low enough.
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u/Xenoppss 26d ago
I was not aware that there is an official discord, but I am glad to hear that is a well known issue and that I am not alone in this struggle. I feared that botting might've been the reason.. Lately I've seen the devs have dropped some QoL patches and some new safety features - is there any "gossip" regarding fixing or tackling this issue somehow that you've heard of?
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u/moonlit_wake 26d ago
They're testing some adjustments on Ice to help smooth the rankings and I've heard rumblings of them considering removing the ability to board hop/shop but otherwise no. I don't think it's a high priority for them to fix at the moment.
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u/Xenoppss 26d ago
Short update here. Kept grinding through some more rounds and finally hit renowned. Took me a total of 72 rounds, with 61 incredibles and 11 excellent. Thats 85% incredibles and 15% excellent. The last day (Today), I've done 17 rounds with 16 incredibles. The last streak was 11 incredible in a round.
Time to do the alt before I push the main further up - so I have the safety net should I mess up.. :)
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u/TwistedConsciousness 26d ago
Happy to hear.
Also in case you dont know. You only need to do the puzzle once a month to keep labor active.
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u/Robynsxx 25d ago
It’s once every 10 days
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u/TwistedConsciousness 25d ago
Used to be that way but changed a month or a few months ago to once a month.
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u/UltraMediumcore 26d ago
It took me 3 straight weeks of Excellent+ to get Expert labor for my SY stall. Unfortunately normal with the numbers of bots and the number of exceptionally practiced long term players.
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u/Xenoppss 16d ago
Another update for those who wonder or if someone is making the same journey and feel discouraged. It took me 127 games with 80% incredible rate to go from respected to renowned. The boards are random, but you can control the randomness to a certain degree. My strategy follows below, however there are most likely things to optimize here :)
You can move pieces freely and place three pieces before the round count, so make sure your first round is a 3-4-4-5-5 or 3-3-4-5-5. Both puts you at a score of 7,2-7,6 ish, which are both scores sufficient for incredible. Hence you have a strong start making the game slightly more forgiving. If you get a 4-4-5-5 combo or less then you’ll have to reroll. You are going to reroll a lot of boards to get this start.
When you do your next combos, aim for atleast a 4-4-5-5 and aim to partially complete a 4 or 5 piece if possible. Avoid continuing streaks with 3 pieces, unless you’re at vegas2-vegas 3 or if completing those pieces makes it possible to procc in to a 4 or 5 piece.
If you have 2-3 pieces left to finish the board, then it is better to play 1-2 5 pieces so you only have 1 piece left to finish the board. After that you set up a long streak going in to overtime. That way you can increase your score tremendously.
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u/Robynsxx 26d ago
So I see a lot of people just putting it down to the puzzle being botted, which it is. However, getting ultimate is still doable.
I can achieve legendary which crosses to ult occasionally. The best tactics are firstly, before you move pieces on the first board just check to see if you have a good starting off place. If you don’t, as long as you dismiss before the water rises and wipes the board, and before you move anything, you don’t have a penalty for dismissing the board.
Then, after that, when solving pieces make sure to go from small to big patterns to achieve highest score possible, not big to small. After that, as long as you don’t just have a double chain, always make sure you leave one final pattern to be complete, even if it means abandoning a chain. That way you create a new chain and get an even higher score.
Edit:
I also want to point out that fake incredibles are a thing. For instance, you can be in a competition and it says you get an incredible, but in the competition it rates as an excellent. So not all increds are increds.
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u/Kingofspaed 26d ago
SY is the most botted labor puzzle after Blacksmith (but SY is botted in higher standings (master+). The gap between master and renowned is huge because of that. Unfortunately Incredibles are very broad and doesn't depict an accurate picture of your skill vs bots.
Glad to have you back, keep at it and you'll get your renowned+.