Tips for new players to help them find solutions.
Tips & Guide for New Player
Game play: Select a block by left clicking. It’ll rise slightly. Click it again to deselect it. Select a block and click a second block and they’ll exchange places. Do this until your crops bloom. You can’t rotate the blocks. Blocks in contact with water will change in appearance. For example, fields will darken and have small plants.
Rule 1. All blocks, except flagstone, must have water touching one side.
Rule 2. If you get stuck, see Rule 1. (HaHa – also see note about curbing below)
Your arsenal:
Water Blocks – will affect blocks on any side but not diagonally (forms a plus sign)
– water block means a block of water
– ‘water’ block means any block conveying water
Sprinkler – will affect all blocks immediately around it (forms a 9 block square) must have water touching one side
Piping – comprised of 3 or more parts; pump, mid-section(s) and anchor – water must make contact with both ends – it will work w/o water touching the anchor, but your crops won’t bloom.
When assembled and water against pump, the mid-sections will spray 2 spaces in both directions, which is a total of 5 blocks. Each mid-section will add another row. The pump and anchor do not spray and adjacent blocks must be irrigated.
Irrigation Ditches – These channel water from a water block to remote blocks. These blocks have curbing to control the water flow.
The basic shapes are:
straight (curbing on opposite sides) top to bottom, side to side
corner (curbing on 2 adjoining sides) left, right, up, down
stop (curb on one side)
Note: Curbing can block water flow, if not positioned correctly. Fields are not affected by curbing, but the other blocks, like the sprinkler, are.
Tips:
Study the raw map for places that demand water placement. For example, 3 adjoining blocks on the outside edge is, generally, going to require a ‘water’ block in the middle. (That’s far more likely than running 3 ‘water’ blocks parallel to them.) Knowing how many and location of req’d water placements will provide a starting point.
When there’s a sprinkler, piping and/or ditches, mentally view the puzzle in sections. The target is getting these things placed without wasted overlap. A sprinkler needs a 9 block square. The piping needs a 5 block wide area. It runs side to side on the map. Finding/placing these blocks in likely spots is a good start on figuring out what to do with the ditches.
Study the irrigation ditches in relation to the shape of the puzzle. Which direction(s) do they tend toward; up/down, right/left, both? How do they correlate to the req’d ‘water’ blocks?
When possible, share water sources. The pump becomes a ‘water’ block, so water will pass through it.
Motivational Speech:
It’s easy to get sucked in and play non stop. Your brain will likely overload and a solution just doesn’t seem to exist. Stop. Take a break. Then start the puzzle from scratch. I got to Lvl 48 and could not get it. I chased a single block all over the map, probably for an hour. The next day, I started it over and threw it together my first try.
