Many players tend to think that time is the most critical factor in bilging, while it is not. Bilging is not about clearing the highest number of pieces, but rather clearing them efficiently not wasting moves to build columns, rows and combos. Time is a minor score effector, thus you can take your time to think how to set up a combo efficiently. The less moves you deploy to clear a combo, the highest your score will be: that's the only thing that really matters in bilging. It is believed that one move to set up a stack of 3 pieces and three moves to set up a 3x3 combo is the key of a 100% efficiency.
Sailing is not only about completing platforms as unexperienced players may think. It is mainly about completing them either as a consequence of a cascade either triggering a cascade or even both. Cascade are therefore the key. Clearing a platform and not involving a cascade is simply useless. The easiest way to complete a platform and make a cascade is filling it up leaving an just empty space for the last piece, then build beside the platform a pile of three pieces of the same color and wait for a piece that is colored half with the pile-of-three color, half with the empty slot color. Clearing the pile will cause the piece to drop right in the empty slot, completing the platform. On this basis, building a structure that can trigger more cascades will score much more.
There are not blatant mistakes in carpentry as its goal is pretty clear: fill holes quickly and efficiently. Nevertheless people may not know or underestimate the frequency of shapes. Carpentry is not only visual thinking it is also statistics. Good carpenters take frequency into account and usually complete the holes leaving at the end one or two empty slots that can be filled with most frequent shapes. A table with the frequency of shapes can be found here.
A common mistake made by the neophyte gunner is trying to load cannons even if the game has not spawned a good board. How does a good board look like? A good board allows the gunner to make a circuit (loop) deploying two arrows around two or more cannons. If you don't get a good board, don't waste any more time and leave the puzzle. There is no penalty for that.
Another frequent mistake is trying to fill all the cannons. Don't. Focus just on the bottom ones, unless you can make another easy loop on the top ones as well.
Even if the goal of navigation is quite simple, a bad navigator may play the puzzle ignoring two of its basic good practices:
1. For each circle make sure you have stars of as many different colors as you can, so anytime if you need to clear the board you can align three stars in a column an make space for other stars.
2. Do not place in the first circle a star under a constellation slot of the same color in the second circle. That may lead you to have a high risk of clearing the so formed column while rotating stars in the first circle, and therefore losing a star you need to complete the constellation.
The main cause of frustration for Midshipmen and Junior Officers is not seeing their standing in battle navigation going up even after well fought battles. The reasons are two: first of all, like any other puzzle, bnav has to be played a several number of times in order to influence one's standings; secondly, taking the Navy mission lead to face weak opponents whose rank do not allow to get a score good enough to raise standings. Brigand ship are ranked exactly like crews, whereas Sailors are the weakest ships and Imperials the strongest. Only fighting Imperials really positively affects standings, but they usually cannot be faced while on the Navy mission.
A common mistake made by unexperienced bnavers is to place tokens by dragging them in the ship icon slots. Putting moves in that way increases the execution time, making LSM hard to perform. The most efficient way to place tokens is by clicking the ship slots with mouse buttons: right button to turn right, left button to turn left, mouse wheel to go straight.
Among other frequent mistakes made even by more experienced players we could include:
- assuming the brigand ship won't move and place tokens to shoot her as she would maintain her original position even if her bar shows she is setting moves (or shots);
- overmaxing: once a ship is maxed there is no reason to waste time and cannon balls overmaxing her (unless it's a sinking pvp or you are not sure you'll will the swordfight and want to cause them even more damage to make easier a possible re-engage);
- abusing LSM;
- neglecting brigands can turn they ships hitting rocks;
- underestimating whirlpools and ignoring how do they work;
- not placing a shot if your fire can cross a tile where a brigand ship can end up (unless you know it will hardly occur and you are saving cannon balls).
