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     Here I present to ye information and hints on the violent and downright despicable arrrt of Swordfighting- and being so violent and despicable, it be an essential part of being a pirate! Without swordfighting ye can only earn poe on navy vessels or by trading, one of which is slow, and the other requirin' lots o' experience, so ye best master this arrrt now! Swordfighting and sailing are incredibly similar, so I recommend that ye study both at the same time- the essential difference is that sailing pieces don't split into two, but swordfighting pieces will fall over any edges ye place them on. If you just want some intermediate combo hints, click here. This tutorial follows the same format as the actual puzzle, even more so than any previous tutorial made without the aide of screenshots.        The first thing you need to do is get a hang of how the keys work- skip this bit if you've played the initial swordfight on the ship that picked you up. This puzzle works using the arrow keys and spacebar only, no mouse for this one. Spacebar The piece that is the centre of rotation (done using the up
Also worth noting is that swordfighting speeds up the longer you spend in the puzzle, making it easier to slip up as the game progresses. Anyone can swordfight! But it not be incredibly polite to request a fight without first asking a pirate, and if ye get no response, they might not be awake! Don't be offended if they say your rating is too low- they probably think you won't learn anything from fighting them yet, even if you do develop the skill to beat them eventually. The first concept I'm gonna share with you is incredibly imporant: in swordfighting, when you clear your board, you are actually 'attacking' your enemy! When you get a breaker,     This attack becomes the blocks you see below- half of the number of those you broke, because if they were all sent across at once the boards would both fill much too fast! Note that the breaker is counted as a block for this calculation! 
This first attack I showed you is a sprinkle attack, named because the individual blocks shower in rows down upon your opponent, and then fall on top of their swordfighting stack. They are effective because no part of the attack is ever wasted- the total amount of blocks always drops. Sprinkle attacks are made of connecting blocks Let's go back to that original image. See that sword in there, and how the rectangle of blocks joined together? That's our second attack type, swords, which are built from stacks of blocks that join together and extend along one of their sides as you add new blocks. (I have also seen these called 'blocks' and 'gems.' There's not a standard name for them, but I like to avoid blocks when I remember because it's too easy to confuse with individual swordfighting pieces, and I don't like gems for the reason that there is now a trading commodity called gems) Swords are a very blunt and very powerful attack type. They maintain all of their blocks when broken, and shatter anything not formed into a stack up to a depth equal to their width. Their other advantage is that they take an extra turn to become normal blocks compared to sprinkes:
But sprinkles drop as: Then:    Then: Before you're equipped with the basics, there's one important hint you need to remember: Tuck breakers away in places where swords can't break them, but you can connect them to a nearby stack or group of sprinkles using merely the right coloured block, in order to easily attack your enemies without relying on a breaker to drop at a critical time (this does have the flaw of being vulnerable to sprinkles, but nevertheless, saving breakers to break big things with later instead of small things now helps)
Now that you've got the basics under your belt I can do away with bolding swordfighting jargon, and explaining types of attacks, to actually show you some more effective ways to attack, and what they'll do to your opponent, in comparison to the pathetic sorts of things I've been showing you so far ;)
These are the simplest methods you can use to make a double. (in swordfighting, a double is when a block or a breaker falls down from the first stack you break, and then causes another stack to break. combos are the general word for this, and they make your attacks much bigger than just the individual blocks that they are composed of) The lefthand and middle ones are preferable- blocks appear more commonly than breakers, and if need be you can break it using two junk breakers.           Here's a run-down of what's gonna happen when I break this triple, starting with the first phase: Phase 1- no bonus + Equals: +
Phase 2- Double! + Equals:  +
Phase 3- Triple! + Equals:
Pretty good combo? Yeah, it's alright... the guarentee here is in the sprinkles on the third phase, these will definately hurt- adding up to just over three rows, nicely burying any combo work for a player- but one of two of the swords might not get through, weakening the insta-kill potential of this combo. Also, the last phase could occur on a side where your opponent has a sword stack high up, negating its effect. But it's still quite impressive!
For the advanced tutorial, we'll be looking at the two most fundamental aspects of swordfighting: how to build combos safely yet still have them able to devastate your enemy, and how to survive under great pressure from your opponent, and send their attacks back to them. Let's begin with a wonderful vegas Sugarpie posted in the forums: (note, if she were to have added an extra step, this would be known as a double-vegas [because the word "vegas" repeats for each subsequent step])  The first thing you notice about this attack is that it's had deliberate thought and care applied to the placement of breakers. Not only are none of them wasted, but all of them are placed in the most damaging places possible. Like many top swordfighters, she favours sprinkles for their ability to layer much more effectively and efficiently, allowing for bigger combos and therefore more attacks at once. This usage of sprinkles also affords her the ability to cover ALL of her enemy's stacks, not just interrupt one or two of them. At this level, you should have carefully considered the advantages and disadvantages of such attacks. The next thing to look carefully at is the way she's deliberately placed an extra step before both the initial break, (you want a bonus for each and every significant area of blocks) and before the final break. (you want to add another step in their to magnify that final attack even more) Adding these 'junk breaks' that allow the more significant breaks to get larger bonuses helps anyone, but the more advanced swordfighters will add them not only at the beginning, but at the end and the intermediate stages too. The more junk breaks you have set up, the more you are inflating the value of an otherwise average combo. This board isn't entirely offensive, either- Sugarpie has deliberately begun to setup the other side of her board, in case her opponent avoids death from the initial combo, or in case here combo is ruined by a well-placed sword, and she is forced to start anew. Even when preparing to press an attack, don't be afraid to clear parts of it if they look dangerous to your own survival- swordfighting is not just about sending large attacks, but also outlasting your opponent. Finally, let's have a look at what this attack would have sent over: Phase 1- no bonus Equals:
Phase 2- Double! Equals: Phase 3- Triple! Equals: Phase 4- Bingo! Equals: Phase 5- Donkey! Equals: Phase 6- Vegas! Equals: Total: With even a reasonably small stack at the bottom this combo is pretty deadly :)
So, ever wondered what all those small, wasted breakers actually send over? What about how combos work? How do you make horizontal swords, and why are they sometimes so different compared to the pattern? Or have you found it hard to understand any explaination about how attacks work, in general? For this explaination, let's start by assuming you're using a stick. Sprinkles So at the beginning of the puzzle, let's say you drop a moderately sized combo on your opponent, using sprinkles. Right, let's translate that into blocks, shall we? Phase 1- no bonus Equals:
(because there are five blocks plus the breaker, and no bonus so the amount is halved- this is because sprinkles never get "lost" during the attack, so you send only half as much over.) Phase 2- Double! Equals:
(because there are four blocks plus the breaker, and this phase is doubled, so you get the same amount of total blocks) Total:  Notice how this corresponds with the bottom rows of the pattern? That's because all attacks now work from the bottom of the pattern then upwards- but with a few additional rules. Let's see what it would look like if we sent a really big sprinkle attack, shall we? Notice how those yellow blocks are missing? That's because only the bottom two rows are used for sprinkles, and they repeat over and over again. (the grey ones in the diagram below:) And the attack stacks these rows one upon another: Vertical Swords For this one, I'm going to invent an altogether new pattern, just to be independant of changing sword patterns. (and we need a longer sword pattern to properly show how this works) Now, let's start off before we do any work with the pattern by giving you a general rule for swords: They almost always send the same amount of blocks over as the stack composes of. (dicsounting combo bonuses) Square stacks will amount to a "thinner" sword than the stack itself- eg. 2x2 stacks make a 1x4 sword, 3x3 stacks make a 2x5 sword, and all 4-wide stacks will make 3-wide swords if they are vertical. Other than that, sword length (discounting combos, which mostly just increase the length of the sword- although they will widen square swords (eg. a doubled 2x2 stack becomes a 2x4 sword, and a doubled 3x3 stack will make a 3x6 sword) and width should be exactly the same as your stack.
Knowing the width and length of the sword that's generated isn't the only trick to vertical swords. There are also some others, too. Have a look at the following combo, and then figure out how many horizontal swords it makes: (the answer is below, you need to highlight it (from left to right is better) to see it)         One horizontal sword, and two vertical swords. Because of the high multiplier on the blue stack, it becomes vertical- to combo horizontal swords, you often need to build wider stacks. Right, now we'll go back to that sword pattern at the beginning. Notice how the top of its pattern is really good? With swords this encourages comboing. Let me show you- we'll assume each stage gets sent as a seperate "attack" at the left of the opponent's screen: And here's the swords after they've turned grey:
In case you haven't seen the inconsistancy here, it's at the top of the yellow sword, which is eight blocks high. Seeing this is higher than our pattern, you'd expect the pattern to repeat from the bottom again. This isn't the case:
Let's have a look at that sword pattern again, except this time, I'll grey out the trouble spot, like with sprinkles. See how the bottom (left) of our grey bit lines up with the bottom of the "actual" pattern? What happens is that when swords need to "repeat" to find extra blocks from the pattern to use, only the top four rows of the pattern are used for this. So swords that reward comboing have their four most effective layers at the top. In case that's confusing, I'll try it another way: The coloured blocks at the bottom only ever get used once- as soon as a sword becomes taller than the bottom, the grey bit of the pattern is "tiled" upwards over the sword, that is, it repeats itself from the bottom upwards again and again until it reachs the top of the sword.         Horizontal Swords Horizontal swords got really interesting with the latest change to swordfighting. Beforehand, horizontal swords would just use the whole rows of the sword pattern, and the invididual row depending on how high up from the bottom they were. While this may seem reasonably simple and intuitive, it does not lead to powerful horizontal swords. Since the change, they now rotate the sword pattern 90°, completely independant of the height they appear, and use the "higher" bits of the pattern only if they are comboed. The real reason this is interesting, however, is because they still have the "only the last four columns repeat" mechanic that vertical swords do. Here's a horizontal pattern for our sword: Rightwards horizontal pattern:(Notice that the bottom half is cut off? You only use the top half of the pattern for horizontal swords. Only 3-tall swords use the bottom row. This means leftwards swords use half the pattern, rightwards swords the other half) This means that if you can combo your sword enough to get rid of those two (or four, if the pattern is eight high) leftmost columns, your horizontal swords will be much more effective. It also means that if your pattern was "layered" (it had a pattern that almost looked as if it was "striped") for its vertical swords instead of using diagonal divisions, it will have much less effective horizontal swords. Here's an example of the difference, using two swords coming from the left (the pattern is flipped around if they come from the right) Not comboed:     Doubled: Tripled:
There's still one subtlety of swordfighting left to discuss, no matter how good you are at stowing breakers away, doing poly-vegases and knocking people out, you can always get an extra edge by having a sword that suits the types of attacks you generally send over. This DOES NOT mean just picking out whatever sword currently happens to be recommended by other players. If you always send over sprinkles, then you should go with a sword that I (or anyone else as good or better at analysing patterns) reccomend for people who sprinkle a lot. If you combo horizontal swords really high, then go for something that I say will have excellent horizontal swords when comboed enough. The first part of analysing the pattern is to determine if changing the colours of your sword will have a noticeable effect. Symmetrical patterns are completely unaffected by sword colours, but ones that are asymmetrical are not. These may be "mirrored," "flipped," or made "right handed" or "right-solid" by choosing green, blue, or purple as the first colour at the ironmonger menu. The second colour (along with your choice among the first colours) is important if you team up with a lot of people who use the same sword- it will determine where areas of the pattern have red blocks, which have green, etc... If your whole crew uses mirrored scimitars, then people who sail with each other frequently should have different secondary colours on their swords. Each person with the same sword as you, but a different combination of sword colours will drop a different distribution of colours. But there's a test, of course- a lot of you will automatically think 'cleaver.' Just being expensive doesn't make a sword good for you! The cleaver has a pretty great, mixed pattern that can word with both attacks, but is far from perfect. Here's a green-black to illustrate the point:
Look carefully at this pattern, (White/Green Cleaver) and you should notice a few weaknesses:
This is no means an attempt to stop you from using cleavers- they have advantages, but seeing they are already so highly valued, I figured we should tackle them first and state their disadvantages primarily. The cleaver has many redeeming features, in fact, it is the favorite of many an informed swordfighter.
Overview: A cleaver is a nice general sword, and it is basically good so long as you don't sprinkle. Horizontal swords and vertical swords work well with this one, although not with the same flare some other swords can achieve. And a final note to people who bought this sword earlier: Its strong side has changed, so I now highly recommend mirroring it. (having the first colour green/purple/blue)
This is my own current choice, a green-green rapier. I assure you I don't hold anything special for mirroring now the column bug's been fixed, (especially seeing most patterns are symetrical now, anyway) I just like the colour :) Let's start with its strengths, in what is to become my standard analysis format from now on:
And here are the cons:
Overview: The rapier is great for big combos that mix up swords and sprinkles, which is good, as before the changes it wasn't worth the leushite it took to make the thing. It had its odd block removed, but this balances it further in my opinion. Rapier is the one to go for if you combo most of the time, and you don't usually utilise horizontal swords.
Pros:
Overall: A sword for sprinklers, or sprinklers that like horizontals. This is basically the anathema to the cleaver- it creates the same sort of winding zones in its horzontals that the cleaver does in its verticals.
Great vertical swords. For sprinkling, a stick might be more effective. Good horizontals, but the rightwards one needs to have the grey bit comboed out. Go for 3-wides instead of 2-wides, as the zoning is better that way. Skull Dagger: (Purple / Blue) Variant on the Poniard. Sprinkle not as strong as poniard and an annoying tendancy to form columns. Good horizontals, but the three-talls get messy once the main part is broken. Stick to 2-wide horizontals with sprinkles. Verticals aren't too bad but the lack of a repeating area does stifle them to a degree. Dirk: (Blue / Yellow) This one is purely for horizontal attacks, otherwise it's rather appaling. Short Sword: (Purple / Purple) Might as well get a foil, they're cheaper. The only difference is that this one sprinkles a little better. This one is only really good for one-row sprinkling. Cutlass: (Green / Blue) Sprinkles are about as bad as the Short Sword's. Horrible colour balance and the repeating area is not that great. This sword could still do with a bit of improvement. 2-tall horizontals are pretty weak, although the 3-tall ones are decent. Scimitar: (Green / Green) Great sprinkles, and good swords at the sides. It has a weak middle, but will also have good 2-tall horizontals. A great all-rounder. Longsword: (missing) Still waiting for an updated pattern on this one. This is what it used to look like.  |
will accelerate 
the pace at which your pieces drop, but won't stop at quite the same to as you do, so be careful and learn to stop a while before you need to do any manuevring, and remember that if one block extends over the edge, it WILL fall off. (so be careful when using it, you need to pause and wait for the star to drop before turning further!) The up 
and down 
arrows will rotate your pieces clockwise 
for up, counter-clockwise 
for down. Right 
will move your pieces right, and left 
will move them left.
