This is a page of resources for the game. The hints and tips here are a mixture of my own personal experience, and information culled from the various public forums and in-game discussions.

• RevDanCatt's Flag Tracker
• Sword Pattern Viewer (Weaver)
• Puzzle Pirates Item Auctions (for PoE) (Raymes)
• Bartle Type Test, Y!PP Edition
• Jobber's Wage Calculator
• Commanding Officer's Divvy Calculator

• Chart of Islands and Shops
• Chart of Ship Specifications

Crow's Nest Forums

General public forum space, including tutorials, and forum hosting for crews and flags who need forums of their own. The Black Plague, Green Scurvy Dogs, Libertarians, La Nueva Revolucion, and Olympians flags are here, as are the Lost Vikings, Red Russians, Serial Pillagers, and The-enD crews.

Elemental Y!PP Tutorials

Illustrated tutorials for the puzzles.

Silverfire's "So you wanna be a pirate?"

Complete tutorial for many aspects of the game.

Master and Commander

Amberyl's guide to being an officer and captain.

Captain JoJo

A Puzzle Pirates-themed Web comic.

Segekihei's GameFaq

An unofficial FAQ for Puzzle Pirates. An assortment of miscellaneous questions and answers.

Targeting 101

A basic illustrated guide to targeting in a brawl or sea battle.

Rudder Revolution (Flag)

This site contains discussion forums for the flag and its crews; embedded within is a lot of useful information, including training docs related to the Puzzle Pirates Academy.

Mad Mutineers (Crew)

Information about the crew, and discussion forums. Many helpful tips and general resources can be found here, as well as island maps.

JackSparrow's Tutorials

Tutorials, animation, and other things of miscellaneous interest.

Sea Battle 101

An interesting analysis of brigand types, move patterns, and sea battle strategy.

Listings are alphabetical.

All But Malice: Flag and crew information.

Crimson Tide: Flag discussion forum.

Equinox: Flag and crew discussion forums.

Error Empire: Flag discussion forum.

Looterati: Flag and crew discussion forums.

Neo Crews: Flag discussion forum.

Nyx's Scions: Flag and crew discussion forums.

Silver Dawn: Flag and crew discussion forums.

Solid Gold: Flag information.

Listings are alphabetical.

Burlap Lemurs: Small site and forums for a small crew.

Black Opal: Information about the crew.

Booty Lubbers: Information about the crew, tutorials, other useful information.

Dark Thorn Dragons: Crew information and discussion forums.

Dark Tide: Small site for a small crew.

Gods of Booty: Crew announcements and discussion forums.

La Giustizia Implacabile (Crew): Yahoo group for a crew.

Puzzle Pirates Academy: Information about the crew.

Red Russians: Information about the crew.

The Travelers: Information about the crew, and discussion forums.

Yellow Jackets: Crew discussion forums.

• Diamondblade's reference list (PP)
• Basic etiquette for newbies (PP)
• Newbie's guide to pillaging (RR)
• How to choose a crew (PP)
• Staffing a ship (MM)
• Check before you job with a crew (PP)
• Bumping an NPP from a station (PP)
• Calculating your cut of the booty (PP)
• Map of the Midnight Ocean (PP)
• Map of the Azure Ocean (PP)
• Island maps (MM)
• How ratings work (PP)

• Sailing tips (RR)
• Sailing approaches (PP)

• Carpentry tutorial (PP)
• Carpentry tutorial (RR)

• Basic bilging tips (PP)
• Bilging approaches (PP)

• Illustrated gunnery tutorial (PP)
• Gunnery tutorial (RR)

• Navigation help (PP)
• Navigation tutorial (RR)
• Navigation approaches (PP)
• Step-by-step Navigation example (PP)

• Everything About Swords mega-tutorial (PP)
• Swordfighting teamwork tutorial (YJ)
• Swordfighting strategy guide (MM)
• Swordfighting tips (PP)
• Swordfighting tutorial (PP)
• How sword strikes work (PP)
• Swordfighting miscellany (PP)
• Swordfighting damage - OUTDATED (PP)
• Using different swords - OUTDATED (PP)
• Building combos in swordfighting (PP)

• Sword patterns explained (MM)
• Analysis of different sword types (PP)
• Choosing a sword for fighting NPPs (PP)
• Sword pattern coloring and mirroring (PP)
• Change to sword pattern drops (PP)
• Pictures of all sword patterns (MM)
• Foil pattern data (PP)

• Tutorial for officers (PP)
• Sea battle tutorial (PP)
• Battle navigation tutorial (RR)
• Commanding a ship (RR)
• Should you start your own crew? (PP)
• Ship types and specifications (PP)
• Basics of running a trading crew (PP)
• Sea lane difficulties (PP)

• Current event calendar (PP)
• How to run a single-elimination tournament (PP)
• Pictures of all commodity spawns (PP)
• How different-colored cloth is made (PP)
• Shopkeeping 101 (PP)
• Governor 101 (PP)

• Read the documentation. It is helpful. Note that you can get in-game help on commands by typing /help.

• The duty puzzles are scored on efficiency, not speed. However, your overall effectiveness rating is based on how much you've accomplished within the given timeframe (over the league, or the like). So you can't be too slow. Score sampling is done in ten-second intervals, and your current performance is based on the average of three samples.

• You can pause a duty puzzle by using the Escape key. (You'll need to, in order to be able to talk during a puzzle.) But while you're paused, you're not doing any work, so pausing can end up lowering your effectiveness rating.

• Practice sailing and carpentry, and get good at them. As an ordinary pirate, you'll spend most of your time doing one of these two activities. Bilging is only needed when the ship is taking on water due to damage, and gunnery is only needed when the cannons need to be loaded. Drinking is purely social and you'll never need it for pirate duties. You should also be a reasonably decent swordfighter, but remember that team swordfight tactics are different from those used in individual duels.

• The more damaged your ship is, the faster the bilge level will increase. The more bilge there is, the slower the ship goes; it will also be more difficult to generate tokens.

• All holes in carpentry have a size which is a multiple of five. Since all pieces are five squares, it's possible to fill each hole exactly. Use as few pieces as possible to fill the hole.

• Glue buckets can be used to fill small gaps of any shape, as long as they're not larger than five spaces. Click to pick up the bucket, then move it over the gap you want to fill. If the glue can fill the gap, the bucket's outline will turn blue.

• Each piece has a wood grain on it. If you get all the grain running horizontally on a filled hole, you will get a Grain Bonus.

• You can re-place a piece that you have just placed, by clicking on it to pick it up, and then clicking on its new spot. You can't move the piece to an arbitrary new location, though; this is mostly good for correcting slip-of-the-mouse placement errors.

• Carpentry reduces the amount of damage that a ship has taken. If a ship is damaged during the initial exchange of battle (from cannon fire, running into rocks, etc.), all fighters on that ship will receive a certain number of black blocks at the bottom of their swordfight puzzle. Damage incurred before the battle does not result in black pieces, and damage repaired during the battle does not reduce the number of black pieces.

• Carpentry can be played during a melee swordfight. If you get knocked out early, and your ship is damaged, go do some carpentry. It won't help you in this battle, but it'll give you a head start on getting your ship repaired.

• Clearing a target creates the biggest score. Bigger targets score more than smaller ones. Clearing five in a row or more also generates a good score, but not as much as clearing a target. Four-in-a-rows score minimally, unless part of a combo chain. The fixed, square blocks don't score any more than normal round pieces. Clearing things as part of a combo multiplies all scores that were part of the chain by the size of the combo (double, triple, and so forth). The order of the chain doesn't matter; a target-row clear scores as much as a row-target clear.

• You need to balance speed with efficiency, especially during sea battles, when sailing performance generates tokens for the navigator. Doing things that would normally generate a high score will also generate tokens -- performing combos, clearing targets, and clearing five-in-a-row or more. The more you're scoring, the more you're contributing towards token generation; note that a token is not immediately generated when you do something that scores. Clearing four-in-a-rows does not contribute towards token generation, unless part of a combo.

• Note that clearing two columns simultaneously does not count as a double. There needs to be a chain of effects, in order to count as a combo.

• Focus on creating doubles. They're the most likely to balance speed and efficiency, especially in combat.

• The most effective way to fight in a melee is to team up. Most crews believe that three-on-one is best, but some like two-on-one instead. Pirates who are being attacked have red dots next to their puzzle-icon. A small red dot represents a single fighter. A large red dot represents five fighters. The pirate that you are attacking will have a white box around his puzzle-icon. Pay attention to how people are shifting around to fight, and to the chat box. In disciplined crews, an officer will tell people how to team up.

• If you are being attacked, you can deliberately slow down, by not pressing space bar to speed the drop of your pieces. Attacks are queued, which means that you'll only be victimized by one each turn. For instance, if your opponent breaks a block with one piece (for a sword drop), and then breaks another block with his next piece (again for a sword drop), you will get one drop after you place your next piece, and then the other drop with after you place the piece after that -- not two swords at once. This will slow down how long it takes you to get knocked out. Also, any attacks that your opponents have "queued up" waiting for you get lost when you get knocked out.

• As a team, you can "fake out" the opponent that you're attacking. While you're setting up your blocks, have your team target one opponent -- and then right before dropping, target someone else, and then immediately switch back to your original target. The original target will be slowing down for nothing -- and your attack has now fallen upon an unsuspecting opponent. (Of course, you need to coordinate who your "real" target is.)

• All swords drop colors in a specific repeating pattern, known as a "sword pattern". Each type of sword has a unique pattern. The specific combination of colors in the pattern is determined by the color of the guard. Blue, purple, and green guards produce "mirrored" swords, flipping the pattern as if it were held up to the mirror (with, for instance, the leftmost column of the pattern becoming the rightmost column of the pattern).

• Pay attention to the colors of the sprinklies and swords that your opponent is dropping on you. Take note of some generalities, like "blue falls on the left side and green falls on the right side"; since most swords fall to one of those edges, having a good guess at the color can really help you to set up your board appropriately. Especially for regular patterns like the foil, you can turn the pieces that were dropped on you into an advantage, sending the blocks right back at your opponent with a breaker placed in anticipation of the pieces changing from silver to color.

• Combinations multiply sequentially; i.e., the part broken when it says "double" will be multiplied by two, the "triple" by three, and so forth. Thus, when you set up a combo, the smallest breaks should be at the beginning of the combo, with the biggest breaks as late in the chain as possible.

• According to Garf, the damage caused is as follows:
  • For non-block breaks, the number of sprinklies is equal to half the number of pieces you broken, rounded down, multiplied by the combo factor.

  • For vertical swords, a combo multiplies the sword length. However, 2x2 block breaks become a 1x4 sword, becomes 2x4 with a double, becomes 2x6 with a triple, and so forth.

  • For horizontal swords, the general case is not known. A 3x2 becomes a 6x2 in a double as well as a triple, but becomes a vertical 2x12 with a bingo.