TruthScape.com - Digging for Data - Holes, Numbers and Spaces

Your job as a Vinesweeper player is to figure out which holes in the playing field have seeds and plant flags in them. But you can’t randomly guess where to plant flags—most of the time you’ll be wrong, and you’ll lose your flag. The inspection option can sometimes tell you if a hole has a seed in it, but it is very slow to use, and should be reserved for special situations.

No, the actual key to finding seeds in Vinesweeper is data that the game provides when you dig up a hole that has no seed in it. Smart players can use this information to figure out where the seeds are, and then plant flags on them without digging them up. Let’s take a look at how hole digging works.

If you dig a hole in the playing field and it didn’t contain a seed, but there is a seed in at least one of the eight squares surrounding it, the hole will be replaced by a floating, rotating number that indicates how many of those squares contain seeds. Thus, a “1” means exactly one of the holes adjacent to that spot has a seed in it (Figure 290); a “2” means two of them do, and so forth.

**Figure 290: Number 1!**
This number “1” means that exactly one of the seeds in the eight squares touching it has a seed; the other seven do not. Your job is to figure out where it is!

The greater the number, the higher the density of seeds in a particular area. The highest number possible, in theory, is 8, representing a square that has no seed but is surrounded by 8 squares that do. In practice, you will mostly see lots of “1”s and “2”s, some “3”s, the occasional “4”, and very rarely a higher number. You will also typically find several bigger numbers in “clumps”, since a concentration of seeds in nearby squares will lead to many surrounding squares having high numbers.

Each number that you uncover represents another piece of the puzzle that is the location of seeds in the area where you are digging. Just as one puzzle piece by itself doesn’t do you much good, neither does a single number. As you dig in more squares in the same vicinity, you will get more and more data to help you identify where the seeds are. You can then use the values of the numbers and their positions to deduce where seeds are likely to be located, and to recognize patterns that tell you immediately where to place your flags. This is all explored in detail in the next section of the guide.

What happens if you dig a hole that didn’t contain a seed, and there were no seeds around it either? Well, if you think about it, the game should display a zero: after all, that’s how many seeds are surrounding that square, right? Well, that’s true, but having bunches of “0”s spinning around would be hard on the eyes, so the game instead shows these zeroes as empty squares. You should always remember that “empty space = zero”, as this will be instrumental later when you learn how to identify seed patterns.

(Note that the two-square-wide border surrounding the perimeter of the playing field does not count as empty space for this purpose; it should be ignored completely.)

One reason why zeroes are shown as blank space is that there are often large areas of the field where there are no seeds, which would mean many “0”s adjacent to each other. To save you from having to dig up lots of empty spaces one after the other, the game will automatically check the spaces around any blank you dig to see if any of them contain numbers other than zero. If no higher numbers are found, the game will then move another square out and keep looking, going up to a maximum of three squares from your current position before stopping. Finding these large empty spaces is called opening up the field; see Figure 291 for an example.

**Figure 291: Opening Up the field**
A single click in the square just south of where I am standing opened up all of these empty spaces and revealed the five numbers you see. The open area only extended three squares from me to my south; I could now click the holes at the lower edge of the image to open up more of the field.

and is more important than you might think. Remember that each empty space represents a zero, which is essential information in figuring out where flags are; these zeros make any higher numbers near them tell you much more about where the seeds are. For example, suppose you dig up a “1”, but all the squares around it have unexplored holes; you can’t do much with that “1”, because the seed could be in any of the eight squares adjacent to it. But suppose you find a “1” and there are two untouched holes next to it and six empty spaces—now there are only two possible places the seed could be.

For this reason, in most cases you always want a healthy open area where you are working. When you start playing, dig around in an area until you are able to open up part of it and reveal several numbers that you can use for deducing seed locations and recognizing patterns. If you uncover a number instead, try moving two holes away and digging again; this sometimes helps.

The fact that any empty space is a “0” has another important implication: any hole that has an empty space next to it is automatically safe to dig. This is just simple logic, if you think about it: since the empty space has zero seeds next to it, you can’t dig up a seed next to any empty space. (Note again that the outer perimeter of the playing area does not count as empty space for this purpose—you can dig up seeds on the outermost edge of the field.)

This safe digging characteristic applies not just when you dig up a fresh part of the field, but also after an area has been reseeded. If the outermost holes created by a farmer or rabbit when reseeding are adjacent to empty space, they are always safe to dig.

Obviously you don’t want to dig up any seeds, but it will happen from time to time. This is especially true when you first start playing in a fresh area; you won’t have any numbers or any other information to guide you, so you’ll have to just dig blindly for a while until you open up some space or find some numbers.

When you do find a seed, you’ll see a message saying “Oh dear! It looks like you dug up a potato seed by mistake.”, as shown in Figure 292. You’ll also lose 10 Vinesweeper points. The seed itself will either be eaten by a rabbit or cleared by a nearby farmer. The entire area in a three-square distance from the seed will then be reseeded (a total of 7x7 squares).

**Figure 292: Whoops**
Sometimes you will dig up a seed when trying to open the field up. You’ll lose 10 points and the area will be reseeded.

The penalty for digging up a seed is actually rather minor, and this is one reason why it makes more sense to dig in a new area to find numbers than it does to use the slow Inspect option. Simply put, if you dig up a seed, don’t worry about it. Just wait for the farmer to reseed the area, or move over a few squares and start over.

Any time you dig a hole, it is also possible that you will receive the message “You uncover a rather odd-looking root vegetable.” This means you’ve dug up an ogleroot; these vegetables stack in your inventory, and can be used to feed rabbits to get them to “disappear”. We’ll discuss this in a separate topic later in this guide.

(Note that the “rather odd-looking” ogleroot bears a striking resemblance to the rather common rutabaga. J)

You get one Vinesweeper point for each hole that you dig—this may not seem like much, but it adds up over time. Also, when you dig on an empty space and the game opens up part of the field, you get also get point for every one of those spaces. This is one reason why my recommended gameplay strategy involves opening up large areas of the gaming field.

The points from digging are especially important for players with low levels, because while the points you get from flagging seeds depends on your Farming level, the digging points do not. In fact, depending on how you play, someone new to Farming might get more points from hole digging than successfully planting flags.