Comb the Beach

Choice adventure number: 1388

Comb the Beach

On first visit of the day:

Gosh, what a nice day! I bet you can't wait to spend it doing repetitive physical labor instead of relaxing or doing any of the other dumb things people do on beaches.

You grab your comb and head to the start of the beach to find a good spot.

On subsequent visits:

You grab your comb and head back to the start of the beach to find another good spot.

(You have X free walks down the beach left today.)

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Wander along the beach for ​ minutes.

Go

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Wander to a random spot

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Grab Common Items (Uses 10 Free Beach Walks)

You look around and grab one of each of the most common things off the beach.

(Acquire one of each of the following: magenta seashell, gray seashell, cyan seashell, yellow seashell, green seashell, kelp, bunch of sea grapes, driftwood bracelet, driftwood pants, and driftwood hat.)

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Stop Beachcombing

You decide to stop combing the beach.

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Occurs when clicking [comb] on your Beach Comb or driftwood beach comb (one-day access).

Notes

• You begin with 11 free beach walks, resetting at rollover or ascension. Otherwise, a beach walk costs one adventure.
• You can comb the beach while falling down drunk.
• Choosing a number of minutes to walk (1-10,000) puts you on a beach, where you can choose a spot to comb. Beaches have rough sand, combed sand (if this spot was already combed by you or another player) and, rarely, a beach head, sand castle or whale.
  • Further explained in the Beach Basics and Tile Types section, below the beach heads table.

Beach Heads

• There are eleven beach heads, each at a fixed location. Combing a head gives you 50 adventures of an effect. You may comb each head once per day.

You comb the beach head, trying to not think too hard about what that thing is, exactly. It gives you some kind of magical blessing as a tip.

You acquire an effect: ... something (duration: 50 Adventures)[[Data:{{{effect}}}]]

Beach Head	Minutes walked	Effect	Enchantment
1	420	Hot-Headed	Serious Hot Resistance (+3), +15 Hot Damage, +15 Damage to Hot Spells
2	2323	Cold as Nice	Serious Cold Resistance (+3), +15 Cold Damage, +15 Damage to Cold Spells
3	4242	A Brush with Grossness	Serious Stench Resistance (+3), +15 Stench Damage, +15 Damage to Stench Spells
4	6969	Does It Have a Skull In There??	Serious Spooky Resistance (+3), +15 Spooky Damage, +15 Damage to Spooky Spells
5	8888	Oiled, Slick	Serious Sleaze Resistance (+3), +15 Sleaze Damage, +15 Damage to Sleaze Spells
6	37	Lack of Body-Building	Muscle +50%, Weapon Damage +25%
7	3737	We're All Made of Starfish	Mysticality +50%, Spell Damage +25%
8	7114	Pomp & Circumsands	Moxie +50%, Ranged Damage +25%
9	5555	Resting Beach Face	+50% Combat Initiative
10	1111	Do I Know You From Somewhere?	+5 to Familiar Weight
11	9696	You Learned Something Maybe!	+5 Stats Per Fight

• After combing a beach head, a button allowing you to conveniently access it will appear on subsequent days.

Beach Basics and Tile Types

• The beach is composed of 10000 minutes that are all composed of a 10x10 tile grid. The available tiles of each minute on a given day, however, is subject to the tides, which are independent of the moons and span the whole beach, showing as few as 6 rows. The tides increment up a row or down a row on the beach daily, depending on where in the cycle it is, and it takes 8 days for a full cycle (that is, if the tide is at its lowest on day 1, it will be at its lowest again on day 9).
• The "Grab Common Items" option permanently unlocks after getting enough common items when searching(?) and only appears when you have 10 free beach walks available.
• Each tile on the beach is one of three rarities, which have no official name and therefore will be referred to as "frequent", "infrequent", and "scarce" for the purposes of this page. Each rarity of tile requires a different amount of time before it becomes available to comb again. Any given tile on the beach will never change its rarity.
  • Frequent tiles make up most of the beach, and always drop grains of sand. They reset after 2, 3, or 4 hours.
  • There are 48,976 Infrequent tiles. They reset approximately in the range of 4 to 7 days.
  • There are 1,001 Scarce tiles. They reset approximately in the range of 12 to 21 days.
• Combing an already-combed tile acts as though the tile is a frequent tile, regardless of the tile's base type.
• Likewise, sandcastles always act as frequent tiles.
• By asking Grandpa about "hierfal", you can permanently gain the ability to see sparkles where infrequent or scarce tiles are.

Items you may find

Rarity of Tile	Rarity from Tile	Chance	Items	Notes
Frequent	Very Commonly	~	driftwood bracelet driftwood pants driftwood hat	You will find only one of each per day. At the end of the day, these equipment pieces disappear. Includes 2-4 grains of sand.
	Commonly	75%	kelp bunch of sea grapes magenta seashell cyan seashell gray seashell green seashell yellow seashell	Includes 2-4 grains of sand.
	Uncommonly	22.5%	taco shell sea avocado sea carrot sea cucumber	Includes 2-4 grains of sand.
	Rarely	2.5%	beach glass bead coconut shell sea salt crystal sea grease sea jelly sea lace seal tooth	Includes 2-4 grains of sand.
Infrequent	Commonly	88%	sand dollar dull fish scale	All infrequent and scarce tile results do not drop grains of sand.
	Uncommonly	10%	rough fish scale lucky rabbitfish fin spearfish fishing spear waders	Equipment here forms the Shallow Sea Fishing Outfit. Rough fish scales are more common than equipment.
	Rarely	2%	pristine fish scale piece of coral	Piece of coral is a familiar hatchling, becomes Pet Coral.
Scarce	Commonly	95%	piece of driftwood	Becomes Driftwood beach comb when used by a player without a beach comb. Allows them to comb the beach for the day.
	Rarely	4.5%	cursed pirate cutlass cursed swash buckle cursed tricorn hat Message in a bottle	The cursed items form the Cursed Skeleton Pirate Costume. Each cursed item includes 5 porquoise, 5 hamethyst, 5 baconstone, and approximately 250000 meat. The message in a bottle does not drop an item.
	Extremely Rare	0.5%	meteorite fragment Whale	Whales drop significant amounts of meat. Whales show up on the beach with their own image, instead of a normal beach image (or sparkling image, see puzzle for details).

Messages

• Combing a frequent tile:

You comb the area and find something kind of interesting, as well as some sand, which is not particularly interesting unless you personally happen to be interested in sand, in which case boy howdy are you in luck. That stuff is everywhere.

You acquire... something. [[Data:{{{item}}}]]

You acquire 2−4 grains of sand

• Demolishing a sand castle gives you an item and some sand:

You carefully demolish the sand castle and comb the area into a nice flat sand parking lot.

You acquire... something. [[Data:{{{item}}}]]

You acquire 2−4 grains of sand

• Combing combed sand gives you an item and some sand:

Someone's already combed this spot, but you give it a comb-over just to make sure.

You acquire... something. [[Data:{{{item}}}]]

You acquire 2−4 grains of sand

• Anything from infrequent tiles:

You comb the area and... oh hey! What's this?

You acquire... something. [[Data:{{{item}}}]]

• Finding a piece of driftwood:

You comb the area for a while and find a piece of driftwood buried under the sand. Potentially useful!

You acquire an item: piece of driftwood

• When finding a piece of the Cursed Skeleton Pirate Costume:

You comb the sand and hear a hollow clonk that can only mean one thing: pirate treasure chest! Heck yeah baby!

You acquire... something. [[Data:{{{item}}}]]

You acquire 5 hamethysts

You acquire 5 baconstones

You acquire 5 porquoises

You gain 200,397−258,562? Meat.

• Extremely rarely, you can find an adorable whale:

You comb all of the meat off the whale carcass, just like barbers used to do back when they were surgeons.

You gain 10,079,882?−11,779,032? Meat.

• When finding a meteorite fragment:

You comb the area, but don't find anything interesting except for a weird rock. Which on closer inspection turns out to be a very interesting rock actually, so never mind that first sentence!

You acquire an item: meteorite fragment

• When finding a rainbow pearl:

You comb the area for a while, and just as you're about to give up and move on, you find... something...incredible.

You acquire an item: rainbow pearl

Perplexing Puzzle

• Sometimes, when combing the beach, you may find a message in a bottle:

You comb the area and under the sand you find a bottle. It looks like it contains some sort of message? You pop the bottle open and look at the piece of paper inside. It says:

LIFE ON A DESSERT ISLAND -- SHOULD BE HARD, BUT REALLY IT IS A PIECE OF CAKE

Is that some sort of joke?

• The distances between each sandcastle, in minutes, starting from the high end, when computed will give either 11, 33 or 55. For example,

9177 55
9188 11
9243 55
9276 33
9287 11
9298 11
9309 11
9364 55
9375 11

which can then be turned into Morse code, where 11 represents a dot, 33 a dash, and 55 a break. Using this, we get the Morse code . / ...- / . / by counting from the back to the front, which translates to "EVE". Repeating this all the way down to 1 minute, we get the message:

EVERY TWENTY SECOND LETTER OF THE BOTTLE MESSAGE LOOPED THRICE

• The message above prompts us to record the twenty-second letter of the bottle message -- "LIFE ON A DESSERT ISLAND -- SHOULD BE HARD, BUT REALLY IT IS A PIECE OF CAKE" after looping it three times. Doing that, we get:

LIFEONADESSERTISLANDS H
OULDBEHARDBUTREALLYIT I
SAPIECEOFCAKELIFEONAD E
SSERTISLANDSHOULDBEHA R
DBUTREALLYITISAPIECEO F
CAKELIFEONADESSERTISL A
NDSHOULDBEHARDBUTREAL L
YITISAPIECEOFCAKE

which gives us a word -- "hierfal".

• Going to Grandpa and asking him about "hierfal" will lead to this message, which tells a story of Silas Hierfal, a being who was supposedly able to find many things easily by just eyeing them.
• After talking to Grandpa, players gain the ability to spot infrequent and scarce tiles on the beach via a twinkling effect.

Scarce Tiles

A specific beach tile's status as scarce, infrequent, or frequent is static over time. In 2021, a public spading project was released that outlined 698 scarce tiles that had been encountered by members of the community and released them to the broader public. To access this list of scarce tiles for your own usage, please see this google sheet.

The list is also used by Mafia script combo, which automatically visits known scarce tiles.

All tiles can be viewed on an interactive page on github.

Tile Distribution

Tile Type	Count
Beach Head	11
Castle	512
Rare Tile	1,001
Uncommon Tile	48,976
Sand	949,500