Screenshot of the level and where I ended up: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3496084775

You should try getting more habitats adjacent to the river. And it seems you didn't use the rain cards to their full potential. It's possible to get 14 tiles watered with the 2 big rains.

Thank you! Will give that a try

Another hint for Continental maps you can place and remove lake tiles to water more land.

Originally posted by Kotli:

Another hint for Continental maps you can place and remove lake tiles to water more land.

This one is more like an exploit. You don't have to use this to solve puzzles.

Originally posted by scruffy:

Currently playing through continental 12 - and can't seem to get past a score of 650/656

I have found 4 different solutions to this puzzle.

The crux here is to think river adjacency points, and to not waste your rain cards.

So: think about the start of your river. If you start it out in a bit of a knot right at the upper end there, you aren't getting ANY adjacency points for the first 2-3 cells of your river, at all ! So shift your mountain up a bit to take up more of the rock tiles at upper end, and shift your river down a little, so you get more habitat around it.

Don't waste your rain cards, place them so that you get the most points out of them (various placements possible, but don't waste them).

And you don't necessarily have to use up every cell on your map, depending on your length of river, you may have a few empty cells, and you'll still reach the needed score if you use your cards wisely.

Originally posted by Kotli:

...place and remove lake tiles to water more land

Like Egan Wolf says, this is an exploit, and not intended to be used like this.

The puzzles are all made to be solved 'straight', and you'll likely just make it more difficult for yourself if you start mixing it in, bc you risk losing track of the direction the puzzle maker is trying to point you.

Many of these puzzles are made to try to help players learn stuff, discover how rules work in different biomes, etc. So better to play them the way they're intended to be solved :-)

Oh, and for puzzles 1-15 in the 3 EA biomes (Continental, Savannah, Marine), there are solutions in the Guide on the forum here.

Gives full solutions, however, so no 'hints' if you just want a little help but not being led all the way...