Hi everybody!, well I am stuck, my population won't grow because nobody wants to be builders. I have 1 hut only, when I select the skill, everybody goes to fish, my flowers are dead!!! I even have a golden child with a population of 25!!!! I am going nuts!
Could somebody please tell me or should I restart the game?
Thanx!

You have a few options. There is more than one hut possible, so check around the island for new spots. Also, if your flowers are still dead then there are other things the builder can do. Drag a villager all over the island and see what they want to do! After you find these things, you may have to babysit them and force them to build until they get the hang of it.

All is not lost... keep going. You've still got loads of stuff to do in this game!

Uknoimfreaky, the builders will not build on their own until they get some training. As foodleking has said you will have to force them, but you will need a villager with some skill in building to find the next hut. Again, drag one of the villagers around the island to find another building project. Once he has some building skill, then drag him around to find the location of the last hut.

I have one adept builder; I have one hut, the beach is cleared, the lagoon is unblocked and my builder is starting on a second hut. I'm trying to train another builder by getting them to work on the hut, but they all wander off to try to push the boulder; My builder is getting on in years, and I need another one. Any suggestions? I'm at harvesting 3 science 2 building 2 spirituality 2 fertility 1 medicine 1. Tx...........

The hotspots for the huts can be 'picky' when they're first started, and that makes it difficult to get your villagers to work on them. Have you tried leaving the game and launching it again? That usually takes care of the problem.

Most of my children are born with farm/fish or research skills. None have been born with beginning builder skills. At the current stage in my village, all the easy building tasks have been completed (ie: 1st hut & clearing beach).

Thank goodness I had some elderly adept builders when I was building the 2nd hut. I have yet to build the 3rd hut.

Now, if my elderly adept builders pass away & if none of the next generation have any beginning building skills ... does this mean that I will be left with NO builders on my island?

Maybe you could try using some adept or master builders to breed with. Chances are good you'll get a child with some builder skills. Even villagers that start with some building skills need to be trained though. They often want to wander out and fix huts, push the boulder, go swimming, and generally goof off! But they are easier to train than villagers who start with other skills.

HMMM....
Is the game really THAT smart? I'm really impressed with Arthur and crew's programming skills. This is truly the most amazing game I've ever experienced on the Palm platform!

Yes, the children will tend to inherit skills from one of their parents, although that's not always the case. Kinda like real life, huh?

I try to breed them with Adept Builders, but unfortuantely, all my Adept Builders are either Adept/Master Farmers or Scientists as well.

My villagers are just too skilled for their own good. =P

I hope some of those Adept Builder skills will kick in.

Just keep breeding them, sometimes it takes a few tries before you can get that ne: child that you will need. XD

There is a brilliant hint in some other thread on this forum: just checkmark the breeder skill as the preferred one on one of your male builders. Before you know it, multiple women (in my case: four within three minutes) are nursing

You don't have to have inborn skill to make an excellent builder; I too had a run of kids with no inherited building skill, so I just put them (2 at a time) on a project and watched for a little while to see if any had hidden talent. Some had no knack or desire at all, some made a little progress, but one, a researcher, went nuts, and now, at age 28, he has ~70% on his construction skill bar and 80% on his research bar.

Thanks Brett. I'm glad to hear that there is hope. I just can't seem to get any of my builders past that 70% mark!

One other crucial hint, not really a spoiler in my opinion: A builder apparently cannot make Master if s/he has never done beach cleanup. I gleaned this from careful reading of other posts, having had a LOT of frustration with this issue in previous attempts. So, this time, I made sure to postpone beach cleanup until I really needed it, and then made sure to force every teenager I could find to do it. As a result I now have two master builders, 46 and 52 years old, and maybe thus a shot at the mysterious Puzzle 12, I am told.

Sometimes a random Island Event will force another beach cleanup, but you can't count on this. I'm not absolutely sure the following is completely true, but my understanding is: No beach cleanup experience, no master builder, and you need at least one MB alive when you finally get all your tech levels to solve Puzzle 12.

Brett, I do not agree with your statement (but I am willing to be proved wrong). Considering there is only 1 definite beach cleanup, I am sure that I have had builders who have developed all their skills only after this puzzle has been completed.

I think what those posts are trying to say, is that if you finish all the puzzles offering building experience, the only way at present to gain more building experience, is to wait for another beach cleanup or two

Savi

There are at least 6 other opportunities after clearing the beach (and hut #1) to gain building experience. It is possible to get master builders after the beach, but it never hurts to get a head start. Don't wait to long to begin though, or you may run into food supply issues.

Who knows, maybe in a later version the villagers will be able to enjoy fine aquatic activities such as surfing, snorkeling, an parasailing. I can almost see the Golden Child flying the hull on a 16' catamaran. Oh well, we can dream, no?

Well, actually I hope I'm wrong too. It just seems to me that requiring beach cleanup experience puts one in too much of a time crunch to get everything done in the lifetime of one villager. Foodleking is correct, by my count there are about a half dozen activities which provide building experience IN ADDITION to beach and hut work. Seems reasonable there is enough variety there to make a Master Builder.

It is definately not necessary for a villager to clean the beach in order to become a master builder. This is just another task which can aid in the development of a master builder. I think the confusion arises because people lose thier masters late in the game and then have to wait for an island event to train a new one (cleaning the beach).
Personally, I do puzzle #12 at the same time I'm doing #9!!
Then, I don't run into the "no more master builders" problem!!

I was just able to get a villager (who has never cleaned a beach in his lifetime) to become a master builder from working on Puzzle #9 !!! YAY! And he is only in his 20's! ^_^