Dredge: How to Find The Painter & Customize Your Boat

The Painter is an NPC in Dredge who can help players customize their boat with flags, paint, and bunting. However, everything has a price, and the cost of finding new colors is aberrant sealife, as players will likely expect from this game.

Nothing is simple in Dredge, and players will need to work hard to unlock every customization option or even find The Painter just to get a new paint job on their ride. Without assistance, they’ll be drowning in the complicated systems.

Related: Dredge: How to find all the Stone Tablets

How to Find The Painter in Dredge

The Painter is located in Little Marrow. This is the town across the water from Greater Marrow, the player’s starting location at the story’s beginning. Regardless of where a player is in the story, it’s easy to find this location by returning to Blackstone Isle and sailing towards the two towns nearby. Little Marrow is the smaller of the two.

Players will need to dock in Little Marrow and interact with The Painter to start customizing their boat. There are a few options available to players from the start of the game, while others are locked behind providing The Painter with certain aberrant crabs.

How to Change the Color of Your Boat in Dredge

To change the color of a boat in Dredge, players must interact with The Painter in Little Marrow and select the option to change the paint on their boat. It’s possible to change the color of either the body or the roof of the boat. These can be different colors, as shown in the image above.

While a set of standard colors is available to payers from the start of the game, more complicated colors can be unlocked by providing specific creatures to The Painter. He grinds them up and adds a special ingredient to help make them stick to boats in the form of paint. It might sound disgusting, but it looks beautiful.

How to Add Flags and Bunting to Your Boat in Dredge

To add flags and bunting to a boat in Dredge, players need to select the corresponding option with The Painter when they speak to him in Little Marrow. He has one flag available at the game’s start, but more can be unlocked if players deliver the ones they find around the world to him.

How to Unlock More Flags for Your Boat in Dredge

Players can unlock more flags to customize their boat with in Dredge by searching for glowing dredge points in the world. Players can pull up flags by dredging at these sites, which can be delivered to The Painter.

The Painter will take these flags, clean them up, and then offer them to players. They can be swapped with the boat’s current flag and flown while players want to see it. These range from eyes to crabs and a few other surprises we don’t want to ruin for players who want to find them organically.

How to Unlock More Paint Colors for Your Boat in Dredge

To unlock new paint colors for boat customization in Dredge, players need to deliver aberrant crabs to The Painter. Many of these aberrant crabs were added to Dredge with Update 3. They can be found around the game’s world by using crab pots in regular locations.

We recommend using crab pots as often as possible. Players should buy more and more and leave them around each biome if they want to have the best chance of collecting every aberrant crab and unlocking all the paint colors.