Game Mechanics

Merging
Merging can be done by combining 3 or more mergeable items of the same type and tier (e.g. 3 Candles). If you move an item that is not mergeable, the game will tell you with a small notice above the item. You will see a white lining around all items that will be pulled into the merge.

When you merge exactly 3 items, the result will be 1 item of 1 tier higher. As an example, 3 Candles (tier 2 Love Lanterns) will produce 1 Candle Dicks (tier 3 Love Lanterns).

When you merge exactly 5 items, the result will be 2 items of 1 tier higher. As an example, 5 Candles will produce 2 Candle Dicks.

Merging 4 items will produce 1 item of 1 tier higher, and leave one of the 4 input items as it was (though if it was on a polluted tile, that tile will be healed).

Merging higher number of items can lose you some of the starting items, e.g. 5 and 6 will result in 2 items. And if you merge a lot of items, the output of your merge can merge too, even merging with nearby items of that tier. This "chaining" you can turn off in your home base. And you can alter the behaviour of item placement in your home. Normally, if you drop an item between two items, a merge will happen; you can turn the option on to only merge if you place an item over another item instead of next to it.

Merging groups
When you merge a large amount of items, the game will do the following:
 * Merges will try to consume as much of your starting items indicated by the white lining.
 * Merges will try to make as much higher tier items as will be possible with 5 and 3 mergers, giving back at most 1 starter item. Therefore you have best efficiency with multiples of 5.

The first step of merging looks like this:

Timers
There are two types of cooldowns in the game; Active cooldowns and Passive cooldowns. The name of the cooldown refers to what action the player must take to start the cooldown, not how the cooldown works.

Active cooldowns
Treasuries and warehouses have active cooldowns. The player must manually activate (tap) them to activate them and start the cooldown. Active cooldowns work by storing a date in the player's savefile. This means that it doesn't matter what the player does; the cooldown's timer will advance. That means the cooldown timer will advance when in other levels, when not playing the game, when looking at scenes or the store and when the "are you still playing" screen is shown.

The Cock Pylon (reward item for Fullmoon Event) has an active cooldown.

Passive cooldowns
Golem totems and Brothels have passive cooldowns. Golem Totems will spawn ink on their own, no player interaction required.

Passive cooldowns are stored as seconds in the player's savefile. This means that the player must be playing the level for passive cooldowns to advance. The only thing that advances the passive cooldown is playing the level without having other screens open. Passive cooldowns will reset if the cooldown expires and there is no space to spawn the item. Passive cooldowns will pause on bubbled items.

The Sweet Desert (reward item for Summer Event) has a passive cooldown.

Map full
When the map is full (or almost full; there is only 1 space left), Nymphs will stop initiating harvesting actions by themselves. Passive spawners, such as Golem Totems, will not spawn any more items (though they will refuse to spawn more items when there's only 1 more space left directly around them, ignoring the state of the map as a whole).

When items can't fit anymore and MUST be placed, the game will bubble them. Intentionally doing this (by placing an item on top of a larger item which has no place to fit anymore) is referred to as "bubbling".

Floating Objects
Almost all objects in the game occupy at least one tile (1x1) and they are completely stationary. There are some objects that do not occupy any tiles at all, thus cannot be bubbled. These objects are called floating objects. A few examples to floating objects are wind lamps, balloons and clouds. Floating objects do not occupy tiles on the ground and they can only be merged if the user overlaps 3 or more of them.

It is speculated that the game considers Nymphs as floating objects.

Wax candles always float from left to right, while other floating objects remain stationary on their location unless user moves them.