Cocklefighting

The town you build#

Shallowmere is the one place on the Shore you build rather than buy from, and the one place nobody can attack you. It runs on three currencies: gold from the Pit, materials from the tide, and harbour rest, which is simply time spent in town. Every building has a rarity, a footprint in plots, a level ceiling and exactly one boon. Only buildings that STAND pay their boon; a stored one keeps its levels and pays nothing. Storing and setting down are free, so the layout is meant to be rearranged.

The ground#

The town square starts at 4×4 plots and is chartered outward one ring at a time to 9×9. Each charter costs 4x the last and needs a minimum town level, so gold alone cannot skip the building. Town level is every level of every building raised, standing or stored.

Fully chartered, the Mere holds 81 plots; the catalogue wants 107. The gap is deliberate: you can never stand everything at once, so which buildings hold ground is a real, revisitable choice. Buildings can be turned a quarter to fit, which swaps their footprint.

Materials#

Every works order costs materials as well as gold, and materials cannot be bought: they wash up from rewarded wins and from a bare daily dredge (+1 Driftwood Timber). The Salvage boon lifts the odds. What an order needs is set by the building’s rarity, the same for founding and for every improvement.

They are deliberately thin. The heaviest single order in the catalogue takes something like a fortnight of ordinary fighting to supply, so a town is raised one decision at a time rather than tunnelled through. Nothing here is as rare as a magic find; gold, in the millions, is still the long pole of a finished Mere.

Building materials: rarity, drop odds and hold capacities

Material	Rarity	Drop / rewarded win	Quantity	Hold cap
Driftwood Timber	uncommon	12%	1-2	40
Shellstone Block	rare	6%	1	20
Tideglass Pane	epic	3%	1	8

Works#

Founding or improving places ONE works order, and its clock only advances while you rest in Shallowmere: turns are for the Pit, rest is for the Mere. Leaving stops the clock where it is; nothing is lost. Calling an order off refunds the gold and materials in full and forfeits the progress. A founding takes the building’s base hours; each improvement takes 30% longer per level above it, capped at 16h per order before the Works time boon cuts it (up to 36% from the catalogue).

Harbour rest#

While you rest and the shelter holds:

• Nobody can attack you. Your rows on the Pit board, the Tide Pools and your profile carry a Sheltered badge with a dead Fight button, and the attack is refused server-side.
• You cannot attack either. Leave town first.
• Your rested surge fills 3x as fast. Out on the Shore it refills at 1% of a level an hour.
• The works advance. Nothing else moves them.

Two rules stop the town becoming a place to hide. The shelter holds 6h a shore day (13.4h with both shelter buildings at their peak); past the quota the works still run but the Pit can reach you again until midnight. And leaving shuts the causeway for 0.5h, about 6 turns of regen, so a session is fought out and then rested rather than ducked in and out of.

Boons and their ceilings#

Every boon is capped across the whole town, and the catalogue is tuned to sit under every cap even fully built: no future building can push a number past what the rest of the game was balanced for. Half of them make something cheaper or smaller, and those are written with a minus, so a chip always reads as what the building actually does.

Every building#

A building is worth its per-level value times its level, so the value curve is straight and the cost curve is not: each improvement costs 1.42x the last. Level ceilings follow the forge rule: humble buildings take many small improvements (10 levels), grand ones a few decisive ones (5).

Every Shallowmere building: footprint, boon, costs, materials and level ceiling

Building	Plots	Boon	At its peak	Found	To the peak	Materials / order	Rest to peak	Unlocks at
The Tide Gate	2×1	+0.5h Sanctuary a level	+5h Sanctuary (L10)	400g	6,822g	2 Driftwood Timber	23.5h	Lv 1
The Kelp Granary	2×2	+4% Salvage a level	+40% Salvage (L10)	700g	11,937g	2 Driftwood Timber	23.5h	Lv 1
The Cockle Rows	1×3	+9% Rested surge a level	+90% Rested surge (L10)	600g	10,233g	2 Driftwood Timber	23.5h	Lv 1
The Barnacle Yard	2×2	-4% Works time a level	-36% Works time (L9)	2,200g	26,607g	3 Driftwood Timber	39.6h	Lv 10 / town 3
The Whistlestone Ring	3×1	+1.2% Pit XP a level	+10.8% Pit XP (L9)	2,600g	31,444g	3 Driftwood Timber	39.6h	Lv 10 / town 3
The Saltworks	2×3	-5% Corrosion a level	-45% Corrosion (L9)	3,000g	36,282g	3 Driftwood Timber	39.6h	Lv 10 / town 3
The Coin Cellar	2×2	+2% Plunder a level	+16% Plunder (L8)	9,000g	77,412g	4 Driftwood Timber and 1 Shellstone Block	49.2h	Lv 20 / town 8
Lanternwrights' Row	3×2	-3% Grotto prices a level	-24% Grotto prices (L8)	11,000g	94,614g	4 Driftwood Timber and 1 Shellstone Block	49.2h	Lv 20 / town 8
Bellows Walk	3×2	-3% Forge prices a level	-24% Forge prices (L8)	11,000g	94,614g	4 Driftwood Timber and 1 Shellstone Block	49.2h	Lv 20 / town 8
The Gull Post	2×1	+2% Turn regen a level	+16% Turn regen (L8)	12,000g	103,215g	4 Driftwood Timber and 1 Shellstone Block	49.2h	Lv 20 / town 8
The Dreaming Beds	3×3	+7% Surge ceiling a level	+49% Surge ceiling (L7)	34,000g	208,819g	5 Driftwood Timber and 2 Shellstone Block	66.5h	Lv 35 / town 16
The Silt Sifters' Guild	3×2	+7% Magic find a level	+49% Magic find (L7)	32,000g	196,535g	5 Driftwood Timber and 2 Shellstone Block	66.5h	Lv 35 / town 16
The Hollowkeep	2×2	-5% Theft risk a level	-35% Theft risk (L7)	30,000g	184,253g	5 Driftwood Timber and 2 Shellstone Block	66.5h	Lv 35 / town 16
The Deepwater Beacon	3×3	+8% Magic find a level	+48% Magic find (L6)	110,000g	485,064g	6 Driftwood Timber, 3 Shellstone Block and 1 Tideglass Pane	72h	Lv 50 / town 26
Siren's Rest	4×2	+0.4h Sanctuary a level	+2.4h Sanctuary (L6)	100,000g	440,967g	6 Driftwood Timber, 3 Shellstone Block and 1 Tideglass Pane	72h	Lv 50 / town 26
The Countinghouse	3×2	+4% Plunder a level	+24% Plunder (L6)	105,000g	463,016g	6 Driftwood Timber, 3 Shellstone Block and 1 Tideglass Pane	72h	Lv 50 / town 26
Hall of the Tideborn	4×4	+3% Pit XP a level	+15% Pit XP (L5)	380,000g	1,212,165g	8 Driftwood Timber, 4 Shellstone Block and 2 Tideglass Pane	67.1h	Lv 70 / town 42
The Mere Eternal	3×3	+3% Turn regen a level	+15% Turn regen (L5)	420,000g	1,339,760g	8 Driftwood Timber, 4 Shellstone Block and 2 Tideglass Pane	67.1h	Lv 70 / town 42

“Rest to peak” is the whole journey with no Works time boon; the Barnacle Yard at its own peak cuts every order by 36%.

Trophies#

The Mere carves its own row on the Tidemark: first building, five buildings, a day of harbour rest, town levels 25, 80 and 200, any building at its peak, and every charter bought. The rarest carry the titles Charterbearer, Lord Mayor and Warden of the Mere.