Merge Workshop guide: how to grow from a Cottage to a Stadium

What you are actually doing

Merge Workshop is an idle game with a merge board on top. Every building on the 42-cell board earns coins every second, all the time, including while you are away. Your job is to turn many small buildings into a few big ones, keep new buildings arriving, and spend coins where they raise your income fastest. You cannot lose, so every decision is about speed.

A fresh town starts with four Cottages and one Sedan.

Why merging always pays

Each step up the ladder earns 3.3 times as much as the step below. Two buildings go in, one comes out, and it is still worth 65% more than the pair. That is why you should merge every pair you see unless you are saving pieces for an order.

Tier	Building	Coins per second (before upgrades)
1	Cottage	0.5
2	House	1.65
3	Townhouse	5.4
4	Coffee Shop	18
5	Bakery	59
6	Pizzeria	196
7	Diner	646
8	Boutique	2,131
9	Supermarket	7,032
10	Apartments	23,206
11	Factory	76,579
12	Tower	252,711
13	Skyscraper	833,945
14	Stadium	about 2.75 million

Delivery vehicles

Vehicles are the only source of new buildings. Each one drops a building onto a random free cell on a timer, and pays a coin bonus worth 15 seconds of that building's earnings every time it finishes. Vehicles merge with matching vehicles too, and a better vehicle drops a better building.

Vehicle	Drops a	Every (before Conveyor)
Sedan	Cottage	6 s
Taxi	House	8.1 s
Pickup	Townhouse	10.9 s
SUV	Coffee Shop	14.8 s
Patrol Car	Bakery	19.9 s
Ambulance	Pizzeria	26.9 s
City Bus	Diner	36.3 s
Freight Truck	Boutique	49 s

Add vehicle buys a new Sedan. The first costs 120 coins and each one after that costs 2.1 times the last (120, 252, 529, 1,111 and so on). The price resets when you Restructure.

Merging two Sedans into a Taxi is one of the best early moves. It frees a cell, and the one Taxi still adds earning buildings and coin bonuses a little faster than the two Sedans did.

When the board is full

If a vehicle finishes and there is no free cell, the building it made is lost. You still get the coin bonus, but your town stops growing. Keep at least one cell open. The Scrap button removes a building for a small refund, about five seconds of what it earns, which is worth doing only to clear a stuck board. Vehicles can never be scrapped.

Dragging an item onto something that does not match simply moves or swaps the two, so you can rearrange freely without losing anything.

Orders

Orders appear once you have made your first House, and three stand at a time. Each asks for two to four buildings of one type, somewhere between your best building and four tiers below it.

Orders pay very well: for every building handed over, you get about 90 minutes of that building's earnings in one lump. You can also deliver part of an order now and the rest later, so you do not need all the pieces on the board at once. Fill orders for the lower tiers they ask for, not the building you are currently climbing toward.

Upgrades

Each upgrade panel shows how many seconds its next level takes to pay for itself. Lower is better.

Upgrade	Effect per level	First level	Price rise per level
Foreman	+0.20x to all earnings	50	x1.15
Conveyor	vehicles finish 5% sooner	250	x1.18
Polish	+0.75x to all earnings	2,500	x1.22
Night Shift	+30 minutes of offline earnings	20,000	x1.60
Syndicate	x1.18 to all earnings, compounding	200,000	x1.32

Foreman and Polish add to your multiplier, so each level is worth a little less than the one before. Syndicate multiplies, and it is the track that keeps income climbing late in a town. Once you can afford it, check its payback time every time you visit.

Conveyor's speed-up compounds but can never bring a vehicle below 15% of its normal time. Night Shift shows no payback time because it does not raise your per-second income; it raises the two-hour offline cap by 30 minutes a level, up to a full day at 44 levels.

Restructure

Restructure resets your coins, upgrades, vehicles and board for permanent bonus points. Each point adds +0.15x to all earnings forever. Points are counted from everything you have ever earned, so resetting early gains you nothing extra, and your first point needs ten billion lifetime coins. After a reset, orders still ask for buildings near the best tier you ever reached.

A good time to restructure is when every upgrade's payback time has grown to many minutes and the button offers several points.

A plan for your first session

Merge the four Cottages into a House, then merge Cottages as the Sedan drops them.
Buy Foreman levels while their payback is short.
Buy a second Sedan at 120 and merge the two into a Taxi.
Deliver the first orders as they appear; the lump sums buy several upgrade levels at once.
Start Conveyor and Polish once Foreman's payback grows.

Common mistakes

Letting the board fill. Every drop onto a full board is a building thrown away.
Buying the cheapest upgrade. The cheapest is not always the fastest to pay back. Read the seconds.
Merging away order pieces. If an order wants three Bakeries and you have two, hold them.
Restructuring too soon. Waiting never loses points.

If you're stuck

If income has flattened, look for a Syndicate level with a reasonable payback, then merge your vehicles upward so drops arrive at a higher tier. If you are leaving for the night, a few Night Shift levels first make sure the whole absence is paid.