Merge Mayor Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Grow Your Town

Merge games are comparatively a newer subgenre of puzzle games that started back in 2017 but has then since continued to be among the most popular and well-loved puzzle type games especially among casual players. From the subgenre name itself, the idea of merge games lets players merge similar items together to create a new item and as much as all that is as simple as it sounds, every merge game is unique in its own right given the other game mechanics incorporated into the merge puzzle gameplay.

StarBerry Games’ Merge Mayor is among the latest match puzzle games on mobile, available on both iOS and Android platforms. The game sets you up as a mayor of a small city in need of development and it is up to you to grow the city into a flourishing metropolis. Your tasks revolve around providing each town the items they need to develop and all of their needs can be earned by merging various items in the merge puzzle game.

Merge Mayor offers simple controls and gameplay mechanics made even easier with the starting tutorial. Along with the straightforward interface, you need only to drag and drop items in the puzzle to merge them together. Even complete beginners can make progress regardless of how they go about playing but as easy as it is to pick up and play Merge Mayor, having the right strategies will help you accomplish more and progress at a much faster rate. If you are just diving into this game now, our Merge Mayor beginner’s guide can help you start up right and sustain the town’s growth and development.

1. Understand The Basics

The merge game subgenre is among the puzzle game types that offer the most basic gameplay mechanics. The idea is that you drag and drop similar items to create a different item that basically stands on a higher level. This continues on for several item levels following the basic concept that higher level items have more value considering the number of merges it would take to obtain them.

There are, of course, several base items with each one having their own product line, so to speak, and part of the challenge is the limited space to work with especially since different item types that cannot be merged together will consume more and more open spaces. Considering the numerous varieties of merge games in the mobile gaming market, Merge Mayor is the type where you will only be playing on the exact same board puzzle throughout your adventure.

In addition to the randomness involved when it comes to items spewed out by the supply boxes, there are also instances when the product generated belongs to a higher level. In this sense, plenty of item types can be created even without merging but at the same time increases the risk of needing more open spaces to accommodate each item variety.

Initially, you will only have a few open spaces available as the surrounding tiles are occupied by wooden crates. When you successfully merge an item, the wooden crates surrounding the merged item will be destroyed, revealing different items that they contain. These revealed items can easily be distinguished with a slanting line on their lower right corner as well as their faded color. More importantly, these items cannot be picked up and moved to a different free space unlike the regular items on the board.

Items can be basically categorized into 2 types: the supplier types and the product types. Although both types can be merged to create a higher grade item, the first one is where you tap on to generate random items and the latter stand as the actual resources your town needs. Supplier items can be distinguished once they are ready to be utilized as sources of materials as they will exhibit a yellow background on their tiles.

The Farmers Cart is a basic example of a supplier type item while cherries and raw wood logs are basic examples of its products. Each basic supplier type item can generate 2 basic product lines and will even expand to having 3 different item types after reaching certain levels.

You have an energy cap of 100 to play in the merge puzzle board and it replenishes once every 90 seconds. Merging items do not consume energy but tapping on the supply items cost 1 energy. Likewise, supply items also run out of stock after a certain number of clicks and will have a cool down period within which they will replenish their supply of items.

With an empty supply of energy, it takes exactly 15 minutes for it to fully recover. On the other hand, when a supply box runs empty on supplies, the gem cost to instantly replenish its stock is an approximate equivalent of the minutes it would take for it to completely replenish. If your Farmers Cart, for example, would cost 6 gems for it to instantly replenish its stock, then it will take at least 6 minutes for it to finally become available for use again.

Merging items often does not just yield the next level items. Higher level merges can also generate experience, coins, gems, as well as duplicate items in a bubble. These duplicate items will have to be purchased using gems within the limited time provided and once the bubble pops, they will be converted into coins. Keep in mind as well that experience, coins, and even gems can be merged, yielding products that usually provide more than the double amount of rewards they previously provided.

Unwanted products can also be disposed of. You can tap on any type of product and hit the trash icon at the upper right side of the screen. Higher level products, however, can be sold for coins. After a bit of progression in your adventure, you will also be able to unlock a warehouse where you can indefinitely store items that you currently do not need on the merge board. You can access this by the box icon at the lower left side of the screen and you can conveniently transfer items across by dragging them to the box or the list.

2. Take On Missions One At A Time

With a seemingly never-ending quest to towards rebuilding your town in Merge Mayor, you will take on a variety of missions for each area in the town. The folder on the lower left side of your screen gives you access to these missions and while your adventure will just start off having one mission at a time, you will soon have multiple pending missions in your hands.

Along with limited open spaces in the merging board, it is also a given that there are limits to your stock of energy and the number of items your supply crates can generate so instead of producing and merging different items at a time, it is best to focus on one task at a time. The general strategy is to go for the mission that is easiest to accomplish and if each mission only has one item as a requirement, it would be all too simple.

Merge Mayor, however, adds a little more challenge with their missions by requiring multiple items to be provided for the objective to complete. These missions will typically require a combination of items that can even come from different supply crates. More often than not, having these as challenges will test your strategy and organization skills, most especially if you do not have a lot of open spaces on your merge board.

What the easiest mission to accomplish is can be different from one player to another. Based on the current needs as required by the available missions, you have to determine which from among the items would take less merges considering the items you already have. Another point of consideration would be that each supply item can generate at least 2 basic item types, with one of them popping up a lot less likely than the other.

Every mission you accomplish earns you experience and experience points allow you to reach new levels. Beyond that, some missions also come with extra rewards such as gold, gems, or even unique supply crates and loot boxes. Experience points are an important resource as it leads to you reaching new levels. Each new level reached comes with a loot box that offers plenty of items you can use to upgrade your supply crates.

3. Familiarize Yourself With Product Lines

At the start of your adventure in Merge Mayor, you will quickly be introduced to the Farmers Cart, which will be your source of fruits, wood products, and even livestock later on. Soon after, you will have access to a Materials Pallet, which produces construction materials as well as safety tools. Although it is fairly easy to identify the initial products you can get from these supply sources, you can expect to unlock more types as you progress in your adventure.

A huge part of what makes Merge Mayor exciting and engaging as well is the wide variety of items you will encounter. Your adventure is set up in such a way that there are gaps between unlocking more item types as natural progression requires you to grow some more familiarity with each type.

Beyond that, though, you should make an effort to really be familiar with each unique item, how you can get them, and which supply or product line they belong to. Doing so will boost your efficiency in accomplishing missions and can make it easier for you as well to organize your merge board.

At some point in viewing your current missions, you will encounter unfamiliar items among the requirements of some missions. It can happen as well that you forgot which item source produces one of the listed items. In such cases, you can click on the item icon and then click on the “I” in its upper right corner. This will show you where the item comes from as well as its exact location in the product line.

You can also tap on each item in the merge board and click on the “I” at the upper left side of the screen. This will take you to the same info page for that item. Whether it is a supply crate or a product and even for locked or grayed out items, make it a habit to peek into the info of the ones you are not that familiar with so you can plan ahead on your next moves.

4. Open Spaces Are Very Important

There are plenty of resources you need to maintain at decent levels above your screen. Energy, coins, and gems are all important resources that you need to be able to play puzzles, perform upgrades, and make different purchases.

Gems may seem like the most valuable resource here given that it is a premium currency you can exchange for a variety of items at the shop as well as speed up progression by reducing or eliminating cool down periods and waiting times. However, what we consider as the most valuable resource in Merge Mayor are actually free spaces on the board.

At this point in time, you should already be accustomed to the idea that the merge puzzle board in Merge Mayor will be the one and only board you will be playing in throughout your adventure. As such, it becomes very important that you push towards having more free space to work with especially considering that more and more types of items will soon begin to flood your merge board.

For starters, what we recommend is to always prioritize the grayed out and immovable items on the board. A lot of these items are product sources that can only be unlocked after some progression or through special chests. However, some of these items are products that can be unlocked at certain periods in your adventure. This is where familiarity with each item becomes important as you would not want to missing merging these items out and freeing more open spaces for you to work with.

Likewise, our previous tip of focusing your actions on completing one mission at a time should minimize items you generate and avoid unnecessary cluttering of different types of items on the board. Merge Mayor also provides a helpful way of dropping hints for you within the puzzle board. Similar items will always shake, so if it becomes too crowded and confusing for you, pause for a while and just keep your eyes open for items that shake.

Relative to free spaces, another important feature to consider is how you utilize your extra storage. The extra storage is as huge as your main merge puzzle board but most of it will be locked when you access it at the early part of your journey. The wooden crates can be shattered by unlocking the ones close to it, which can cost gold, gems, or some materials.

Naturally, the cost of unlocking more extra space increases exponentially and it will take a lot of time before you can actually unlock even a quarter of the whole extra storage board.

Merge Mayor is a game of patience as well and this is where you should exercise this virtue. Although you will need to pay the full amount of gems and coins if they are the requirements to unlock more space, you can always hold on to either resource until you have enough to make a purchase. Gems may be more difficult to hold on to as there are more enticing options you can spend them on. In the case of locks that can be opened using materials, you can opt to pay for them one at a time.

Again, extra items on the merge puzzle board can be disposed of using the trash bin or selling some of them for coins. If they are fairly easy to acquire, then feel free to sell them. If not, then opt to keep them in storage. Special items like batteries you can save for emergencies are also best kept in storage. Items you will need later or at least you feel that you will need later should also be kept in storage.

5. Keep Your Merge Board Organized

While this may sound like a very basic tip, it is among the things that most players, beginners or otherwise, can easily forget to tend to or unconsciously ignore. It can be very challenging at first, considering that there will be several locked or grayed out items on your merge puzzle board, but as you make progress, you can find it easier to set up your own way of organizing items.

Supply sources like the Farmers Cart and the Tool Box are consistently needed in the puzzle and are basically maintained in a fixed position since you do not regularly merge them around. In this sense, it is only practical to position them on the edge of the puzzle. In our case, we emptied out spaces on the right side of the merge puzzle board so our supply crates are stashed and lined up on the right side of our screen.

From right to left, you can place items that you can generate from the supply box. In our example, all fruits are placed to the left of the Farmers Cart and all tools are positioned to the left of the Tool Box. Whenever you tap on the supply box, items will be generated randomly on any open space and you can easily drag them to the corresponding lines assigned to them.

There will be cases where you will have more than one supply box of the same type but have different levels. You can choose to place them close to one another and still adhere to our strategy considering that each supply source generates more than one product line.

Following the consideration of only pursuing missions one at a time, there should typically be only 2 supply crates with pending merges to their left. If there are no foreseen need for other items, you have to decide on which ones to keep and which ones to sell or dispose of, considering their value and difficulty to obtain.

In some cases, it may also happen that you will have a lot of items in the production line left out after you have accomplished the mission. If it appears that it will not take as many clicks on the relative supply boxes to merge more items and clear more space as an effect, then be sure to make the effort to do so.

Experience, gems, coins, as well as event items will consistently be among the items you would want to keep and use only when they are at max level since the rewards they give you at max level is a lot more than its smaller counterparts. However, if push comes to shove, choosing to consume them early on will save you the hassle of having to work with fewer spaces to accomplish your current mission.

Always keep in mind that some missions in Merge Mayor take quite some time to accomplish given the temporary limitations in supply of some items as well as the energy system that limits your play time in one sitting.

As such, before engaging in missions where one item will take a lot of merging to finally acquire, be sure you have ample empty spaces to conveniently work with. Some of these missions may even take several sessions for you to finally complete, so be sure to come prepared and keep your board organized at all times.

6. Earn Mayor Points For Perks

On top of the main missions as well as daily missions that basically have similar needs, Merge Mayor also provides quests that earn you mayor points that activate more perks and bonuses the more points you gather. In essence, these are like milestones in the game that unlock permanent perks and the quests associated with earning mayor points also work the same way as missions.

You can click on the top hat icon at the upper left side of the screen to check on current quests. Quests are grouped into the landmarks they belong to and each area shows how many quests and mayor points you can earn for each landmark. Although we consider the main missions as the top priority, there will be instances when accomplishing these extra quests will be a lot easier and also coincide with the current situation you have in your merge board.

While items needed for missions will have a green border and check mark once they appear on the merge board, items needed for mayor quests will be highlighted by blue. At any time, you can click on the top hat icon and check on the requirements for each landmark upgrade. Again, the “I” icon will be helpful in identifying how some of the needed items can be obtained. Once completed, you will also need to spend some coins to initiate the upgrade and wait for it to be completed.

Clicking on the top hat icon will take you to the “My City” window that showcases the landmarks in need of an upgrade. You can check on other tabs through markers at the bottom of the window. There are city perks to unlock based on the number of mayor points you have accumulated.

The extra inventory or storage we keep mentioning earlier is among these perks and along with more daily rewards, there will also be vehicles roaming the city you can click on to earn extra rewards. The third tab is where you can claim the city rewards. Be sure to check on it daily once the feature has been unlocked.

7. Strategize Around Waiting Times

There are basically two types of instances in Merge Mayor when you are likely to consider taking a break from your adventure. The first one is when your energy supply runs out and the other one is if the supply box you need goes on cool down. Having no energy and no batteries as well as free ways to earn more means you absolutely have to take a break but if you still have energy left, then you should proceed to generate other items from other supply sources.

Prioritizing one mission over another should not prevent you from considering alternatives if it happens to become temporarily impossible to achieve. Even in the absence of other quests, merging other items has its own benefits, with coins being the least of them should you decide to sell some merged items.

Likewise, if you are close to reaching a new level and you can earn enough experience with the available experience points in your merge puzzle board, then do not hesitate to use them to reach the next level and obtain the special chest reward.

Tapping on chests can earn you extra energy as well as materials that can upgrade your supply crates so any probability of extending your play time should be considered. For efficiency, the best time to absolutely take a break is when both your energy and priority supply crates are on cool down.

8. Take Advantage Of Freebies And Ad Boosts

In addition to the daily rewards as well as the extra ones you can obtain by catching the scooter that roams around your city, there are additional freebies you can enjoy in Merge Mayor to further boost your progress in your adventure. If you have yet to check out the shop through its icon at the upper right corner of the screen, then make it a habit to check on it at least once a day as you can grab an energy pack from it for free.

Although you have a maximum of 100 energy and that it replenishes once every 90 seconds, you can easily expend all of it especially if you play Merge Mayor very actively. There are energy packs you can earn as rewards from missions and event quests but you can still easily run out of energy if you are too hooked on generating and merging items several minutes per session.

If you run out of energy and click on any supply box, you will be given an option to purchase 100 more for 5 gems. Alternatively, though, you can earn 25 energy for free by simply agreeing to play a 15 to 30-second ad. You can do this for up to 3 times each day and earn a total of 75 energy.

We mentioned earlier as well that, sometimes, when you merge items, a duplicate copy of the product will be generated inside a bubble. You can spend gems to burst the bubble and obtain the item within the minute or wait for the countdown to lapse and earn a coin. In some instances, Merge Mayor provides you free ways to get the item and all you need to do is play a short video ad for it.

Whenever you reach a new level, you will have to click on your level to claim your reward for it. This will normally be a special item box that you can also obtain from some missions and quests as a reward. Once obtained, you can drop them down on the merge puzzle board by tapping on them at the bottom of the screen. These chests or boxes will not be readily usable, though, and you will need to activate them first as well as wait for a certain period of time before they unlock.

You can only open one of these special reward boxes at a time so if you are itching to open them and claim your special rewards you can spend some gems to clear the waiting time. As an alternative option, however, you can choose to play a video add to get the same results.

Merge Mayor is certainly a casual game that guarantees hours after hours of fun and exciting gameplay and if you adhere to the basic tips and strategies we shared in our guide, we are confident that you can accomplish a lot more with every bit of time you spend in the game.

We certainly feel that we have covered everything you need to know to grow and develop your town in Merge Mayor as fast and efficiently as possible but if you can still add something to the list, feel free to share your discoveries in the comment section!