Saltfire Day 68 6 September 2026
Coin
How do you make Coin in 7 merges?
- 1 Ember + Salt Ash
- 2 Salt + Salt Crystal
- 3 Ash + Crystal Stone
- 4 Ember + Ember Flame
- 5 Flame + Stone Ore
- 6 Ember + Ore Copper
- 7 Copper + Stone Coin
Why is 7 merges the shortest possible?
Day 68 asked for Coin — a tier-4 element, one of the complex — and it goes in seven merges. Not fewer: par is worked out across the whole recipe tree before the puzzle ships, and then proved by replaying the chain above against the game's own rules, starting from nothing but Salt, Ember, Dew and Breath. If that replay had spent one step more or one step less, the build would have failed and this day would never have run.
Three of the seven merges come straight out of the primordials — Ash, Crystal and Flame — and everything else is built on top of those. The last step is Copper + Stone, which is where Coin finally condenses.
Now look at Stone: made once, then wanted in two different merges. That is the whole reason the floor is seven and not ten. A step buys you an element for the rest of the run, so par counts distinct pairs, not branches of a tree — the second time the chain reaches for Stone it is already sitting in the tray, free. Counted as a tree, with a fresh derivation for every single ingredient, this same solution reads as ten merges.
Coin has three recipes in the tree, so the route above is the cheapest way in rather than the only one. Another chain of the same length is quite possible; a longer one is far more likely. Two steps fuse an element with itself (Salt + Salt and Ember + Ember). Self-merges are legal moves and a few elements only come out that way — always worth a try when a run stalls. Dew and Breath never appear in the short way through — though nothing tells you that while you are playing, which is rather the point.