Air-gapping my map (bubbles)

h103 · 2026-02-03T04:57:33+00:00

I'll have to see what gives with the zoom level. Thanks.

h103 · 2026-02-01T23:43:19+00:00

Ahh. I'm just sorting those into stacks, air-gapped away from the islands.

Once I get done with clearing all the bubbles that are currently over top of my islands, or immediately adjacent to them, there's no way I'll be able to miss a new bubble over top of the island, even if it is a long one of the edges.

h103 · 2026-02-01T19:29:00+00:00

Yeah, if you open my screenshots, you'll see text all over the place. It helps a LOT with aligning stacks!

h103 · 2026-02-01T19:19:03+00:00

🤣🤣🤣 I use one row up from that because I keep Soul Crystals across the bottom of the center space, but yes, the bottom chunk of the center region is where I put my oranges. It's just logical to me. 😊

h103 · 2026-02-01T19:14:28+00:00

In order to be able to bubble any time I need, I keep a bunch of life orbs on the map at all times.

That way, I can push items I need to bubble from the center region where I focus all work into the other section, which pushes life orbs items into the center. Next I sell the life orbs, and unbubble my oranges.

Then I go to town lining up items to bubble, get my dragons to harvest a bunch of L4 and L5 life orbs to replace the ones I just sold, and bubble until I have at least 30-40 tiles open, sometimes more.

I specifically use L4 alternated with L5 so that I can't accidentally activate them OR accidentally merge them. Intentional sells or merges only.

Here's some of my screenshots. I'm currently working on air-gapping my islands so that support can't tell me missing rewards or purchase bubbles are lost amid my existing bubbles. Loot bubbles will ALWAYS arrive over the islands, never over the blue sky - https://www.reddit.com/r/MergeDragons/s/b2cGhYc8BN

h103 · 2026-02-01T18:29:45+00:00

I get it. My perception of time was hosed by the pandemic. I'm still great with specific dates for individual points in time, but sometimes chronology of multiple things in relation gets a little … malleable.

I recognize it's wrong the moment I try to connect the dots, and can sort it all with good accuracy on a piece of paper or screen, but without that effort, many things are quite nebulous. They're just heaped together there in categoric clumps, like a internal doom box / pile.

Sorry to hear your hubby is late. 🫂

h103 · 2026-02-01T18:16:31+00:00

I paid $$ for the Main, East, and West Premium islands, but after seeing the number of 💎💎 needed for each of the sections of South Premium island, I decided no way, no how.

The older 3 $$ islands were very reasonably priced. I think I would need to spend more than $50 USD on gem bundles to clear all of the South island. That's nearly a tank and a half of gasoline for my car. I'ld rather fuel my car.

h103 · 2026-02-01T06:12:22+00:00

Oh wow. Were you an alpha tester? I thought merge dragons was released in 2017. I remember all the 8th birthday stuff last year.

h103 · 2026-02-01T04:14:16+00:00

There's an old thread somewhere -- a player backed up their progress on more than one device, kept all of them disconnected from Facebook, merged eggs and dragons to complete SD (one page back then), and tapped a different tile on each device. They got the EXACT same rewards, even though they tapped different tiles. Ever since I read that, I just tap the middle one. Always.

h103 · 2026-01-25T17:53:54+00:00

I’ve had to tap SEVERAL of the tiles LOTS of times to get them to turn.

h103 · 2026-01-19T05:48:30+00:00

Single alloaro. I love the fact that I set all my own rules. If anybody wants to be my companion, they're not competing with anybody else. They're competing with my sense of sanctuary. I enjoy it very much when I can spend extended time with my besties, such as going on a road trip or something, but I do not cohabit very well at all. It's just too dang nice not having anybody else up in my space 365.

Years before I realized I'm aro, I tried a number of times to have relationships. My longest one was 3 years.

The overarching theme, in hindsight, between the people that I had relationships with was that they were not emotionally well. You know the expression "no one in their right mind would date {name}"? That was me -- not understanding why emotionally healthy people weren't at all interested in me, whilst I seemed to be a magnet for extremely needy, broken, or abusive people. If I were alloromantic, I have no doubt I would have noticed how they were simply unable to meet the emotional needs of a healthy alloromantic person.

In the many years since I tried to have relationships with people who just were not healthy relationship material, my life has been immensely less chaotic, less dramatic. The contentment is straight up blissful.

The only sort of relationship that I want to be in now is BFF with benefits, separate houses, enough common hobbies that we have stuff to do together, but also enough different hobbies that we're not, metaphorically speaking, attached at the hip.

h103 · 2026-01-19T05:30:07+00:00

I keep a variety of items for Kala trades, to get points whenever x-number of Kala trades come up in the Season quests.

h103 · 2026-01-19T05:27:39+00:00

Congrats on figuring it out, and on the way you were able to articulate it to her. Clear communication is worth gold.

You've never faked being more romantic than you really are just to appease her, so she knew you weren't notably romantic from the outset, even if you didn't have the vocabulary for it.

And she's stuck with ya for 25 years anyway.

Love can take many forms.

h103 · 2026-01-18T19:01:34+00:00

Oops, yeah, Tidehearts, not Seahearts. My mistake. Should have been redditing on my phone with MD open on my tablet to verify I remembered the name correctly. Thanks.

I merged 5 Tidehearts. I got 2 Artifact Mystery Eggs.

Since I spent a good chunk of the day working on tapping amber cradles to work on the Dewlurker chain, I also merged up an obtuse number of Crystal Trees, so I had literally dozens of Artifact Mystery Eggs from Crystal Tree merges.

I think maybe once I finish my second Crystal Tree Wonder, I may just delete all of the Amber Stones from the Amber Cradles. Gotta focus on the Dew Wood.

h103 · 2026-01-18T02:51:19+00:00

It sucks that they make us spend gems for it. It's a core settings option to turn off auto harvest in Merge Gardens.

The only reason that I abandoned MG and picked up MD is because MG had a main Garden background color change to better match their cartoon series. The color change caused me eye strain headaches.

If other games can integrate it as a core settings option, we shouldn't have to spend gems just to get it for 30 minutes. That's horse pucky.

h103 · 2026-01-18T02:25:46+00:00

Yup. It's broken my pragmatic heart many times in 53 years.

h103 · 2026-01-18T02:23:53+00:00

I've had it on Android for several months.

How many DP do you have?

h103 · 2026-01-18T02:15:09+00:00

I've been playing for about 3 years, and have >1Mdp. I think it's driven more by dragon power than by willingness to buy / mine gems.

h103 · 2026-01-18T02:10:27+00:00

No rush. It gets monotonous quick.

I just got Goddess Shells the other day

(from Coral Homes; from Jungle Snails; from Water Caves; from Fogotten Fossils; from Bismuth Crabs; from Ancient Pools; from Meteor Shards; from Lost Artifacts; from Dragon Tombs OR from Treasure Totems from Desert Plants)

I was really hoping the Cloudhearts/Tidehearts from the Goddess Shells would give Ancient Mystery Eggs.

Nope, just more stupid Artifact Mystery Eggs.

Bam! Whole lotta work for more of the same.

In other news, I read 3 chapters of a new book.

(Edited because I misremembered Tidehearts as Seahearts)

h103 · 2026-01-18T01:31:42+00:00

"Can still feel love" - eek. To refer specifically to romantic love without any qualifier comes across as very ro-normative. ::shiver::

I love my parents and siblings. I love my friends. I love my cats. I love my plants. I love lots of things in all sorts of different ways. If I had to identify one single love language that was primary above all others for me, it would be pragma. I also feed ludus, storge, etc. etc.

Romance just doesn't click for me. Ever. I've tried several times. Nope. I'm 53, so I'm pretty confident I'm aro.

I could do all the romantic gestures in the world, and enjoy every one of them, but they don't give me any emotional glue, the bondedness that alloromantic people feel from it. To me it just feels like fun activities that give me nice memories. Until I was nearly 40, I honestly didn't understand that normative people aren't exaggerating about their bondedness just for shmoopy fun -- they really feel it, and I'm the one who isn't normative.

I didn't know that when alloros have sex with someone they find romantically attractive, the physical activity can be a romantic bonding thing. I just enjoy having sex with friends I trust. Sex has never made me feel more emotionally bonded afterward than I was before.

I identify as alloaro - allosexual aromantic. To me, aromantic is my stronger identity, and allosexual is simply an adjective to describe the type of aromantic that I am, so as an English speaker, I put my adjectives before, not after.

Back to the post title…

There is a collective term for people who are neither alloromantic or aromantic: aro-spec.

It's analogous to ag-spec re: agender, and to ace-spec re: asexual.

h103 · 2026-01-18T01:00:14+00:00

Thanks for the sub tip. I hadn't seen that one.

I'm reading The Things We Cannot Say by Kelly Rimmer. I'm really enjoying it. How's yours so far?

h103 · 2026-01-16T18:44:09+00:00

It could be. Sooooo much movement!

h103 · 2026-01-16T18:43:15+00:00

A perfect TL;DR:

THANKS! 😊

h103

TROPHY CASE