Saltern — Salt Pond Harvest

About

Salt isn't mined here. It's farmed. Saltern is a dense incremental game about running a solar salt works, one pond at a time. Flood a dry bed with seawater and the sun starts taking the water back: the brine climbs through six visible colors — sea blue, jade, chartreuse, apricot, rose, white crust — as it concentrates. The salt mass never changes. What changes is what it's worth: skim a jade pond for quick cash, or hold your nerve to the crust and rake it for five times the price. The master move is the pump. Consolidate two half-evaporated ponds into one crystallizer, re-flood the freed bed, and suddenly you're not tending puddles — you're running a pipeline, feeders in front and crystallizers behind, exactly how real salterns have worked for two thousand years. • Nine ponds, six visible brine stages — your whole works readable in one glance • Harvest timing is the economy: jade skims ×0.5, apricot ×1.4, rose ×2.2, whole crust ×5 • Pump brine between ponds to build feeder/crystallizer pipelines and keep every bed busy • Shallow brine evaporates faster — deep beds hold more, thin layers finish sooner • The mistral: a dry wind that triples the sun while it blows • Squalls: a warned rain that thins every open brine — rake ahead of it, shed it with rain sheds and tarred canvas, then farm the hard sun that follows • The harbor posts standing orders — deliver salt at the asked stage or better for premium pay, and crust orders pay fleur mid-season • The still-house: every raked crust drains bittern liquor, and the stone still burns it through one draw at a time — Epsom for steady salt, Gypsum for cheaper works, Lye for a hotter sun • Fleur blooms: on a calm afternoon a rose pond films over with fleur de sel — skim it before it sinks, mid-season, without harvesting the pond • The Almanac: 30 lifetime marks of the works, each one a permanent perk once earned • Sign a season charter — Rose, Deep, or Wind — one build-around pick, good until Season's End • The morning tide: a daily gift whose streak pauses on a missed day, never resets • Ten works upgrades and eighteen permanent fleur improvements • Season's End: sell the works for fleur de sel — each petal makes every future harvest 10% dearer • A quiet synthesized shoreline — pads, wash, and wind chimes — that mixes with your own music • The sun keeps working while you're away (up to 14 h) • No account, no internet, nothing collected — the whole works lives on your phone The beds are dry and the tide is in. Open the gate.

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