The Garden Guide

Welcome to the garden

A contemplative idle game inspired by Japanese ponds.

Koi Garden is an idle game: it keeps running while you're away. Your koi grow, breed, lay eggs and their carp ship out — even when the app is closed.

Your role is twofold:

• Active — feed the koi, trigger Frenzies, spend Yens on upgrades, manage research, catch kittens.
• Passive — let the pond produce, come back to collect, contemplate.

You can play in short or long sessions, depending on your mood. Progress is never lost.

The pond loop

A handful of gestures that chain on forever.

1. Feed — tap the pond to throw pellets. The koi rise to the surface: this is the Frenzy.
2. Raise — Internal Breeding continuously adds new koi, whether you tap or not.
3. Ship — mature carp leave through the shipping lanes, in bags, on their way to markets.
4. Earn — every delivery brings in Yens, which fund the upgrades.
5. Switch variety — when the Pond Value reaches a threshold, a new koi variety unlocks. You can then evolve your stock: the new variety becomes active and the value of every shipped carp increases — often by several orders of magnitude.

This loop repeats at several time scales: seconds (the Frenzy), minutes (growth), hours (variety switch).

The progression engine: switching variety is what takes a carp's value from a few Yens to billions. It's the single most structuring event of your run — each variety opens a new economic tier.

The 3-stage pipeline

Pond → Spawning → Shipping. Everything rests on balancing the three.

The production formula is simple:

Carp/sec = Population × Spawn rate × Research multipliers

And the golden rule: if shipping capacity is lower than carp production, carp pile up without leaving. That's a bottleneck (see dedicated section).

Shipping bags

11 bags, 17 lanes — the pipeline's exit.

Carp leave the pond through the shipping lanes. Each lane fits a bag, and each bag has a capacity (carp/min). You start with 4 lanes; you can unlock up to 17 through Pond Research.

The 11 bags

Economy & currencies

Four currencies, each with its purpose.

What to spend, and when?

• Yens — always. are useless in the bank; invest as much as you can.
• Pearls — first, Permanent Research (Sacred Food, Ascension Bonus, Prophecy Bonus), then boosts.
• Scales — applied automatically through the Dragon Bonus, nothing to spend.
• Prophecy Pearls — never spent. They accumulate and boost passively.

Reading big numbers

K, M, B, T, q, Q, s, S, o, N… the suffix code.

Like every idle game, Koi Garden handles absurdly large numbers. The game uses a suffix notation where each letter represents three more zeros. Lowercase and uppercase suffixes are distinct — watch out.

Orders of magnitude

To compare two very distant numbers, we talk about orders of magnitude — i.e. powers of 10. "3 orders = ×1,000", "6 orders = ×1,000,000". This is the reference unit when comparing two Dragon Bonuses or two earnings curves.

Pond Research

13 levels, 56 items, 2,330 ranks to unlock — funded with Yens.

Pond Research is the temporary tree: everything is reset on each variety switch. Higher levels unlock based on the total number of researches performed (all items combined).

The researches that change everything

• Clear Water (Level 1) — +500% spawn rate at max.
• Enriched Pellets (Level 1) — +1,000% carp value at max.
• Bigger Carp (Level 2) — ×2 instant value (1 rank only, prioritize).
• Premium Certification (Level 4) — ×3 instant value.
• Mizuhiki Knot (Level 3) and Tengu's Breath (Level 5) — unlock shipping lanes 5 to 8.
• Improved Genetics (Level 5) — +450% on both spawn rate AND value (the double dip).

Permanent Research

22 items funded with Pearls. Acquired forever.

Unlike Pond Research, Permanent Research never resets. It's funded with Pearls and represents the long-term investment.

The most powerful researches

1. Sacred Food — 140 levels, +1% Dragon Bonus per Scale at every level (up to +150% per Scale).
2. Prophecy Bonus — 5 levels, +1% per Prophecy Pearl (compounded effect).
3. Dragon Ascension Bonus — 20 levels, +10% Scales earned at every dragon ascension (up to +200%).

Researches worth aiming for early

• Epic Hatchery / Epic Breeding — speed up internal breeding (×2 at max).
• Frugal Contractors / Art of Knotting / Improved Lab — −50% on ponds, bags and research.
• Sensitive Frenzy / Amplified Frenzy — boost the active Frenzy.
• Comfortable Ponds — +5% spawn rate per level (up to +100%).
• Reserve Capacity — +6 min per reserve (×3 the offline time at max).
• Nocturnal Instinct — +200% offline internal breeding.

The Frenzy

The active bonus. The difference between 1× and 500×.

When you tap the pond to throw pellets, the koi present rise to the surface. Each koi visibly drawn to the food gives a multiplier bonus on the shipped carp value. That's the Frenzy.

The simplified formula:

Bonus = min(visible_koi × 0.001 × SensitiveFrenzy, cap)
cap   = 4 × (1 + 2.0 × AmplifiedFrenzy_level)

What to remember

• The Frenzy multiplies shipping earnings, not the spawn rate.
• The more koi in motion you have, the higher the bonus climbs. Tip: don't fully fill the ponds — koi move more when there's room left.
• The Frenzy is zero offline. That's what creates the gap between active and idle (typically 100× to 500×).
• The Auto Feeders (boosts) throw food automatically and keep the Frenzy going without tapping.

Boosts & multipliers

Five families, to combine with judgment.

Spawning Prisms

Multiply internal breeding. From the Spawning Prism ×10 (50 Pearls, 10 min) to the Supreme Prism ×1,000 (30,000 Pearls, 1 h).

Boost Lighthouses

Multiply other active boosts running at the same time. The Legendary Lighthouse ×50 (50,000 Pearls, 10 min) is used to amplify a complete setup.

Food

Multiply carp earnings. The Best Food ×50 (2,500 Pearls, 10 min) is a combo classic.

Scale Lighthouses

Multiply Scales earned at dragon ascension. The Legendary Scale Lighthouse ×500 (10,000 Pearls, 10 min) is essential for any optimized run.

Auto Feeders

• Auto Feeder — 10 Pearls, 10 min: food thrown every 3 s.
• Premium Feeder — 1,000 Pearls, 10 min: Frenzy maxed instantly, no food consumption.

Bottlenecks

Spotting where it jams and unblocking production.

A bottleneck happens when one stage of the pipeline is slower than the one before it. The surplus piles up without earning. Knowing where it jams is the skill of a good idle player.

Bottleneck #1 — Pond capacity

Symptom: ponds are full, internal breeding doesn't generate any more koi.
Solution: upgrade a pond (T+1), buy Pond Renovation or Microlux Suites in research.

Bottleneck #2 — Shipping capacity

Symptom: the "carp pending" gauge is red, koi spawn faster than the lanes can ship.
Solution: upgrade the bags on the slowest lanes, unlock an extra shipping lane through research, unlock Flexible Cord or Carriers' Discipline.

Bottleneck #3 — Yens in the bank

Symptom: tons of piling up but nothing to buy at this level.
Solution: upgrade the pond tier, or wait for the next variety to multiply carp value tenfold.

Bottleneck #4 — Food reserves

Symptom: reserves drain during your absence and everything stops.
Solution: build an extra reserve, max out the Reserve Capacity permanent research.

Bottleneck #5 — Internal breeding

Symptom: the pond fills up too slowly after a variety switch.
Solution: Internal Breeding, Improved Breeding, AI Hatcheries, Neural Link researches; activate a Spawning Prism.

Offline mode

The game keeps going. But how, exactly?

When you close the app, the game does not simulate in real time. It computes retroactively, on your return, what happened during your absence — using a known formula:

Offline earnings = Online rate × Reserve quality × Absence duration

What runs offline

• Internal breeding (with the Nocturnal Instinct ×3 bonus)
• Carp spawning
• Shipping
• Boost timers (yes, they burn anyway)

What does NOT run offline

• Frenzy — at zero, that's the whole active/idle gap.
• Kittens — only spawn while the game is open.

Food reserves

Reserves are your absence reservoir. Each reserve built adds time during which the pond keeps producing while you're away. When they're empty, everything stops. The Reserve Capacity permanent research extends each reserve's duration up to 3 times.

Coming back to the garden

On your return, a modal shows the earnings accumulated during your absence and offers to refill the reserves with one tap.

Garden life

Kittens, challenges, contracts, calendar — the living part of the game.

Kittens

Kitten sprites appear randomly (~150/h). A roughly 10-second window to tap them before they vanish. 70% give Yens (as a % of Pond Value), 30% give Pearls. ~7.8% are Elite (rewards ×4 to ×16). No offline spawn.

Random gifts

Every 3 to 8 minutes, a gift appears in the pond. Loot: Yens (% of Pond Value), Pearls, or a rare boost.

Challenges

60 linear challenges: hatch X koi, earn Y /sec, catch Z kittens… They never reset. Rewards: Yens (early), Pearls (mid), Dragon Scales (late).

Keeper's Calendar

A 28-day cycle with progressive rewards. No skipping: you pick up where you left off. One Prophecy Pearl per month for the first months; beyond that, Pearls come in big bundles.

Trophies

5 population tiers × 19 varieties — the main source of Prophecy Pearls.

Each koi variety has its own trophies. They unlock by reaching a population threshold on the active variety — independently of challenges. They're one of the main sources of Pearls and Prophecy Pearls in the game.

The 5 tiers

The thresholds are the same for every variety; what changes is the difficulty of reaching them depending on the active variety's value.

Rewards — Varieties 1 to 18

Tier	Pearls	Prophecy Pearls
Bronze	1,000	—
Silver	2,500	—
Gold	5,000	+1 PP
Platinum	10,000	+2 PP
Diamond	variable (depends on variety)	1 to 5 PP

The Diamond trophies of the earliest varieties (Kohaku → Tancho) are the most generous in Prophecy Pearls (up to 5 PP for Kohaku Diamond). The following varieties give 1 PP per Diamond + lots of Pearls.

Koi of Illumination (variety 19)

The final variety has its own scale, paid exclusively in Prophecy Pearls:

Trophy total: 103 Prophecy Pearls spread across 95 trophies — the overwhelming majority of PP you'll earn across the whole game.

Where to find your trophies

Trophies are available from the start of the game — just reach the population threshold on the active variety. No challenge is required to unlock them.

The Trophies screen opens from the Challenges overlay via the "Trophies (X/95)" button, accessible at any time. Once all 60 challenges are done, the button changes appearance (solid gold) — this is purely cosmetic and doesn't change access to the trophies themselves.

Glossary

The garden's vocabulary, in alphabetical order.

• Active variety — the koi variety whose value is used for production. One at a time.
• Bag — shipping container. 11 bag tiers, each with its own capacity in carp/min.
• Bottleneck — pipeline stage that limits overall production.
• Cap — ceiling. For ponds, the max population; for the Frenzy, the max multiplier.
• Carp — the unit counted at the pond's exit, in the shipping bags (carp/min).
• Compound — bonus that multiplies on itself (PP × PP × PP…).
• DB — Dragon Bonus (shown as " Dragon Scale Bonus" in game). Global multiplier applied to all earnings.
• Dragon Ascension — progression step that converts your wealth into permanent Scales to start a new, more powerful cycle.
• Dragon Scales — permanent reward earned at dragon ascension. Increases the Dragon Bonus.
• Frenzy — active bonus on carp value, triggered by feeding.
• Internal Breeding — rate at which new koi appear in each pond (koi/min/pond), produced continuously, app open or closed.
• Order of magnitude — measure of powers of 10. "3 orders = 1,000", "6 orders = 1 M". Used to compare very distant Dragon Bonuses.
• Permanent Research — research tree funded with Pearls, never resets.
• Pipeline — the Pond → Spawning → Shipping chain.
• Pond Value — score that unlocks varieties.
• Prophecy Pearl — very rare currency with a compounded bonus: each Prophecy Pearl grows the effect of all the others.
• Reserve — food silo that determines how long an absence is sustainable.
• Shipping lane — slot to place a bag. Starts at 4, up to 17.
• Yens — Soft currency.
• Pearls — Premium currency.
• Dragon Scales — Permanent reward earned at dragon ascension.
• Prophecy Pearls — Very rare currency with a compounded bonus.