Making salt out of sea water

[Signatus]

Hey everyone, I've been testing for a way to make salt out of sea water. Sea water has at least 3% salt, so anyone can boil it in a pot and get at least SOME salt. Perhaps it's not as high quality as the ones salt farmers create, but still, it's salt. This surely held true during the iron age.

So I researched a bit in order to make a simple addition that makes you capable of making salt yourself. You'll need to get the water from the sea, of course, and you'll need a pot that will become unusable for 5 days. This could help balancing it, though anyway you'll only get 0.2 lbs per full pot of water. Could be changed to {*pot} to free the pot for other use, and removing the [boil] tag. Unsure how that would work with the weighing. You should also be able to drink the water

Code: [Select]

// Salt-making

// Collecting sea-water simply requires being at a sea tile and having a container
// Weight set to 1, but batches allow various amounts to be made
// Being in the cookery menu makes it not stack properly, but it should be put in a container anyway
// It will appear at your feet
//
.Collect sea-water. "Hunting horn" [effort:0] [phys:hands] *COOKERY* [noquality] /1/ [patch:20]
{[TERRAIN:sea]} 'Be at sea'
{[NEARBY_TILE:water]} 'Be near water'
{Container}
[NAME:Sea-water]
[WEIGHT:1]
[WATER:100]

// Sea-water consists of about 3.5% salt, +/- 0.5%
// Water in the Baltic has much lower salinity than the average, though, so
// You can make exactly 0.06 lb of salt with 6 lbs of sea-water (1%)
//
// Process has to be tended and the water stirred, I set it at 8 minutes per batch (48 minutes per full pot)
// Drying the salt can take days or weeks, so I set it at 5 days for now
//
// A patch of 50 takes 6h40m (and 5 days) to prepare, uses up 50 lbs of sea-water and yields 0.5 lb of salt
//
// Sea-water is 1 lb to allow for smaller batches, but yielding same percentage of salt in the end
//
// Your pot will not be unusable while it prepares
//
.Boil seawater for salt. "Salt" [effort:0] *COOKERY* [noquality] /8/ \5d\ [patch:50]
{Sea-water} #1.0# [patchwise] [remove] 'As much sea-water as possible'
{*pot} '+for boiling the water'
{Board} '+for laying salt out to dry
[WEIGHT:0.01]
[NAME:Salt]
Probably not very lucrative, but at least you can get some of it!

Edit: was missing a [patchwise] tag

For further reference, a single pike takes 0.66 lbs of salt to salt (heh). That's roughly 20 lbs of sea water. Salting is going to be very hard for an inland character without trading or water "mining" expeditions. A coastal character, on the other hand, could somewhat easily make some, though.

UPDATE: changed yield to 1% and no longer boils the water

[JEB Davis]

Apparently, the sea around Finland has much lower salinity, which is why it is drinkable in the game.

[Signatus]

Oh wow, today I learned this! I guess in that case it should be lowered to about 1% yield, making very unlikely to be abused. I guess I'll change it to require a pot but not boil it. It'll use 1 lb of sea-water per patch to help ration it. 50 lbs (maximum patch) will only make 0.5 lbs of salt, but it'll take less time per batch. I'll update the post.

Yield is now 1% (I saw value from 0.4% to 1.8%, so seems appropriate) so you'll actually be getting less of it despite the faster batches

[Brygun]

This is a possible inclusion for the BAC, if Signatus will agree.

Id like to hear a bit of feedback on the work vs price/utility.

My own character Novrus is stuck in his quest to get a bag of salt.

Which also raises the question...

Is the player made salt something that be used to satisfy the "Salt from the coast" quest?

[Privateer]

Id like to hear a bit of feedback on the work vs price/utility.

My own character Novrus is stuck in his quest to get a bag of salt.
Which also raises the question...
Is the player made salt something that be used to satisfy the "Salt from the coast" quest?

Salt is intended to be a rare/expensive import. However as someone who has modded the dead.. more than once. I support most any thoughtful use of things that can be done in the game.

Sami Maaranen

 Mar 07, 2017 #7
To me both the price and salt being only imported good are quite good and reasonable and I don't see the changes coming anytime soon. Although, if we find historical reference to salt having been far less valued during the period then it's gotta be tweaked.

Baltic sea salinity doesn't really encourage to salt production and I think majority of the salt was brought in Finland from central europe, eg. Germany. And I have a hunch of reading that during iron-age salt was in turn imported to central europe all the way from Africa.

Salt is a luxurity mostly for coastal southern tribes, and not necessary (or affordable) at all for everyone.
- Sami, UnReal World creator, sami@unrealworld.fi

This could be a good day to utilize your squirrels hides.

Last opinion I remember from Sami on the topic.

[Signatus]

This is a possible inclusion for the BAC, if Signatus will agree.

Id like to hear a bit of feedback on the work vs price/utility.

My own character Novrus is stuck in his quest to get a bag of salt.

Which also raises the question...

Is the player made salt something that be used to satisfy the "Salt from the coast" quest?

I don't mind, this is also quite simple.

As for work vs. Utility/price, it takes time to boil and you'll need several days and pounds of water to make a few pounds of salt. It might be unbalanced, so some testing might be in order, but seems like using it as a trade commodity is way too laborious. Coastal characters should be able to at least get some, if only to occasionally salt some food. This requires at least a bit of preparation due to it drying for 5 days

The main limiting factor for inland characters is the sea-water gathering and then the time wasted boiling, which might not be adequate at the moment.

Since the final product inherits the salt item, it should work if you have enough of it to clear the quest. Is 1 lb enough? Do you need a full 20 lbs in a bag? Does the quest look for the trading of the salt?

Salt is intended to be a rare/expensive import. However as someone who has modded the dead.. more than once. I support most any thoughtful use of things that can be done in the game.

Sami Maaranen

 Mar 07, 2017 #7
To me both the price and salt being only imported good are quite good and reasonable and I don't see the changes coming anytime soon. Although, if we find historical reference to salt having been far less valued during the period then it's gotta be tweaked.

Baltic sea salinity doesn't really encourage to salt production and I think majority of the salt was brought in Finland from central europe, eg. Germany. And I have a hunch of reading that during iron-age salt was in turn imported to central europe all the way from Africa.

Salt is a luxurity mostly for coastal southern tribes, and not necessary (or affordable) at all for everyone.
- Sami, UnReal World creator, sami@unrealworld.fi

This could be a good day to utilize your squirrels hides.

Last opinion I remember from Sami on the topic.

I think it's definitely a luxury, and it seems that making the salt-making realistic only proves it: it takes too much effort for little gain. If you needed 500 lbs of leather, it would probably be easier to trade it around rather than collecting it yourself piece by piece, right? You can still hunt for 500 lbs of leather, it'll just take much more time and effort. Same here, especially considering you're playing a lone settler with no division of labour.

Large-scale salt-mining is not an option unless we mod in some kind of laborious process at the shore, which would yield more salt after some months maybe. Would it be worth it, relevant or realistic? I'm not sure

We could always make the test and ask someone in the Baltic nations to try and boil 6 lbs of sea water and measure the salt's weight and time taken

[Ara D.]

I feel that the advance adventures are more about making you move around and get out of our homestead and explore

[Brygun]

I feel that the advance adventures are more about making you move around and get out of our homestead and explore

Yep, there are. Tour de la Finland.

[Brygun]

"Mining" salt in the medieval times only occurred in very few places and AFAIK Finland wasn't one of them.

The other method of old school salt production is flat pools. You let in salt water then close it off (or hand carry it in). The sun will eventually boil the water off leaving a cake of salt. You can carry this though often getting some bit of dirt. Time frame on this process is huge. Raining screws it up too. So this method might not eve be valid for Finland. Which is probably true as it was rare. The dessert regions with little rainfall would be okay with the pool.

[Signatus]

At that point it's more like farming

It does seem absolutely impractical, even if we ignored the rain. Unless there is some other method that I'm missing:

WILD SPICES
Salt was made on Ice sea in the Middle-Ages. I suppose it was a luxury item in Iron-Age and people used herbs from nature to replace it or / and increase preservation.

http://www.katajahovi.org/en/ironage.html

But what does "made on ice sea" mean? Would it be possible to mine highly saline ice chunks? Lol

[Brygun]

At that point it's more like farming

It does seem absolutely impractical, even if we ignored the rain. Unless there is some other method that I'm missing:

WILD SPICES
Salt was made on Ice sea in the Middle-Ages. I suppose it was a luxury item in Iron-Age and people used herbs from nature to replace it or / and increase preservation.

http://www.katajahovi.org/en/ironage.html

But what does "made on ice sea" mean? Would it be possible to mine highly saline ice chunks? Lol

Well... artic circle glaciers becoming icebergs would have in their ice the salt % from there, whatever it is. I question whether the icebergs could do a 180 turn around the Danish Straits and flow to Finland. I suspect, though not certain, the Baltic sea tends to flow away from Finland toward the North Sea. I digress...

[Signatus]

For now I guess we'll have to make a salty iceberg plant that grows on the sea-shore with symbiosis with water. When we can mod creatures in, we'll just make it an aquatic creature roaming the sea