How to differentiate salt water from fresh water?

[Meuhey]

Is water from game world with 100% land all fresh water ? 

[Thorfinn]

Probably. Does it matter? So long as you choose a water source that is above nearby water source, why waste time testing it? Big honkin' ocean looking thing, assume it is and get on with life.Small lake higher than another water source? Assume it's fresh. Works every time I've tried it.

[Streetwind]

6 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Works every time I've tried it.

Not on my end. I've had a giant bay eight chunks across that was all freshwater despite leading into an actual ocean.

The way oceans are generated is: first the game world generates a 100% land world, and then an algorithm runs that, depending on your landcover and scale percentages, selects certain areas and sort of inverts them, meaning they go down instead of up. These elevation-dropped areas become oceans.

Due to this process, you can end up with a large body of water that generated as a lake seamlessly border a large body of water that was designated an ocean. You won't be able to tell where the freshwater stops and the saltwater starts unless you use a liquid container like a bucket or bowl to scoop up some of it and check.

 

Edited September 13 by Streetwind

[Thorfinn]

Sorry. I wasn't clear. My only concern is to not end up with salt water on my crops, or to tan leather. So if I see a body of water, and then several Z lower, another body of water, so far I've never been wrong in assuming the higher one was fresh. Though to be fair, I've never bothered to check to see if salt water kills crops or has an effect on tanning.

Is there a vanilla use for salt water yet? 

[Jack Mackey]

I don't think there's a use for it unmodded. It definitely kills crops, though. Lost two full greenhouses because I didn't check what I made my pools out of.