Boil sea water for salt?

[DUCATISLO]

From a mod https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/32528

Why can't we have this in vanilla, tho? for a start this can work well we just boil some seawater for a small amount of salt and maybe in the future we get full on salt plantations we can make.

[Tabbot95]

i'd go further; you shouldn't even need to boil it in summer, you just have to have brine pools where salt accumulates with the tides;

[DUCATISLO]

18 minutes ago, Tabbot95 said:

i'd go further; you shouldn't even need to boil it in summer, you just have to have brine pools where salt accumulates with the tides;

or just leave it in buckets and let the sea water evapurate lol 

[Tabbot95]

22 minutes ago, DUCATISLO said:

or just leave it in buckets and let the sea water evapurate lol 

maybe 4-8 times or something idk/idc think it would be an interesting way to have a "farm" consisting of just open topped barrels.

[Rexvladimir]

My wife said the same thing and I totally agree. +1

[Thorfinn]

At a guess, probably because it makes the game way too easy. You should try one of the various salt mods. You need, what, 6 batches of this mod to cure an entire barrel of meat? Which lasts next to forever?

[EDIT]

Or maybe all you need to do is tweak the recipe to require some realistic amount of salt. There is absolutely no way that 20 liters of sea water has enough salt to cure an entire barrel full of meat.

Edited October 20, 2025 by Thorfinn

[MKMoose]

An alternative way to obtain salt would be nice. I would imagine, though, that if sea salt is ever added to the game, it would be a more lengthy and involved process than just boiling seawater in a pot. That's just the balancing approach in Vintage Story, from what I've seen - it can't be too easy to obtain in large amounts, so that food preservation isn't trivialized early into the progression and seeking out salt deposits retains most of its attractiveness. Perhaps something like this, after a relatively quick search:

• salt very slowly deposits in shallow depressions very close to coastline in areas with low rainfall and decently high temperature,
• scrape the accumulated salt to obtain wet salt cake,
• wash the cake clean to obtain concentrated salt brine (pretty much the same mechanic as panning),
• pour the brine onto shallow ceramic evaporation pans (pans made from lead or iron could contain more brine and increase evaporation speed),
• put the pans over a fire to evaporate (could be done on a firepit, would take a fairly long time),
• finally, scrape a small amount of salt out of the pans (I'm not sure about exact conversion ratios).

The above process has the advantage of being easy to build from existing mechanics despite being fairly complex.

More advanced saltworks could be added as well, but it would be a larger and more challenging to implement feature, and the level of complexity may be a bit excessive even for Vintage Story unless significant simplifications from the real process are made.

I mean, they could reuse barrel mechanics and have the player use a single pond for evaporation, but I'm not sure if that's particularly exciting compared to the real setup which takes in seawater with the tide into a large pond, and then requires small gates to be opened to move the brine into a series of similar ponds at appropriate times over days or even weeks until salt crystallizes in the last one and can be raked. Starting with a simpler setup, easier to implement or mod in, would allow to gauge the balance and community sentiment before putting a lot of time and effort into the big thing.

Edited October 20, 2025 by MKMoose

[hstone32]

This to me, is a tricky question. On one hand, salt is really easy to obtain in real life. People have been boiling seawater for millenia. Geolithic salt sources like halite or gypsum are treated more like a luxury rather than salt's only source.

but at the same time, so much of VSs gameplay is designed around long sparce bumps in progression that must be patiently worked for. Salt in VS seems to be designed around this idea as well: it is the gate behind which meat preservation, pickling, and cheese is locked. It generates rarely, but in such large volumes that players ar unlikely to ever need to search for more once one source is found.

I worry that making salt as immediately and indefinitely accassible as it is in real life would make obtaining it less rewarding, as well as give players somewhat less of a reason to brave the depths to find it.

maybe a compromise could be considered.  instead of only being found underground, maybe there could be rare salt-water lakes where big salt boulders can be found on the shores, just like the dead sea and the great salt lake. Appropriate, considering rivers will be added soon.

[Bumber]

38 minutes ago, hstone32 said:

but at the same time, so much of VSs gameplay is designed around long sparce bumps in progression that must be patiently worked for. Salt in VS seems to be designed around this idea as well: it is the gate behind which meat preservation, pickling, and cheese is locked. It generates rarely, but in such large volumes that players ar unlikely to ever need to search for more once one source is found.

If you aren't situated near a halite deposit, you're stuck getting it from a commodities trader. At that point, you've got access to a slow trickle of salt, but have to ask yourself if it's worth even using it.

Cheese involves a slow, convoluted process that ultimately reduces the nutritional value of the milk. You can just keep a pregnant ewe around and drink it fresh. It doesn't matter if it rots, because you'll always keep getting more. (Timing it so you have a lactating ewe at all times is easier said than done, however.) But then you remember that agricultural traders will just sell you waxed cheddar, already made.

Salted meat is even less desirable. Meat gets a nutritional buff from instead being preserved as a stew. You can seal crocks with all the fat you'll be getting from butchering (or with wax, a byproduct of non-perishable honey). Meat can be stored indefinitely in the form of butcherable livestock, as they can't starve to death. I'm reasonably certain you can leave crops fully grown in the same way?

To cut it short, salt is actually for players basing in hot climates, where the salt will be nearby and the perish rate is always high. It's not really progression, but a necessity where it's found.

Edited October 20, 2025 by Bumber

[Teh Pizza Lady]

For what it's worth, if you're interested in mods, there are several that add salt from sea water as a mechanic, either by sealing it in barrels, or by boiling it in a pot. I think Primitive Survival is one of them. It adds a LOT of early game stuff that I wish was in the base game and it's one of my go-to mods for improving early game play. If all of the features of the mod don't appeal to you, never fear, they allow you to turn some of it off in the config file.

[Facethief]

If this feature was added, I’d balance it by making it take a long time in a cooking pot, so it takes a lot of fuel and time to get a bit of salt; it does, after all, take a lot of energy to boil a whole pot of water away. Aside from fuel costs, maybe the different sources of salt could be balanced by having oceans as pretty rare (which they are currently, at least on default settings).

I will note that a cooking pot shouldn’t get dirty/residued from boiling salt water. Or maybe they should; that’s a lot of salt, and there’s some nasty stuff in seawater.

[Thorfinn]

The game's ratios are just a little weird. 1m^3 of halite yields only 2 salt, which is only enough salt to cure 1 meat. Sea water is about 3.5% salt, IIRC, so you should need to boil about 28 m^3 to get the same 2 salt. Not the miniscule 10l (~0.01 m^3) this mod uses. Assuming I didn't blow a decimal point somewhere, it would take over 500 50l barrels to have the same amount of salt as a single block of halite.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 10/24/2025 at 11:41 AM, Thorfinn said:

The game's ratios are just a little weird. 1m^3 of halite yields only 2 salt, which is only enough salt to cure 1 meat. Sea water is about 3.5% salt, IIRC, so you should need to boil about 28 m^3 to get the same 2 salt. Not the miniscule 10l (~0.01 m^3) this mod uses. Assuming I didn't blow a decimal point somewhere, it would take over 500 50l barrels to have the same amount of salt as a single block of halite.

yeah the Halite really should drop more than 2 salt and the salt domes should be more rare.

[Mac Mcleod]

On 10/20/2025 at 12:24 PM, Thorfinn said:

At a guess, probably because it makes the game way too easy. You should try one of the various salt mods. You need, what, 6 batches of this mod to cure an entire barrel of meat? Which lasts next to forever?

[EDIT]

Or maybe all you need to do is tweak the recipe to require some realistic amount of salt. There is absolutely no way that 20 liters of sea water has enough salt to cure an entire barrel full of meat.

I don't think it's the devs role to just try to make things hard.    Much of the appeal of VS comes from the simulation/realism aspects.

For sea water...

1. Volume: 10 liters (~2.6gallons)

2. Density of seawater: ~1.025 kg per liter
   10 L × 1.025 kg/L = 10.25 kg seawater

3. Salt fraction: ~3.5% by mass
   10.25 kg × 0.035 = 0.35875 kg salt  (359 grams / 0.8 pounds / 12.5 ounces).

The Process...

 

Step-by-step

1. Filter the seawater
• Pour it through a fine mesh, coffee filter, or clean cloth
This removes sand, shell bits, seaweed, and obvious debris.

2. Optional: Let it settle overnight
• Cloudiness sinks to the bottom
• Carefully pour off the clear top layer
This reduces micro-sediment.

3. Boil the water
• Bring it to a rolling boil for several minutes
• This kills microorganisms and drives off volatile organics
• Keep boiling until the volume reduces a lot (saves time during drying)

4. Evaporate the rest
You have two good options:

A) Stovetop or oven
Spread the concentrated brine in a stainless or glass pan.
Low heat (around 200°F / 93°C) until dry crystals form.

B) Sun evaporation (traditional but slower)
Cover the pan with fine mesh to keep insects out.
Let sun + wind do the work.

5. Rinse the crystals lightly (optional)
A very quick rinse with clean water can wash away bitter magnesium salts.
Do not fully dissolve them, just splash and drain.
(Chefs do this for a milder flavor.)

6. Final drying
Return the crystals to heat until crisp and fully dry.
Moist salt molds.

 

[Thorfinn]

9 minutes ago, Mac Mcleod said:

I don't think it's the devs role to just try to make things hard.    Much of the appeal of VS comes from the simulation/realism aspects.

For sea water...

Now repeat the calculations for halite. SG probably over 2, so a m^3 is more than a couple metric tons. Which is enough to cure one meat. Or at least that's how they decided it should be balanced. The point is not one of easy/hard, but rather that it is consistent.

Edited October 27, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Mac Mcleod]

21 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Now repeat the calculations for halite. SG probably over 2, so a m^3 is more than a couple metric tons. Which is enough to cure one meat. Or at least that's how they decided it should be balanced. The point is not one of easy/hard, but rather that it is consistent.

I was reacting to your statement that "it makes the game way too easy."

And what you said, "that's how they decided it should be balanced. " applies to the idea of using sea water to get salt just as well.

It takes 132 pounds , 60kg to cure the meat from 4 full grown cattle size animals.  

Your estimate for the amount of salt is correct.  A cubic meter of salt has 4700 pounds of salt. (2,170 kg).  It *is* an area that breaks suspension of disbelief.   The game *fails* to be a simulation in the fact that just like minecraft, your character is often walking around with over 100 tons of material if you think about it too hard.

They could balance sea water salt just as well.   This is really more of a question of their bandwidth and the interests of their programmers.

 

[Echo Weaver]

I appreciate both satisfying progression and immersive simulation, and it annoys me when these things don't line up. I agree with @Thorfinn that the current salt output from halite is a bit nuts from a realism point of view. Also, since the challenge is FINDING the halite, having individual stones output a more reasonable amount of salt doesn't affect progression much.

I could imagine a mechanic around evaporating salt water if the quantities were realistic (as in you have to evaporate a huge quantity of salt water). It could end up being sort of like panning vs prospecting -- panning is slow, but it's safe and delivers resources. Prospecting is more active, and when you find ore it delivers a lot more resources.

 

[Thorfinn]

Exactly. VS is not a simulation, it's a game. Trying to get too much verisimilitude in the name of "immersion" does not work. Same way a full grown moose has only a dozen times more meat than a rabbit. If they balanced it more towards realistic salt extraction from sea water, no one would ever bother with looking for salt, other than maybe for the sylvite. To use @Echo Weaver's example, imagine panning gave you 1-4 nuggets every time. What would be the point of mining, or even looking for surface ore?

[Echo Weaver]

31 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Exactly. VS is not a simulation, it's a game. Trying to get too much verisimilitude in the name of "immersion" does not work. Same way a full grown moose has only a dozen times more meat than a rabbit. If they balanced it more towards realistic salt extraction from sea water, no one would ever bother with looking for salt, other than maybe for the sylvite. To use @Echo Weaver's example, imagine panning gave you 1-4 nuggets every time. What would be the point of mining, or even looking for surface ore?

I don't recall saying anything about salt extraction being easy. I was saying the opposite. Panning exists, yet it doesn't doesn't give you 1-4 nuggets every time. Salt extraction from water, if it exists in the game, should be cumbersome and slow. Like panning, it can be an inferior option when the primary method is not yielding anything.

We should keep in mind that, though salt has been extracted from salt water since time immemorial, salt was NOT, historically, an abundant resource. However we acquire it, it should not be easy. I think that labor-intensive tedium can be a decent tradeoff for hard prospecting for folks who lean that way. 

It's not a high priority for me, but I appreciate the argument that locking salt behind halite feels pretty artificial. 

(ETA: I like to do a spot of panning as a relaxing activity in my base, and I've reached the conclusion that it's way too easy to get copper this way. This underscores how different my expectations of the game are, I guess, since new players complaining about how hard it is to get copper from panning is a forum mainstay. I'm messing around with a panning mod that better distinguishes bony soil drops from sand/gravel drops and nerfs copper drops in favor of infrequent drops of actually hard-to-find resources like sulfur and halite.) 

Edited October 28, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[Rendrassa]

As someone who doesn't like cave diving and does love panning, I'd rather have the tedious, grindy option of sea water boiling. I'm always grateful to VS modability.

[MKMoose]

On 10/28/2025 at 9:52 PM, Echo Weaver said:

Salt extraction from water, if it exists in the game, should be cumbersome and slow.

I would like to mention the different design factors for salt extraction, which would allow multiple salt extraction methods to exist simultaneously in balance.

To give some context to it, the methods for sea salt that I would consider are:

1. Simple seawater boiling. May need a secondary step (seawater -> brine -> salt). Would require the most fuel, with about 10 l of seawater required for each 1-3 l of brine, which then converts at some rate into salt (realistically it's about 300 g per 1 kg of brine or a bit more, but the game's ratios are not realistic). The first step of concentrating seawater into brine may dirty the pots with other salts and sediments.

2. Obtaining brine from crystallizations in shallow depressions near the coastline, or alternatively, from salt lakes or brine springs, but that would be rare. This fully or partially skips the initial boiling of seawater to concentrate salts, but is extremely slow as it typically requires to wait for natural salt crystallization near oceans in dry regions. Those crystallizations are scraped to obtain wet salt cake, which is washed to obtain brine.

3. Proper salterns with multiple large ponds. The most sophisticated and difficult to set up process, but allows to obtain relatively large quantities of salt purely through evaporation over several weeks. The ponds would probably be made with clay and could be actually really large, like upwards of 100 blocks each, though probably with some upper limit. In the first pond sediments are separated, in the second one I think calcium salts separate, and in the third pond clean sodium chloride crystallizes and can be raked. Evaporation requires dry and warm climates with low rainfall. May be tough to implement without significant simplifications from the real process.

 

It may be useful to add shallow evaporation pans to the game, allowing to boil seawater more efficiently than in a pot.

All of these methods could benefit from simulation of salt concentration, but that's not easy to implement and far from necessary for gameplay purposes.

 

With that, the balancing factors are:

1. Time. Both boiling and evaporation are long processes, in the case of boiling also generally requiring regular refueling, meaning the player would have to stay nearby throughout the process.

2. Fuel. People often overlook this, where in reality it's perhaps the most important factor why sea salt is rarely extracted in colder climates despite seawater obviously having about the same amount salt concentration. Boiling away 1 t of water (yielding 35 kg of salt directly from seawater or something like 300 kg from brine) apparently takes about 6 t of dry firewood, last I looked it up. Obtaining salt through boiling seawater would therefore not be a free process - it would effectively be a fuel to salt conversion.

3. Startup and scaling cost. Efficient methods of obtaining sea salt require larger setups and a lot of preparation to get significant returns.

4. Climate requirements. The best methods of obtaining sea salt only work in hot and dry areas with a period of very low rainfall. And let's not forget you actually need seawater, which may be very far away depending on where the player decides to settle.

Relative to halite, which once found is nearly free until exhausted but may take a while to locate, these factors offer plenty flexibility to balance different salt sources between each other.

[Echo Weaver]

2 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I would like to mention the different design factors for salt extraction, which would allow multiple salt extraction methods to exist simultaneously in balance.

This does sound like just the kind of system that VS excels at. You made me excited to play it.

There are several salt-from-saltwater mods, but I don't know how much they simulate this mechanic. I'm thinking of Fields of Salt on particular. I've never played with any of them, though.

[SpookyJ]

On 10/19/2025 at 6:44 PM, Tabbot95 said:

i'd go further; you shouldn't even need to boil it in summer, you just have to have brine pools where salt accumulates with the tides;

Im all for natural brine pools since it would let you pickle veggies early, but I think being able to boil brine or seawater for salt would make finding halite pillars far less exciting.

If you can get infinite salt from seawater, no matter how little or inefficient, no matter how complex the process, would be way more convenient than searching for halite and would ultimately make halite pillars feel less special. There is already an alternative to finding salt pillars in the form of traders selling salt and that is far more balanced since it costs money and isn't always available.

[Tabbot95]

On 11/11/2025 at 8:35 PM, SpookyJ said:

Im all for natural brine pools since it would let you pickle veggies early, but I think being able to boil brine or seawater for salt would make finding halite pillars far less exciting.

If you can get infinite salt from seawater, no matter how little or inefficient, no matter how complex the process, would be way more convenient than searching for halite and would ultimately make halite pillars feel less special. There is already an alternative to finding salt pillars in the form of traders selling salt and that is far more balanced since it costs money and isn't always available.

idk I don't always spawn anywhere near the ocean; typically I'm pretty far inland; 

as a side effect; either by thirst or by way of requirements for freshwater there could be some kind of tradeoff;

[Vexxvididu]

I just want to say I've found this discussion interesting.  I'm also torn between making salt difficult to get from a gameplay perspective versus the realism that yes you can boil sea water, lol.

I agree that gameplay is more important than realism. It's also worth mentioning that salt is very abundant in the real world (which is why it's super cheap in most grocery stores) but there have absolutely been times and places where it was valuable and expensive because it wasn't locally available.

I think I lean towards the idea that it should be possible to boil sea water for salt, BUT it requires a lot of sea water to get a little bit of salt and totally boiling away liters of salt water is fuel intensive.