Potash but no pot ash?

[LordOfDegeneracy]

I just find it funny that the only way to get Potash(ium) is the (semi) industrialized way, and more-so odd that the traditional method of burning wood and leaching the ash and then boiling off the water is not an option. 

It could easily be locked behind copper by way of requiring barrels to leach the ash. Alternatively, ash could just be used in place of the ground sylvite in the current recipe, but then it could be done with just clay.

As for the ash, I could see it being gained by intentionally leaving open a charcoal pit and then collecting the resulting piles of ash instead of charcoal.

 

Any of these ways the yield would be small, requiring something like:

10 ash : 1L of water —> 1 potash 

(roughly the 10% by weight that wood ash is)

 

Thoughts?

[Bruno Willis]

30 minutes ago, LordOfDegeneracy said:

Thoughts?

Yes, absolutely. I'd love to see wood ash and its historical uses used in V.S.

I'm pretty sure you can make lye with wood ash, and use that instead of lime water to cure skins (so in real life you'd just burn some wood instead of hunting for a lime region).

[Emeal]

Wood Ash is a useful byproduct of doing everything related to Fire and Wood.

A Fireplace would have the Ash and you have to get it out with a small shovel.
You store it in a Bucket with a lid or it will fly away if you carry it in a Bucket with no lid when its windy.

Some Ash would also be there when you do a Charcoal burn, left at the bottom of the stack.
Potash is great for Plants, but you cant just put it on farmland if its Windy, do it while its raining.

[LadyWYT]

https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/25902

This mod adds wood ash and some uses for such, though I don't know that it can be used to make potash, exactly.

On 4/15/2026 at 5:53 PM, LordOfDegeneracy said:

Thoughts?

I think it's the kind of mechanic we might see when herbalism is introduced, since such a system could have some basic chemistry applications outside of just crafting medicines and poisons.

[Tabbot95]

On 4/15/2026 at 7:54 PM, Emeal said:

Wood Ash is a useful byproduct of doing everything related to Fire and Wood.

A Fireplace would have the Ash and you have to get it out with a small shovel.
You store it in a Bucket with a lid or it will fly away if you carry it in a Bucket with no lid when its windy.

Some Ash would also be there when you do a Charcoal burn, left at the bottom of the stack.
Potash is great for Plants, but you cant just put it on farmland if its Windy, do it while its raining.

thoughts for possible upgrades to include:

AndIrons, and grates, eventually culminating in more "contained" woodstoves with dedicated ash-catchers/doors.

see my post here:

https://www.vintagestory.at/forums/topic/20404-upgrade-for-firepit/?&_rid=680115#findComment-107814

would mean more crap to decorate your house and to concern one's progression in game, though not "purely decorative" in that these would ideally have some actual benefits even if it's "limiting fire spread" or "limiting ash piling up and extinguishing the fire", with other mechanisms for more "heat/fuel-consumption-rate control, in a very primitive form" 

Edited April 17 by Tabbot95