Thoughts on chemistry

[cjameshuff]

• Sylvite is simply potassium chloride. It is unaffected by boiling, and is used as a no-sodium salt substitute, so it is a bit odd that it fouls cooking pots.
  • While sylvite is a form of potash (a catch-all term for soluble potassium salts), it historically refers to salts extracted by soaking ashes in a pot. This is a useful alkali for soap making in addition to fertilizer.
• Borax is a soft evaporite mineral, which makes it odd for it to require a higher tier pickaxe than limestone. This also gates leather behind bronze pickaxes if, but only if you're in an area without limestone, which seems...unlikely to be intentional?
• Black coal would realistically not work well for blasting powder. In reality, black powder uses charcoal, and works as well as it does largely due to the sulfur and saltpeter being incorporated into the pores of the charcoal.
• Lime water is made from quicklime/slaked lime, not lime (calcium carbonate), which is practically insoluble.
  • Limewater is also used in food preparation: nixtamalization of maize, for example.
  • Quicklime is rather inefficient to produce in a firepit, a bloomery recipe would be nice.
• Soil chemistry: lime (as in ground limestone) is often added to soil to raise the pH of acidic soil. Peat is often used to add organic material to soil, but tends to make the soil acidic. This could be a route for upgrading soil.
  • pH in general could be another dimension to soil fertility, with peat or sulfur lowering it and lime raising it, and different crops favoring specific ranges.
• The sulfuric acid recipe uses realistic ingredients, but you couldn't just cook them in a pot. Perhaps add a lead-lined version of the still to produce it from steam and burning sulfur/saltpetre.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

48 minutes ago, cjameshuff said:

Sylvite is simply potassium chloride. It is unaffected by boiling, and is used as a no-sodium salt substitute, so it is a bit odd that it fouls cooking pots.

this one is quite simple:

you have food recipes and non-food recipes. In order for a non-food recipe to be cooked, it must be done so in a dirty cookpot or else it will foul the cookpot and make it unusable. It's just part of how the game determines if you're cooking food or something else.

50 minutes ago, cjameshuff said:

This also gates leather behind bronze pickaxes if, but only if you're in an area without limestone, which seems...unlikely to be intentional?

correct, because the intended path to leather is finding limestone or chalk. Borax can be used as a substitute, but the reason it's gated behind bronze is because of how it's used as a flux between the two halves of an iron anvil to forge weld them together.

52 minutes ago, cjameshuff said:

Lime water is made from quicklime/slaked lime, not lime (calcium carbonate), which is practically insoluble.

• Limewater is also used in food preparation: nixtamalization of maize, for example.
• Quicklime is rather inefficient to produce in a firepit, a bloomery recipe would be nice.

 

I have opinions about this, too, but I believe the difference between the lime water and quicklime is that the quicklime is used for mortar preparation and the ground limestone is just to differentiate between the two. I do not understand why one is required over the other and honestly I might see if I can create a mod that fixes this if one does not already exist.

54 minutes ago, cjameshuff said:

The sulfuric acid recipe uses realistic ingredients, but you couldn't just cook them in a pot. Perhaps add a lead-lined version of the still to produce it from steam and burning sulfur/saltpetre.

Not sure if this is the best solution, but I get where you're coming from. The major problem I have with this is what to do with the lead-lined still once you're done...  Usually sturdy leather is kind of a one-time end-game process.

[cjameshuff]

26 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

correct, because the intended path to leather is finding limestone or chalk. Borax can be used as a substitute, but the reason it's gated behind bronze is because of how it's used as a flux between the two halves of an iron anvil to forge weld them together.

 That and building the coffin for a cementation furnace only use a minuscule amount of borax though, and both of these uses are inherently gated behind iron, so gating the borax behind bronze doesn't actually change anything but its application to tanning and its use as a white dye. And in my current world I have a lot more easily accessible borax than I do limestone. 

 

26 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Not sure if this is the best solution, but I get where you're coming from. The major problem I have with this is what to do with the lead-lined still once you're done...  Usually sturdy leather is kind of a one-time end-game process.

That's more an issue with lack of trades or other things to use it on, and applies to a bunch of much more elaborate things. How often do you really need to use a beehive kiln after getting the pottery you need?