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[KingBacon]

Historically, salt played a crucial role as a luxury and trade good. I've been toying with the idea of making a mini mod of sorts. One where salt is produced and processed for export or can be used as a cooking ingredient. So I'm looking for some advice.

1: What would be a good valuation of salt for the medieval period or what would be a good valuation in DF? I was thinking either Mat value between 3 and 5 but I have been reading some historic resources that suggest that the relative value of salt might be higher.

2:  Or reactions, which workshop and skills would be most fitting for saltworking, mason or craftdwarf? And should the final product be bars or something stored in a barrel?

3: Is there any way to create a labor similar to fishing, such that dorfs gather salt only from the ocean/saltwater?

Thanks for the feedback, I'm going to go read some raws.


Link of an awesome 13th Century salt mine in Poland
http://stoneartblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/daniowicz-shaft-mikoaj-kopernik-chamber.html

[Haspen]

Mining for salt is an ancient practice, and 'boil sea water to get salt' isn't nothing new either.

There's already rock salt in game; it wouldn't be hard to:

A) Make 'rock salt powder plant' via plant template
B) Make said 'salt' plant unavailable (so it can be made only via reactions) and allow it to be milled into powder
C) Make reaction 'rock salt stone -> rock salt powder'. As a powder, it could be used as ingredient for cooking, iirc.

The salt price varied - it was of course cheaper at the coastal areas and in areas close to salt mines.

[Quietust]

There is already a hardcoded "salt" material in the game (used for salty water and forgotten beasts), and it has a material value of 10 (the same as iron and silver), so it's just a matter of using custom reactions to make items out of it.

[Meph]

I wanted to do a desalination workshop, but water is water in the game, there are no tags in the raws to distinguish fresh from salt water.

[KingBacon]

I wanted to do a desalination workshop, but water is water in the game, there are no tags in the raws to distinguish fresh from salt water.

What are the labels associated with salt and salt water. I mean salt water has to be desalinated to be drinkable. There has to be some unique identifier with that.

[Haspen]

Possibly hardcored in region map/world generation/somewhere else in the code.

[Meph]

I wanted to do a desalination workshop, but water is water in the game, there are no tags in the raws to distinguish fresh from salt water.

What are the labels associated with salt and salt water. I mean salt water has to be desalinated to be drinkable. There has to be some unique identifier with that.

No. There is just LIQUID_MISC WATER. Thats it. No tags for salty, muddy, whatever. There are flags, which dfhack might be able to read out... but nothing a modder can do. Best advise I can give is to ask in the dfhack thread, if they can think of a C++ plugin that can recognize this. A workshop like the SteamEngine, which required water underneath it, and you run the reaction... reaction takes 1/7 of the water away, produces 1 water in a bucket and a pile of salt.

That should be possible.

[KingBacon]

So getting dorfs to pan for salt by the ocean is infeasible through raw editing?

Ok so I edited the raw for some reactions and am genning up a new world. So I have three parts. One is to produce Salt Block made of the Salt value Quietust mentioned. Second part creates a faux plant as a placeholder and the third part uses the mill to make a crushed salt product which can be stored in barrels I presume (since it is a plant technically.) Everything look ok?


[REACTION:ROCK_SALT_TO_EXPORT_SALT]
[NAME:make salt for export]
[BUILDING:MASONRY_WORKSHOP:NONE]
[REAGENT:A:1:BOULDER:NO_SUBTYPE:INORGANIC:ROCK_SALT]
[PRODUCT:100:5:BLOCK:NO_SUBTYPE:SALT:NONE][PRODUCT_DIMENSION:150]
[SKILL:MASONRY]

[PLANT:PROCESSED_SALT]
   [NAME:Processed Salt][NAME_PLURAL:Processed Salts][ADJ:Processed Salt]
[USE_MATERIAL_TEMPLATE:STRUCTURAL:STRUCTURAL_PLANT_TEMPLATE]
   [MATERIAL_VALUE:15]
   [EDIBLE_COOKED]
   [BASIC_MAT:LOCAL_PLANT_MAT:STRUCTURAL]
   [PICKED_TILE:240][PICKED_COLOR:7:7:1]
   [VALUE:5]
   [FREQUENCY:0]
   [CLUSTERSIZE:1]


[REACTION:EXPORT_SALT_TO_PROCESSED_SALT]
   [NAME:crush salt]
   [BUILDING:QUERN:CUSTOM_S]
   [BUILDING:MILLSTONE:CUSTOM_S]
   [REAGENT:A:1:BLOCK:NO_SUBTYPE:SALT]
   [PRODUCT:100:1:PLANT_MAT:PROCESSED_SALT:STRUCTURAL]
        [PRODUCT_TO_CONTAINER:barrel/pot]
   [SKILL:MILLING]

[Durgress]

1: What would be a good valuation of salt for the medieval period or what would be a good valuation in DF? I was thinking either Mat value between 3 and 5 but I have been reading some historic resources that suggest that the relative value of salt might be higher.

I seem to recall one figure saying salt was worth it's weight in gold in medieval times. Thus the superstion of throwing salt over your shoulder has nothing to due with bad luck, and everything to do with hiding the evidence of your wastefulness. Also, Medieval salt containers (called cellars) were often made of silver or gold and studded with gemstones. Seriously valuable stuff. Though for balance reasons, might want to lower the value a bit. Or just make the reaction extremely inefficient.

[Deon]

It should be [PRODUCT:100:1:PLANT:NONE:PLANT_MAT:PROCESSED_SALT:PLANT].

[KingBacon]

Still fiddling with the raws, still can't make the reaction show up in new worlds.

I was thinking of giving rock salt a value of 3, blocks are then crushed at a workshop and then turned into a plant with a value of 15.
This is the first time I've every muddled with regents and reactions. So much more difficult than making elves wield bronze weapons or cats spontaneously combust.

[Seriyu]

You probably already know this, but note that the export salt can be used to build buildings with, since it's a block. If you don't want that, you can make a salt "toy", and just never add that toy to any entity file to get a "salt pack" or whatever that won't be built with.

Not that I've got any issue with salt towers, mind!

[IndigoFenix]

Well, if you don't mind it being weird... you can make a common, ubiquitous salt water 'fish' that can be caught by fisherdwarves and processed into salt.  That would at least let you produce salt from salt water biomes.