Purity

About

Purity affects only a few items in the game right now: Food items, Butcher's Knives, and Sabres. It has no effect on Inspirationals

Purity can add up to 10% to the damage done by a Sabre so that a 100% Purity Sabre does 110% as much damage as a 0% Purity Sabre.

Purity can add up to 100% to the value of a food, meaning that a 100% Pure piece of food gives 2x what its 0% version gives.

Purity is a measure of an item's AEther value. An item can have various amounts of AEther, Mercury, Sulphur and Lead, but Mercury, Sulphur, and Lead are considered Impurities and may have a use at some future date. For now, only AEther is useful. AEther is always 0 and Purity is therefore always 0% for items found in the wild.

Right now, there are several ways to increase Purity of the various industries in Salem so as to get better food and weapon purity.

Getting Purity

Iron Purity

Iron Purity has a direct effect on Sabre Purity and on Meat Purity through the Butcher's Knife and Hunter's Knife.

Iron Purity is increased by digging further from the ladder in a mine and by increasing the Mining artifice of your character's outfit. Boulders dug from the area near the ladder will tend to be low purity, though there is a RNG involved so that you can get lucky. Boulders dug further and further from the ladder will tend to be higher and higher purity with a chance of 100% at a distance of a couple hundred squares. Having a higher Mining artifice value in your clothing will give a bonus to the RNG so that purity tends to be higher.

Purity of the Iron Ore transfers directly to purity of the Bar of Iron smelted in the Ore Smelter.

Purity of the Bar of Iron transfers directly to the Knife Blade as well, which leads to Game Meat Purity.

Purity of the Bar of Any Metal transfers directly to the Fish Hook, which leads to one way to get Fish purity.

You can also catch Fish with a Fishing Pole. The Purity of the Bar of Any Metal used to make the Fish Hook in the Lures transfers directly to the Fish caught.

Weapon Purity

Craftable weapons such as Halberds and Spanish Sabres initially take their Purity from the Wrought Iron Bars used in their construction but all Polearms and Swords' Purity can be modified by selecting a Whetstone and right-clicking it on the Weapon and selecting "Sharpen". This consume the Whetstone and transfer the Purity of Whetstone onto the Weapon. Purity increases the amount of damage done by the Weapon by up to 10% for 100% Purity. A Whetstone gains its Purity from the Boulder it was Chipped from.

Fish Purity

Any Fish caught will take their Purity directly from the Bait used to catch it.

A Fish Hook takes on the Purity of the Bar of Any Metal used in its construction. This Purity is passed onto Any Lure which is made from it. A Common Earthworm receives its Purity from Worm Purity and a Grub's purity comes from Insect Purity.

Knife Purity

The purity of the Game Meat Food Group: Rabbit, Timber Rattler, Beaver, Deer, and Bear, is based directly off the Knife Blade used to make the Butchers's Knife, which must be held in the hand when butchering meat. The Argopelter Purity of the Poultry Food Group is also based of the Knife Blade. The Hunter's Knife, which can be bought from the store, can be have it's blade replaced with a Purity blade when the original wears off. Both a Butcher's Knife and a Hunter's Knife will wear with each butchering until the blade breaks and disappears. At that time, the hilt disappears, and the blade can be replaced.

Shellfish Trap Purity

A Shellfish Trap takes its Purity from the Fibre Netting used in its construction. Fibre Netting can be made from any Fibre, but the only Purity Fibers available are Cotton and Milkweed Jute which affected by Farming Purity and Gardening Purity respectively. A Shellfish Trap's Purity transfers directly onto Any Shellfish caught in it.

Humus and Worm Purity

Worms such as Common Earthworms and Earthworm Pythons can have their Purity raised by allowing them to eat Plants with higher Purity than their own. To do this place a Worm in a Container such as a Woven Basket. Place your Pure Plants, such as Any Cabbage Leaf directly next to, above, or below the Worm as Worms will not eat Plants which are diagonal to them. After a few hours the Worm will consume the Plants and take up to 10% of the difference between the Plant's and the Worm's Purity. For example if the Plant had 40 Purity and the Worm has 30 - a difference of 10 - the Worm will gain 1%, rising to 31. Generally it is more effective to use Earthworm Pythons than Common Earthworms for this as a Compost Bin needs fewer Earthworm Pythons to reach max efficiency.

Worms pass their Purity to the Humus they produce in a Compost Bin. This Purity is determined by the average Purity of all the Worms inside the Compost Bin and the Worm Efficiency. Humus is one of three components for Gardening Purity.

Gardening Purity

The Gardening Purity is the Purity which transfers onto any Potable plant planted in a Gardening Pot.

Three factors influence Gardening Purity. The Purity of the Humus, the Purity of the plant, and the Purity of the Gardening Pot. The Harvested plant will be an average of these three factors. Any time this average is higher than the Gardening Pot, the Gardening Pot's Purity will permanently increase by up to 2%. You may check your Gardening Pot's Purity by right-clicking on it.

Farming Purity

The Purity of crops Harvested from a Tilled Field is based on a combination of the Purity of the Tilled Field, the Purity of the Seeds used when Planting, and chance, which may increase or decrease the Purity of a Harvest by a few percent. Each time the Harvest is higher than the Tilled Field's Purity that Field's Purity will permanently increase by up to 1%.

Turkey Purity

Aside from Iron and Farm purity, Turkey Purity is the only other basic purity grind. The only other purity grind that does not depend on another industry's purity. Turkey Purity affects the Poultry Food Group, but only the Turkeys, not the Argopelters.

Wild Turkeys cannot have purity, but are designed so that newbies can use them for the Poultry Food Group until they are able to raise Domestic Turkeys, which have all the same bonuses and effects, only better.

Turkey Purity is based on the purity of the Coop, the Gobbler, the Hen, and a RNG. Like farms and pots, the Turkey Coop can only go up in Purity. It can raise by only .10% purity per egg laid, but a full coop of Hens can lay several eggs in a day.

Purity of the coop increases each time an Egg of higher purity than the coop is is laid. Subsequent hatching and growing up of the poult has no effect so it is okay to remove egg or poult from the coop to use in a recipe.

Purity of the Egg is significantly weighted towards the purity of the coop, so players wishing to skip this grind can only have partial success from buying pure Hens and Gobblers. The resulting eggs and hence the turkeys will be low purity until the coop has time to raise to match. However, they will still be higher purity than they would have otherwise been, and the coop will go up with each egg until coop purity matches Turkey purity so some benefit can be derived from buying turkeys.

How Food Purity Works

Each food belongs to a specific Food Group. When cooking that good, the purity is taken only from ingredients that belong to that Food Group. For example, Papricharred Charcuterie is a Slugs Bugs and Kritters recipe that requires a Raw Venison Steak, a Game Meat. I doesn't matter if the Venison Steak is 0% purity or 100% purity, the purity of the resulting food will be taken entirely from the Any Bugs portion of the recipe. However, that same Venison Steak's purity will matter in a Simple Sunday Steak, which is a Game Meat recipe.

When calculating Purity of a food, each individual ingredient is averaged first, then all the ingredient types that have an effect on the result are averaged. For example, a Berry Salad requires 2 Cranberry, 2 Blackberries, and 1 Huckleberries. If one Cranberry is 50% purity and one is 30% purity, the resulting Cranberry purity for that recipe will be 40%. If the Blackberries then average out to 50% and the Huckleberries are 60%, the three Types will be averaged together: (40+50+60)/3=50% total Purity. For Pemmican, the ingredients are 4 of Any Berries, 1 Raw Rabbit Cut, and 1 Gelatinous Lard. The purity of the 4 Berries is averaged together and that is the purity of the resulting Pemmican, no matter what purity the other two ingredients are.

The Berries Food Group receives purity from Cranberry, Huckleberries, Blackberries, and Crowberry Stalk. If the Dehydrated Berry, Pectin, Fruit Jelly, or Berry Jam is used, the recipe takes its purity from that as well.

The Bread Food Group receives purity from Flour, from Loaf of Ryebread in the cases where that is used as an ingredient, and from Sourdough Starters. In a way, the Starter is a mini Purity grind as it must be bought at 0% and when the resulting purity dough is 'Split', the starters retain the dough's purity.

The Corn Food Group receives purity from Corn, Cornmeal, and Corn Oil used in recipes.

The Fish Food Group receives purity from Fish and from Fish Filets.

The Mushroom Food Group receives its purity from whatever Mushrooms are used in them, very simple.

The Game Meat Food Group gets its purity from Steaks, Cuts, Meat Shreds, and Brains used in recipes. It is unknown whether Bones count as there aren't any Game recipes with them as an ingredient.

Nuts and Seeds receives its purity from whatever nuts are in the recipe: Walnut, Hickory Nut, Myrtle Oak Acorn, Stray Chestnut, Pine Nuts, and any Roasted Nut.

Poultry receives its Purity from the Turkey or Argopelter used in the recipe or from the parts obtained when cutting up a Stuffed Bird. Argopelter or Turkey Eggs also contribute their purity to these recipes.

Pumpkins purity is based on the purity of the Pumpkin or Pumpkin Flesh used in the recipe.

Shellfish purity is based on the Shellfish used in the recipe, whether it is whole, has had it's meat removed, or it has already been cooked.

The Slugs Bugs and Kritters Food Group receives its purity from the Caterpillar, Grub, Beetle, and Virginia Snail, and also from Wartbite Cricket and Frog both in their cooked, uncooked, and dissected states.

The Vegetables and Greens Food Group is a bit odd. It gets its purity not just from Cabbage Leaves, but also from other plants that are considered Vegetables. The complete list is unknown yet, but seems to include Carrot, Cooked Carrot, Oakworth, Grass, Ostrich Fiddlehead, Radish, Lilypad Bulb, and Milkweed Roots. All of these plants can be potted to raise their purity.