Re: Compost Bin Purity: Oh crap, how do earthworms work?

[Darkside]

martin's latest compost bin results clearly demonstrates what is in my opinion a huge flaw in the current purity system.

Here's the exact data:
Wood purity: 17% (56.34/14.58/16.91/12.18)
p1 76.22/5.89/8.13/9.78
p2 75.70/5.63/4.97/13.70
p3 75.86/6.55/8.20/9.39
p4 75.25/6.72/8.99/9.04
p5 74.78/7.54/7.73/9.96
p6 74.26/6.95/8.58/10.21
w1 97.66/1.11/0.90/0.33
humus: 51.14/16.01/17.33/15.54

even though he is using worms whose purity is completely unattainable using non-legacy materials, his humus is STILL below the compost bin's wood purity. This shows that you will reach a cap to your humus purity which is roughly equal to the natural biome purity cap of around 10%.

I believe it is a flaw because from the dev's comments they seemed to indicate that the purity of 100% was "too easy" to achieve before, they did not say it should be impossible to achieve, which is what the current system is. They implied the 10% purity cap was supposed to be just for foraged materials, but due to the tree grinding/compost bin formulas those natural purity caps also extends to all agriculture and everything in the game.

I would propose that compost bins SHOULD be able to produce humus beyond the bin's wood purity by using worms whose alchemies exceed the wood's alchemies. That way you can exceed the soft cap of the bin's wood purity by getting lucky with the farming RNG where you get say pumpkins with a higher resulting alchemy than the humus used to prepare the field, then feed your worms those pumpkins so they have a bit higher alchemy than the bin which in turn lets you get humus beyond the bin's alchemies too. Then repeat that process with diminishing returns on each iteration until you can increase your humus enough to plant better trees. Even this way 100% humus will never be possible due to the limitations of the lime, granite and water used on the pot, but at least you have a way to progress beyond that 10% foraging cap.

[lachlaan]

I've been speculating for a while that bin purity =/= board purity, and that the actual bin purity is more along the lines of the resulting humus when no worms are inside the bin. So (board_element + 25*2.5)/3.5 are the resulting elements of the bin, you can then use those to calculate the actual purity and multiplier and try to make sense of the results.
If i'm right though, what this means is that the highest any element can go on a bin is 46.42 if you use 100% pure boards.

Nope, it can definitly go higher. My current salt bin makes humus with 51.14 element value already.

Here's the exact data:
Wood purity: 17% (56.34/14.58/16.91/12.18)
p1 76.22/5.89/8.13/9.78
p2 75.70/5.63/4.97/13.70
p3 75.86/6.55/8.20/9.39
p4 75.25/6.72/8.99/9.04
p5 74.78/7.54/7.73/9.96
p6 74.26/6.95/8.58/10.21
w1 97.66/1.11/0.90/0.33
humus: 51.14/16.01/17.33/15.54

I have a idea on a formula, but I need to wait until this compost bin produces another humus, without any worms, to check if it rings true.

What I meant is the actual elemental values of the bin itself. If resultant humus from the bin will always be (element + 25 * 2.5)/3.5 then even with 100% wood you'd get the highest value of (100+62.5)/3.5 = 46.42. With that you could of course slowly inch upwards on the humus ladder with alchemy and luck, but even then you're slightly limited by water and lime/granite. I'm not sure if it's possible to push anything to 100% by repeatedly shifting them between test tubes and alembic, but even if it is there'd still be water and the bin's hardcap to worry about. It's all very tricky tbh, not sure how set in stone the caps are, but they're definetly there.

[martinuzz]

martin's latest compost bin results clearly demonstrates what is in my opinion a huge flaw in the current purity system.
even though he is using worms whose purity is completely unattainable using non-legacy materials, his humus is STILL below the compost bin's wood purity. This shows that you will reach a cap to your humus purity which is roughly equal to the natural biome purity cap of around 10%.

I fully agree, the current system is flawed and demotivating

I would propose that compost bins SHOULD be able to produce humus beyond the bin's wood purity by using worms whose alchemies exceed the wood's alchemies. That way you can exceed the soft cap of the bin's wood purity by getting lucky with the farming RNG where you get say pumpkins with a higher resulting alchemy than the humus used to prepare the field, then feed your worms those pumpkins so they have a bit higher alchemy than the bin which in turn lets you get humus beyond the bin's alchemies too. Then repeat that process with diminishing returns on each iteration until you can increase your humus enough to plant better trees. Even this way 100% humus will never be possible due to the limitations of the lime, granite and water used on the pot, but at least you have a way to progress beyond that 10% foraging cap.

A good start would be to finish what is incomplete. I do recall jorb mentioning that nail purity would be added later. Doing just that, for both the iron as well as the wood nails, would already make a huge difference.

[Snowpig]

i doubt it. My observation is: the more pure the component (bin/worm) the less it contributes to the final result.
I tried to play around with numbers and the most promising approach was to actually divide the individual elemental values by their corresponding multiplier (or - alternatively use something like "*(10-multiplier)")