lachlaan wrote:Every unit of ore turns into dross after smelting, except for the ore that completed the progress towards 100% of a bar. Imagine progress of a bar as being an invisible counter the smelter doesn't show you. Every ore you smelt without lime in adds 2% of a bar to that counter, every lime you add into a smelt will add 1% to each ore's effect. When the smelter does the math for its counter, i think it counts ores left to right, top to bottom, and when an ore goes over 100% it becomes a bar rather than a dross, and it keeps adding the rest of the ores from the start. If it doesn't reach a full 100% at the end of the smelt, the progress gets remembered and added up with the next smelt's progress.
The highest yield you can get in the long run are smelts of 13 ore 12 lime, or 14 ore 11 lime. Because you'd get either 13 ores at a potency of 14%, or 14 ores at the potency of 13%, both resulting in 182% of a bar worth of progress.
Okay, I think I understand. . . So every piece of ore does actually get counted towards a 100% mark -- even towards a second 100% mark. . But the ore that gets counted, but not used for a bar, turns to dross? But it's % is still remembered for the next smelt?
Maybe that's worded horribly. . . . it becomes dross because its iron is removed and used toward the next smelt, but since it wasn't actually turned into a bar, it gets left over as dross, yet the % remains in the ore smelter? Is that right?