Fun with Colliquative Pressure Cookers.

[Mereni]

I'm am a mathematical failhead, but could someone explain to me what would be the likely outcome in this instance;

You take an object, and using the cooker equalise say, Salt and Mercury values. You have another object and equalize Salt and Sulphur values.
Now both objects have similar Salt values, and you combine them to make another object.
What happens to the Salt value at this point? Will it drop, rise or remain static?

If you are crafting, say, funny foam, the two values of each element will be averaged. You'll end up with something who's salt value is exactly between the original values of the two items. The sulphur and mercury values will go down.

I guess that would be the best use of the cooker. If you have, say, a lead mine and you find some good salt lime with lead being second highest, you can cook that lime and get a few percent better bars when you smelt. Or you find inspirational ingredients of various purity types, you can equalize the second highest value and have more opportunities to match elements when crafting the inspirational. Even a 1.5 multiplier achieved from mixing similar elements is pretty good in many cases.

[Jalpha]

So the Salt value would be averaged, but the overall purity would rise?

I'm just trying to discover if the cooker can be used to raise overall purity on its own, or if it only gives a small nudge in the right direction for further processes. Of course I understand more alchemy devices will be added though.

Thanks for the replies.

[lachlaan]

It can, at best, raise the purity % or the multiplier by un-evening the non-dominant elements. If you had something with 70 salt, the remaining 30 points could either be spread out like so 70/13.3/13.3/13.3 , which would be the lowest possible purity/multiplier for an item with a salt value of 70. Otherwise it could be spread out like so 70/0/0/30, and have the highest possible purity for a dominant value of 70. I believe that's the main point of the cooker, nearing the highest possible purity for stuff without changing the dominant element's value. Alternatively, you could have 50/21/19/10 ore and 10/21/19/50 lime, and might have enough time and courage to attempt to harmonize both ore and lime and ultimately end up with 25/50/0/25 Iron (or more likely an exploded oven xD)

[Mereni]

So the Salt value would be averaged, but the overall purity would rise?

I'm just trying to discover if the cooker can be used to raise overall purity on its own, or if it only gives a small nudge in the right direction for further processes. Of course I understand more alchemy devices will be added though.

Thanks for the replies.

Well, let's say you are making funny foam. You find a snail that is 37, 28, 15, 20, so that salt is the highest element. You find coarse salt that is 18, 25, 42, 15, so that sulphur is the highest element. Craft your foam and you end up with a slightly sulphur inspirational with a multiplier of 1.09.

However, mercury is the second highest element for both of those items, so if you put them in the cooker and succeed in making the second element in each equalize, you get: Snail 37,37,10.5, 15.5; Coarse salt 9.5, 42, 42, 6.5. Both have mercury now the dominant element and if you mix them you get an inspirational with a multiplier of 1.49, an improvement of .4, which isn't bad for inspirationals. And if you put that funny foam back in the cooker, and it's able to reach balance, you'll get a multiplier of 2.10.

That's almost double the strength. In practice, cookers are so volatile, they probably won't be very useful. But, they will help with slight increases in purity for mixes of low purity things if you want to risk it.

[Jalpha]

The volatility of the cooker is my main concern. I lose way too many items using my 4% cooker. Has anyone worked out a method of lowering instability, or is there even a way?

[lachlaan]

Short of cooking a pair of items, then crafting them together and then cooking the finished item, I don't think there's a way to lower instability. A higher % cooker should technically give you more alchemical gain per stage of instability gained, so i'd say experiment with that.