Tips For The Purity Grind

[DemonEyes]

Purity may have been blasted, It is now much much harder to push purity for beginners bereft of legacy items to boost them along. Old bases only go so far to keep the player base buoyant and much of what we can achieve with scraps results in only slight improvements to purity levels.

SO.. I thought with the glut of question about how this works, and how to achieve that, I would relate my struggles and experiences into the world of purity from scratch..

The resources around your base (within a good hours walk i would say is reasonable) have never been more critical, before placing your claim stone, study the environment in which you are in..
PURITY
Purity works around a principal of nodes, areas have peaks and troughs, just as the landscape has hills and dips.. pick something up, check out its element values, walk a short way to another identical item and compare the values, if one particular element increases if you go further in that direction it should increase again up towards the 'summit' of that purity node. Unfortunately these nodes may only peak at relatively low values so a LOT of work is needed to map out the area around your chosen location to evaluate the nodes. Different items will have different elemental purities in those areas.. just because you got a 40 mercury granite in that spot does not mean you get a 40 mercury lime (there may be occasions this happens, but dont hold your breath).

WATER
Water is incredibly important, check along the rivers (get a bucket) follow the purity gradients to find the optimal spots for taking water (down to the individual tile), water will be the boost you need for the purity of your clay and plants, as well as retaining the purity of your food where it is used. the highest purity water you have pretty much dictates which element you will focus on to begin with (if you have several high purity nodes, grats to you and pick your favorite to begin with).


ANY PLANT
Prompted by your water purity to must then adventure and wander around looking for the best purity grass in the same element as your water (you can use any plant but lets face it grass is MUCH more readily available) If you cannot find any within an hours walk of your base, you either must trade for it, put up with substandard purity development for some while, or move location) This grass will be fed to your worms in containers (I recommend woven baskets for cheapness, but it matters not as long as you can put 4 pieces around your worm).

WORMS
Worms, are a pain in the butt.. you can get loads of worms just by flattening your land, but the ones you want are pythons, if you find one in a stump.. KEEP IT! otherwise you must wait for one to be spawned in a compost bin. 1 Python = 4 worms worth of efficiency.. this means less grass to feed them and less clutter in your compost bins.. you need 6 pythons and 1 worm for 100% efficiency so dont be afraid to start feeding a little tiddler to begin with. Each item the worm eats changes the worms elemental value by 10% of the difference (30/20/25/25 plant gives 25.5/24.5/25/25 worm, BUT THEN same purity plant will give 25.95/24.05/25/25)

Taking stock now of your situation, you have got a supply of high purity water, your worms are eating away on high purity grass, and you STILL have nothing to show for it..

POTS
Wander about a bit, find the highest purity granite and lime that you can (in same element as all the rest), this is going to be you gardening pot material.. if you can only forage decent lime, then use the best lime you can find for ONLY the pots that you plan on grinding tree purity, use otherwise lime for your day to day gardening of peppers and the like (or even for trees for your tree wall). Due to the limits from clay pits the best clay that you can get will be related to the water that you can find (I really recommend against using any 'good' lime for making clay unless you have it in tons as the weighting of the lime in clay is 1-10). Make your gardening pots and segregate the good pots from the bad pots so that you dont get confused (as the humus you want to use will be in VERY short supply)

At this point you can go ahead and plant your cuttings to gain the minimal benefit from your gardening supplies.. it takes 3 days for your saplings to be ready for planting and another week for them to be ready to take cuttings from, so this isnt a bad idea. Separate your good trees grown in your good pots from the tree wall trees grown in your bad pots.. do this however you wish.. but ensure that where ever your good tree is growing you can still chop it down so it doesnt land on a wall.

OH IS THAT PURITY I SEE?
Once your worm(s) get some purity in them they can be transported into your compost bins, I personally put them in at 1% and kept one rotating pushing them all up little by little, you could just keep feeding new ones to replace the old when they exceed their purity. The humus out of this first (unpure boards) bin will be very slightly modified.. ensure to remove all unpure worms as they spawn as they reduce the gains.. (pain in the butt again mr worm)

You have now taken the very first steps towards getting purer malarky across the board.. use this humus for your second gen of trees (taken from cuttings from the first if they were suitably higher in the chosen element) you can take branches from the young tree to see how they are developing and even when your successes become adequate chop them down prematurely to make space for other (potentially better) saplings.

From the trees you are growing you must make boards for new compost bins, I dont know if doing the first or even second gen trees would be worthwhile, the gains are just too small.. but if you are really in a rush this could be worthwhile.. I waited until third generation and it got me to 1% in two months.. with a couple of lost generations (thanks RNG)..

CONCLUSION
Lets face it, all these steps, all this 'work' will result in tiny tiny results, half a point here, half a point there, but all of it adds up, and it only gets faster and faster.. the old bins (and worms) you can use to feed your crops, giving higher purity crops (with RNG screwing you up sometimes) which can then be fed to worms giving a beneficial path to improvement. Remember its only the first two (at 50% upkeep) humus that give purity, so use good stuff for that and use the older unpure stuff for fertilizer.

As far as i can see you are limited by the purity of the water, pot and RNG against progressing to high values. I am currently unaware of any shortcuts beyond trading that would speed this up, so trading is highly recommended.. I will still struggle on from scratch as this gives me greater understanding of how disastrous this purity system really is and can be if the world is wiped.

NOTE: The % purity is an overview, nothing more.. the balance of elements within each item make all the difference, I have 6% water (13.52/37.88/15.48/33.12) but use 5% water (13.91/38.96/15.76/31.37) which seems crazy to me to be less pure!

[martinuzz]

Good post. I am spoiled, for I have legacy humus, and my trees are up to 19% pure, but what you're illustrating here, is also what I hear from other people who are trying to get purity from scratch.
I quote a friend; "If there was a wipe the devs would see how ***** up their purity system is".

This is the reason why I suggested to change nodes from 0-10 to 10-20%. It will speed up the purity from scratch path, without boosting endgame purities to insane levels.

You forgot to mention one important thing, unless I missed it reading; Your proficiencies cap the element values that you can find in the wild.
So if you want to find semi-decent granite and lime, first raise your Mines and Mountains, for example.

[Snowpig]

Purity works around a principal of nodes, areas have peaks and troughs, just as the landscape has hills and dips.. pick something up, check out its element values, walk a short way to another identical item and compare the values, if one particular element increases if you go further in that direction it should increase again up towards the 'summit' of that purity node. Unfortunately these nodes may only peak at relatively low values so a LOT of work is needed to map out the area around your chosen location to evaluate the nodes. Different items will have different elemental purities in those areas.. just because you got a 40 mercury granite in that spot does not mean you get a 40 mercury lime (there may be occasions this happens, but dont hold your breath).

Do not forget, that these values are capped by your skills, therefore revisit these areas after raising them for better results.

At this point you can go ahead and plant your cuttings to gain the minimal benefit from your gardening supplies.. it takes 3 days for your saplings to be ready for planting and another week for them to be ready to take cuttings from, so this isnt a bad idea. Separate your good trees grown in your good pots from the tree wall trees grown in your bad pots.. do this however you wish.. but ensure that where ever your good tree is growing you can still chop it down so it doesnt land on a wall.

To make it easier for yourself, use one tree type for each element you grind - like Birch for lead, Elm for sulfur, Oak for mercury... Take in mind, that at the present date it takes too long/forever for the cutlings to regrow. If you cut down two cutlings, you can almost chop the tree as well. The higher your S&C and Nat. Phil. the less the chance to lose cutlings during the growth.

NOTE: The % purity is an overview, nothing more.. the balance of elements within each item make all the difference, I have 6% water (13.52/37.88/15.48/33.12) but use 5% water (13.91/38.96/15.76/31.37) which seems crazy to me to be less pure!

This is the result of the purity calculation formula, which favors two/three higher bars to one high and the others equally low. I'd suggest you ignore the purity % and look more at the elemental value (38.96). Try to raise it and purity will raise as well on the long run.