Salt Water

Salt Water is an in-game liquid resource commonly found in the Tide Pool biome and as the output of Salt Water Geysers. It functions as both a local resource for irrigation and a feedstock that can be converted into fresh Water and Salt by processing buildings. Salt Water is renewable through natural geysers and certain space Point-Of-Interest (POI) harvests, making it a sustainable source of liquid and salt when managed properly.

Salt Water Geysers periodically emit Salt Water; at least one uncovered Salt Water Geyser can be found in the Tide Pool biome. Salt Water is also obtainable on rocket missions from specific POIs: Salty Asteroid Fields yield 270–810 kg per cycle, and Interstellar Oceans yield 37.5–125 kg per cycle. Because of these sources, Salt Water is valuable for both early- and mid-game economies where fresh Water is scarce or where Salt is required.

Salt Water is commonly processed in the Desalinator. A Desalinator converts Salt Water into fresh Water and Salt at a fixed throughput: 5 kg/s Salt Water → 4.65 kg/s Water + 0.35 kg/s Salt. This conversion makes Salt Water a key intermediate when you need potable Water or Salt for recipes and industrial uses but lack natural freshwater sources.

Salt Water is used directly for agricultural irrigation in certain cases. Artificially grown Waterweed requires an irrigation supply of 5 kg Salt Water per growth cycle when manually irrigated with Salt Water. This makes Salt Water useful for biomes or setups where fresh Water is not readily available but Salt Water is abundant.

Practical notes and interactions:

• Desalination is the primary use: run Salt Water through a Desalinator to produce both usable Water and Salt simultaneously; size your Desalinator throughput to match the 5 kg/s input for predictable outputs.
• Geysers provide long-term renewable supply; uncovering and piping a Salt Water Geyser is an efficient way to feed Desalinators and irrigation networks without consuming produced Water.
• Rocket-harvested Salt Water can supplement planetary supplies or be used as payload for missions that require liquid resources; note the wide yield variance between Salty Asteroid Fields and Interstellar Oceans.
• When planning irrigation and storage, account for the Salt byproduct of desalination—Salt will accumulate and should be collected or consumed by recipes that require it to avoid overflow.
• Use Salt Water as a fallback irrigation fluid for Waterweed and other applications where fresh Water is unavailable, but prefer desalinated Water where recipes or plant types specifically require fresh Water.