Water Purification Guide

What changed on day two (hotfix 1.0.0.2)

The developer rebalanced water on October 29, 2026 “as per community feedback” Official:

Water grades and value

Water carries a quality label, from worst to best CommunityCommunity:

Gutterflow → Rustwater → Ghostwater → Basewater → High-quality → Pure

A community guide lists the liquid’s value per litre, measured on the hardest difficulty and not counting the container Community:

The same guide’s advice: compare that price gap with the consumables and the time your cash sits tied up. If you’re short on cash, sell at the grade you already have Community.

Some rules from the official patch notes Official:

• Water containers count as water goods only while they hold liquid. Empty, they’re household goods, and market events reprice both the liquid and the container.
• Premium Spring Water carries the Water tag, but only Upper Level customers accept it. Lower-level customers and tourists turn it down.
• The water pitcher also counts as a household item.

Testing: never buy blind

The Water Merchant start comes with testing strips. Drag a strip into a container to read its purity Community. Tips from Owlie’s guide Community:

• Pool water into one big container (the 6 L jug) and test it once. This saves strips.
• Sellers mislabel often. Test every bottle before you buy. Calling out a scam gets you a lower price and a discount on top.
• Water that looks darker than usual is ghostwater or worse. If it’s labelled basewater, it’s mislabelled.
• During an ice-miner event the ice miner sells high-quality water and never mislabels it. Water prices also drop 25% while the event runs Community.

The tools, and what each removes

Community-measured in 1.0, before the 1.0.0.2 rework Community:

The guide’s two biggest “don’ts”: don’t sell the 6 L jug you start with, and don’t try to make high-quality water out of rustwater or gutterflow with filters alone Community.

The basic process (high-quality water)

From the Water Merchant starting kit, per Owlie’s guide Community:

1. Drop a purification tablet into a container of water.
2. Fit a water filter onto the water pitcher.
3. Pour the treated water into the pitcher.
4. Pour the filtered water into a clean container. A 6 L jug saves tablets and strips.
5. Test it, or (riskier) set the label with the labeler.

Done right, the author reports high-quality water about 90% of the time. If the strip reads 98–99%, dilute it with an equal amount of high-quality water.

Reaching pure water

There are two community-documented routes. Both were measured before the purifier rework, so verify with strips:

• Water Purifier with Quality modules. The Machinery and You guide found that from a basic source (traders, tap, Moisture Farm) you need about +100% Quality on the purifier to reach pure water, or +75% if you pre-filter in a pitcher Community.
• High-Quality Moisture Farm. The same guide lists output that skips filtering and comes out pure at +150% Quality Community. Its Moisture Farm figures are from the demo era, though, and 1.0 changed the farm (next section).

Module Quality, Performance and Efficiency are explained in machines & automation.

Moisture Farm: nerfed, then cheaper

• At 1.0 launch players measured 650 credits, 6 kWh per day, 850 ml per night, and diminishing returns per extra farm Community. 诺布诺布 measured two farms at 1,360 ml combined, meaning the second farm adds only 510 ml Community.
• Hotfix 1.0.0.2 cut the price to 350 Official. Owlie wrote “do not buy a Moisture Farm” before the hotfix Community. At about half the price, the payback math is worth redoing for your own save.

Upgrades for a water business

Wild’s network offers water upgrades: Retired Water Merchant, Gutterflow on Tap and Rustwater on Tap Official. Community figures from launch week:

• Rustwater on Tap costs about 550 in favours and credits Community.
• An Apprentice who buys all three water upgrades spends about 1,800 before any machines or consumables Community.
• A Water Purifier cost 345 from the retired merchant or 375 from Dr. Jackson. These prices predate Dr. Jackson’s markup cut in 1.0.0.2 CommunityOfficial.

Selling: events and scams

• A water treatment breakdown event raises water and water-ration prices by +100% for 3 days. A scheduled maintenance event adds +35% Community. Hold stock for these.
• Relabelling basewater as high-quality works early on. Some customers carry testing strips, though, and Owlie reports getting called out after selling roughly 100 L that way Community. The store page is blunt about it: “Misjudge the item or the person selling it, and you absorb the cost.” Official