Water trade

Water Purification Guide

Water is bought dirty and sold by grade. Test every bottle before you pay, kill the microbes with a tablet or a UV Lamp, pour it through a filtered pitcher, and save the Water Purifier for batches that have to reach Pure Water. The grade decides the price: a litre of Pure Water is worth 200 Credits, a litre of Gutterflow 10.

6water grades, Gutterflow to Pure Water

10–200Credits per litre from the worst grade to the best

98%purity at which the portable purifier refuses a batch

300Credits for Water Trading in Wild's Network

From dirty bottle to sellable grade

Unlock the trade and dress the window

Start as the Water Merchant or buy Water Trading from Joe Wild for 300 Credits. Put the water sign in the window so customers bring water to sell, and keep the HydraTech Micro Water Purifier from the kit: it handles dirty batches long before you own a machine.

Once the trade is open, Dr. Jackson stocks the Water Purifier, Moisture Farm, Bottle Printer and AquaScan.
Testing strips and filters count as household goods, so household-goods discounts are the time to restock.

Water Merchant start →

Test before you pay

Drag a Water Testing Strip onto any bottle before you agree a price. The strip reads the real grade, whatever the seller's label claims. Rustwater and Gutterflow give themselves away by colour, but Ghostwater looks as clear as Basewater, so clear water is the water to test.

An AquaScan lists every contaminant, which tells you whether your equipment can fix the batch at all.
If you only own filters, buy water a filter can improve and leave Rustwater and Gutterflow for later.

Kill the microbes

Drop a purification tablet into the container: it wipes out microbes and cuts some chemical contamination, and one tablet covers a large bottle of Rustwater. Later the UV Lamp does the same job by turning microbes into water.

Filter into the pitcher

Fit a Water Filter to the Water Pitcher and pour the water through it into a clean container. The filter strips physical contaminants, organic waste and minerals, and loses durability for every step of contamination it removes.

Filters never remove heavy metals or chemical contamination; check those two readings before you call a batch finished.
Water worse than Ghostwater wears a filter out fast, and Gutterflow destroys one quickly.

Purify dirty water before filtering

For cheap Rustwater and Gutterflow, run the portable purifier or the Water Purifier first and filter afterwards. The HydraTech cuts every non-water contaminant in proportion and keeps the volume, at 1 durability per started 100 mL: 8 for a 750 mL bottle, 10 for a litre. The machine needs power and a container and works overnight.

Hotfix 1.0.0.2 reworked the purifier's logic, so run one small batch and read the result before you commit a full tank.

Finish to Pure Water

Tablets and a filter take most water to Basewater or High-Quality. Pure Water, 99.9% and up, needs the Water Purifier with Quality modules fitted. In one recorded run a machine at 77% Quality followed by a filter produced Pure Water, and a machine at 105% Quality reached about 99.96% in a single pass.

Improvement slows as purity rises, so look at your Quality modules instead of running the same batch again and again.
A batch just short of the next grade can be lifted by mixing in purer water and testing again; that spends good water rather than creating it.

Machine modules →

Reference

Water grades and prices

Base price per litre for each grade. The buyer, the label you declare and your difficulty move the final sale.

Grade	Credits per litre
Pure Water 99.9%+	200
High-Quality 99% to 99.9%	100
Basewater 98% to 99%	40
Ghostwater 96% to 98%	27
Rustwater 90% to 96%	20
Gutterflow Below 90%	10

Six contaminants a scan can show

Organic wasteMicrobesPhysical contaminantsChemical contaminantsMineralsHeavy metals

Minerals count against drinking-water purity just like the other five.

Label what you tested

Selling Ghostwater as Basewater counts against you, and after about 2.5 litres you are charged with Endangerment. A High-Quality label on that water counts double and a Pure Water label four times.

Which tool fixes what

Each tool links to its item page, with where to get it and who buys it.

Tool	Base value	What it does	Limit
Water testing strip	3 Credits	Reads a bottle's real purity and grade	One test per strip; it shows purity, not each contaminant
Aquascan	200 Credits	Lists every contaminant in a batch	Tells you whether your tools can fix the water
Water Purification Tablet	6 Credits	Wipes out microbes and cuts some chemical contamination	One tablet covers a large bottle of Rustwater
UV Lamp	150 Credits	Turns microbes into water	Use it after the portable purifier
Water filter	25 Credits	Removes physical contaminants, organic waste and minerals in a pitcher	No effect on heavy metals or chemicals
Hydratech micro water purifier	325 Credits	Cuts every non-water contaminant in proportion, volume unchanged	Refuses batches at 98% purity or above
Water Purifier	250 Credits	Purifies a powered container overnight	Pure Water needs Quality modules fitted
Moisture Farm	350 Credits	Fills a bottle with up to 850 mL of water a night	Output per farm falls as you run more
Bottle Printer	100 Credits	Prints empty bottles from 3D printing filament	4, 6 or 11 filament for a small, normal or large bottle

Grow the supply once processing works

850 mL

Moisture Farm

One night's output into any container you give it, powered by a battery. Its Quality setup sets the grade: 50% and 90% Quality give Basewater, 100% gives High-Quality and 150% gives Pure Water.

250 / 350

Taps

Gutterflow On Tap and Rustwater On Tap cost 250 and 350 Credits and never run dry. The Working Pipes trait gives unlimited Rustwater from day one. Buy a tap only once you can treat what it pours.

Visitor

Ice harvester

This event visitor sells high-purity High-Quality water that a filter can carry further. Heavy metals and chemical contamination still stay in, so read those values rather than the label.

Several Moisture Farms share the air

Each farm's solo output is divided by 1 + 0.25 for every other farm running that night. A farm only counts when it works, has power for the whole night and has a container with free space.

Farms running	Each farm (mL)	Combined (mL)
1	850	850
2	680	1,360
3	567	1,700
4	486	1,943
5	425	2,125

Selling the batch

A shop counter on day 259 with pistols, knives and gun mods laid out, 72,353 Credits on the wall display and the board reading RENT DUE TODAY — Every batch leaves across the counter like any other stock, and the label you declare is what the buyer holds you to.

Weigh the margin

Set the finished grade's price against what you paid, the filter wear and the equipment. A cheap bottle of Gutterflow is only a bargain if you can bring it up a grade.

Keep good water for other trades

High-Quality water lifts BloomBerry wine a grade above Basewater, and hydroponic beds grow on the cleanest water you can spare.

Mislabelling is its own gamble

Passing Ghostwater off as Pure Water to customers who cannot tell does nothing for the water itself, visibly dirty grades are still spotted, and every false label feeds the Endangerment count.

When a batch will not come good

The filter wears out and the water stays poor

Treat dirty water with a purifier before filtering it; the filter is for the last contaminants, not the first.

The portable purifier does nothing

The batch is already at 98% or higher, or the purifier lacks the durability to treat the whole volume.

Readings stall on heavy metals or chemicals

No ordinary filter removes either. Run the batch through a purifier, or sell it at the grade it has.

New Moisture Farm modules change nothing

The output has not crossed a grade threshold yet. Check the grade the farm displays, not the Quality number.

Sources.

· Bonus Action: all trades and how to unlock them ·.
· GameWikiStation: water trading guide ·.
· GameWikiStation: water and purifier reference ·.
· GameWikiStation: Pure Water with rat feces ·.
· Steam: Hotfix 1.0.0.2 notes ·.
· Destructoid: water trading in Probably Stolen ·.