Saltfire Day 71 9 September 2026
Pigment
How do you make Pigment in 6 merges?
- 1 Breath + Salt Dust
- 2 Dew + Dust Clay
- 3 Clay + Ember Ochre
- 4 Ember + Salt Ash
- 5 Ash + Dew Lye
- 6 Lye + Ochre Pigment
Why is 6 merges the shortest possible?
Day 71 asked for Pigment — a tier-4 element, one of the complex — and it goes in six merges. Not fewer: par is worked out across the whole recipe tree before the puzzle ships, and then proved by replaying the chain above against the game's own rules, starting from nothing but Salt, Ember, Dew and Breath. If that replay had spent one step more or one step less, the build would have failed and this day would never have run.
Two of the six merges come straight out of the primordials — Dust and Ash — and everything else is built on top of those. The last step is Lye + Ochre, which is where Pigment finally condenses.
No intermediate here is wanted twice: every element the chain makes is consumed by exactly one later merge, so par is simply how far Pigment sits above the primordials. There is nothing shared to save a step on — six links of chain, six merges.
Pigment has three recipes in the tree, so the route above is the cheapest way in rather than the only one. Another chain of the same length is quite possible; a longer one is far more likely.