Liquid containers

Liquid containers are vessels required to carry liquid. Liquid containers are most notably required to hold fresh water, which acts as the main fungible currency in Trading.

Overview

Design

Containers are regular in design: they come in a size and material specific to their name. For example, a waterskin will always be 64 Drams in size, will always have the same base value of $5 (before factoring in stats like reputation and ego), and will have the same interactions with liquids (e.g. acid will always burn through it as it is made from organic material). Containers are randomized in that they will spawn with different liquids inside them.

Containers have a total weight, composed of both the container and the liquid contents: a 5lb glass bottle maxed out with 16D of acid at 0.25lb/Dram is (16D / 4) + 5lbs = 9lbs, meaning that ~56% of the carry weight is the container itself.

Sub-types

Liquid containers can hold any kind of liquid provided it does not exceed their dram limit, though not all containers will survive for very long. For example, pouring lava into a waterskin is possible, but the likely outcome is that the lava's temperature will burn the waterskin every turn until it disintegrates into ashes and spills the held drams. Canteens that take enough damage will be marked as such, causing them to rapidly leak any liquid stored in them and damaging their sale value.

A Liquid containers's material is also significant. Glass containers, specifically phials and glass bottles, are especially useful for holding acid and lava, which are corrosive and incredibly hot respectively. canteens, while the same size as a waterskin, are metal and can safely hold acid. It should be noted that, confusingly, there are some cases where container name is irrelevant; the difference between waterskins and oilskins seems to be only the name.

Usage

General

Liquids are moved by the Pour interaction. Pouring different liquids into one container results in a liquid mix, a process that stacks multiple times by prepending additional adjectives (e.g. slimy for adding slime). Since mixed liquids have different values and output, the pouring interface will never mix two liquids unless explicitly requested by the player: any automated process, such as filling containers from a large pool, will ignore any containers with free space that do not match on liquid type to prevent unintended mixing.

Trading

Drinking water, the central currency of Qud, is held in containers. Like other liquids, any received payment in Drams will fill any non-brimming Liquid containers, then any empty containers. Choosing to pour any amount of any other fluid into a container of drinking water discounts it from being used as currency. Liquids other than drinking water cannot be directly exchanged: you must sell the canteen holding it for the sum value of the canteen plus the value of the contents.