Probably Stolen Water Guide: Purifier Setups, Pure Water and Selling Water

To make money with water in Probably Stolen, get unlimited Rustwater from the tap, run it through Water Purifiers until it is High-Quality Water (99%), and sell that to the customers who pay for it. For Pure Water (99.9%), give one purifier +100% Quality from modules and feed it High-Quality Water the other purifiers have already made. Numbers are for version 1.0.0.6.

The calculator above shows, morning by morning, what a Water Purifier does to any container you put in it.

What are the water grades and what are they worth?

Water is graded by purity, the share of the container that is actually water. The grade sets the price:

Water is worth 40 credits per liter at Basewater, adjusted by the grade, plus the value of the bottle it is in. That makes Pure Water worth twice as much as Basewater and eight times as much as Rustwater:

Water grade	450 ml	750 ml	2 L	6 L
Pure Water	40	65	169	495
High-Quality Water	31	50	129	375
Basewater	22	35	89	255
Ghostwater	16	25	63	176
Rustwater	9	13	29	75
Gutterflow	6	8	17	39

Rustwater and Gutterflow look dirty and anyone can see it. Ghostwater looks exactly like better water, which is why selling it as Basewater is the classic Lower Levels scam. A Water Testing Strip tells you the grade once; the AquaScan can be reused and also lists every contaminant in the container.

How do you get water?

You need a steady supply before any of the machines matter. In order of how much they help:

1. Rustwater On Tap. Unlimited Rustwater from your sink at 90.00–91.50% purity, a new value each day. In Wild's Network buy Water Trading (300), then Gutterflow On Tap (250), then Rustwater On Tap (350). The Working Pipes starting perk unlocks both taps from day one.
2. Moisture Farm. 850 ml of Ghostwater a night from the air. See below for why it is a weak buy.
3. Water sellers. A Water Neon Sign in the display case brings someone selling water about three days in four. With Water Trading unlocked the seller changes with the day of the week, and some of them lie about the grade, so test before you pay.
4. Sealed Water Rations. A Sealed Water Ration (Standard) pours out 750 ml of Basewater. Water buyers also accept the sealed ration as it is.

Buying Water Trading also hands you a starter kit: the Water Trading Manual, test strips, purification tablets, a Water Pitcher with a Water Filter, a Water Neon Sign and a HydraTech Micro Water Purifier with 75 charge. It brings a Water Trader to your store, and the Retired Water Merchant starts visiting once a week with purifiers, filters and Water Tanks. The Water Merchant start begins with all of this already unlocked.

Which machines and tools do you need?

Water Purifier250 ¢Moisture Farm350 ¢Bottle Printer100 ¢PowerBloc200 ¢Recharger150 ¢UV Lamp150 ¢Water Filter25 ¢Bottle of Water Purification Tablets1 ¢AquaScan200 ¢HydraTech Micro Water Purifier325 ¢Advanced Turbo Booster300 ¢Jug of Water15 ¢

• Water Purifier (250). The machine that matters. It cleans whatever water is inside overnight and uses 4 power, but only on nights it actually removes something.
• Moisture Farm (350). Makes water from the air for 6 power a night.
• Bottle Printer (100). Prints an empty bottle each time you press it, using power from its battery: 4 for a small bottle, 6 for a standard one, 11 for a large one. Standard bottles unlock after 3 Electronic Parts (Common), large ones after 9 in total.
• PowerBloc (200). Adds 2 power a night to every battery it touches, including batteries inside neighboring machines; 4 with the Commercial Grade Power Supply Unit upgrade.
• Recharger (150). Recharges the batteries inside it by 3 a night, 6 with that upgrade.

Containers decide how much a purifier can work on at once. The small, standard and large bottles hold 450 ml, 750 ml and 2 L, and a Jug of Water holds 6 L. The Water Pitcher holds 3 L and filters whatever you pour through it. The Water Tank starts at 20 L and grows to 50 L: each Scrap Metal adds 2 L, and an ingot adds 4–14 L depending on its purity.

Cleaning water by hand

• UV Lamp. Use it on a container and every microbe turns into water, instantly. It is never used up. On tap water that is 15% of the dirt gone for free.
• Water Filter in a Water Pitcher. Pour water through the pitcher and the filter catches organic waste, physical contaminants and minerals, which is 45% of tap water's dirt. It does nothing against microbes, chemicals or heavy metals. Filtering 6 L of tap water costs about 245 of its 400 durability. The Advanced Water Filter recovers 50 durability every morning.
• Water Purification Tablets. Each tablet brings chemical contaminants down to 0.7% of the container and spends what is left of its strength on microbes. They do nothing else, and they take a little volume with them.
• HydraTech Micro Water Purifier. Brings any container straight to Basewater (98%). It uses 1 of its 300 charge for every 100 ml, so a 6 L jug costs 60, and it refuses water that is already Basewater or better.

How does the Water Purifier work?

Every night the purifier removes a share of the dirt in its container, and the dirtier the water, the more it removes. That is why a jug of Rustwater climbs fast on the first night and slowly at the end. Bigger containers are also cleaned faster than small ones, though not in proportion to their size.

Performance from modules raises how much it removes each night. Quality sets the highest purity it can reach. The Water Purifier counts Quality at its full value, even though its tooltip mentions a 0.5 ratio:

A Performance Module gives +16% Performance and a Quality Module only +8% Quality, which is why Pure Water is the expensive part. Any module with the Learning Algorithm affix is worth leaving in a purifier from the day you get it: it starts at nothing and grows each night the machine works, up to twice its normal stats. Avoid Inferior modules, and think twice about Overcharged (10% chance of being ruined on each use) and Degrading (loses a point every use).

Water Purifier or Moisture Farm?

Buy purifiers. The Moisture Farm looks like free water, but:

• Farms share the air. Every farm running the same night makes less: two make 80% each, four only 57% each. Four farms give about 2.3 farms' worth of water.
• Ghostwater without modules. 850 ml of 96% water that upper-class buyers will not touch. The tap already gives you unlimited water that is only slightly worse.
• Quality is costly. The farm needs Quality +100% for High-Quality Water and +150% for Pure Water. A purifier without any modules already turns 6 L of tap water into High-Quality Water every five nights, which is more than 850 ml a night.
• Pure Water is cheaper with a purifier. One purifier with +100% Quality and a little Performance turns a whole 6 L jug of High-Quality Water into Pure Water in one night.

A single farm with heavy Quality can make sense late in the game, when money no longer matters. The machines guide has the full output table.

How many nights does the purifier take?

This is the table to plan around. Each cell is the lowest Performance a purifier needs to finish in that many nights:

What goes in the Water Purifier	5 nights	4 nights	3 nights	2 nights	1 night
6 L Rustwater from the tap → High-Quality	no modules	34%+	93%+	214%+	—
6 L Rustwater + UV Lamp → High-Quality	no modules	20%+	71%+	177%+	—
6 L Rustwater + UV Lamp + Water Pitcher → High-Quality (uses 245 filter durability)			no modules	42%+	193%+
2 L Rustwater → High-Quality				no modules	47%+
6 L Basewater (98%, e.g. after the HydraTech Micro Water Purifier) → High-Quality				no modules	12%+
6 L High-Quality → Pure Water (Quality +100%)				no modules	1%+
6 L High-Quality → 100% (Quality +200%)				no modules	12%+

Three things stand out:

• Bigger containers give more water per day. Without modules, 750 ml of tap water reaches High-Quality in one night, 2 L in two and 6 L in five. That is 750 ml, 1 L and 1.2 L a day per purifier.
• The UV Lamp is free speed. It only changes the no-module result when you have some Performance, but from +20% on it saves a full night on a 6 L jug.
• Pitcher-filtered water is three nights without modules. It costs a little over half a filter per jug.

How do you run water in the early game?

Pick Working Pipes or buy the taps before you try to sell water in earnest. Then:

1. Fill a large bottle (2 L) with tap water and put it in the purifier. It is High-Quality in two nights, which beats a standard bottle every night (1 L a day instead of 750 ml).
2. Buy more purifiers as money allows and stagger them so that one finishes every morning.
3. Keep a Water Pitcher, two filters and a bottle of purification tablets aside for shortages (see below).

How do you run water in the mid game?

Switch every purifier to 6 L jugs and hit each jug with the UV Lamp when you fill it. With five purifiers started on different days, one jug of 6 L High-Quality Water comes out every morning.

Then buy Performance Modules without bad affixes. At +20% Performance a 6 L jug takes four nights instead of five, at +71% three nights, and at +177% two. Put your Quality Modules aside for now, except Learning Algorithm ones, which should start growing as early as possible.

How do you make Pure Water efficiently?

You only need +100% Quality to take water from 99% to 99.9%. So split the work:

• Fast purifiers with Performance only turn tap water into High-Quality Water.
• One Quality purifier with +100% Quality (and at least 1% Performance) turns a 6 L jug of High-Quality Water into Pure Water every night.

Compare two ways to spend the same effort. Four purifiers that you painstakingly bring to +100% Quality, each fed a 2 L bottle of tap water, make Pure Water in two nights: 4 L a day. Three purifiers at +71% Performance (three or four Performance Modules each) make 6 L of High-Quality Water a day between them, and one +100% Quality purifier turns all of it into Pure Water: 6 L a day, 50% more, and far cheaper to set up.

Reaching +100% Quality usually means a full module bay, since Quality Modules give only +8% each and the Refinement Module (+25% Quality) costs 8% Performance. Watch the total: at 0% Performance or below, the last 0.01% takes a second night.

What should you do in a water shortage?

Three events change water prices, and they also cover drinks and purification supplies:

During a crisis an extra buyer comes for water: a Corporate Representative with 450–500 credits half the time, otherwise a Spacer with 100–120. During a Minor Water Shortage a Lower Level Citizen with 150–200 comes for Basewater or High-Quality Water. The problem is usually having nothing left to sell. These are the emergency routes, from cheapest to fastest:

1. Pitcher and tablets. Pour tap water through the Water Pitcher into a 6 L jug, twice, then drop in three purification tablets. That gives about 5.5 L of Basewater right away, for roughly 245 filter durability and three tablets. One night in a purifier without modules makes it High-Quality. Keep two filters and nine tablets in stock so you can do this three times.
2. Pitcher, UV Lamp and Performance. Pitcher-filtered tap water hit with the UV Lamp becomes High-Quality in one night with +193% Performance, two nights with +42%. No tablets needed.
3. HydraTech Micro Water Purifier. 60 charge turns a 6 L jug into Basewater on the spot. A purifier finishes it to High-Quality in two nights, or one with +12% Performance.
4. Advanced Turbo Booster. Using it on a purifier runs the purifier's night immediately, power and all. It recharges from its own battery and can be used once every three nights. Use it to turn spare High-Quality Water into Pure Water while the prices are up.

Who buys water, and what do they pay?

Water buyers decide by the grade on the label, and all of them also take sealed rations:

The Water Stockpiler is the one worth producing Pure Water for. Which water buyer your display case attracts depends on the most common grade of water on display.

The Labeler changes the grade on the label, and it is tempting. Lower Levels, Black Market and Security customers test the water and catch any wrong label, and so does the Water Stockpiler. Scavengers, tourists, Upper Levels and ordinary customers only notice Rustwater and Gutterflow. Wrong labels that slip through still add up: past about 2.5 liters of mislabeled water, the game starts recording it as Fraud, or as Endangerment when the water was really Ghostwater (which also brings threatening notes). Ghostwater sold as Pure Water counts four times as fast. The tally shrinks slowly each day. The spot fakes guide has more on labels.

The Vending Fountain (1,200 in Wild's Network) sells water overnight at 10% above value. It only takes Basewater, High-Quality Water and Pure Water, and event price changes do not apply to it.

Why is my water not getting better?

• The purifier stopped at its cap. Check Max Purity on its tooltip; add Quality to go higher.
• No power. The battery needs 4 power for the night. A PowerBloc next to it keeps it topped up.
• The filter is spent. A filter at 0 durability lets everything through.
• The label is old. A label can stay on the old grade after the water changes. Test the water and use Match Label before selling.
• You mixed waters. Pouring two waters together averages their purity by volume, so a little Rustwater can drag a jug of High-Quality Water down a grade.
• Wine. BloomBerry wine wants High-Quality Water or Basewater. Pure Water lacks the minerals it needs.