Saltfire Day 80 18 September 2026
Wax
How do you make Wax in 8 merges?
- 1 Dew + Salt Brine
- 2 Brine + Ember Broth
- 3 Breath + Salt Dust
- 4 Broth + Dust Seed
- 5 Ember + Seed Tree
- 6 Ember + Tree Resin
- 7 Ember + Ember Flame
- 8 Flame + Resin Wax
Why is 8 merges the shortest possible?
Day 80 asked for Wax — a tier-4 element, one of the complex — and it goes in eight 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.
Three of the eight merges come straight out of the primordials — Brine, Dust and Flame — and everything else is built on top of those. The last step is Flame + Resin, which is where Wax 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 Wax sits above the primordials. There is nothing shared to save a step on — eight links of chain, eight merges.
Wax 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. One step fuses an element with itself (Ember + Ember). Self-merges are legal moves and a few elements only come out that way — always worth a try when a run stalls.