Now we've been patiently waiting for our dye to steep for a while, it's time to open the cask up. This can be done one of two ways: with a metal fitting of the same material, to tap the cask, or with a dagger, to lever the lid off. Tapping it is technically free, since the metal fitting is returned when the cask is emptied, but it's a little more restrictive; we'll get more into that when it comes to the actual brewing update. The alternative, which will be probably more palatable than dispensing dye on tap, is to remove the lid. This can also be used to abort brewing at the cost of ruining the liquid, if you decide you want to use the cask for something else. Levering it open will, of course, consume some durability on the dagger. The dye can then be transferred into a barrel to use the cask for something else.

Now that we have an open cask of dye, we can start dyeing some stuff. For many items, this is as simple as dragging the item onto the cask/barrel of dye, just like before. For fabrics, it's now a little more complicated. Let me introduce you to a new mining item...

Alum is a fairly common mining drop. It's used for both cooking and dyeing, but it will probably be a cooking ingredient of last resort. You'll receive it from firesetting in the form of crystals, which can be pestled into a powder and stored in sacks. The powder can then be mixed into a barrel of water to create mordant. You'll then need to soak the cloth in mordant in a cask for several in-game days.

...But we don't have time for that, so we'll skip it. Once your fabric has been soaked in mordant you can then begin dyeing it by soaking it in the dye, and once that's done, trim it with an applique kit if you'd like. Make sure you know what color you want, because you can no longer re-dye clothing (at least for now, we may add a way to remove dye and start the process over). The whole process takes several in-game weeks, so you won't be able to casually try on dyes anymore and, combined with the durability of clothing, it will probably be most convenient for tailors to sell clothes already dyed. We really hope to see shop floors with stands showing off outfits some day!

There's more to dyeing, but we'll leave that to you to discover. For now, that's another thing crossed off the roadmap, which leaves only the cooking and brewing overhauls, which I'm waiting for the sprites to start. So tomorrow we'll be headed back to the website (for now) to implement the new event system!