Rock Salt

Rock Salt is a failry common mineral that can be acquired by mining rock salt, which is found underground or it can be bought from HOLD and HOLD for HOLD silver coins.

Occurence
The mineral ore has the same occurence as nitre ore and sulfur ore. Compared to those common ores rock salt veins are up 1.5 times bigger and contain up to 12 blocks, but their occurence is 2/3 of that of nitre and salpeter.

Rock salt can be found in any biome of Middle-earth in layers under elevation level 64. The underground of oceans and seas contains two and a half times as much rock salt, albeit in veins of a slightly smaller average volume. In the sands and soils of oceanic islands and shores between elevation levels 56 and 80, there is an additional small chance to also hit rock salt deposits of up to 8 blocks.

Usage
Rock salt blocks can be 'smelted' in vanilla furnaces and alloy forges to obtain salt, which can have various applications in the mod. The applicability of salt is currently restricted to the crafting of Gammon from cooked porc.

Trivia

 * Throughout earth history, salt was and is still the most common resource used to conserve foodstuffs. Unsurprisingly, salt has long been the most common currency.
 * On earth, salt is extracted from both rock salt deposits and deposits of salt in salt pans along sea water shores. In the mod, the 'smelting' of rock salt to obtain salt in the mod is a cosmetic way to simulate the effort required to separate the mineral from its surrounding rocky neighbours. In reality the extraction of salt from mineral ore rock is mainly done by dissolution and hardly requires elevated temperatures.
 * Chemically, salt is commonly known as sodium nitrate, NaCl.