It took me less than 24 hours to get the correct amount of digits, in decimal. It took me less than 48 to get the correct amount of digits, in nonary. I don't know if it's possible to get the correct amount of digits, in octal, but hey that's the mystery of production cycles! My previous two attempts had me put the Glyph of Dispersion, which all my homies hate with a passion, near the Elemental Quintessence input glyph. This felt like a good choice at the time. But when I slept on the problem, I realised there were some serious issues with such a machine. See, near the Glyph of Dispersion there needs to be a bunch of additional machinery; namely, it needs to have glyphs nearby that support calcification, duplication, and a triplex-bonding station. That made it tricky to find space for the regular bonder, and just how to move the quintessence through the chamber in order to get it at the right hexes that could support a normal-bonding station.

So my approach then shifted towards using the conduit provided to transport the Elemental Quintessence input to the Glyph of Dispersion, meaning the machinery for the worst glyph in the game could be contained sort of far away from the input, where it would not taint its purity. Then all I had to do was find ample space for at least one bonding station. Turns out with the swings I had programmed, I had space for the perfect bonding location!

I think I'm quite happy with this solve, but I do suspect the cycle count can easily go down below where I'm at. It'd just be a rate shave of 4, and I am doing some inefficient stuff. Perhaps I will find this over the week!

This is what I wrote when I found my first couple of sub-100c solves, in any case. But now sitting on an 83c solve, I realised I could use new Fire to make even more Fire. You can see this here with the Water and Earth atoms. The Water-Turned-Fire lets the Earth turn into Fire without the original Fire from the Glyph of Dispersion needing to be there, cutting down rate and latency, both by one! Please also notice the things arms 4 and 5 are doing, especially when they make the first triplex-bond. The length two swing and the slide movement are just the right combination of swings and slides that don't cause a collision. I'm still going to hunt for more optimisations, though! I think I will crack the sub-80 mark!

Turns out joining the sub-80c club was as easy as just spotting a rather trivial period reduction on one of the arms. Neat!

(Not to steal Spectria's thunder or anything, but if you enjoyed this puzzle, please try out "Sustaining Elixir - Research into Unconventional Alchemy VI" by Rithaniel, on the Workshop. It's similar to this one, except the output has six salt-likes (three water, one salt, one vitae, one mors). Another puzzle similar to this one, from the same series, is "Black Toxin - Research into Unconventional Alchemy XX", from the same author as before. And yes, I have the names and number of each entry memorised, why are you asking?)

PS: Did you know that if you make a grey triplex-bond and a red triplex-bond at the same time, it sort of sounds like you're making a regular bond? It fucked me up good when I noticed.