The idea is fairly simple, why not make it so if you boil water in a cauldron of higher quality than the water for, say x time, it raises the quality of the water. You boil water normally in real life to get rid of bacteria in the water, this could be seen as raising the quality of it.
I always found it easier to get say Q50 metals than Q50 water as a hermit, I usually find around Q30 when I play as a hermit which would mean with a Q50 cauldron and Q30 Water, maybe it would be something like go to Q40 depending on how the formula would play out, maybe take into account fuel quality too.
On one side it supports industry, which I'm sure we all want to increase. On the other hand, it widens the gap in between hermits and factions even further. +0
It depends. If You make a correct formula for that, Hermit shouldn't pass natural Q of a faction. (not to say that faction could use that themself with better Q water.).
Only luckies of lucky hermites will be able to find a better Q node than a faction and probably, if any faction would find that a hermit has better Q water than them, it would end up in pretty damn good trade or pretty good siege.
So is the main concern that natural water would be useless? Because I think mulch made soil useless, high Q water nodes would still be useful here, as if it calculates into the formula for the final product, then obviously Q10 water still wouldn't provide you as high of water as Q50+ water with your Q160+ cauldron
As a hermit you can trade something one time for a high q cauldron rather than trade everytime for a barrel of high q water. I support this guys idea and I do think that it will not wide but narrow the hermit/vilager/realm gap.
Also if I may suggest we can do it more complicated that I think would please the devs - How about if you boil snow into a high q cauldron you get high q water on some kind of forumla. Also add quality to snow, with nodes and shit.