So I played with all kinds of settings in PrusaSlicer. Nothing changed anything.
The only things that did improve the outcome some was:
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Forcing the letters to be printed first: then the letters are smooshed and bleed into the background instead of the other way round, which arguably looks better / more legible. Nothing to write home about though.
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Dropping the first layer's height to 0.1mm (the other layers are 0.2mm high): that improves the letters a bit.
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Dropping the first layer's height to 0.05mm: because the first layer is so thin, it becomes kind of translucent and the wider white letter beneath it sort of show through. The net result is that it drops a kind of gaussian blur onto the lettering, which actually improves them - especially at a distance.
Other than that, there's just nothing for it. And half of the suggestions I got concern other slicers, and I couldn't find them or equivalents in PrusaSlicer. Oh well...
I guess that's as good as it's gonna get.
Did you calibrate flow rate, retraction and z offset? Teaching Tech has a pretty thorough guide for all things calibration.
Fuck me retraction has done me dirty so many times, I'm convinced it's just not worth it unless you've got a direct drive extruder
You mean you have turned it off completely? I used it with the stock E3v2 extruder and BMG in Bowden mode, and later with BMG in direct drive mode, without any retraction related problems and I think it's the same for the majority of 3d printer owners. Perhaps your printer had some other issue, which only showed up in combination with retraction?
Yes I have, and it's not even worth troubleshooting tbh, I'm not having any of the issues that having it on would fix