[Suggestion] Allow furnace and campfire to be fueled by charcoal

Comments: 27

• 29 Aug, '21
  Skibee

  hmm ur right but idk every survival game i have played thus far charcoal was typically used for gunpowder crafting, an i dont think it would be a great for generic coal to be used as fuel source. Maybe if the were specific coal node variations on different parts of the map and or oil that would be okay. I mean it is a survival game it does have to challenging, and charcoal do have other uses most likely later in the game progression.2

• 30 Aug, '21
  Kevin

  Perhaps allowing charcoal to be used in fires as a supplement instead of replacement. Doing so would allow wood/sticks to be consumed at a lesser rate. Also, maybe it will come in handy later in the game, but atm I have waaay too much charcoal in my inventory thanks to cooking. Could be balanced by reducing the number of animals in the game, decreasing attacks, and allowing food to spoil more slowly.

• 02 Sep, '21
  DeathEmber

  Charcoal as an alternate fuel for furnace makes sense. For campfire make it a byproduct.
  
  Burning wood to fuel your furnace later is how it was done in Green Hell and it worked well imo.

• 03 Sep, '21
  Drakyn_Ral

  I feel like this is defiantly a case of game mechanics vs. real life expectation due to naming. The idea is wood is needed to keep fires going, while the waste left over might be used in other crafting recipes. Having the waste from a fire also feed that same fire I feel misses the indented mechanic. Perhaps if people really have issues with this the better option is to rename the 'charcoal' to 'ash'. I feel renaming charcoal to ash would better convey the idea and preserve the indented mechanic at the same time.

• 10 Sep, '21
  Sou7ution

  I miss this option as well! Should be come on a next Update for sure!

• 11 Sep, '21
  Mantauk

  I think a hybrid of these ideas may be an interesting solution. As with a real fire when you burn wood you get ash and charred wood (charcoal in this case). Some charcoal (charred wood) is okay for your fire, and will allow the fire to burn longer since it will still act as fuel whereas too much charcoal (ash) will actually bank your fire and eventually smother it. So balancing the 'charcoal' and your fuel could give players who want to micromanage their survival experience one more thing to consider, and players who don't want to can just keep their ash pits clear for the base cooking and heating rate.

• 13 Sep, '21
  RolandDT

  You can use Coal (an ore that you mine) for fuel. It lasts much longer than Wood. Charcoal is used in later recipes, although not in enough abundance for the amount generated.

• 13 Sep, '21
  IO

  As far as I'm aware, charcoal is only an excellent fuel source once it has been sufficiently heated itself. The things that make it a good fuel source (It's excellent durability and heat retention) also make it hard to use as a fuel. Since the game only has one slot for fuel, and since survival game enthusiasts enjoy realism, charcoal really shouldn't be a fuel source until and unless the devs make a progressive fueling system, with each progression having its own waste materials (fiber/sticks leaving ash, wood leaving charcoal/ash, charcoal leaving ash... or somesuch). This would also be needlessly complicated, probably. Personally I agree with Drakyn_Ral, just change the leftovers from burning stuff to ash. This also deals with the fact that, for some reason, charcoal can be stacked in sets of 500 and weighs more than equivalent stone stacks.

• 14 Sep, '21
  Crazyhorse

  I was able to do coal on everything after a certain lvl including my campfire...so I don't understand the suggestion...

• 14 Sep, '21
  Dries

  My suggestion is to have a separate "Charcoal Oven" to produce charcoal from wood or sticks. This charoal can than be used by campfires, make gunpowder ect.

• 14 Sep, '21
  Echo024

  Horrible idea. Smelt 1 wood>turns to charcoal>smelt charcoal>produces ??? Charcoal?>smelt charcoal again. Wood is already incredibly easy to get for fuel you don't need double the smelting potential with it
  
  We have coal already which just needs a buff to smelt time, once you get enough steel or past steel in tech tree coal could be used more. It might even be already planned for coal to be the only fuel source for higher tier smelters, so pointless suggestion

• 14 Sep, '21
  Engimage

  Charcoal can really be used to power furnaces, this is a real life application. Also charcoal is used in grills for cooking.
  However the amount of charcoal produced during wood being burnt in the open fire is minimal. Charcoal can be produced in big quantities if the wood is burnt with the defficite of air. So Green Hell did it right.
  
  You can opt into producing charcoal if burning wood (not sticks, those burn completely) and then reuse the charcoal to burn somewhere else. This is totally fine.

• 16 Sep, '21
  tonythegardener

  Since charcoal is a byproduct of wood burning, maybe charcoal can be used to produce another fuel source? Maybe unlock combining charcoal with something else? We ended up with a lot of it and gunpowder doesn't require that much. Would be great to have some other kind of use for it.

• 17 Sep, '21
  Drakyn_Ral

  Looking back on this I see a lot of comments again mentioning how charcoal in real life is a good fuel and thus it should be usable here, but are missing the idea of the game world mechanics that are indented. The idea is that you need to keep gathering fuel sources to keep your fires and smelters running, basically "keep gathering stuff to keep things fueled". Trying to balance fuel requirements in the game while having a feedback loop of the waste is also fuel is needlessly complicated. The only reason I can see in-game that charcoal exists is for the byproduct of the burning to be used as an ingredient for other crafting lines, like gun powder. And the only reason I see people think it should be a fuel is because it's called "charcoal" which exist in real life. This is why I stick by if you rename the "charcoal" to "ash" then the preconceived notion that charcoal is a fuel goes away and they can see the in-game item as meant to be: The leftover junk of a fire that has use elsewhere.

• 27 Sep, '21
  Emilio Jaksetic

  Not a bad suggestion --- charcoal can be used as a fuel. But, there are coal rocks to be mined --- not many, but I did find at least two (once during Beta session 2 and once during Beta session 3). It's a tossup for the devs to consider.

• 07 Oct, '21
  Ryan Y.

  It seems that the issue is a misnomer on the part of the developers. An open fire source will not produce any useable amount of charcoal, it will produce ash. Producing charcoal requires both high temperature and low oxygen aimed at the elimination of volatile components--particularly water--from the wood. The manufacturing process takes place in a kiln specifically designed for this purpose, and it appears that even modern batch processes take about a week to complete.
  
  Reference: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-4/Charcoal-Briquette.html
  
  My recommendation is to rename the byproduct from using wood as a fuel and heat source to ash to avoid confusion.

• 11 Oct, '21
  Natrash

  terrible idea...

• 15 Oct, '21
  fornost gsd

  Make what comes from the fire ash and harvest charcoal from the trees that catch on fire from lightning strikes.

• 15 Oct, '21
  Natrash

  If I may, I would like to complete my previous comment.
  
  charcoal from wood is already infinite in a fireplace, not speaking about charcoal trees outisde after a storm.
  So first, there is too much charcoal from 1 wood to become a combustible. It would need a complete rebalance.
  Charcoal should last longer than wood, but shorter than coal ore.
  
  Secondly, Charcoal can a good combustible, just like coal ore, anyway, this should turn into ashes.
  Ashes could be used in blueprints for decorations, inscriptions, medicine, mixes for lingots, for carbone elements (once converted)
  
  just an idea.

• 04 Nov, '21
  Dave

  No absolutely not just cut down more trees instead of being lazy DOWN VOTE FOR SURE!!!

• 04 Nov, '21
  ThirdCloud

  Why is this under consideration? Logically makes no sense. I think further down the tech tree having things that cook more efficiently makes complete sense. but using a by product of what you use to continue cooking is just bad game balancing. creates another issue of now having to set some charcoal aside for gun powder since if i dont baby sit my fire it will eventually burn through it.

• 25 Dec, '21
  stb155

  The name is misleading.
  You do not get Charcoal from burning wood in an open fire, what you get is Ash.
  You can not use Ash to fuel another fire.
  
  They should rename it.
  
  
  They could add the possibility to produce actual (Char)Coal in the furnace.
  Wood as fuel and Wood as process material.
  The resulting (Car)Coal would burn longer than fuel, and be more efficient to carry around in places where you can't get fresh wood.

• 29 Dec, '21
  PTTG

  The lore is that the atmosphere is too oxygen-poor to burn right... But on the other hand we have solid oxidizer just sitting on the ground, so we should be able to burn up charcoal just fine.

• 28 Mar, '22
  Lianail

  Agreed, charcoal should be burnable. Also, the rate of charcoal from fuel should be reduced. If you want to make charcoal by putting wood or sticks in the ingredient area (not fuel) then it should produce charcoal at the much higher rate.

• 09 Aug, '22
  westor

  Nice and pretty idea, that of course will help more, because charcoal is a burning material that normally can be used to keep fire alive so why not in game too..

• 16 Sep, '22
  Shockwave

  You can not burn wood in a fireplace and get usable charcoal to burn again. Nor can rotten meat be turned into burnable charcoal.
  
  This is just people seeing the word charcoal and thinking of kingsford briquettes. There is zero reason to burn wood in the fire and produce more fuel for the same fire.

• 17 Sep, '22
  Shockwave

  Have to say big no on this one, please don't. You don't get charcoal from burning wood as fuel on a fire you are cooking on. In this game it is a waste product. I echo several others here. I shouldn't get free fuel for burning other fuel, and I don't want my charcoal going up in smoke when I need it for other recipes. It's bad enough rotten meat becomes charcoal.