Firepit

Introduction

The Fire pit is one of the most essential world blocks in TerraFirmaCraft and it is TFC's equivalent to vanilla's furnace block. It is where you will start off cooking food, smelting ores, and lighting torches. It is made using 3 sticks (optionally a piece of paper can be used to help facilitate ignition) and a firestarter and kept going using logs or peat. The fire pit's temperature is affected by the air around the fire pit, the type of fuel, and any bellows pumping air at it.

Making a fire pit

A fire pit is simply made by dropping 3 sticks onto the ground (Default key: Q), then using a firestarter on the block under it until they finally catch fire. It could take several uses of a firestarter (or even several firestarters) until they finally light).

A piece of paper may be used in order to increase the chance of a fire pit being formed. This is done by throwing the piece of paper onto the sticks before trying to light it. A extinguished fire pit can be relight by putting wood or peat in the fuel slots and using the firestarter on it.

For the fire pit to reach maximum possible temperature from any fuel it is important to keep the fire pit's area free from obstacles. The fire pit needs a 3x3x3 area, with the fire pit being the central block of the bottom layer, in order to reach maximum temperature.

It is important to note that if it is raining, the fire pit cannot be crafted or relight. If the fire pit was already flaming when the rain starts is will slowly go out, not consuming any additional fuel. To use a fire pit even when it rains it needs to have a solid block (no stairs, half-slabs, trapdoors or other transparent blocks) above it. In other words, it needs to be indoors or covered.

Usage

To access the firepit's GUI right click it with anything other than the firestarter. It is important to note, that as in most TFCraft GUIs all of the above slots only hold one item.

Slots 1-4: Fuel input slots. Used for adding peat or wood as fuel for the firepit, some wood logs burn hotter and longer than others. Check Trees for more information about each kind of wood.

The bar beside the input slots is the temperature gauge. It is used as an estimate to the current temperature of the fire. This is extremely important as some Ores can only be smelted at extremely high temperatures. There are only a few basic Ores which can be liquefied for shaping using the fire pit. Note: A bellows may be used to reach slightly higher temperatures.

Slot 5: This is the input slot, it will accept anything which can be cooked or smelted. It will also accept sticks for lighting into torches.

Slot 6-7: The output slots, each slots can hold 1 type of material and stacks up to the usual storage of that item. In the case of Smelting ores, if you have an half-finished liquid metal, it will finish that rather then using the second output slot, given that you have a Ceramic Mold in both slots.

Slot 8-11: The byproduct slots, currently unused.

• In past versions used for slag, and charcoal pit output.

Charcoal Pit

Latest update

The information below is mostly correct with a few corrections below. The charcoal produced is deposited in charcoal blocks on the floor of the pit, they can be harvested with a shovel. You may now make charcoal pits of almost any shape up to 25m wide and 13m tall, with the firepit located at any point in this pile.

A fairly up-to-date method on building charcoal pits by youtuber Spumwack can be found here:

Corrections: At the end of 18 hours (20 minutes) any pit covered in gravity affected blocks will "collapse" as the wood is replaced with a smaller amount of Charcoal.

The Firepit can be placed at any point in the pit as long as it will ignite the pile.

Intro

The second use of the firepit is in making charcoal. This is accomplished by creating a stack of Log Piles upto 25x13 in size, note that you can place log piles on top of each other by holding shift when trying to place another log pile. You can make a charcoal pit with as little as 5 logs and a Firepit though it's recommended to use as many logs as possible.

The type of wood you use has a Minimal effect on the quantity of Charcoal produced with higher quality woods producing slightly more charcoal per stack.

The smallest version of a charcoal pit is just have a log pile surrounding the 4 sides of a fire pit and the top. Cover all exposed log with some sort of dirt or stone to finish it.

The Charcoal pit needs to be covered to allow it to burn without access to Air. The fire pit can be placed at any point in the charcoal pit as long as it will ignite the log piles.

After 18 Hours in game (20 minutes) - The Log Piles will turn to a small pile of Charcoal which will fall to the ground. If the pit was covered with a Gravity affected block such as dirt or cobble, the pit will collapse.

Most larger pits are made out of Stone/Brick to give a more permanent structure with a Door placed one side to check progress and access the pit. The Door will not burn or count as air.

Chiseled blocks or glass do count as air and will not work.

At the maximum size of 25x13 the massive update of Log Piles to Charcoal will put some strain on the server so should be used with care.

An Example Charcoal Pit

This used to be the largest pit you could make and the most common design, foyou will need 42 non-flammable blocks, the materials for a fire pit and at least 30 logs, though it is recommended to have many many more logs.

The charcoal pit is made first by laying a 5x5 area minus the corners with log piles.

Next place a solid 3x3 cap over top of the first layer, centered on the fire pit. It is highly recommended that you don't place the middle log pile until your fire pit is primed and your charcoal pit is nearly covered. You don't have much time after placing the last log pile before it will start burning.

And now with the completed covering you have your charcoal pit. The covering should start smoking after it's completely covered, after that all you have to do is wait 18 hours to reap your charcoal.

When the charcoal is ready, the center will cave in (if it was build with dirt), as the fire pit had disappeared. The charcoal appears as a black block that can be collected using a stone or metal shovel. The full charcoal blocks are composed of 8 layers, with the block dropping charcoal and decreasing in size each time it is harvested with a shovel.