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mdtexeira

Charcoal pit

43 posts in this topic

Ok, I'm writing this a bit dismayed.  I thought I'd understood the wiki well enough when I built my charcoal pit structure, but when I just checked on it, I found half of my logs gone and no charcoal.  So, I'm going to describe my setup and hope that someone here can clear the derp that has descended upon me so that I might not waste so much time and energy in the future.

 

So, I build a room with basalt bricks.  Contained within the room is a space equaling 7x6x3 blocks, with a door at one end.  I filled this entire room with minus the space directly in front of the door.  When I finished, there were approximately 2000 logs in this room.  I then build a firepit in the single floor space remaining directly in front of the door, lit it, and closed the door.  My understanding was that the door does not count as air, so this would suffice.  I also was under the impression that as long as the fire pit was on the floor of the area and had a log pile directly above it that it would work.  Alas, that is not what I have experienced.  I lost about two thirds of my logs in this failed attempt...which had taken me better than 20 days to collect (in between forging my first iron anvil, and getting my cheese production in gear).  I cannot suffer such a loss again.

 

What did I do wrong?  How can I do better?

 

Thanks

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You need to surround the firepit with log piles, the firepit in front of the doors is what you did wrong.

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Ok, good to know.  It might be nice to add that as a requirement to the wiki since as of now, I can't seem to find a place where it states that the firepit must be surrounded on all sides by log piles.

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Actually I was wrong, I just tested it and you can have the firepit right next to the door.

Perhaps you haven't filled the room to the top, and there were air blocks?

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Kitty and I had a discussion about charcoal pits a few days ago, which might be related to your problem.

 

You can start a charcoal pit with the firepit in any position within the logpile. If the firepit has "wood" on all five sides (N, S, E, W and above), the firepit will continue to burn without using up its internal fuel. In this case "wood" means any block with a wood material property, including doors. If you do not have 5 sides of wood, the firepit will use up its internal fuel before the charcoal operation has time to complete.

 

If you built the firepit on an edge of the pit, you can use a door to 'seal off' the charcoal pit and it should have worked because it is surrounded on five sides (4 log piles, 1 door)

If you have the firepit on a corner of the pit, perhaps one side was basalt brick and thus it would have burnt out. (3 log piles, 1 basalt brick, 1 door)

If you have the firepit in the middle of the pit, it would have log piles on all sides and should work.

 

You're right that the wiki doesn't seem to mention this little detail.

 

You can work around this detail if you quickly leave the area and the chunk unloads before the firepit runs out of fuel.

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never mind. didn't read completely ) 

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Well, I had the firepit directly against the door.  There was, indeed, one space that I couldn't place wood in.  I'm guessing that that was the problem.  I'll restock the room, fill that slot with a brick block, copy the world and try it again.  Well, I'm off to experiment with planting a huge network of white cedar all spaced 3 blocks from each other.  Hopefully, if my plan works, chopping one of them will cause them all to come down.  I'm just not sure what to do in the days it will take them to grow.  Thanks for all the help.  I'll post back once I see if the fix I'm going with is successful.

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White cedar farms suck for charcoal making. You'd be better off making expeditions into forests and chopping them down, making charcoal pits right there and moving on.

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Chopping one will also not chop them all even if the leaves touch. The game knows that they are separate trees.

 

As for charcoal pits, don't bother being too fancy. I use a super simple design that has worked every time, without fail, that I used it. First, I dig a 3x3 pit two blocks deep into the ground. Then I place log piles 2 blocks high into it, leaving the center empty. I can then stack dirt blocks on the log piles without the dirt falling into the middle if I place the corners first. I place all dirt blocks except for the center and one side block, so I still have comfortable access to the middle. I throw sticks in, start a fire, place the last log pile on top and plop down the remaining two pieces of dirt. I know when the pit is finished when the dirt blocks fall in.

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Just plant a lot of Dougles Fur RIGHT next to each other on a line, so not 1block space next to each other, where X is a sapling , just like this : XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX , with dougles fur (not sure if it works with anyother) they actually grow next to each other so you can cut 1 trunk and get ALL the trees in a line, also douglas fur is quite a tall tree and grows rather quickly : over 9000 logs

 

 

Bile

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I'd definitely do the Douglas Fir thing if I had access to it.  As of right now, with the version I'm using at least, chopping down a White Cedar definitely brings down any trees within a certain distance.  I spaced the trees so there were two empty blocks between each sapling, and a single chop brought down about 16 or so trees at a time.  4 chops (2 for each of the areas I planted, and I had half of my inventory completely filled with wood.  

 

I placed a brick block in the place that I'd had air before, and this time it worked.  I ended up with exactly 7 stacks of charcoal.  Strangely, the entire top layer of wood was left untouched, which leads my to believe that the process of conversion moves directly up from the firepit, and then across the horizontal plane, and never moves vertically except through the area directly above the firepit.  Well, no bother since My structure is now 1/3 full.  I realized that I was being rather stupid, and I can just remove the block above the door to place the last woodpile and then seal it up afterwards.  Next time I should successfully convert all 126 woodpiles in a single go.

 

As for people's advice about making smaller pits or pits on the go, I prefer this method.  Firstly, my charcoal processing area is right near my house and my tree farms.  Thus, I never need venture too far from home if I don't want to.  Secondly, I prefer getting to do this process less often with larger returns.  It means more focused activity and less time I have to spend traipsing about the wilderness carrying all my tools.

 

Well, I've got some hematite needing attending to.  Cheers.

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*snip*

Well, I've got some hematite needing attending to.  Cheers.

 

You are doing it right. Sounds like you found the open air block that was your problem. You are clearly harvesting on an industrial scale, so small coal pits are not ideal. I have yet to find a tree that does not propagate to nearby trees. I don't know if the trees have to be adjacent, or overlapping, or if the trees have to be a certain proximity. The two spaces you use are what I have the most luck with, sometimes three. Douglas firs are good because their branches are not sprawling, so you can pack them in tight without crowding other trees from growing; but as you have experienced you can have success with other kinds. 

 

My pits are usually only two high, with a door. If you are going with three high, you could avoid the unreachable pocket of air by making your door level one higher than ground.

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I thought about that solution Tomatothief (I actually made that exact change in my world, temporarily), but I think the door has to be directly next to the firepit to satisfy the 'wood on all sides' aspect of things.  Also, one thing I like about this design is the lack of rushing to add another logpile after lighting the pit.  I'm going to just remove the block making that space unreachable, and then put it back once I've filled in the gap.  I really only use charcoal for iron processing since I'm right near a few nice veins of coal, so I imagine this stuff should last me a fair while.  I might go hunting for some Douglas Fir saplings.  Do you know if they tend to correspond to certain z coordinates?

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Chopping one will also not chop them all even if the leaves touch. The game knows that they are separate trees.

 

Wrong. The game simply scans around for touching logs and leaves of the same type within a certain proximity. So you can indeed space out a bunch of saplings so they are relatively close, and then chop down the entire farm with a few swings and a few axes.

 

The game is smart enough to tell the difference between different types of trees. So you can't say have a farm of alternating douglas fir and white cedar and expect them all to chop down, but as long as you are using the same type of sapling throughout the farm, it works.

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Really? Is that a relatively new feature/side effect? Because in a b75 multiplayer world, my friend and I had a white cedar tree farm because we were south of the southern treeline and still wanted large amounts of wood and sticks. The saplings were planted in a large grid with 2 spaces in between them, which meant the leaves were touching each other all around. Probably around 6x12 planting spots in total, and they usually all grew within a day of each other. In the beginning we farmed all the leaf blocks for sticks for ladders, but after establishing our mines we chopped the trees with leaves intact.

 

Chopping one did most definitely not fell more than one tree. We played for quite a while and always had to chop each tree on its own, no exceptions.

 

Gonna have to try Biletooth's douglas fir trick next time, if the trunks touch I'm fairly sure it will chop it all in one go.

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Actually, I wouldn't mind it if the game would differentiate even between the trees of the same type. It always struckt me as weird and kind of lacking immersion how one could grow tight-knit area of woods and then, with an effort necessary to just take out one of the trees, deforest the whole place in a gigantic rain of logs. Kinda silly, especially given that it's not really that hard to just fell several of them in some random forest. I'd even categorize it as an exploit/bug.

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Actually, I wouldn't mind it if the game would differentiate even between the trees of the same type. It always struckt me as weird and kind of lacking immersion how one could grow tight-knit area of woods and then, with an effort necessary to just take out one of the trees, deforest the whole place in a gigantic rain of logs. Kinda silly, especially given that it's not really that hard to just fell several of them in some random forest. I'd even categorize it as an exploit/bug.

 

Personally, I consider both door on charcoal pits and multiple tree falls with one chop to be exploits. It's just not believable that I can deforest an entire are with one chop or that somehow my wooden door is somehow immune to the fire that can turn solid logs to charcoal.  Just my preference though.

 

NOTE: I'm not judging or condemning other people's play styles. Play however you enjoy.  The point is to have fun.

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Personally, I consider both door on charcoal pits and multiple tree falls with one chop to be exploits. It's just not believable that I can deforest an entire are with one chop or that somehow my wooden door is somehow immune to the fire that can turn solid logs to charcoal.  Just my preference though.

 

NOTE: I'm not judging or condemning other people's play styles. Play however you enjoy.  The point is to have fun.

 

I agree on the chopping of wood, but it's nice to have the ability to put a door on our charcoal pits. Perhaps the devs will add a metal-plated door we can construct and then invalidate the wooden door in a future update?

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Metal door would be perfectly acceptable. However, since I'm a glutton for punishment and quickly lose interest in game if it's not challenging, I still do it the traditional way. Dig a pit, fill it up, cover with dirt.  More labor/time intensive but why do things the easy way when a hard way is available. :)

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I thought about that solution Tomatothief (I actually made that exact change in my world, temporarily), but I think the door has to be directly next to the firepit to satisfy the 'wood on all sides' aspect of things.  Also, one thing I like about this design is the lack of rushing to add another logpile after lighting the pit.  I'm going to just remove the block making that space unreachable, and then put it back once I've filled in the gap.  I really only use charcoal for iron processing since I'm right near a few nice veins of coal, so I imagine this stuff should last me a fair while.  I might go hunting for some Douglas Fir saplings.  Do you know if they tend to correspond to certain z coordinates?

 

To your question about tree spawning: I don't know about a rule of thumb z-wise. But according to the wiki they need a temperature range of 1-14, and rainfall of 750-16000. That's fairly cold temperature, so shoot for more northern or southern regions from the equator. http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Trees

 

As for the door, the rule is not that the firepit need be surrounded by wood or logs. You could have it in the corner of your stone/dirt structure. The door "trick" is merely that a door block counts as a closed space (a wall), and will not burn.

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It will be nice seeing you try the wooden door trick in B79  :D

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It's funny...when I first saw a second tree come down when chopping down the first, I thought it was supposed to simulate one tree falling into another and causing it to fall too.  That could still make sense assuming that only larger trees would knock down smaller ones, and only one other tree at a time.  IRL if not's that easy, but neither do trees suddenly break into handy portable logs when you knock them down.  Sawing apart a fallen tree is arguably a great deal more work than chopping that tree down to begin with.

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Well, no proper door isn't a big deal. I'll just have a dirt door.

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Well, just to update and close this thread...I finally filled the room up again, and by removing the blocking block and adding it back, I was able to convert the whole chamber.  It ended up netting me 10 full stacks and some change.  I'm fairly satisfied with it.  The only other change I made was replacing the floor with basalt bricks so that I didn't keep accidentally digging it up with my shovel during harvest.

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Torches are not air, right? Have anyone uses torches to block airflow?

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