Is the kiln worth having for producing coal from wood?

[AirToob]

About a Kiln: is turning wood into coal worth it? From the Hearth's sacrifice feature, it seems that coal has twice the calorific value of wood (yes?) but it takes 2 wood to create 1 coal.

Right now, I can see the only use of coal as an ingredient, rather than as a fuel, is in producing pigment. Hence my question.

[mk11]

Very marginal.

[arjensmit79]

Very marginal is the perfect wording

If you are in Marchlands, your woodcutters produce about 3 wood per minute.
In the royal woodlands your woodcutter produce about 5 wood per minute.

So on a clean account (no unlocks), to burn 1 hearth you need 5 wood per minute which translates to:

-1 guy wood cutting on royal woodlands
-1.66 wood cutting on marchlands.

Now if we introduce the killn we need instead of 5 wood per minute 1.5 coal per minute for the hearth. 1 guy in the killn produces about 3 coal from 6 wood per minute. So burning this we need 0.5 guys in the killn to burn a hearth. We also still need to cut 3 wood per minute which takes about 0.6 or 1 guy. So using killn we get to:

-1.1 guys on royal woodlands
-1.5 guys on marchlands

So on marchlands you gain a marginal advantage by using the killn, On royal woodlands you lose a little by doing so. Of course production bonusses can change the math a little.

[hardy_conrad]

Yeah the only time I bother making coal is if I have some kind of relevant cornerstone providing a buff. While we're on the topic, what about oil? Any thoughts on that?

[arjensmit79]

Oil is awesome

[mostly willing]

in my latest marsh trade hub game I ran a piped kiln for fuel, piped smokehouse incense into carpenter luxury packs + smokehouse jerky. turned out better than I expected

unpiped kiln is not worth it most of the time

Originally posted by AirToob:

I can see the only use of coal as an ingredient, rather than as a fuel, is in producing pigment. Hence my question.

you are forgetting jerky, incense, pottery, and copper bars. all recipes that involve burning take fuels

[Vaelin]

It's marginal as other have said. BUT, depending on unlocks and other perks - making something has a chance for double returns (mostly the global double production chances come from citadel upgrades, so depends on progression), so the more you process something, the more chance you have for more resources in the end. However, that also takes more time and more villagers (more food) - and time is a very important resource.

All that only shifts it marginally better... so it's still an 'it depends' sort of situation for hearth. Lizards like it for resolve, I do use it for coal more than anything- but the early jerky and brick recipes are nice as well. Jerky, for example, takes 5 wood or 1 coal - so the coal is much more resource efficient for the 1 star jerky recipe. But again, not always time efficient as you have to process it first. There are a lot of other recipes where this is also true.

[Prowler™]

Coal is almost always better.
Remember, you get a baseline 2x production chance which is improved by using favoured workers and your citadel upgrades.
2x coal is significantly more value than 2x wood.

[Cubey]

From the Hearth's sacrifice feature, it seems that coal has twice the calorific value of wood (yes?) but it takes 2 wood to create 1 coal.

That is incorrect. Check burn timers at the hearth: a single piece of coal should burn about 4 times longer than a piece of wood. Moreover sacrificing wood lowers hostility by 50 per stack, but sacrificing coal lowers it by 80, so they're not entirely comparable.

[skyhrg]

I haven't done all the calculations, but I feel like the coals do a better job in the higher difficulties when you can burn extra coal for the hostility reduction.

[kory]

Coal wins out in the sealed forest, where the calculation of how much wood you could get by just putting those workers into a lumber mill is a bit more painful. That said, the kiln still isn't all that great, as you would prefer a source of fuel that doesnt even touch the trees, but kiln will extend your fuel supply in a pinch.

[arjensmit79]

I see a lot of people hailing the qualities from coal.
And indeed, coal is fabulous. If you get it from an upgraded mine.

From the kiln it is indeed very marginal. Even with the 10% or 20% production boost. Surely some recipes use 1 coal vs 5 fuel and then its a good deal, but usually you wont be making enormous amounts of fuels for those purposes, so you don't gain enormous values either.

Originally posted by skyhrg:

I haven't done all the calculations, but I feel like the coals do a better job in the higher difficulties when you can burn extra coal for the hostility reduction.

And on higher levels, the killn is more of a no-go simply because you have so few blueprints and so many bigger priorities than the marginal value you could get out of this.

Sacrificing resources is absolutely not the way to beat higher difficulties. Sacrificing fuels is the most horrible waste you can make in this game. Its just way, way to expensive to use regularly. Just a few seconds here and there at most.

Does that mean i never use the Killn ? No, every buliding in this game will find use someday under the right combination of circumstances. Just yesteday i actually picked a building purely because it could make pigment. And Mostly Willing Sun also painted a scenario where the killn can be utilized.

The killn is just not efficient enough to be considered one of the base fuel solutions like marrow, coal mine and oil production.

Interesting part of that just reducing the wood required for fuel is not really enough for comfort. On a wood rich biome, it would be fine. As you saw in the numbers in my earlier post however, its on a wood poor biome where the killn is marginally effective. On a wood rich one it is not. Hence on a royal woodlands, the killns is superfluous, you can just as well burn wood. On marchlands where the killn hs positive efficiency, the killn is not enough, even burning half the wood is a pain in the butt. (but surely it is a viable last resort on marchlands if you cant find better fuel fixes, more viable at least than trying to burn your hearths on wood)

[John Hadley]

I think the kiln is always worth using if you are on a higher difficulty level. It basically makes you able to fuel your hearths with only 60% of the amount of woodcutters. When each woodcutter costs you 24 hostility and revealing a glade costs you 40 hostility you have to conserve hostility as much as possible. If you can have 3 woodcutters and 2 kiln workers instead of 5 woodcutters then that's a reduction of 48 hostility. It very well may be the difference between being stuck at a hostility level of 3 during a storm or a much more comfortable hostility level of 2.

[Samseng Yik]

In my eye is very worthy.
Fuel management is a things require handling and it can't solve itself.
Either making good fuel, or very efficient plank recipe.
At high difficulty setting, you don't even get much blueprint option at all
So the key thing about this game is, take what is useful to you when it is offered.
Not "reroll" until your dream stuff appear.
I forgot kiln has meat tag or not, if yes having a lizard make it much more worth

[RonEmpire]

Always still worth it for various reasons but also having the kiln gives other benefits too for lizards happy resolve. Jerky better than kitchen. Bricks better than crude.

It's a three slot building that you can use water for resolve.

Reduces woodcutters can cut down on hostility as others have mentioned.

[Skallagrim]

Question of "worth" is almost always answered with "as oppose to what?"

If in early game I have only 2 blueprints to pick from, and the other is Press (which most people agree is an awesome blueprint) but I have no way to produce wheat or plant fiber, then I will take Kiln and make use it.

If I have a 4-node coal pack in front of me, then I will probably take the speculative cellar unless I have an order asking for a kiln for whatever reason.

In an abstract sense using Kiln to make coal is slightly better than simply burning wood, but in Against the Storm it's very rare that one gets to make such decisions without context.