The Kiln

[marcusaddamsson]

I'm really not sure about this building. I've taken it a number of times, especially early on. My initial thoughts were good... Three-star recipe for coal, a better brick recipe than makeshift, and even the one-star jerky wasn't bad as it's easy to get early.. and helps resolve for those who need it most.

But these days... I don't think it's worth much. Primarily, the wood. This game is sooo much around wood. Planks, planks, and more planks. And wood is very common mat in lotsa recipes.

Don't get me wrong, coal is awesome. If you've got enough of it, burning it thru the Storm can really help. But the Kiln's coal might come at too high of price (aka more wood pressure). Maybe if you've got lizardmen.. that helps. They love workin' in the Kiln, so it helps overall resolve levels.

What do y'all think of the Kiln?

[MadDjinn]

The Kiln is great for Lizards and Frogs. Preferable when paired with Beaver choppers.

10 wood-> 5 coal = 2:1. Burn time on two wood is less than 1 coal, so it's better.

Most recipes that can use either coal or wood have a bigger ratio gap than 2:1, so it's better to make coal and then use that coal for everything instead of the wood.

The Kiln can also get 3* biscuits, which can be useful in some race combos.

just make sure to lock your wood and coal in the storage so that you can still burn it during the storm. I usually start keeping back 120 wood and 20 coal, but can go up from there depending on the needs.

edit: For the bricks and jerky -- early game it's a nice material savings, but I'd still look to get a better building for those later.


If I lack Frogs or Lizards, I'll probably be looking for coal deposits or making excess oil. Or taking the later game +wood from chopping and straight burning that.

[Skallagrim]

If offered early I'm never unhappy about Kiln in a vacuum, especially in a biome that doesn't have coal naturally. Having said that, I would prefer most other "good" buildings.

The key problem *was* that you don't gain much from converting wood into coal. There have been a lot of math done, and it shows without piping it up, turning wood to coal only offers very minor improvement as hearth fuel. The difference gets more noticeable if you use coal in other crafting recipes and coal solves some glade events. Of course it'gets even better once you hook up the rain engine.

DLC improves it though, that you can convert algae into coal. If it's a map with stable source of algae, you can run only 1 wood cutter + kiln for the entire settlement even without a coal mine/good oil production chain.

TL;DR: to me Kiln is a second-tier building that I'm more than okay without one. In fact I would take a good speculative late game pick (for instance Press/Scribe) than Kiln unless I'm facing immediate brick pressure, or need coal for event.

[Syrris]

Another case for the kiln would be if the map has no natural coal along with extra hostility and/or a dangerous hostility effect. Burning coal in the hearth is -80 hostility each; inefficiency notwithstanding, doing that instead of or in addition to wood may let you stay below the hits-the-fan threshold.

[mostly willing]

by far the best thing about kiln is the jerky recipe. before 1.4 it was a non-factor, since FK had jerky. now that it's gone, kiln is actually good in a game with harpies. even stronger with harpies and dinos

the coal recipe on its own is whatever, but if you happen to pipe the kiln, it can handle everything fuel related and then some. it's been a while since that happened in my game, admittedly

T1 bricks is barely better than T0. really weak recipe. could be bumped up to T2 and it wouldn't make kiln OP

[marcusaddamsson]

Hrm. While I have 'piped' the Kiln before... I don't think I've done so in my more recent runs. That certainly would help greatly... I'll put it back on the 'maybe' pile for a bit.

[marcusaddamsson]

Hehe. I got offered the Kiln again. Didn't have any lizards... but I also knew I was gonna win, so I picked it. And piping it really really does make a difference. I might need to modify my strategy a bit... piping can be quite useful.

[Hotto Doggo(AFK)]

I be Kiln it alright. (>.0)

[Zelmor]

Like with most buildings, it depends on the situation you find yourself in.

[MadDjinn]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

Hehe. I got offered the Kiln again. Didn't have any lizards... but I also knew I was gonna win, so I picked it. And piping it really really does make a difference. I might need to modify my strategy a bit... piping can be quite useful.

The game somewhat expects piping buildings, especially on higher prestige levels. It can make or break you if you can't pipe sometimes.

[arjensmit79]

Originally posted by marcusaddamsson:

What do y'all think of the Kiln?

I used to think it was utter trash. Indeed because the wood. The time needed to turn the wood into fuel didn't make it really more efficient than just burning the wood itself.

But now its ok as you can turn algae into fuel which is freakishly efficient because you either get it from freakishly efficient pools, or you just get it as a by-product scraped from stones.