So much charcoal from outdoor fires

[Telzen]

So isn't it supposed to be that one hour of burn time gives 1 charcoal? It has seemed like that so far when I was making fires indoors, but I just made an outdoor fire and even though it was only 4 hours long it gave me 14 charcoal. Anyone else notice this?

[MaGicBush]

Sounds like a bug. Any fire i have made outside ive gotten one or two respectively if my fire is 1 or 2 hours long. Never tried longer than 2 hours outside yet though.

[Proxykon]

You find that weird? I find it weird that we can't use said charcoal as fuel and only as utility for mapping our environment. I can go with suspension of disbelief but with the amount of charcoal I already found in my 35 days character, I could've kept some fires alive.

Also, I have gained some weirdly high charcoal numbers from fires as well.

[iwasa]

I haven't paid attention to length of fire duration versus amount of charcoal recovered but I can say that I have been surprised by the amount of charcoal pieces I have recovered from a fire.

Until cartography was introduced, I was thinking that with some effort we should be able to make quantities of charcoal to use as a poorer form of coal which would help players in the harder game modes to keep warm.

I watched the youtube channel Primitive Technology where the guy was making charcoal so he could get a hotter forge fire. It was quite a bit of work and took probably a couple of days to do.

I also visited the Ward Charcoal ovens in Nevada. They stand like 30 feet high, 30 feet in diameter at their widest, and can produce 1,750 bushels of charcoal at the cost of denuding 6 acres of trees - that's a lot of sticks in TLD terms :).

[LD-SK]

COAL provides more charcoal than firewood.

[Josh]

Originally posted by Enix:

You find that weird? I find it weird that we can't use said charcoal as fuel and only as utility for mapping our environment. I can go with suspension of disbelief but with the amount of charcoal I already found in my 35 days character, I could've kept some fires alive.

Well the thing is you can't actually mke charcoal from just burning wood or coal in a campfire in real life. In order to make real charcoal you have to put wood or similar materials into an airtight container and heat it really hot for a long time. The impurities and water vapour escape (through some sort of valve or small holes in the container) and you are basically left with almost pure carbon. The carbon remains because no oxygen is allowed into the container. Basically what iwasa was describing seeing in Nevada.

I think naming the stuff used in TLD "charcoal" is a bit misleading, in reality it would just be sort of charred wood or those sort of little bits of cinders that are left over after a fire. You'd probably be able to draw with them but they don't really have much energy left in them for burning.

[len186]

That's how you make good quality charcoal but its is still very possible to get charcoal from a camp fire. The thing is some of the wood will be starved of oxygen and not burn fully due to the oxygen being consumed. Not artist quality but still useable. It would help a fire.