Water melting/boiling question

[Manel84]

It's a thing that troubles me for a long time, how much time do you have to spent to melt and boil 1 liter of water? Normally I get 20 mins for melting, but sometimes I notice and goes quick only for 10 mins. For boiling is always half of the time for melting.
These times changes are a bug or something that I do for that effect?

Today I boiled 12 liters in one hour of fire as example.

[Lonelywolf]

Hinterland should adjust this mechanic IMO. Melting snow takes a lot of time, because you can only fit so much in a pot at a time. Then it has to melt, and you have to pack more in. The time for it to melt is dependent on temperature, but only goes so far before it balances. When it comes to boiling, however, the total temp output of the fire should determine how long it takes. Even a freezing cold gallon of water will boil much quicker on a temp output of 110 compared to 30...

[iwasa]

Sounds like the OP has a glitch or bug within the game though the rule of thumb that making one liter of potable water from snow takes 20 minutes to melt and 10 to boil is to ensure success rather than be a precise amount of the time needed.

Come to think of it, while fire starting has its own variables within limits, I have come across instances where the progress bar was slowly filling, as expected, when suddenly *poof* the fire is lit even though I could swear the bar could not have filled in the usual fashion. Have no idea why the game did that at that point.

[Alcator]

Originally posted by Soldier984 PT:

It's a thing that troubles me for a long time, how much time do you have to spent to melt and boil 1 liter of water? Normally I get 20 mins for melting, but sometimes I notice and goes quick only for 10 mins. For boiling is always half of the time for melting.
These times changes are a bug or something that I do for that effect?

Today I boiled 12 liters in one hour of fire as example.

It depends on the temperature of the fire (or the heat output).

[Manel84]

I thought about it too, one time I made a fire that last for hours, both for cooking large quantity of meat and some more for water, the heat was high but was always those 20mins. Today I made a small fire only with a few sticks and notice the water was melting faster.

This thing always confuse me when it happened, because when I do things I'm not counting the precise time: why I'm melting so much water, shouldn't the fire be already out, did something wrong on counting the quantity of water?

[Manel84]

I took some screeshots of the event, so it is normal to have this on that condition of fire?

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=953527269
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=953527324

It has 13 minutes of difference.

[Johnny Cash]

Does the cooking skill have an influence on it?

[Manel84]

Maybe I don't know, I have lvl 4 right now.

[placidus33]

It's almost the same that happens to me from time to time with fires. 2 days ago I was fishing and in 4h15min of fire in the fishing hut I had time to fish 4 hours, cook 6 fishes, melt and boil 2 l of water and I still had 56 min of fire remaining. I did notice in the past too sometimes when researching a book in caves, with e.g about 3h of fire, I studied 4 hours and the fire was still lit. Somebody told me in another discussion that fires outside interior locations last longer than in inside locations, and maybe it is true, but I couldn't repeat on purpose the sequence of fishing described above. It seems to me sometimes the accelerated time goes crazy, but I couldn't understand why...

[Doze_D]

It takes around 1 hours to melt 5 liters of snow and another 30 mins to boil it. Those figures sound outrageous, nowhere near the real life counterpart, which takes roughtly about 10 minutes to do.

Besides, if you melt some snow, why there is still separate step to boil it ? I mean, when you melt snow, it's pretty obvious, that it'll start boiling pretty quickly and why would you not boil it at the same go ? The whole system is weird.

[Manel84]

One reason you can have is to save wood in an emergency and use water purification tablets. But that day is still to come to justify the dual separated process of water.

[Doze_D]

Originally posted by Soldier984 PT:

One reason you can have is to save wood in an emergency and use water purification tablets. But that day is still to come to justify the dual separated process of water.

Well the wood saving is pretty weird reason as well, since you don't really need to add any more wood, once you start the fire and it starts going, it's gonna burn long enough to melt and boil snow in one go.

[placidus33]

Originally posted by DD-Indeed:

It takes around 1 hours to melt 5 liters of snow and another 30 mins to boil it. Those figures sound outrageous, nowhere near the real life counterpart, which takes roughtly about 10 minutes to do.

Besides, if you melt some snow, why there is still separate step to boil it ? I mean, when you melt snow, it's pretty obvious, that it'll start boiling pretty quickly and why would you not boil it at the same go ? The whole system is weird.

I stay on my idea of some bug-related accelerated time issue.....
I just ran my test sandbox and melted/boiled 2 l of water inside Camp Office and outside.
Inside it took 1 hour.
Outside it took 48 minutes.
So it is true that outside you can do more things with your fire, but 5 l in 1 hour and half it seems to me like a bug. Unless melting and boiling does really improves with cooking skills (my test run is in Pilgrim all skills at 1). But I'm quite sure in my current playtime run in Stalker I need 1 hour to melt/boil 2 l of water (I'll check though), and atm I'm lvl 3 in cooking.

[Manel84]

I read long time ago, directly from the devs in here, fires outside have a little bonus because of the wind stir the fire a bit, but don't justify some big discrepancies I had in the past too.

[Doze_D]

Originally posted by placidus33:

Originally posted by DD-Indeed:

It takes around 1 hours to melt 5 liters of snow and another 30 mins to boil it. Those figures sound outrageous, nowhere near the real life counterpart, which takes roughtly about 10 minutes to do.

Besides, if you melt some snow, why there is still separate step to boil it ? I mean, when you melt snow, it's pretty obvious, that it'll start boiling pretty quickly and why would you not boil it at the same go ? The whole system is weird.

I stay on my idea of some bug-related accelerated time issue.....
I just ran my test sandbox and melted/boiled 2 l of water inside Camp Office and outside.
Inside it took 1 hour.
Outside it took 48 minutes.
So it is true that outside you can do more things with your fire, but 5 l in 1 hour and half it seems to me like a bug. Unless melting and boiling does really improves with cooking skills (my test run is in Pilgrim all skills at 1). But I'm quite sure in my current playtime run in Stalker I need 1 hour to melt/boil 2 l of water (I'll check though), and atm I'm lvl 3 in cooking.

Yea but the thing is, any of that water making mechanism doesn't make any sense. You don't spend hours in real life melting and boiling some snow. It only takes couple mins.

[placidus33]

Originally posted by DD-Indeed:

Originally posted by placidus33:

I stay on my idea of some bug-related accelerated time issue.....
I just ran my test sandbox and melted/boiled 2 l of water inside Camp Office and outside.
Inside it took 1 hour.
Outside it took 48 minutes.
So it is true that outside you can do more things with your fire, but 5 l in 1 hour and half it seems to me like a bug. Unless melting and boiling does really improves with cooking skills (my test run is in Pilgrim all skills at 1). But I'm quite sure in my current playtime run in Stalker I need 1 hour to melt/boil 2 l of water (I'll check though), and atm I'm lvl 3 in cooking.

Yea but the thing is, any of that water making mechanism doesn't make any sense. You don't spend hours in real life melting and boiling some snow. It only takes couple mins.

Well.... I'm Italian. I don't melt snow but I cook a lot of pasta.... I don't use to measure exactly of many liters I use, but I'm pretty sure boiling about 1 l at my altitude (150 m) starting from 20 degrees celsius it takes at least 10 minutes on methane flame. The higher you go the less it takes to boil cause of the decreased pressure, but I don't think the mechanics of the game are so refined to count on altitude and efficiency of fuel. In the game the time it takes to melt/boil water is surely exaggerated, but I don't think in a very big scale. It seems to me more demading the ratio between time to cut a limb vs hours of fire you receive. But I'm no expert in wood fires.