Craftable Charcoal

[astainless]

Hey guys.

 

One of the problems I have been having lately is that Charcoal is so hard to find. I have over 500 hours in game already and it is really a sticking point in the latest updates. In reality it can be crafted with a fire and burning some wood. Charcoal should be a craftable item. Perhaps 100 wood to 10 coal or something. It would just make sense. I can find potassium everywhere when mining by coal is near impossible without breaking small bolders for tiny amounts. It just doesn't make sense that it can't be crafted when most people can make it in their backyard with what most people have at home already.

[Glimpse]

Yeah, this has been suggested before I think it's a great idea and should be implemented.

 

Plains biomes are supposedly loaded with Coal, but there's not one within 4km of where I'm set up, even mining in forests has only led to about 220 pieces, and I'm on day 43 of this map.

[wolverine576]

Hey guys.

 

One of the problems I have been having lately is that Charcoal is so hard to find. I have over 500 hours in game already and it is really a sticking point in the latest updates. In reality it can be crafted with a fire and burning some wood. Charcoal should be a craftable item. Perhaps 100 wood to 10 coal or something. It would just make sense. I can find potassium everywhere when mining by coal is near impossible without breaking small bolders for tiny amounts. It just doesn't make sense that it can't be crafted when most people can make it in their backyard with what most people have at home already.

 

Coal can be found in abundance in burnt biome, above surface, for new players, and about 20M above bedrock

 

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?52307-Mining-A15&highlight=mining

[Glimpse]

Oh yeah, forgot about the burnt biome.

[astainless]

Yeah but to travel to s distant biome to find something that should be a level 1 or 2 craftable item is a little crazy. I have a huge base with a big network of underground tunnels and I have only ever found iron, lead, potassium and stone. You still have to mine for potassium but I think crafting coal would be a little more realistic. It's basiclly just the burnt wood that you throw away after you use your fire pit. Maybe also have a "Bag of Coal" a findable item in the tool stores like you would for your BBQ grill.

 

It can also be used for purifying water.

[Glimpse]

Yeah but to travel to s distant biome to find something that should be a level 1 or 2 craftable item is a little crazy. I have a huge base with a big network of underground tunnels and I have only ever found iron, lead, potassium and stone. You still have to mine for potassium but I think crafting coal would be a little more realistic. It's basiclly just the burnt wood that you throw away after you use your fire pit. Maybe also have a "Bag of Coal" a findable item in the tool stores like you would for your BBQ grill.

 

It can also be used for purifying water.

 

As well as writing notes to other survivors, marking locations you've scouted and a million other little things that aren't in the game, but still, it should be craftable.

[TSBX]

Hey guys.

 

One of the problems I have been having lately is that Charcoal is so hard to find. I have over 500 hours in game already and it is really a sticking point in the latest updates. In reality it can be crafted with a fire and burning some wood. Charcoal should be a craftable item. Perhaps 100 wood to 10 coal or something. It would just make sense. I can find potassium everywhere when mining by coal is near impossible without breaking small bolders for tiny amounts. It just doesn't make sense that it can't be crafted when most people can make it in their backyard with what most people have at home already.

 

I dunno, I'm torn. I see the realism aspect AND it makes sense, but it would also throw a big ol' wrench into balance. Maybe if the progression went from wood>charcoal>coal on burn time and you needed a workstation to make the charcoal (made from time+wood+animal fat) to maintain the value of going out to mine fuel. Otherwise it makes fuel much too easy to farm.

[DUST2DEATH]

I run a modded server for myself and a few friends.

 

At the moment the general summary is how long can you live. The longer you stay alive, the harder it is to maintain the levels of gunpowder required to survive a horde. unlike vanilla when you have everything by day 49, we are approaching day 195 and we are far from "everything".

 

(my hordes arent like vanilla, at all).

 

To that effect, I did add recipes for both coal and brass. The catch, long cook time, you will get hordes. Now, no one my server hides underground so maybe modifying it to like TSBX's suggestion may be more appropriate.

Open recipes.xml in an editor, at the top add the following code to the file.

 

Coal is made in a campfire.

 

<recipe name="coal" count="1" craft_area="campfire" craft_time="30" craft_exp_gain="2">
<ingredient name="wood" count="10"/>
</recipe>

 

At its fastest cook time, should be around 7.5seconds for 1 coal (10 wood = 1 lump of coal), so a stack of 500 takes 1 hour roughly to make. Mining is still far faster.

 

You can do the same with brass on my server, chem station.

 

<recipe name="scrapBrass" count="20" craft_area="chemistryStation" craft_time = "120" craft_exp_gain="2">
<ingredient name="scrapIron" count="10"/>
<ingredient name="potassiumNitratePowder" count="5"/>
<ingredient name="coal" count="5"/>
</recipe>

 

at its fastest, you can pump out 20 brass every 30 seconds.

You still have to find nitrate, its the limiting factor.

[astainless]

Nitrate should be the limiting factor as far as gunpowder production. I have 2 stacks of it now only because coal is so hard to find in A15 AND I have an extensive tunnel and mining system under my base. It should be easily craftable because even with the ability to make an abundance of it the nitrate is what you have to mine for. The only reason I have so much nitrate aside from the lack of coal is as I stated before I have dug out a fairly large system of tunnels for my base and an escape tunnel as well as several mining shafts and even after all that I barely covered 2k in nitrate which I would stop my normal tunneling for when I found it to mine it. If you had a chem station and 2k of nitrite and coal which would give you 2k in gunpowder the only cheap round to make is 9mm. Everything else requires 2 to 3 per 1 and if you make exploding bolts, tnt for blasting or mines that eats up even more faster. 2k gunpowder and mines that use 10 would only give you a total of 200 land mines ( a 1 time use item) to surround your base with and no ammo. 200 mines would last 1 or 2 horde nights before your down to nothing and that is with a lot of mining. Not to mention you still need bullets. I understand we want to make it a hard to survive game and when you are out nomading or early on before you have a forge and a mine it should be hard, but at the point I am at with a total concrete base with wall, sniper tower, pill box, a roof top garden, a bunch of bolts, able to craft purple level items and every weapon in the game in multiples it makes no sense for someone who could make it this far to be struggling to get something that should be easily craftable. Even if you were to turn it all into 9mm and 10mm round you are looking at 500 rds of 9mm and 1000 10mm and that would kind of give someone some false security. They would go crazy shooting everything in site especially on a horde night (10mm goes fast in that SMG) only to realize all their ammo is gone. The nitrate is what should be the limiting factor.

 

There are also other uses for coal in a survival situation that could make it more useful. Like building a barrel with coal and grass and dirt to fill it to slowly generate clean drinking water. Maybe fill it with dirty water and it slowly over time filters it out to maybe 1 every min or so until it runs dry. But something to have. Or if left outside after a rain it can produce X amount of clean water. I think coal needs to be craftable and used more then for just ammo.

[Doombringer101]

Arguments could be made that potassium nitrate should be able to be crafted as well, just not as quickly and easily as charcoal.

At the advent of widespread gunpowder use they needed huge quantities of it and bat guano was not exactly common lol.

The French method was something along the lines of hay, manure, ash and copious amounts of urine.

They left it for a year or so, adding urine the whole time then added water to leech out the calcium nitrate, this was then filtered through potash (basically plant ash soaked in water) giving potassium nitrate.

Now this utilizes in game resources (well manure may need to be added or adapted) and a lot of time but it is achievable.

Other methods used a system below stables that allowed only the urine to get down to a bed of sand, which was later dug up and leeched for the nitrates and then filtered through potash as above.

 

I do agree that charcoal (coal) should be a crafting recipe tho the potassium nitrate is much more involved... and messy

[Glimpse]

Notice though, the OP and I are asking to make Charcoal, not coal.

 

So this wouldn't be for gunpowder, at least on my end, because I don't use guns in this game.

 

I want something that burns longer than wood, but less time than coal, so that I can stock my forges and campfires up for smelting and cooking.

 

So iirc, wood burns 10 seconds, coal burns 20. Charcoal could burn 15, and cost wood to make.

[DUST2DEATH]

Notice though, the OP and I are asking to make Charcoal, not coal.

 

Done and tested.

 

Items.xml

<item id="2467" name="charcoal">
<property name="Extends" value="coal" />
<property name="CustomIcon" value="coal"/>
   <property name="CustomIconTint" value="999998"/>
<property name="FuelValue" value="15" />
</item>

 

recipes.xml

<recipe name="charcoal" count="1" craft_area="campfire" craft_time="30" craft_exp_gain="2">
<ingredient name="wood" count="10"/>
</recipe>

 

by default will use misc skill, if you wish to tie it to say science like I have add the following to the item code

<property name="CraftingSkillGroup" value="Science"/>

[ayoflaco]

Done and tested.

 

Items.xml

<item id="2467" name="charcoal">
<property name="Extends" value="coal" />
<property name="CustomIcon" value="coal"/>
   <property name="CustomIconTint" value="999998"/>
<property name="FuelValue" value="15" />
</item>

 

recipes.xml

<recipe name="charcoal" count="1" craft_area="campfire" craft_time="30" craft_exp_gain="2">
<ingredient name="wood" count="10"/>
</recipe>

 

by default will use misc skill, if you wish to tie it to say science like I have add the following to the item code

<property name="CraftingSkillGroup" value="Science"/>

 

what folder would i go about adding these too ? still really new been messing around with them for like a hour tryna get charcoal craftable haha

 

Edit: Got it