Long lasting campfire fuel source

[Chuckerton]

I've noticed that most fuels don't last very long, which sucks if you're only using a fire for lighting/heat and not actually trying to cook or smelt stuff with it. I have a fireplace in my living room, and I like to keep it burning because it looks nice and cozy, but I barely ever light it because there's no reason to if I'm not going to use it to cook, which I don't often do in there (I have a kitchen too). 

I propose adding a fuel source that burns for a longer time. It could burn at a lower temperature so that it can't be used for crucibles, but either way, just a fuel that lasts longer would be nice. 

All I've been able to find irl is dried hardwood as firewood burns for a long time. So, I guess being able to dry your firewood to increase its burn time would be nice. That or increasing the burn time of peat, its not really used for anything else anyway. 

[Ogi Teh yeti]

Animal fat burns for a long time which I don't recall off the top of my head, but only burns for around 400 degrees or so. If you are good at hunting and have a surplus of animal fat, that might work for your purpose. Another long lasting fuel that realistically wouldn't work because of how rare it is, at least to me so far, would be anthracite, though that is a coal that could be used for an actual purpose outside of heating a home. Alternatively, you can just collect a whole lot of burnable material like deforest an area, constantly dig up peat, etc so you have plenty of fuel and just get a crate that you put it in, when you are in your home you put a big stack of it into the fireplace and before you leave you remove whatever is in the fireplace, put it in the crate, and leave.

That said, I think it's not a bad idea to have either a long, low burning fuel. Simply giving some suggestions that you COULD use already in the game.

[PaleSoul]

+1 a dried firewood that doesnt cook food but burns for maybe days would be awesome for having a cozy warm fire in winter that doesnt burn through all your logs. Def should be added to the base game 

[Bumber]

Isn't there an aged firewood item? Could probably use that.

[Venusgate]

My idea for this was a retool of the campfire:

Burnables overflow into a new slot for "embers."

Embers decay heat like the clay oven, and average their heat with newly made embers like food spoilage.

The decay will eventually average to a non-funtionally low temp (<200°C) if not cleared out. to simulate a fire choking itself out

Embers left to cool completely will convert the whole stack into ashes, a new resource. This can be manually tended by removing embers with a clay container like a pot or bowl, and allowing them to cool separately and more quickly. (maybe have the shovel go into offhand or player is burned)

 

Benefits:
- New resource.

- Having at least two cooking spots if you want to make use of all your ashes (multiple spot station utility)

- Sustained immersive room heat that isn't logging a whole glade for a week of heat.

[Freakyuser396]

Pretty much had the same issue and wanted to just keep my firepit lit.

 

But since I´m currently getting into VS modding, I made a very basic mod that enables just that.

 

I changed aged firewood to a slow burning fuel thats too low heat do cook anything, and added some crafting recipes.

For compatibility i didn´t want to change the name of aged firewood, but i might look into making a texture and create a "treated firewood" later on instead

 

https://mods.vintagestory.at/slowfuel

 

PS: In general, as long as the firepit is empty, fuel lasts 2.5x as long.

[TamTroll]

i thought firewood already burned for a long time if it wasn't cooking anything.

if that's not the case, then i could see a situation where if a fuel source is cooking anything (food, metal, torch, etc) then it burns at it's current speed, but if there is nothing being cooked, then it instead burns at like 1/5th or 1/10th the speed.

[Maelstrom]

How unrealistic.  Wood burns at the same rate whether something is cooking on it or not.  If one wants a log to burn for a day one must chop down a tree and insert one end of the trunk into the fire and continually feed said unaltered log into the fire.  In my experience a log about 12 inches in diameter will burn in about 10 to 15 minutes for the cookfire conditions we see in game.

[TamTroll]

you could explain it away as the player doing something to make the fire burn hotter while cooking, while when not cooking, they do something so it's not as hot, thus burning the logs away less quickly. controlling airflow into the fire maybe, idk. I just thought it'd be a neat and reasonable mechanic.

[VaelophisNyx]

technically speaking different woods should have different burn times, as per real tree woods

but also we should be able to treat firewood in some way to extend the burn timer and lower the temperature.

perhaps a proper multiblock fireplace could be implemented to cover a need like this though

[GrumpyOldMan1066]

The firepit would have to be reworked to have a stoked vs. non-stoked condition.  Fires will burn to embers and then extinguish unless you push new fuel onto the embers.  Make the fire unable to cook if not kept up to temp and burn at the slower rate, then to cook, poke it with a stick/firepoker which is boost both temp and fuel consumption for a short length of time.  Once that time is done, the fire returns to the lower rate of consumption and the heat subsides.

You could match the higher consumption to the the number of pieces of fuel used now to cook.  If a pot cooks using 5 units of fuel, poke it 5 times to burn hot that long.

If nothing is cooking, a poke should return/bank the fire to the lower rate.

[Dra6o0n]

How fire burns through fuel depends on various elements, like say Oxygen, this is why certain devices like lanterns and fire stoves and such has ways to adjust it by closing it so there's less air able to get in, etc.

 

Other ways to have longer burning fuel is using fuel that is 'harder' to burn. This means instead of outputting higher temps it actually outputs less, but last longer as a result.

[Chuckerton]

On 1/5/2024 at 2:37 PM, Maelstrom said:

How unrealistic.  Wood burns at the same rate whether something is cooking on it or not.  If one wants a log to burn for a day one must chop down a tree and insert one end of the trunk into the fire and continually feed said unaltered log into the fire.  In my experience a log about 12 inches in diameter will burn in about 10 to 15 minutes for the cookfire conditions we see in game.

In some cases, I would rather the game prioritize fun and quality of life over realism. Having a campfire burn for longer than it realistically could when you aren't cooking things with it isn't going to break my immersion anymore than temporal storms, night vision masks, or translocators do. I mean if we have that stuff in the game, is long burning campfire fuel really that much of a stretch?

[Maelstrom]

I agree that games have to break realism at some point.  And frankly, I wouldn't have a problem with this one either.

[Thorfinn]

On 1/15/2024 at 7:52 PM, VaelophisNyx said:

technically speaking different woods should have different burn times, as per real tree woods

In our cabin, we do most of our heating with wood stoves. This does not match my experience. We can fill the firebox before going to bed, and in the morning, it's about the same amount of coals, regardless of whether we were using red oak, cherry, apple, maple, pine or poplar. The heat output for those hours is drastically different for the same level of moisture depending on which wood we are using, but burn time is, as @Dra6o0n says, much more dependent on damper settings.

That said, I don't care much one way or the other. I'm not a huge fan of realism in my escapism.

[Maelstrom]

I find that old cedar fencing burns almost as fast as paper while denser woods take longer.

[Thorfinn]

Don't know about cedar in particular. Never burned it more than just cut-offs from making a cedar closet, or old cedar shingles, which are quite different in form than a chunk of split wood. I don't know that the shingles burned any faster than the luan scraps from redoing the laundry room floor. The cedar smell is probably an oil. Pine can be the same if it's very "pitchy". And, sure, you let pretty much anything dry for a long time, it burns fast. But a split 5"x5" log, like the game model shows, seasoned for a year, doesn't vary much in terms of burn time IME. Just heat output. YMMV.

But again, I don't care about realism if it makes for a better game, which I think longer lasting fires would. Certainly realism argues a fair sized log should last longer than a small pot of porridge.

Edited January 23 by Thorfinn

[Gorfinhofin]

On 1/15/2024 at 7:52 PM, VaelophisNyx said:

technically speaking different woods should have different burn times, as per real tree woods

They do! As long as you don't turn them into firewood. Oak and ebony burn the longest, and will actually burn longer in log form than the equivalent amount of firewood.

[Yozo]

On 1/5/2024 at 9:37 PM, Maelstrom said:

How unrealistic.  Wood burns at the same rate whether something is cooking on it or not.  If one wants a log to burn for a day one must chop down a tree and insert one end of the trunk into the fire and continually feed said unaltered log into the fire.  In my experience a log about 12 inches in diameter will burn in about 10 to 15 minutes for the cookfire conditions we see in game.

Relax. It's a game.

[Nymue]

On 1/23/2024 at 8:39 AM, Maelstrom said:

I find that old cedar fencing burns almost as fast as paper while denser woods take longer.

It burns hot and quickly in my experience too. I like to get my fires started with them, and then add in harder woods like cherry to burn together once the stove temp is where I like it.