Copper casting not working

[kleptomanisch]

Hello, I am having a hard time to cast anything in Vintage Story. Since I use a handful of mods, this might be related.

After I've put my copper nuggets into the crucible, I heat it up with some wood, and change to charcoal after that. The problem now is, that the copper just won't melt when it reaches 1084°

Hello, I am having a hard time to cast anything in Vintage Story. Since I use a handful of mods, this might be related.
The first copper things I cast, worked well, I made a copper pickaxe and a prospecting pick. The hammer, however, was a bit more difficult, but still worked. Then I started to make an anvil and tried to cast two copper bars, but had a hard time getting them full.

Now, when I am trying to progress, it goes something like this:

I put my copper nuggets into the crucible, heat it up with some wood, and change to charcoal after that. The problem now is, that the copper just won't melt when it reaches 1084° Celsius. The more copper, the longer it takes (which seems sensible so far). When I put in say about 50 copper nuggets, the temperature starts rising. Near the temperature to cast, the green bar should appear and rise steadily, until the crucible is hot enough, and appears in the right slot, to take it out.

But when the green bar shows, the temperature goes steadily up, without showing the progress in the bar, until it reaches 1300° Celsius, gets to white-hot and nothing else happens. If I take out the half of it, it might suddenly pop over, to be used, but this doesn't always work. And casting with miniscule amounts is more than annoying. I already have three crucibles with left in copper, which I just can not smelt again.

It doesn't seem to make a difference, how I start to heat up the crucible. Sometime, when I burn ridiculous amounts of charcoal, it MIGHT suddenly turn over to be taken out.

I use these activated mods:
Auto Map Markers
Better Ruins
Better Traders
HUD Clock
Knapster
Rivers
Th3Dungeons
Th3DungeonsTopEntrance
VS Villages
Whole Lotta Tree Seeds

In my mod folder are some other mods, which are turned off:
Charcoal Pit Door
chiseltools
Mannequin Stand
Prospect Together
Scarecrow
Spyglass

Am I doing something wrong, or is one of the mods known to cause this behavior?

[kleptomanisch]

Ups, I've grabbed the wrong one.

 

[LadyWYT]

Judging from the screenshots, it looks like you're attempting to smelt a LOT of copper at once(ten ingots' worth). The larger the quantity, the more time it will take at the melting point to actually melt; it's not an instant product. The temperature will also continue to rise as long as the fire remains fueled--this is also perfectly fine. If the arrow begins to turn green once it reaches the proper temperature, then everything is working as it should be, and it should produce molten metal reading for casting once the arrow is filled completely.

Now, if the arrow isn't turning green at all once it reaches the proper temperature, or if the arrow turns solid green but never goes any further to produce the molten metal, then there's definitely a problem that's likely mod-related. In that case, I would check comments on the mod pages of those you suspect, to see if anyone else has had similar issues, as well as disable all mods and test on a different world to make sure there's not something screwed up in the game code somehow(it's rare, but it happens). If everything works fine without the mods, start adding the mods back in one by one until you find the culprit.

[kleptomanisch]

Thank you for your answer. I do know, that large amounts of copper should need longer, than just a little but, casting 7–15 units is a bit much. As I've written, if I always take half of it out of the crucible, it MIGHT suddenly be finished, but with a minuscule amount (always take half if it). I was being lazy and really didn't want to start a new game. And I'd rather not do it with my latest save game, because this will leave me with some things the vanilla game doesn't recognize.

 

Edit:

So, before I try around a make the same mistake over an over, how much copper is okay to smelt in one go? I've tried around with a new game without any active mods, where I gave myself copper nuggets, and smelting ten seems to work fine. Twenty ingots works, too. Obviously I was too greedy, and put too many nuggets in the crucible.

But I'd still appreciate it, if you could tell me, how much copper one crucible can have without issues in your experience. For example, is one toll (100 units) okay, or can I smelt two or something.

Edited Friday at 03:14 PM by kleptomanisch

[idiomcritter]

1 hour ago, kleptomanisch said:

how much copper is okay to smelt in one go?

without mods, I usually smelt/melt down enough copper to fill 24 ingot molds.  the 4 crucible slots will have 128, 128, 128, 96 nuggets (480 nuggets / 20 nuggets = 24 ingots) (20nuggets = 100units)

(i forget exactly how many brown coals I use to melt the copper, think its around 16, and its a long wait for the process.  I'm usually looking to busy myself with other things in the area, like feeding the chickens   )

if for some reason, the crucible has a fraction of 100 units, I'll fire up  another crucible to complete the faction, if that makes sense?

(though it seems to me that the game will allow partial filling a mold, so the crucible can be emptied to reload with more metal)

Edited Friday at 03:39 PM by idiomcritter

[kleptomanisch]

Wow, and how long will that take? I've tried to remelt a crucible with about 350 units and it used 25 charcoal and nothing happened. Does that mean it needs even more charcoal?

[idiomcritter]

2 hours ago, kleptomanisch said:

remelt a crucible

when reheating metal that has already been melted once, I watch for the wording solidify, when mousing over the crucible, and grab it, to start pouring into what ever available mold.

(ie, I don't wait for the crucible to move over to the firepit output slot)

[kleptomanisch]

I'll try that one out. Not that I don't have enough copper, but it rubs me the wrong way to have a crucible with 350 and one with 80 units. It's just ...  wrong.

[idiomcritter]

so I got curious on how long does it takes (playing on TOPS server....)

480 nuggets of copper from firepit input to output took me ruffly 15 minutes real time (in game time, it took a bit over 7hours)

that was starting out with 4 peet to preheat, and 11 brown coal to finish.

Also, I had it backwards in the wording, crucible with cooled metal is labeled as solidified (when mousing over the crucible), and when reheating, the label dynamically changes to molten (ready to poor).

and yeah, the game has the player doing some math gymnastics with how many nuggets to units so that it comes out even per 100 units.  and then throw in ratios with mixing metals wee... no automatic here heh

btw, I've used the mod AlloyCalculator-v1.0.0, its kinda useful for dialing in whats needed in nuggets for the desired units, and it addresses the ratio's with multiple metals...

Edited Friday at 10:29 PM by idiomcritter

[kleptomanisch]

I now understand what I did wrong. I didn't have enough patience!

@LadyWYT: I HAD tons of nuggets in the crucible, and would have had to wait much longer for it all to melt. That actually takes quite a bit of charcoal.

@idiomcritter: Looking for the word 'molten' is exactly what I ended up doing. I was waiting for the crucible to appear on the right. I could have waited til the cows come home!

My crucibles could all be poured. It was a bit strange that for a while I had a mold that was missing exactly one unit of copper. But that evened out later after I had cast a few more ingots.

Thank you both for your tips!

 

And for fairness: I use LanguageTool and DeepL for checking typos and mix-ups. I tend to write 'habe' instead of 'have' or such nonsense. Somehow I often mix German words in my English texts, when writing, and that is, while funny in German, not always understandable in English. And in English one can make pretty bad mistakes, and will still be understood. So, shoutout to LanguageTool and DeepL. If I wanted to write my postings first in German, I could totally do that. There a some things that DeepL doesn't get right, and a special meaning gets lost in translation, but aside from that, it's absolutely great.

Edited 18 hours ago by kleptomanisch