What efficient ways to calcinate flints ?

[VonPanda]

I am doing a run on 1.20, on the last RC (Vintage Story 1.20.0-rc.4 for Linux to be specific) and I am wondering if I missed something with the flint calcination process, because it just feels like a massive bottleneck ?

At first I thought I was doing it inefficiently, due to the fact I was using a firepit, so I rushed to build a bloomery with the flints I had already treated and ... Only 6 ? One can fit 120 iron nuggets or 24 cubic meters of glass in a bloomery, but only 6 flints ? I can't help but feel it's supposed to be 60 and the '0' was forgotten somewhere ...

Losing about 3 bricks per bloomery firing, those bricks costing in turn 12 fireclay, so 1.5 calcinated flints - it's still a sure way to make it, but I find a bit finicky.

PS: For science, I tried to put flints in a (already cooked) storage vessel in a beehive kiln in a creative world, to see if firing the kiln would heat up all the elements inside, but no. The cooked vessel does not heat up

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums! Unfortunately I don't think there's currently a way to quickly mass-produce calcined flint. However, one piece of calcined flint equals eight pieces of fire clay, so you don't need a ton of it until you start thinking about steel or mass production of pottery.

What I usually do is pre-heat the firepit with peat or firewood, and then throw a bunch of coal/charcoal on there to cook the flint while I do other things around my base. By the time I'm done tinkering, the flint is ready to be ground up and turned into fire clay.

An alternate method of getting fire clay, I believe, is to look under black coal/anthracite deposits--it spawns naturally there. I believe you can also buy it from some of the traders, though that does require rusty gears that you may want to save for other things.

[VonPanda]

Thank you - I am indeed thinking about steel, it's just that my last 1.18 playthrough went there a bit easier with the old clay system.
I never posted there but I sank about 500h in this game ... and yet did not knew the clay would spawn under anthacite

Anyways I guess the answer really is "Tyron thought it was too easy" isn't it ?

[LadyWYT]

7 minutes ago, VonPanda said:

Anyways I guess the answer really is "Tyron thought it was too easy" isn't it ?

Pretty much! In all fairness, it was too easy in that respect, but I wouldn't say it feels like too much of a bottleneck now. I like having a use for all the flint I inevitably acquire, plus it gives more incentive to find the materials for the sturdier high-tier refractory bricks. And provided you stay on top of resource management, the fuel cost isn't bad even if you're using charcoal to cook it down.

Edited December 16, 2024 by LadyWYT

[VonPanda]

Perhaps it's just that the flint part of the process feels a bit closer to really early game tech, while I need it for late game. You know, cooking a sharp rock in a fire and pulverizing olivine with windpower at the same time feel a bit off.

But I agree, this really helps in making steel feel like a greater achievement.

Anyway, thanks for your insight !
I have rocks to bake ...

Edited December 16, 2024 by VonPanda

[Thorfinn]

41 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Unfortunately I don't think there's currently a way to quickly mass-produce calcined flint.

Sure there is. Dry grass is a renewable resource, so you can have as many firepits going as you want.  

Charcoal is a whole lot easier now with the bigger (2x2) trees. It just means you have to knap a whole lot more hard stones into axes to do your firewood crafting. Yeah, steel axes are a lot more durable, but I doubt the opportunity cost makes it worthwhile.

I've decided I don't care that much about starting with peat. It only saves about 2-3 charcoal per batch. If I had a lot going on at home, and could remember to go back and add charcoal, it would probably be a good idea, but I usually forget about it and come back to a cold firepit and no calcined flint.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Thorfinn said:

Sure there is. Dry grass is a renewable resource, so you can have as many firepits going as you want.  

This is very true, but will also require more fuel upfront. By mass-production I meant there's not currently a way to stick several piles of flint into one receptacle and cook them all at once for a minimum fuel cost, like a beehive kiln or refractory. Multiple firepits will help speed up the process though, if one is willing to go that route.

[Echo Weaver]

What is the point of calcinating flint anyway? It sounds pretty annoying. I guess I don't go around in the real world knapping flint tools, so I don't know the real process, but I'd never heard of this before it was added to VS.

[LadyWYT]

29 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

What is the point of calcinating flint anyway? It sounds pretty annoying. I guess I don't go around in the real world knapping flint tools, so I don't know the real process, but I'd never heard of this before it was added to VS.

You need it to craft fire clay, since fire clay only spawns naturally under black coal/anthracite deposits now. And it probably will be an annoying change for some players, so I expect to see a mod or two that either makes the process easier, or makes fire clay spawn as it did previously.

[Thorfinn]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

This is very true, but will also require more fuel upfront.

Yeah, that was the point of the wink. The dry grass is hardly the bottleneck.

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I expect to see a mod or two that either makes the process easier, or makes fire clay spawn as it did previously.

Probably both. There already are some that probably have that effect. The one that doesn't require fire pit materials to start from room temperature, for example. That one change may well be enough, if it means you only need a dozen pieces of charcoal to make a stack or two of calcined flint.

But I would also expect to see mods that add kaolinite, among other uses, porcelain. That's probably what Tyron was going for in the original implementation of fireclay.

Edited December 16, 2024 by Thorfinn

[Myszkou]

So they really meant it when they said its harder to obtain huh, came on the forums with the same question

Desperately waiting for the better firepit mod to update here 

[LoveWyrm]

You can make it a bit easier on yourself by putting tongs in your off hand, heating up the entire stack until they're at 1000+ Celsius, then taking the stack out of the firepit and then right click dropping the slowly cooling off flint bits back into the firepit.

 

For some reason, cooking one piece of flint makes the rest of the stack become cool again, but by taking them all out, the only temperature loss you get is the slow passive cooldown.

This speeds up smelting at the cost of having to actively be there and juggle the things.

[Vratislav]

10 hours ago, LoveWyrm said:

This speeds up smelting at the cost of having to actively be there and juggle the things.

With four firepits run at once, this is easily manageable and fast enough.