Are beehive kilns really this terrible?

[Michael Gates]

I set one up in my current relatively-serious world, and... it is not great? Losing six refractory brick blocks and a grating every run is excessive, although the bit where you get to INSTANTLY fire 128 shingles or 48 bricks for every stack of four firewood is neat looking. If you follow the directions, you end up with a kiln embedded a square down in the ground. The documentation seems to , indicate that if you make a kiln out of fire clay bricks, it's going to eat HALF of them on each run? I'm not even going to try that.

So I decided to poke it in creative mode, started up BoringFlatnessWorld, and built a couple of kilns THERE. The kiln's behavior is very different. Zero brick blocks destroyed, ever. If I don't put a full stack of 32 firewood under each grating it doesn't fire at all; putting down 4 or 8 wood lights, but my pottery just becomes "Raw Bowl - 1200.0 degrees" and then stays like that. If I do put in the full 32, it works and insta-fires again, but then I can just pull all the wood out losing only 1-2 firewood per stack.

Also it seems like the third door on the kiln should really be a regular open hole, because no sane person is ever going to light this business with all three doors closed. Yes, I do have a huge pile of boring tan shingles now, why do you ask?

It doesn't feel like any of this is quite the intended behavior.

[TFT]

I'm also having similar troubles which makes testing a pain in the butt. I'm trying to test how resistant each kiln tier is, how much of an effect fuel types have on firing, and whether opening or closing hatches mid process affects anything, but between kilns just not breaking (a normal fire clay kiln with 92 hours running with no broken blocks, can't tell if bug or luck) and things instantly firing from raw to fired ceramic with no discernible reason, my 20 kiln testing area produces nothing but mixed results. I don't know whether the bug is because I made them in creative, made them with the worldedit copy paste tools, or maybe there's a seemingly unrelated mod is causing trouble in some way.

It seems to work properly when you see a "Fired for X hours" tooltip on the ceramic, which you can only check by looking directly at it in the kiln.
I'm also not sure whether the "Firing: for XX hours" is just a measure of the kiln's lifetime or if there is an actual 'finish' state like a cementation furnace where block damage takes effect. Is a "cycle" as mentioned in the handbook defined by the fuel burning out or the pottery becoming fired?

So far I have a few observations that may or may not be based on bugged behavior.
1) Never use fuels other than what is most plentiful or convenient since the clay finishes firing long before the fuel burns through.
2) It takes 9 hours (according to aforementioned tooltip) to fire the whole batch. It doesn't matter if it's bricks stacked to the ceiling or a few storage vessels.
3) Fired ceramics start cooling down when they're done, regardless if there is fuel burning underneath or not, bug or feature I couldn't tell you.
4) Ceramics begin their "Fired for X" timer once they hit around 950 degrees.
5) All fuel types heat the interior to 1200 degrees.
6) The color of the fired bricks is determined at the moment it finishes firing. e.g. If every hatch was closed for 8.99 hours of the process and you opened two in the last minute, your red clay bricks would be red instead of the expected tan. Be careful of trolls turning all your blue clay bricks into clinkers I guess.

On 2/8/2025 at 12:54 PM, Michael Gates said:

It doesn't feel like any of this is quite the intended behavior.

I agree.

[Chuckerton]

I have had similar experiences with the beehive kiln. 

Mostly the instant firing thing, I assume that its a block getting damaged as soon as you fire it, and then the game is like "oh the multiblock structure is incomplete, AAAAAAAAA" and then just freaks out and completes the cycle immediately. If it would wait until the fuel burns out before damaging blocks maybe it would feel more natural. Come to think of it, i dont know that ive seen any blocks get damaged unless the instant firing happens, so i think instant firing is just when a block is supposed to be damaged, it happens immediately and skips the cycle instead of after the firing is done. 

6 hours ago, TFT said:

3) Fired ceramics start cooling down when they're done, regardless if there is fuel burning underneath or not, bug or feature I couldn't tell you..

 

I dont think ive seen this happen. I think it stays at 1200 until i take out all the fires. So, you probably found a bug. 

[redram]

For folks having this problem recently, what version of the game are you using?  1.20.4 was supposed to have fixed the insta-firing.  But 1.20.4 is currently in 'release candidate' mode, so your game probably won't auto-update to it, you'd have to do it manually.   If you're on 1.20.4 and this is still happening, that would be good to know.  Otherwise if you're still on 1.20.3, know that it will hopefully be fixed in 1.20.4.

Aside from the insta-firing issue, some clarifications:

- The kiln should do a block damage check every 168 hours (7 days) of burn time.  So you should be able to run at least 7 batches before it does a check for damaging blocks.   This may have seemed erratic previously, because the issue with insta-firing was that the kiln door was not properly resetting it's timer (I'm told - I'm not a coder). So it would be counting up hours when it should not, you'd go to fire a batch, it would already have counted up 168 hours despite nothing going on during that time, and then boom, insta-fire. 
iirc a batch should take about 16 hours or so (including warm-up time).  The reason the check interval is 168 hours, btw, is because it inherited this from the cementation furnace.

- The fuel piles do not have to be full stacks, you just have to have *some* fuel in all 9 spots.  iirc you only need to fill them slightly over halfway to run 1 batch.  If you over-fill the piles, you'll be putting hours on your kiln door (hence, advancing toward damage time) unnecessarily.

- Yes, the doors' positions at the moment of finish check time is what matters.  Trying to keep some running total of states on an hourly basis was deemed too complex for the time we had this update, and possibly a limitation of the game, due to chunk unloading, and moreover the possibility of hatches being in different chunks than the doors.  And honestly, it's unnecessary.  It's just meant to give a simple way to control the color result, without having to create a raw clay type for every single fired color.

We unfortunately did not reach all our goals for the beehive kiln this update, so it is true that some functions are not optimal.  We hope at some future time to make the mechanic more flexible in terms of fuels.  So that you could mix fuel types, or run the kiln without having fuel in all 9 spaces.  We may also distribute the block damage more over time, with the caveat that broken blocks would not fully halt the firing, but slow it down instead (up to a point, after which it would stop).  These things probably will not happen any time soon, and when they do the cementation furnace will likely get the same changes.  But I thought I'd clarify things for those of you who were wondering.

And please do let me know regarding what version you were playing when you had the insta-firing issues.

[RapscallionGamer]

I am a big fan of the new fired brick colors, more options in these cases can only be a good thing for builders.  On that same subject, I feel that not using in game Dyes with clay in particular, is a huge miss.  Something basic like this, I feel, should be included in the base game.  Using a raw clay, mixed clay, or in this case a batch of dyed clay would provide a ton of options, which I've heard is only a good thing.  Including it in the base game would only provide a more options for future mods using dyes.

 

[Michael Gates]

I am using 1.20.3... don't think 1.20.4 was available yet when I posted this .. I will update and poke at it again. I really want this thing to work and be practical to use!

[redram]

9 hours ago, RapscallionGamer said:

 I feel that not using in game Dyes with clay in particular, is a huge miss.  Something basic like this, I feel, should be included in the base game.  Using a raw clay, mixed clay, or in this case a batch of dyed clay would provide a ton of options, which I've heard is only a good thing.

At some point we will add glazing, which will expand the color options.  But this will be applied after the bricks are made, not mixed in with the raw clay.  And it will use the types of ingredients one would use irl, so mostly metal and mineral powders.  Possibly plant-based ashes.  We'll see.

[TFT]

22 hours ago, redram said:

And please do let me know regarding what version you were playing when you had the insta-firing issues.

1.20.3. I wasn't aware there was a new version out, thanks.

[redram]

1 hour ago, TFT said:

1.20.3. I wasn't aware there was a new version out, thanks.

1.20.4 is still a 'release candidate' version, meaning it could still have issues, and should be treated with caution.  So you should probably make a backup of your save if you intend to try it out on a 'long term' world.  

[Thranos]

The fact that the only alternative to pit kilns is strictly locked behind iron, and basically locked behind mechanical power at best or titanium at worse (Refractory Bricks) is appalling to me. I made a beehive kiln, fired it twice, and had half the blocks explode. I've never used it again. It's just too expensive for too little.

I can't fathom why there wasn't some kind of system where you could make a beehive kiln without the iron door requirement, but with no ability to fire fancy clay variations- or something else, anything else between "literal hole in the ground" and "effectively steel-age". It's a bizarre choice that feels like a complete misstep.  

[Thorfinn]

I still don't get what's wrong with a hole in the ground. For all practical purposes, it's scalable to whatever you need. And with scythe and shears, it's easy to feed.

[Michael Gates]

On 2/14/2025 at 6:47 AM, Thorfinn said:

I still don't get what's wrong with a hole in the ground. For all practical purposes, it's scalable to whatever you need. And with scythe and shears, it's easy to feed.

Having poked at this a bit on 1.20.4 now, I can say with authority: nothing wrong with the ol' hole in the ground. You can fire any clay goods in a pit kiln, and they come out just fine.

What the beehive IS good for, is huge quantities With the insta-fire bug fixed (which was the cause of the insta-kiln-break bug), I could see a rational person making a beehive out of fire clay bricks, and then firing an ENTIRE CEMENTATION FURNACE worth of refractory bricks in one go. It would fit; you can jam 36(!!) pit kilns worth of bricks or shingles into the beehive if you use the second shelf. If you actually fill it you also save on fuel, a little bit; that's something like six stacks of grass and two of sticks that you don't have to collect. And then bricks. Even if you just run the kiln into the ground and then never touch it again, you get a cementation furnace and something like four hundred brick blocks. That's enough to do, I don't know, something good-sized.

The other thing is the colors, which, cosmetic features are always expensive. Is it "worth" all this work to get the pretty variegated brick blocks? Not really, no... but pretty! variegated! bricks!  I feel a little of that urge myself occasionally, and now I've got a nice little church mostly erected with the nice red tile shingles. Once I've got these statues sculpted for the facade I might even be happy with it. Well, okay I won't be. I suck SO HARD at sculpting, these guys look like fat drifters. But actual talented people could!

[Vratislav]

On 2/14/2025 at 2:19 PM, Thranos said:

and basically locked behind mechanical power at best or titanium at worse (Refractory Bricks)

I don't know if it was mentioned before, but basic fireclay bricks work fine for Beehive kiln. I have tested it in both 1.20.3 and 1.20.4. versions. 

 

On 2/12/2025 at 3:53 AM, redram said:

- The fuel piles do not have to be full stacks, you just have to have *some* fuel in all 9 spots.  iirc you only need to fill them slightly over halfway to run 1 batch.

So is it OK to put there 16 or 18 firewood into every spot? Then the price of the one run is getting to be really reasonable.

On 2/16/2025 at 10:40 AM, Michael Gates said:

you can jam 36(!!) pit kilns worth of bricks or shingles into the beehive if you use the second shelf.

You can even just stack bricks on top of the others without shelves, providing equivalent of 54 pit kilns. I am actually running a beehive kiln, where I put mugs and planters on top of two blocks of bricks, getting rid of shelves and I hope it will go well.

 

Edited February 18, 2025 by Vratislav
clearing

[JAGIELSKI]

I think the mod this feature is based on did it better.

[LadyWYT]

On 2/16/2025 at 3:40 AM, Michael Gates said:

I feel a little of that urge myself occasionally, and now I've got a nice little church mostly erected with the nice red tile shingles. Once I've got these statues sculpted for the facade I might even be happy with it. Well, okay I won't be. I suck SO HARD at sculpting, these guys look like fat drifters. But actual talented people could!

Or maybe they're like those little Buddha statues, but with drifters instead?

On 2/16/2025 at 3:40 AM, Michael Gates said:

The other thing is the colors, which, cosmetic features are always expensive. Is it "worth" all this work to get the pretty variegated brick blocks? Not really, no... but pretty! variegated!

Aesthetics are definitely worth it, especially if you like bragging rights/a really nice looking base.

[redram]

On 2/18/2025 at 5:27 AM, Vratislav said:

So is it OK to put there 16 or 18 firewood into every spot? Then the price of the one run is getting to be really reasonable.

I think it's somewhere in the 18-20 area, iirc. 

[Vratislav]

On 2/18/2025 at 12:27 PM, Vratislav said:

I am actually running a beehive kiln, where I put mugs and planters on top of two blocks of bricks, getting rid of shelves and I hope it will go well.

Well, after burning all wood, the content of kiln did not get fired. But I am not sure if the reason is an overfilled kiln. I went to travels meanwhile and the chunk with the kiln got unloaded. May this be the reason?

So I try it agan, let's see. 

[redram]

2 hours ago, Vratislav said:

Well, after burning all wood, the content of kiln did not get fired. But I am not sure if the reason is an overfilled kiln. I went to travels meanwhile and the chunk with the kiln got unloaded. May this be the reason?

There is no tracking of fuel vs items in the kiln.  The fuel cost is the same if you have a bowl, or if you have stacked the kiln floor to ceiling with bricks.  This may change in the future.  But for now it is what it is.

[Vratislav]

On 2/20/2025 at 8:07 PM, Vratislav said:

So I try it agan, let's see. 

It went pretty well after I did not run away from the area.