Hearth Block concept

[Maethius]

I love building castles and estates (well, I have a lot to learn about mansion construction), but in VS something is always missing that was commonplace when I built them in MC... they feel cold and dark. I've tried to simulate large, warm fireplaces with torches and oil lamps, but using camp fires is no good because... well... they burn out so fast and consume huge amounts of fuel. I thought this could be an excellent solution: the Hearth Block.

On one hand, I wanted something that was more aesthetic than functional, but on the other hand, VS is also all about function. This block would strike a balance between the two:

Aesthetics:
The Hearth Block would add a feeling of warmth to a build with animating flames and particles. It could be made to fill larger spaces for larger builds; adjacent Hearth Blocks could blend together just like fences and roof blocks.

Function:
It would seriously bump up both warmth for larger spaces but also provide light like a lantern or chandelier. I would suggest the Hearth uses a single log for fuel (any kind) with a prolonged burn time; say, up to 8 hours. I know that there are different burn times for different logs, but as an aesthetic aspect, the use of fuel should be prolonged. Chained Hearths would require the player to drop additional logs at a time (3 hearths require dropping a stack of 3 logs), and the burn time will remain 8 hours regardless of how many Hearths are linked.

What do you think?

[LadyWYT]

I like the idea, but I think if it were added, it should be a bit more than just "bigger campfire". You could maybe have a block similar to the forge block, that only accepts wood, peat, or fat as fuel, but can extend the burn time by a fair amount(not enough to accomplish the decorative lighting purpose). Make it require the ashlar stone blocks, so that players need to sink in a bit more time and resources to acquire it as well, but not so much that you couldn't have a big hearth area by mid-game.

In regards to what purpose it serves...cooking. More efficient cooking, since it retains heat better and thus needs less fuel to cook the same amount of food when compared to a campfire. And since you can chain multiple hearth blocks together to make a multiblock hearth(perhaps max size 6 long by 2 wide), you can have multiple things cooking at once. Of course, to cook anything over the hearth, you'll need to build a cooking spit first. Simply hammer one out from some iron rods, and use it to roast meat or hang cookpots(each spit could have two slots). Link multiple spits together for larger hearths.

As for decorative lighting...I think there are some decorating lighting blocks available via creative, that could probably be used to simulate decorative fires. If nothing else, decorative fires that are only available in creative mode would be an obvious thing to add. We already have decorative crops, so decorative fires isn't too much of a stretch.