help Charcoal Gnomes?

[defal]

Hello everyone!

I have been playing Vintage Story for some weeks now, on my single player world. And a thing that has bothered me time and time again is the "Charcoal Gnomes"-as I've got used to calling them.

I dug a Charcoal Pit as Instructed in the wiki (done them multiple times successfully already) and sometimes my charcoal, when it's finished, suddenly disappear if I leave them unattended for extended periods of time.

I first thought it was some kind of bug, the game is in early access after all, but one day I rembered I was making Charcoal for my Bloomery and went to check it since it had been some time. My Charcoal pit is in the end of my base, so I can see it from afar easily and I swear I saw something that looked like a drifter with a hat and it was running away from the Charcoal Pit.

It was only for a moment and I wasn't able take a screenshot of it, and when I went to check the pit, it was empty again. I have attached the images of the pit producing smoke, then the empty pit and a drawing I mate aftwards of what I think I saw.

Does anyone know anything about this? There is no mention of it on the wiki and I would like to prevent further encounters with the creature.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Are you sure you completely filled your pit with no air spaces? That will cause your entire charcoal pit to burn up and leave you with nothing. Aside from that, there is nothing that would cause your charcoal to disappear like that. I haven't seen it happen in my worlds before.

[Steel General]

I have heard, though never witnessed (because I never took the chance), that rain will dissolve charcoal.

[Sugarrushdragon]

Ok, heads up I'm new too so I don't know much about this topic, but I did some looking around.

I found nothing on the wiki's about charcoal disapearing/stolen and the only Drifter's wearing clothing I could find was mods.
I did find similar stories, however, they were mostly about charcoal pits burning for eternity rather than disapearing and those that did mention missing charcoal admitted that it was due to human error (E.g. not making it air tight, etc.).

Here are some suggestions though:
1) Change the blocks of the pit - Noticed from the screen shots that your're using natural blocks for the walls of the pit. It might be silly but maybe thats the reason why the blocks are despawning. So try changing the wall to a block that has to be crafted like compound dirt or cobble stone, etc.

2) Make sure your're using full stacks of firewood (Airtight) - Maybe you accidentally left an incomplete stack of firewood, thus creating an air pocket, which resulted in it all burning instead.
3) Booby traps/ Drifter proofing your base - If their really is a secret charcoal-knapper it might be best to leave a trap around the pit or make it hard for a Drifter or any other creature to get to. I don't have many suggestions for this but maybe moving the pit to a higher place could be a start.

If the Gnome continues their crime spree the please use this wanted poster to help catch them.
(Gonna be honest I just like the idea of a Drifter going around and stealing stuff from your base it's funny)

Edited July 11, 2025 by Sugarrushdragon
oopsie

[Teh Pizza Lady]

53 minutes ago, Sugarrushdragon said:

1) Change the blocks of the pit - Noticed from the screen shots that your're using natural blocks for the walls of the pit. It might be silly but maybe thats the reason why the blocks are despawning. So try changing the wall to a block that has to be crafted like compound dirt or cobble stone, etc.

2) Make sure your're using full stacks of firewood (Airtight) - Maybe you accidentally left an incomplete stack of firewood, thus creating an air pocket, which resulted in it all burning instead.

the first suggestion shouldn't be an issue. I dig charcoal pits all the time and haven't ever had this issue. I would suspect the 2nd one tho.

[wildforester]

I’d guess the missing logs are on the top of the pile, mostly because I don’t think you can stack on more logs if there’s an incomplete pile.