The Beehive Kiln should be accessible earlier

[That1GameGuy]

I'd really like to use the beehive kiln, but it just comes far too late for me to find any use for it. The iron age is so far into the game that I've already fired all the clayware I need, and my homestead is already established with a specific "style" so the need to use it for bricks has long passed.

The requirement for iron hatches seems a little arbitrary, since its only purpose is to provide oxygen. I don't see why we can't just leave those blocks as open air/filled in with fire bricks, with the hatches just being an option. The kiln door I can understand why it uses iron, but I'd still like a cheaper option to make the beehive kiln something you can make earlier. Maybe there could be a Crude Kiln Door made from just fire bricks and mortar, with the trade off being that it breaks the fire bricks after only 84 hours of operation instead of the full 168.

[Lugh Crow-Slave]

This is definitely a result of how you're playing rather than how it's balanced. 

 

For instance I tend to hit iron extremely fast normally a two or three daysafter my first copper cast. 

 

Honestly the beehive feels more like something geared towards a server than a solo run. Even with how fast I hit iron I never use it on solo worlds. However on servers it's a mainstay for crocks and storage alone.

[That1GameGuy]

1 hour ago, Lugh Crow-Slave said:

Honestly the beehive feels more like something geared towards a server than a solo run. Even with how fast I hit iron I never use it on solo worlds. However on servers it's a mainstay for crocks and storage alone.

Doesn't that (kind of) prove my point though? 

17 iron is a lot to cough up, if it was available earlier (and by extension cheaper) it would become more viable in solo worlds.

I can understand features more geared towards multiplayer, but it feeling useless in singleplayer is what doesn't sit right with me. The Beehive Kiln does have potential to offer solo players in the form of mass firing bricks and shingles for construction, which is why I'd like the Kiln to be an earlier craft to make those options viable.

[Lugh Crow-Slave]

3 hours ago, That1GameGuy said:

Doesn't that (kind of) prove my point though? 

17 iron is a lot to cough up, if it was available earlier (and by extension cheaper) it would become more viable in solo worlds.

I can understand features more geared towards multiplayer, but it feeling useless in singleplayer is what doesn't sit right with me. The Beehive Kiln does have potential to offer solo players in the form of mass firing bricks and shingles for construction, which is why I'd like the Kiln to be an earlier craft to make those options viable.

If you make it cheap enough to be that useful you're going to make pit kilns largely useless. 

The bigger issue is Clay just stops being all that needed in single player. A better option would be to make molds or at least some molds one time use. So that by the time you're at the beehive you still have use for it. 

[KoviBat]

I think you can make a beehive kiln out of just fire clay bricks, and there do appear to be Kiln doors now, rather than the iron door required for steelmaking, but the handbook really doesn't communicate very well what happens if you use fire clay bricks instead of refractory bricks, or different tiers of bricks aside from just saying "heat damage." In fact, I find this is an area where the handbook is very lacking in information. Do different types of fuel affect how much "heat damage" bricks take? So if you wanted to make a low-tier kiln for firing basic pottery, could you just fill the fuel floor with firewood and not cause any heat damage to fire clay bricks? I would hope so. Then to make it into a coke oven or a blister steel kiln you would need to use higher tier bricks because of the higher temperatures. That's how I'd set it up ideally, but there's nothing to indicate that's how it works.

[Entaris]

On 7/25/2025 at 4:32 AM, Lugh Crow-Slave said:

If you make it cheap enough to be that useful you're going to make pit kilns largely useless. 

The bigger issue is Clay just stops being all that needed in single player. A better option would be to make molds or at least some molds one time use. So that by the time you're at the beehive you still have use for it. 

Honestly, I think all the molds should be single use.

Conversely, I think we should also have access to packed sand molds that don't rely on all this firing and waiting.

Of course, it would take a sample to press from, so wooden mock-ups of the objects would be ideal (Why DONT we have wooden bowls?)

[Krougal]

Firebrick breaks very quickly, although I guess it would be good for your first go.

I've thought about making one, because I can, but as said, I am not making a lot of pottery by that time, and I would have likely already made T2 bricks for my cementation furnace before I would even think of making a kiln.

 I agree with @Lugh Crow-Slave It probably is more geared towards multi-player.

22 minutes ago, Entaris said:

Honestly, I think all the molds should be single use.

Conversely, I think we should also have access to packed sand molds that don't rely on all this firing and waiting.

Of course, it would take a sample to press from, so wooden mock-ups of the objects would be ideal (Why DONT we have wooden bowls?)

Wooden bowls? That's just crazy talk. Only elves eat out of wooden bowls. Dorfs use stone coo...uhhh....wrong game, my bad.

Damn  you! I never thought of it before, but now I want wooden bowls too!

Edited August 15, 2025 by Krougal

[Entaris]

12 hours ago, Krougal said:

Firebrick breaks very quickly, although I guess it would be good for your first go.

I've thought about making one, because I can, but as said, I am not making a lot of pottery by that time, and I would have likely already made T2 bricks for my cementation furnace before I would even think of making a kiln.

 I agree with @Lugh Crow-Slave It probably is more geared towards multi-player.

Wooden bowls? That's just crazy talk. Only elves eat out of wooden bowls. Dorfs use stone coo...uhhh....wrong game, my bad.

Damn  you! I never thought of it before, but now I want wooden bowls too!

 

[Thorfinn]

13 hours ago, Entaris said:

Honestly, I think all the molds should be single use.

Not sure about all of them. Straight-walled should be fine, since the metal contracts as it cools, and pulls away from mold. Ingot molds should be fine, at least if you pretend they have sloped sides like the ingots they produce. Though if shooting for realism, most fired molds should probably require some kind of release agent if you want them reusable. Otherwise, I'd give a percentage chance of having to break it.

[Krougal]

Yeah, the anvil mold is fine. If they added the helve hammer molds it wouldn't bother me either, since I usually just make 3 because I'll do a big batch of tin at once, and then I've just got these molds I'll never use again taking up space.

Some other things I may only ever cast 1 (like a falx, propick or hoe) I wouldn't care, but I wouldn't be thrilled about pick axe, hammer, shovel, axe.

Ingots in particular would really piss me off.

[Entaris]

Yeah, the way I see it could be another progression.

Like, you make a stick frame and take some sand and make press-molds. Single-Use.

Then you start making clay molds, which are also single-use without a releasing agent, like Borax or something.

This has an added effect of getting rid of one-off molds you'll never use again and have no place to store, like helve hammer. Ingots I can see an argument for, as you've said, much of that is geometry. Maybe a fireclay/refractory brick break-chance? 

The end game would be graphite molds, as those are carvable and hold up phenomenally well to the temperature ranges involved with pour-molding metals and release quite easily. But this would be up there with, like, bullion furnaces pouring molten gold, iron and steel.

(Oh man, drop forging would be sick)

[Krougal]

Graphite? We're talking late 1800s now. Might be out of tech range for the game.

Still, these are interesting ideas.

Besides that it really has been done with sand like you said, sand doesn't have a lot of uses in VS and I guess it would be a good alternative for those people who seem unable to find clay.

I think a chance of molds breaking would be tolerable, as long as it isn't excessive.

 

[Entaris]

1 hour ago, Krougal said:

Graphite? We're talking late 1800s now. Might be out of tech range for the game.

Still, these are interesting ideas.

Besides that it really has been done with sand like you said, sand doesn't have a lot of uses in VS and I guess it would be a good alternative for those people who seem unable to find clay.

I think a chance of molds breaking would be tolerable, as long as it isn't excessive.

 

Yes, graphite, which was discovered and used in the BCs and by the 16th century they were using graphite to line the molds for cannonballs. 

 

Even beyond that, we're sitting on Bauxite, Ilmenite and creating STEEL in bulk. I foresee a bit more being added in the tiered tech system.

Edited August 15, 2025 by Entaris

[Krougal]

2 minutes ago, Entaris said:

Yes, graphite, which was discovered and used in the BCs and by the 16th century they were using graphite to line the molds for cannonballs. 

Oh. Yeah, I guess it was just the industrial patent that was close to 1800. 

2 minutes ago, Entaris said:

Even beyond that, we're sitting on Bauxite, Ilmenite and creating STEEL in bulk. I foresee a bit more being added in the tiered tech system.

True that.

[Entaris]

I'm hoping the endgame is we fashion Gundam-type mecha from alloys of titanium and meteoric iron to take the fight to Dave. 

[KoviBat]

9 hours ago, Krougal said:

Graphite? We're talking late 1800s now. Might be out of tech range for the game.

 

We already have Graphite in the game, no known use at this time, though.

[KoviBat]

Wanted to follow up on my previous assumptions, while you could build a beehive kiln out of fire clay, you also need the kiln door, which requires four nails and straps, and two iron bars, which gates it firmly behind the Iron Age, when this really is something you should be able to make around the late Copper/early Bronze ages.

Really, the amount of resources required to put one of these together is ridiculous. You need 250 bricks of your choice of tier (12 for the door, 18 for the gratings and 220 for the brick blocks), and at least 17 ingots of iron (1 for nails and strips, 4 for the bars for the kiln door, and 12 for the iron hatch doors). Unless you want to double the amount of fire clay required, you'll also need two ingots for iron pounder caps for your pulverizer in order to make higher tier bricks. You'll also need a full windmill to power that pulverizer reliably, which is 256 Flax fiber. You can get it to work on a particularly windy day with half that number, but 128 flax fiber is still difficult to come by without getting good luck with cracked vessels. All this just to not use up a little grass, a few sticks, and some firewood is absolutely not worth the amount of effort that goes into it. Especially since the bricks can, and will, break.

I think the Beehive Kiln needs to be reworked to only use fire clay bricks, and not need iron to make it. You can easily replace the iron bars with solid stone, like that used in the Quern and Coffin recipes, and the iron nails and strips with mortar. Then, reduce the heat damage drastically, and only let firewood be usable as a fuel. This makes it accessible for the mid-game, which is where it will be most useful. That's when you'll want to fire a bunch of molds for things like hammers, anvils, helve hammers, prospecting picks, and general tools and armor. Iron is still far off, even if you're in the early bronze age, but you can reliably make any ceramics you need without needing to aerate your lawn.

[Krougal]

You need to grow flax to get large amounts reliably, which is going to take a few months anyway.

It doesn't take that long to get to iron. My current game my first load of steel was ready by October.

While the kiln would be nice to have, the fact of the matter is the amount of bricks it would take, it wouldn't save me any effort, because by the time I have a cementation furnace I am kinda done with pottery anyway.

I think it is meant for the players who are building large structures and using all different colors, as a way for them to still play in survival without losing their minds.

I don't think it is meant for the average survival player who isn't overly concerned that his base is still pretty much an overgrown dirthole even end game.

I agree for myself, it isn't worth the effort by the time it can be reasonably made, but as others have said, if it were easier then why would I ever use pit kilns.

  

9 hours ago, KoviBat said:

We already have Graphite in the game, no known use at this time, though.

Naturally occurring at that. Wonder when that was added. Well maybe the devs were already thinking about some of the suggestions.

Edited August 16, 2025 by Krougal

[Entaris]

2 hours ago, Krougal said:

It doesn't take that long to get to iron. My current game my first load of steel was ready by October.

Meanwhile you have my server, where we spent the first year scrabbling around trying to enter Bronze because we just couldn't find copper, zinc, tin, etc. Had to pan it all out. 

Even then, i don't see a real use case for a beehive kiln. One anvil, eight bowls (four for eating four for light) pickaxe mold and a hammer and we were basically done outside of the chef's obsessive need for more storage vessels and crocks, half of which go unused. 

Now all we use it for is my firebricks, and I can do that just fine with pits. I guess I could build a beehive EXCLUSIVELY to hit the numbers I need for Cementation furnace, but eh?

[Thorfinn]

By last harvest, I NEED 35 storage vessels (yes, mental illness) and 36 crocks. If playing with Golden Combs, another 30-ish hives and honey pots I think they are called, (yes another mental illness, though kissing cousins) but that's easy to knock out with a dozen pit kilns. I tried to like beehive kilns, but apart from color-coding my storage vessels, I don't see much point to the beehive, particularly when I've spent so much fireclay just building the thing.

Edited August 16, 2025 by Thorfinn

[That1GameGuy]

Quote

Now all we use it for is my firebricks, and I can do that just fine with pits. I guess I could build a beehive EXCLUSIVELY to hit the numbers I need for Cementation furnace, but eh?

Funny, I did that in my world, only to realize I could have just used the bricks I used to make the kiln on the Cementation furnace instead. That's one reason why I made this post lol

Edited August 17, 2025 by That1GameGuy

[That1GameGuy]

Quote

Really, the amount of resources required to put one of these together is ridiculous. You need 250 bricks of your choice of tier (12 for the door, 18 for the gratings and 220 for the brick blocks), and at least 17 ingots of iron (1 for nails and strips, 4 for the bars for the kiln door, and 12 for the iron hatch doors). Unless you want to double the amount of fire clay required, you'll also need two ingots for iron pounder caps for your pulverizer in order to make higher tier bricks. You'll also need a full windmill to power that pulverizer reliably, which is 256 Flax fiber. You can get it to work on a particularly windy day with half that number, but 128 flax fiber is still difficult to come by without getting good luck with cracked vessels. All this just to not use up a little grass, a few sticks, and some firewood is absolutely not worth the amount of effort that goes into it. Especially since the bricks can, and will, break.

This has me thinking that maybe the Beehive Kiln (and to a certain extent the Cementation Furnace) could be more freeform in its construction similar to cellars. Like as long as you have a box made from fire clay/refractory bricks with three potential openings and a kiln door, it would act as a valid kiln. So you could make an itty bitty 3x3x4 kiln, or an even bigger one than we have now. (11x11x11 Beehive Kiln when?)

[Entaris]

I don't think the cementation furnace could do that, given the size of the coffin, but maybe a one-layer Beehive Kiln?