Leave traces for crafted blocks and items destroyed by fire

[TamanduaGirl]

It could leave coal or unusable ash but it would be a great addition to leave a trace that it was fire that destroyed something. I saw a post of someone asking what happened to their base and the replies said fire from lightening. It reminded me of when the same happened to me in minecraft and I came back from mining to find much of my base just gone and I had recently had a chunk error so though it was a glitch.

I also recently lost a tool shelf and tools to a kiln but had no idea that's what happened and that it wasn't some glitch or other issue till I saw a post about that same happening to someone else.

To me it seems an error in the game design to risk losing items and builds to something with no trace in game to tell you what happened. I left fire spread on because I'm fine to loose stuff to my own mistakes(I have lightening caused fires off though sine I deal with that enough IRL), but there really needs to be some indication of what happened. People should not need to ask the internet what happened to find out. The game should let you know somehow.

Edited November 8, 2025 by TamanduaGirl
Clarification that only for crafted blocks and items not natural

[Yerik]

I love the ash idea, it could pile up like snow, the bigger taller your house is that burned down the taller the ash piles are afterwards.

[hstone32]

Good idea in theory, but I can't help but wonder if a feature like this might have massive consequences on performance during, say, a forest fire. I've seen large lag spikes happen during landslides, so it seems that computing falling blocks must be intensive.

[TamanduaGirl]

2 hours ago, hstone32 said:

Good idea in theory, but I can't help but wonder if a feature like this might have massive consequences on performance during, say, a forest fire. I've seen large lag spikes happen during landslides, so it seems that computing falling blocks must be intensive.

Yeah, I don't know how it would work behind the code but that's part of why I suggested it just do it for crafted blocks and items. but it's possible there's a reason it's not done.

But as Yerik said, they kinda do it already with snow. They could even make it a chance, like, 1 in 5 chance a burnt block/item leaves an ash layer. I'm not sure if that would actually be better or worse for performance but then if a lot burns it wouldn't be all over.

The ice and fire mod for minecraft does similar but not exactly the same. When a dragon burns things it leaves ash blocks behind. They even eventually turn to dirt blocks if you leave them long enough. So it seems like it might be possible.

[Diff]

On 11/14/2025 at 3:16 PM, TamanduaGirl said:

but it's possible there's a reason it's not done.

Found out the reason. I didn't realize this at first, but apparently fire blocks are their own independent thing. They feed off a fuel block, but they occupy their own separate space adjacent to that. I guess they need that space for oxygen, which is why you can't set fire to a block if it doesn't have a full air block next to it.

If a fire block turns its fuel block to ashes, it'll keep itself from spreading any further in that direction. Often a fire block will scooch on over if there's more fresh fuel that way once it consumes its fuel block. If there's not another way around to more fuel, a fire can easily choke itself out on ashes. Peat fires wind up just scorching the top layer rather than burning a new cave into the earth.

For some instances, this can be helped by turning the fire block into ash rather than the fuel block it consumed, but this doesn't help the case of peat fires and downwards-burning fires in general, the ash will just fall on top of the newly formed fire and smother it rather than replacing it.

I'm sure there's another way around it, but if you want to play around with doing it the wrong way, I made a mod.

[TamanduaGirl]

Interesting. Makes sense. Though I wonder if it could be made to drop the ash only once no more fuel blocks are below the fire block? Though adding the extra check could effect performance for larger fires.