Charcoal issues

[Winters R0se]

So Im following the process it lists, burying a bunch of fire wood under dirt and lighting it on fire, but Im not getting charcoal. what am I doing wrong?

[Diff]

Could be any of a good handful of things. A picture/video would be worth a lot. Without that, the top few things that go wrong are air gaps/incompletely filled wood piles and not covering up the fire itself. It's gotta be completely starved of oxygen or else it'll just burn.

[Winters R0se]

5 minutes ago, Diff said:

Could be any of a good handful of things. A picture/video would be worth a lot. Without that, the top few things that go wrong are air gaps/incompletely filled wood piles and not covering up the fire itself. It's gotta be completely starved of oxygen or else it'll just burn.

I used this pyramid design, completely filled with fire wood piles, lit at the top then covered

[partially deconstructed]

[[This is also my third attempt to make charcoal and im getting  a bit miffed about how much wood is getting wasted]]

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Winters R0se said:

I used this pyramid design, completely filled with fire wood piles, lit at the top then covered

[partially deconstructed]

[[This is also my third attempt to make charcoal and im getting  a bit miffed about how much wood is getting wasted]]

Out of curiosity, how exactly are you lighting the fuel pile? Are you building a firepit on top of the firewood stack and then lighting the firepit before covering, or are you setting the fuel stack itself on fire? The firepit is crucial, as that's what turns the structure into a recognized charcoal pit. Otherwise, you're going to wind up with nothing but ashes when it finishes burning.

[Diff]

14 hours ago, Winters R0se said:

I used this pyramid design, completely filled with fire wood piles, lit at the top then covered

[partially deconstructed]

[[This is also my third attempt to make charcoal and im getting  a bit miffed about how much wood is getting wasted]]

Far as I can tell there's nothing wrong with the shape of your pit, so it's either that there's a stack that's not quite a full 32 logs, or that it's not being lit correctly. I recreated your pit and was able to get it to bake down to crispy charcoal bits. Things to watch for, once I complete the fire pit on top of the logs, the info HUD at the top actually changes to "Charcoal Pit" instead of "Fire Pit", and after lighting it, it displays a warning that you have 30 in game minutes to cover the pit. If you don't see any of those things, abandon ship and double check everything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLHjLE9Y-Oc

 

Edited December 27, 2025 by Diff
Embed doesn't seem to be working

[Winters R0se]

Oh-

I was lighting the top stack on fire directly xd

thanks for the correction

10 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Out of curiosity, how exactly are you lighting the fuel pile? Are you building a firepit on top of the firewood stack and then lighting the firepit before covering, or are you setting the fuel stack itself on fire? The firepit is crucial, as that's what turns the structure into a recognized charcoal pit. Otherwise, you're going to wind up with nothing but ashes when it finishes burning.