Did the behaviour of firepits change?

[CatNolara]

I just started a new world on 1.22 the other day and I noticed that firepits behave differently now.

Before if you put a bunch of fireable things in there they'd heat up, process, then drop one of the product in the right slot and start from cold again. Since that takes forever and eats up a lot of fuel I did it a little differently: I let the stack of stuff heat up and right before it finishes processing I take it out and put it in again to let it heat more. If you repeat that a couple of times it heats up to a very high temperature and all you have to do is drop one item of the stack at once into the firepit and it will process super quickly while the rest of the stack stays hot, saving you time and fuel.

Now if I put a stack of stuff into the firepit it heats up super slowly, propably scaled by the stack size. I really noticed it right now trying to make calzined flint, put half a stack of flint into the firepit and I think I used up like 16 coal just to even get it to processing temperature. I'd love to use a bloomery instead, but I need the calzined flint to make one in the first place.

Wish there was a better way to get fireclay, it feels like it has gotten much, much harder now. I also think the rework of the firepit mechanics could need some tweaking, putting in more of the same stuff at once shouldn't increase the firing time that much...

[Helst_navngivet]

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

I really REALLY REALLY want some other way of getting fireclay, preferably a more renewable one, as being restricted to flint that has to be picked up in some random forest a thousand blocks away because you have used all of the flint in your general vicinity isnt great when bloomeries are one time uses.

The thing about scaling with stack size makes sense from a game balance viewpoint, as if there was no tradeoff to blasting everything at once, it wouldnt make sense to make 1 or 2 pieces of calcined flint rather than saving up to make a boatload of it, but i agree the implementation could have been better.

[Allen]

4 minutes ago, Helst_navngivet said:

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

I really REALLY REALLY want some other way of getting fireclay, preferably a more renewable one, as being restricted to flint that has to be picked up in some random forest a thousand blocks away because you have used all of the flint in your general vicinity isnt great when bloomeries are one time uses.

The thing about scaling with stack size makes sense from a game balance viewpoint, as if there was no tradeoff to blasting everything at once, it wouldnt make sense to make 1 or 2 pieces of calcined flint rather than saving up to make a boatload of it, but i agree the implementation could have been better.

Not renewable, but one way to get fireclay that's (possibly) less annoying is going out to look for surface bauxite, since fireclay can spawn on the surface if the stone type is bauxite.

It can also be found under coal veins (specifically, black coal. I think.), so you also could go searching for coal and check below them too.

[DoctorSnakes]

37 minutes ago, Helst_navngivet said:

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

I really REALLY REALLY want some other way of getting fireclay, preferably a more renewable one, as being restricted to flint that has to be picked up in some random forest a thousand blocks away because you have used all of the flint in your general vicinity isnt great when bloomeries are one time uses.

Yeah, I hope they add bigger flint "veins" than what we have now, and perhaps possible to discover with prospecting.

[cjameshuff]

53 minutes ago, DoctorSnakes said:

Yeah, I hope they add bigger flint "veins" than what we have now, and perhaps possible to discover with prospecting.

Flint is just chert that forms in nodules in calcium carbonate rock.

[CatNolara]

I'm playing starting in a hot climate for the first time right now, when digging for surface copper I found a pretty big "vein" of flint, so that wasn't too big of a problem.

Also, I just explored a little more and found a stretch of bauxite desert and was amazed to find patches of fire clay there. Just after I struggled making my own from regular clay and flint, lol.

But that doesn't change that the firepit still stays annoying, I noticed it taking long to heat up a stack of hyena meat as well, before it even started cooking. Isn't waiting for each item to process in the heat making it take long enough, does it really have to be prolonged by an upscaled heating time?

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, CatNolara said:

Now if I put a stack of stuff into the firepit it heats up super slowly, propably scaled by the stack size. I really noticed it right now trying to make calzined flint, put half a stack of flint into the firepit and I think I used up like 16 coal just to even get it to processing temperature. I'd love to use a bloomery instead, but I need the calzined flint to make one in the first place.

To answer the original question, yes, firepits were changed in 1.22 to no longer reset item temperature when a new item starts cooking from a stack, with the stack of items taking proportionally longer to heat up as a result. Try cooking a smaller stack of flint(such as eight) to get what you need for the initial bloomery. 

I will also note that item stacks currently don't cool off at a proportional rate, so it's pretty important to keep things heated appropriately once you get them up to temperature. However, if you would like to change that, there is a mod for it: https://mods.vintagestory.at/scs

1 hour ago, CatNolara said:

Also, I just explored a little more and found a stretch of bauxite desert and was amazed to find patches of fire clay there. Just after I struggled making my own from regular clay and flint, lol.

Fire clay deposits can also occur under black coal/anthracite veins. If you're playing with lore content enabled, you can also sometimes find it in cracked vessels or ruins, and can sometimes purchase it from traders as well.

[CatNolara]

Hmm, that mod only influences the cool down speed, not the heating speed. I downloaded it anyway, seems useful enough. Now that I think about it, maybe there's a mod that can decrease both heating and cooling times for items in the firepit. I have to take a look.

I know that you can find it below black coal, haven't found any anthracite though, in any of my worlds. It's usually not that much anyway, though, and for that it's pretty hard to find.

[kurzninja]

How often does fire clay spawn under black coal? I’ve found it there before but I found a vein of coal last night hoping to find fire clay with it. I mined a bit of the coal and there was no fire clay with it. Granted I didn’t mine that much of it so maybe it is there and I just haven’t found it. I just have no idea how likely it is for them to spawn together: always? 75% of the time? 50%?

[KahvozeinsFang]

36 minutes ago, kurzninja said:

How often does fire clay spawn under black coal? I’ve found it there before but I found a vein of coal last night hoping to find fire clay with it. I mined a bit of the coal and there was no fire clay with it. Granted I didn’t mine that much of it so maybe it is there and I just haven’t found it. I just have no idea how likely it is for them to spawn together: always? 75% of the time? 50%?

I don't know how often you can find it but I was randomly wandering through a cave just the other day and found a massive amount of black coal. Under the coal was probably about 2000 or more fireclay. 

 

There was like three coal veins in layers about 7 blocks vertically apart, and all of them had fireclay under. I think it has to do with the amount of coal. Small veins don't seem to have fireclay, but big ones do. In my experience anyway. 

[MKMoose]

2 hours ago, kurzninja said:

How often does fire clay spawn under black coal?

It's roughly under 60% of bituminous coal and anthracite deposits, though partial coverage is also possible.

 

2 hours ago, KahvozeinsFang said:

There was like three coal veins in layers about 7 blocks vertically apart, and all of them had fireclay under. I think it has to do with the amount of coal. Small veins don't seem to have fireclay, but big ones do. In my experience anyway. 

It's only tied to location in the horizontal plane, so close-by deposits will tend to either all have fireclay or all have no fireclay. No relation to deposit size.