Is Coal Supposed To Be Rare?

[Stevensonbak]

To put into perspective how little coal I've come across in my current session, I am well into the Iron age and just finished building my coke furnace in preparation for moving onto steel, and all I have ever found in my world is a couple traces of Lignite that I haven't pursued because the distribution was considered, "miniscule" by the prospecting pick everywhere I looked.
I've particularly searched in limestone and sandstone rich biomes, and have even struck diamonds before I've even seen a single deposit of coal anywhere in my world. I also tried loading up a throwaway world with default settings to fly around in, and I still had to work hard to find any coal, only finding a large Lignite node by pure luck after flying around at full speed for 10 minutes.

Is there a type of stone or biome where coal is particularly abundant? I'm tired of making charcoal and digging up peat, let alone not being able to move onto steel

[Streetwind]

Abundance differences by area in the sense of frequency of generation isn't really a thing. An ore has a fixed number of tries it is allowed to roll per chunk for a chance to spawn, and then there is an ore density map overlaying the world that determines the chance of success for each of those rolls in each particular chunk. If the local stone cannot host the ore, nothing can generate; if the local stone can host it, then it has that amount of tries at that chance of success. The former never changes by stone type, and the latter is essentially random.

Ores that can have different qualities can sometimes spawn better variants in some stone types but not in others. But coal ores do not have quality.

Anecdotally, I can offer the following experiences regarding coal:

• In my 1.12 world, I started in a claystone area, and I found three separate surface deposits of lignite before I managed to find cassiterite. As far as deep ores went (the kind the propick actually detects) I had lots of readings for lignite and bituminous coal both, but only very low density ones, so I never bothered to follow up on them.
• In my 1.13 world, I didn't play for very long due to RL time constraints. I remember getting anthracite readings, but they started right at the edge of a ginormous lake, and I didn't feel like prospecting underwater.
• In my current 1.14 world, I started in an all-igneous area so large that I reached meteoric iron before even spotting a single sedimentary pebble anywhere. Thus coal couldn't generate for me, and I have never seen any.

Come to think of it, I have never found a high density coal area anywhere, in any world. Unsure if this is intended or not, but there are other ores that seem to follow a similar pattern. Cinnabar for instance - I've never seen any result other than miniscule or very poor. But I have found cinnabar deposits. Two in my current world, in fact, without even looking for it. Randomly hit 'em while looking for iron. So perhaps that's just the way it's meant to work? Don't have enough data to say for sure.

Personally, I just make charcoal. It doesn't have the long burn time of lignite, but it is hotter than any naturally occuring coal type. And for that matter, everything besides the firepit ignores burn time and temperature anyway, so only ease of procurement matters. By being accessible without metal tools, independent of your local stone type, and infinitely renewable right outside your front door, charcoal wins that contest handily. I mean, if I randomly hit a coal deposit I would dig it up for sure, but I wouldn't ever bother putting any time into searching for one.

(Steelmaking works just fine with charcoal too, by the way.)

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Streetwind

[DrEngine]

Yes, charcoal is simple renewable solution. Find some pine forest with huge "double" pine trees (2x2) and it'll last for a long time. 

Concerning coal: find some sandstone/claystone/limestone area and explore all caves. You'll definitely find some coal deposit sooner or later.

[Stevensonbak]

10 hours ago, Streetwind said:

(Steelmaking works just fine with charcoal too, by the way.)

Aaah, this completely removes my need to deliberately find coal; for some reason, I had the impression that the steel furnace needed coke to run properly, wish I had known this sooner.

Then on a semi-related subject in regards to fuel, I have been using peat for the purpose of cooking and clay forming since it is relatively easy to get with a decent burn time and so-so maximum temperature. Obviously, it is a non-renewable resource and at some point the trips to get it won't be worth it at all, but is it actually more efficient in the long run to just use charcoal for those purposes as soon as possible? I have been saving charcoal exclusively for the purpose of smelting, but I actually started using it for the occasional clayforming and cooking too, am I being wasteful or practical?

[Streetwind]

That's a hard question to answer. Because when you look closely at the firepit and how it works, you'll notice fairly quickly that it's... in a really weird place right now. Likely, it was one of the first crafting stations ever implemented, and is very much showing its age nowadays, mechanics-wise. There is already a rework task for it penciled into the development roadmap, too. It probably won't happen in 1.15, as that update will have a different thematic focus, but it'll happen at some point.

As far as processing single items goes, optimization is fairly straightforward. You're basically just trying to figure out the minimum viable fuel input for the task. I'd start by figuring out which fuel items can do it with just one of them, or two at most, and then comparing the cost. For example: when trying to fire a storage vessel, putting in one firewood will not do it, and neither will one peat. But one charcoal will do it, or two firewood, or two peat. Given that charcoal converts from firewood, is it better to use two firewood or one charcoal? In this case, firewood is better, because the conversion ratio is worse than 2:1 (that is, you need more than two firewood to make one charcoal). But peat isn't part of that equation, so you cannot solve it by math. Here, go back to ease of procurement. What is more convenient in your situation - chopping trees, or digging up peat?

A big part of this minimum viable fuel strategy is realizing that there is a grace period that all hot items have. For about a minute or so after they stop gaining heat, they'll hold their temperature steady as long as nothing else updates it. And if that temperature is above the minimum cooking temperature, then the item will continue cooking even if there is no more fuel in the firepit. That's why two firewood will bake a storage vessel to completion despite the process taking longer than the burntime of two units of firewood. And only very few cases exist in the game where a single item will take longer to cook than this grace period - mainly crucibles filled with nuggets, and cooking pots with particularly large portion sizes. Both pots and crucibles are special in how they scale their cooking time with the amount of contents inside them. Pretty much all other items have fixed cooking times lower than the grace period, or at least very close to it, and all you need to do is to figure out the minimum viable fuel input to make the item go above its cooking temperature just once. But it can apply even to cooking pots, depending on what you cook. Example: a vegetable stew will cook at 100°C. With few ingredients inside the pot, tossing in a single stick will be enough to bring it to 120°C, after which it just continues cooking to completion. But with many ingredients in the pot, it'll take too long - so what you do is throw in a second stick at the halfway mark. It'll bring the temperature of the firepit higher than the temperature of the pot for just a few moments. Which means that the pot gains heat again for a few moments, then stops. And because it just stopped gaining heat, it gets the whole grace period all over again, and finishes cooking on that. Alternatively, if sticks are more precious than firewood because you need tons of ladders for mining, then one firewood will push the temperature of the pot high enough that it'll take so long to cool down even after the grace period ends, it'll finish anyway.

The reason I say to try and stick with single items is because your list of options quickly becomes arbitrarily huge by allowing arbitrary combinations of items. What about starting with one oak sapling to preheat the firepit, then one peat to bring the temperature up, and then one firewood to hold the temperature? Yeah, that's utter nonsense, isn't it. Don't go there. It's pointless. You spend more time confusing yourself than it would take you to chop one ingame year's supply of firewood.

If you must get into games of mixed fuel types, keep one thing in mind: temperature changes more quickly the farther it is from the target. So use the highest temperature fuel you have first. One of the few examples where this is worth paying attention to is smelting copper or bronze with lignite (brown coal). It has an ideal 1100°C burning temperature for copper's requirement of 1084°C, and it has a really long burn time - nearly three times that of charcoal. Sounds great for those chock-full crucibles that take forever to process, and it is... except that because temperature climbs only slowly when it is already near its target maximum, lignite will take a long time to initially get to 1084° that's required for the process to even start. If you start with charcoal to spike the temperature up fast, and then switch to lignite to merely hold it steady over a long period of time, you'll be more efficient with your nonrenewable supply of lignite, and slightly faster in your processing too.

As for processing stacks of items (bricks, shingles, dough, bushmeat etc.) goes, this is where the firepit is at its worst. You can currently choose between two approaches. One, you can put your fuel and your items into the firepit and walk away. Everything will process just fine. It'll take ages, and consume huge amounts of fuel, but you can do something else in the meantime. Or, two, you can exploit the heck out of it, processing your items in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the fuel cost - at the expense of enduring the boredom of having to babysit the entire process from start to finish without being able to step away even once. What is more precious to you: your fuel stockpile, or your time? It varies from player to player, and possibly from situation to situation.

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Streetwind

[DrEngine]

@Streetwind : it seems your firepit fiddling doesn't work for me. I've tried to melt 40 pcs of copper nuggets:

variant A: 1 charcoal first, 2 lignite after, melted.

variant B: 2 lignite first, melted.
 

I don't see any difference. May you write down some concrete exact example ? Thanks.

[Streetwind]

As mentioned, the number of cases where you see any difference by mixing fuel types is very small. I was supplying the theory case that high temperature fuels are better as a starter, and the charcoal/lignite pair one poster child where this difference exists. If I had come up with a different example off the top of my head, I would have used that.

As I wrote in the first post I made in this thread, I haven't even seen lignite since game version 1.12. If you're looking for specific use cases, you'll have to continue experimenting.

(And while I'm not entirely sure, there's a decent chance that your 1 charcoal + 2 lignite experiment would have melted fine as 1 charcoal + 1 lignite, too. 40 units is a tiny amount with a fast cooking time.)

 

Edited April 5, 2021 by Streetwind

[Stevensonbak]

17 hours ago, Streetwind said:

If you must get into games of mixed fuel types, keep one thing in mind: temperature changes more quickly the farther it is from the target. So use the highest temperature fuel you have first. One of the few examples where this is worth paying attention to is smelting copper or bronze with lignite (brown coal). It has an ideal 1100°C burning temperature for copper's requirement of 1084°C, and it has a really long burn time - nearly three times that of charcoal. Sounds great for those chock-full crucibles that take forever to process, and it is... except that because temperature climbs only slowly when it is already near its target maximum, lignite will take a long time to initially get to 1084° that's required for the process to even start. If you start with charcoal to spike the temperature up fast, and then switch to lignite to merely hold it steady over a long period of time, you'll be more efficient with your nonrenewable supply of lignite, and slightly faster in your processing too.

This is exactly what I started doing yesterday, it's those "grace periods" and "warm-up time" factors that made me realize two things: A) It's not a horrible idea to "jumpstart" certain high-temp cookjobs with a high-temperature fuel like charcoal and then proceed to use the intended fuel, but it's still relatively inefficient, and B) You get the best bang for your buck for doing larger and uninterrupted cookjobs, as long as you maintain the fuel supply until the job is done.

 

17 hours ago, Streetwind said:

As for processing stacks of items (bricks, shingles, dough, bushmeat etc.) goes, this is where the firepit is at its worst. You can currently choose between two approaches. One, you can put your fuel and your items into the firepit and walk away. Everything will process just fine. It'll take ages, and consume huge amounts of fuel, but you can do something else in the meantime. Or, two, you can exploit the heck out of it, processing your items in a fraction of the time for a fraction of the fuel cost - at the expense of enduring the boredom of having to babysit the entire process from start to finish without being able to step away even once. What is more precious to you: your fuel stockpile, or your time? It varies from player to player, and possibly from situation to situation.

I can see how someone would do this in a situation where fuel sources are scarce, i.e. no ready access to peat or coal and maybe they are far away from trees and/or have a very long sapling growth rate for some reason, so I bet some hardcore desert dweller might benefit from babysitting their campfires in this way when every log is precious.

Considering this is a game where there are always dozens of chores to do if you're playing it right, I definitely don't see a situation where I would do this myself even in the very early game, but it does give interesting insight into the cooking mechanics.

[ChubbyDemon]

On 4/3/2021 at 10:31 PM, Stevensonbak said:

To put into perspective how little coal I've come across in my current session, I am well into the Iron age and just finished building my coke furnace in preparation for moving onto steel, and all I have ever found in my world is a couple traces of Lignite that I haven't pursued because the distribution was considered, "miniscule" by the prospecting pick everywhere I looked.
I've particularly searched in limestone and sandstone rich biomes, and have even struck diamonds before I've even seen a single deposit of coal anywhere in my world. I also tried loading up a throwaway world with default settings to fly around in, and I still had to work hard to find any coal, only finding a large Lignite node by pure luck after flying around at full speed for 10 minutes.

Is there a type of stone or biome where coal is particularly abundant? I'm tired of making charcoal and digging up peat, let alone not being able to move onto steel

I do not envy your situation.  While attempting to find some bits of surface copper, I legitimately stumbled into a pretty nice vein of lignite.  And I mean literally stumbled, took a running leap through a bush and fell into a vertical cave shaft with tons of lignite on the walls.

[ChubbyDemon]

On 4/5/2021 at 8:01 PM, Stevensonbak said:

This is exactly what I started doing yesterday, it's those "grace periods" and "warm-up time" factors that made me realize two things: A) It's not a horrible idea to "jumpstart" certain high-temp cookjobs with a high-temperature fuel like charcoal and then proceed to use the intended fuel, but it's still relatively inefficient, and B) You get the best bang for your buck for doing larger and uninterrupted cookjobs, as long as you maintain the fuel supply until the job is done.

 

I can see how someone would do this in a situation where fuel sources are scarce, i.e. no ready access to peat or coal and maybe they are far away from trees and/or have a very long sapling growth rate for some reason, so I bet some hardcore desert dweller might benefit from babysitting their campfires in this way when every log is precious.

Considering this is a game where there are always dozens of chores to do if you're playing it right, I definitely don't see a situation where I would do this myself even in the very early game, but it does give interesting insight into the cooking mechanics.

I live in what I think is a savanna of some sort?  The average temp is 18C, but for some reason my berries take 9 days to go from harvested to flowered, and then another 9 to ripen.  I have not harvested a single berry bush since I planted them on day 1.  They’ll ripen in 2 days but I feel like I’m doing something wrong.  Do berry bushes decrease their ripening time based on the soil they’re on?  Because mine are on low fertility soil.

[ChubbyDemon]

On 4/4/2021 at 11:53 AM, Stevensonbak said:

Aaah, this completely removes my need to deliberately find coal; for some reason, I had the impression that the steel furnace needed coke to run properly, wish I had known this sooner.

Then on a semi-related subject in regards to fuel, I have been using peat for the purpose of cooking and clay forming since it is relatively easy to get with a decent burn time and so-so maximum temperature. Obviously, it is a non-renewable resource and at some point the trips to get it won't be worth it at all, but is it actually more efficient in the long run to just use charcoal for those purposes as soon as possible? I have been saving charcoal exclusively for the purpose of smelting, but I actually started using it for the occasional clayforming and cooking too, am I being wasteful or practical?

Well clay forming isn’t done in a firepit anymore since I’m from the future, but peat is still the best fuel for clay forming if you have a nice supply of it.  It’s faster than firewood and the increased burn temp doesn’t really matter for firepit recipies.  You should never use charcoal for clay forming, since it’s orders of magnitude less efficient and the extra time it takes using firewood isn’t worth turning 32 firewood into like 6-7 charcoal.  32 firewood can kiln 8 objects (4 if they’re storage vessels) while the same amount of firewood turned into charcoal can kiln 1 object (and 0 storage vessels).  The doubled speed is not worth the exorbitant fuel loss.

[Bumber]

2 hours ago, ChubbyDemon said:

I live in what I think is a savanna of some sort?  The average temp is 18C, but for some reason my berries take 9 days to go from harvested to flowered, and then another 9 to ripen.  I have not harvested a single berry bush since I planted them on day 1.  They’ll ripen in 2 days but I feel like I’m doing something wrong.  Do berry bushes decrease their ripening time based on the soil they’re on?  Because mine are on low fertility soil.

Mine are 8-9 days on medium fertility soil. Temperate climate, 9-day months. Looks like they just take that long to grow.

I've seen bushes in the wild that say 30 days. Might be the fault of raccoons? I break these and replant to get them back to normal.

[Maelstrom]

9 hours ago, ChubbyDemon said:

Well clay forming isn’t done in a firepit anymore since I’m from the future, but peat is still the best fuel for clay forming if you have a nice supply of it.  It’s faster than firewood and the increased burn temp doesn’t really matter for firepit recipies.  You should never use charcoal for clay forming, since it’s orders of magnitude less efficient and the extra time it takes using firewood isn’t worth turning 32 firewood into like 6-7 charcoal.  32 firewood can kiln 8 objects (4 if they’re storage vessels) while the same amount of firewood turned into charcoal can kiln 1 object (and 0 storage vessels).  The doubled speed is not worth the exorbitant fuel loss.

Once charcoal is mass produced it isn't that much to take a bit of it to use on firing clay items (primarily refractory and fire clay bricks).

[Bumber]

39 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

Once charcoal is mass produced it isn't that much to take a bit of it to use on firing clay items (primarily refractory and fire clay bricks).

If you didn't need the charcoal for something else (e.g., steel,) then you're wasting time producing and digging it up in the first place. Might as well just double your simultaneous pit kilns for an effective speed boost.

On the subject of coal, I find lignite in surface caves. It's almost not worth it to mine since each block gives only 1 brown coal, and mining is slow even with a steel pick.

Edited September 12, 2023 by Bumber

[Maelstrom]

I concur.  mining coal feels like it consumes more time than creating charcoal.  Unless using ore blasting bombs.  Some think that of the total time consumed to make charcoal but they forget that growing trees and burning wood into charcoal do not require direct attention like mining coal does.

Regarding lignite?  I have yet to see lignite.  I think it's a myth.

[ChubbyDemon]

On 9/12/2023 at 11:58 AM, Maelstrom said:

I concur.  mining coal feels like it consumes more time than creating charcoal.  Unless using ore blasting bombs.  Some think that of the total time consumed to make charcoal but they forget that growing trees and burning wood into charcoal do not require direct attention like mining coal does.

Regarding lignite?  I have yet to see lignite.  I think it's a myth.

I'm shocked you've gone so long without stumbling into lignite.  I see it coating cave walls and inside cliff faces all the time!

[Maelstrom]

Uhhh...  wait a sec.   lignite = brown coal - I have seen tons and tonnes of that stuff.  I was thinking of anthracite.