Fire! Well, campfire. [Min/Max spoilers]

[LannyRipple]

So I'm watching Mesh flagellate himself on the campfires. It's painful. The spoiler ban has been lifted but there might be some people that don't like this sort of min/max information. If you play BTW I suspect you aren't that type of person but there must be some of you out there. As such final details will be \[spoiler\]-ed.

So a campfire. Early days it's the only way to cook food. My personal take is that FC is making his thoughts known to us, who must count every sawdust, and just saying, "Really. Get a life. In the end a few extra sawdust won't matter." That said I think BTW trains us, sometimes strictly, that EVERYTHING matters. So...

A campfire holds 10 sawdust. Sticks are worth two sawdust. Bark and saplings worth one.

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A single food can be cooked with 13 sawdust. Light the fire, use 4, then when it burns down 9 (but use 10 for consistency, read on.)
Two food can be cooked in a night. Light the fire, use 4 sawdust, then 10. Swap the food. Then 10 and finally 4. (4-10-10-4).
So the math is simple. Unless you pay attention. Food is either 20/14 sawdust (the campfire itself is worth 6) or 17/17 sawdust. So yeah, a few extra sawdust won't matter but here are the numbers if you want to keep it tight.

My final bit of advice on campfires is, build a brick oven PDQ.

[Mesh]

So I'm watching Mesh flagellate himself on the campfires.

Hey I'm a caveman and I've just discovered fire. I think I'm doing pretty well considering it's BRAND NEW TECH. I gotta say though I like the idea that the campfire isn't an exact science, so I'll be going out of my way to not learn the exact amount of fuel to add and when, and instead go by "feeling". I imagine that will just come about with practice as I become a more professional caveman

[FlowerChild]

So I'm watching Mesh flagellate himself on the campfires. It's painful. The spoiler ban has been lifted but there might be some people that don't like this sort of min/max information. If you play BTW I suspect you aren't that type of person but there must be some of you out there.

Given the creator of the mod is one such person, you may have a mistaken impression of that :)

Feel free to min max if you like of course, and discuss those findings, but really the thing was designed to be used more by feel than anything else. I guess I occasionally count myself, but it's usually more when I'm adding a bunch of fuel to a few fires at the same time, and counting off how many it takes to get it blazing (which is the point I usually stop feeding it).

Anyways, just to say, counting is in no way a prerequisite to use.

[jackatthekilns]

I think you may need to count again. I have already made a post about this on the spoilers thread. Its not a huge deal, but since your numbers differ from mine, Id like us to both double check. I realize not everyone likes to min/max but as that is the stated purpose of the thread I thought I would add what I have found

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A piece of food takes 16 units(sawdust or similar) to cook. A campfire has 6 built in when you light it. you may need an extra to get between 2 things of food if your timing is imperfect. but I think you will find that if you start a fire and then put in 10 sawdust without allowing it to go to the highest flame, and then stop adding fuel and wait. the food will cook. this number also makes the most sense in comparison to cooking in the oven because it is double.
ADDITION
each sawdust burns for 15 seconds (or the equivalent ticks anyway) which means 1 piece of food takes 4 min to cook.

I will run another test myself since I got those numbers a couple of versions ago. Let me know if your results differ.

EDIT
Just did a test and

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10 sawdust is all that is needed on first lighting a campfire, not 13. Version AABBBbbbb

[LannyRipple]

Hey I'm a caveman and I've just discovered fire. I think I'm doing pretty well considering it's BRAND NEW TECH.

Hi Mesh,

You did a lot better than I did! Your by-feel approach is working great. My comment was more about how entertaining it was every time you'd turn around and some fire had gone out. :) Watching your BTW videos has given me dozen's of hours of entertainment and a huge amount of knowledge and my wife and kids won't even play BTW without your texture pack loaded. I'm really looking forward to when you go multi-player again and you publish the BTW Aaahh! texture pack.

[LannyRipple]

Anyways, just to say, counting is in no way a prerequisite to use.

Agree and why I was careful with the spoiler tag. The UI you've put on the campfire gives a huge amount of feedback to guide people toward correct use. But it's also really fun to try and figure out the "rules" on the thing by experimenting. I'm still pretty sure there's some secondary effect in there because I get results I don't expect when I do things in different ways and solving that puzzle keeps me scribbling down numbers each night while the iron nuggets bake.

[LannyRipple]

Just did a test and

Ok. So you are keeping the flame as high as possible without going to the big flame? If so that makes sense and explains why I see different results if I feed the campfire in different ways. My numbers were for feeding the fire when it goes down to "low". I had read your numbers in the spoiler thread but couldn't duplicate (obviously because I was feeding the fire differently.) I have no doubt you are correct on the amount per food and the reason behind it.

[Moldiworp2]

Do people really play this mod with this much meta!? Half the reason I love this mod is because of how much it surprises/shocks me. The fear and satisfaction is very real if you don't count every grain of sand potentially wasted in the ocean...
EDIT: Sorry guys, if thats what you enjoy don't let my opinions stop you, as long as your having fun.

[LannyRipple]

Certainly no offense taken here. My wife and I have done 6-7 playthroughs and now starting our next. I drive her crazy wanting to count the grains of sand. :) On the other hand she likes not having to know how to construct animal feeders or item-sorting systems (but is more than happy to take advantage of them when they are built). The first day or so in a new Aaahh! world is still really touch-and-go for me so I was looking for any advantage I could eek out and once you learn something like that it's tough to unlearn it.

[jackatthekilns]

EDIT: Sorry guys, if thats what you enjoy don't let my opinions stop you, as long as your having fun.

No offense here either. I am very glad that FC made the mod have more mystery and unknowns. For me, I enjoyed the hell out of figuring out how the campfire worked. In practice, I feed the fire as much by feel as anything else, especially if I'm cooking a lot of food with a few campfires. I will keep putting those kind of numbers in spoiler tags because I understand the desire to keep it more organic.

But for anyone who wants to know, or if you just want to be sure you have enough fuel to cook that third piece of mutton, the numbers are available.

[mc_isaac]

camp fire no fuel
2 minutes

once campfire goes to small version you have
20 seconds until fire dies

once campfire goes to medium version you have
3 minutes until fire dies

Max large fire time:
60 seconds
large fires burn items, you could use it as a trash if you ever had too many items lying around.

This means the longest a fire will burn is 4 minutes if you pump it to max then let it die.

Stick + 20 seconds
Dust +15 seconds
Bark (all flavors) + 15 seconds

Cooking Food:
Food does not cook when fire is small. (includes start up and burn down times)
Food cooks the same on Large fires but it's more tedious to keep a fire large. Please remember max burn time of 4 mintues. Meaning you can't just dump a ton of fuel and expect it to cook.

start fire drop 1 stick and 1 dust wait ~1m40s throw 4 dust wait 15 seconds throw 4 dust food cooks.

start fire, wait 10 seconds for fire to go medium, drop 6 sticks, wait for >30 seconds drop 2 dust, food cooks

[CrimsonStorm]

Updating this thread based on my experiments with version ...:dancer::poo::dancer::bee:--I encourage y'all to check my work:

Campfires:

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From Big->Medium: 30s
From Medium->Small: 220s
From Small->Embers: 20s

So "max burn time" is 270s.

Each sawdust/bark adds 20s to the time in small/medium fires, or ~7s to the time on large fires.
1 shaft = 2 sawdust (aka 40s).
Still haven't tested other fuel sources--flowers, logs, etc.

When going from "embers" or "unlit" states to medium fire, the campfire spends ~10s in the "small" state, no matter how much fuel you add. I believe meat will not cook in this time.

Lighting an unlit fire will start it with 160s of fuel (equal to the 4 shafts used to start it). If you add no other fuel, then you'll have:
10s startup small fire -> 130s medium fire -> 20s small fire -> embers

Porkchops (and presumably all meat?) take 240s on a medium or large fire to cook. Letting the fire go to small pauses this timer(?) and letting the fire go to embers resets it.

Brick Ovens

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* Brick ovens burn fuel 2x as quickly as a medium fire--so sawdust burn in 10s, and shafts burn in 20s.
* One oak log = 64 sawdust = 640s of burn time
* Max burn time for a brick oven is 710s.
* Food cooks in 1/3 of the time compared to on a campfire--meaning it uses 2/3 of the fuel. 8 sawdust will cook 1 porkchop.