Campfires...

[Cerelum]

Is there a helpfile of how to make them in non wood areas?

I am playing a class that can make camp in the wilderness, but I can't figure out how to make fires.

[mansa]

>help fire

Campfire Making                                                    (Gameplay)

   To create a campfire you need sufficient fuel and kindling.  Once you
have these things then you can make your fire.  To make the fire you
use the craft command.  There isn't a required skill needed to make a
campfire.  Currently, anyone can make a campfire if they have the
right materials.

Once the fire is built and lit it will need fuel or it will burn out.
Things that burn work best for this (wood, cloth, oil, dried dung, etc).  Use the
command 'put' to add objects to your fire.

Syntax:
craft <items...> into a campfire
light campfire
put <item> fire

Example:
>craft twig into tinder
>craft tinder 2.tinder 3.tinder into kindling
>craft branch into firewood
>craft kindling firewood 2.firewood 3.firewood into a campfire

> light campfire

> put log campfire

Notes:
"Forage kindling" will yield materials that can be made into kindling.

"Dung" can be crafted into dried dung, which can then be made into campfires.

Fires will burn and consume items depending on the material they
are made of.  Materials like stone and bone may not be consumed.  Objects
in a burning fire may not be retrieved.  You can extinguish the fire first
to retrieve objects.

See also:
   darkness, extinguish, forage, crafting, light, dung

Delay:
   after

[Cerelum]

>help fire...

So it's just not possible without a branch object?

[mansa]

>help fire

Campfire Making

...

Notes:
"Forage kindling" will yield materials that can be made into kindling.

"Dung" can be crafted into dried dung, which can then be made into campfires.

[rinthrat]

Any character can make a campfire. The blurb about making camp in the wilderness refers to wilderness quit. You can quit in any wilderness room, like rangers could.

Dried dung will work for a campfire instead of firewood. I am not sure if branch objects even work without crafting them into fireworks first.

[Sokotra]

How easy is it to make a campfire with dung?  Maybe I didn't have the ingredients just right but for some reason it seemed ridiculously hard and time consuming the last time I tried.  I don't know if it requires you to be way too specific with your ingredients or what.

[Riev]

How easy is it to make a campfire with dung?  Maybe I didn't have the ingredients just right but for some reason it seemed ridiculously hard and time consuming the last time I tried.  I don't know if it requires you to be way too specific with your ingredients or what.

Its time consuming because  you have to dry the dung, first, you can't just use some sloppy fecal matter.

I think it still requires some sort of kindling though.

[Sokotra]

How easy is it to make a campfire with dung?  Maybe I didn't have the ingredients just right but for some reason it seemed ridiculously hard and time consuming the last time I tried.  I don't know if it requires you to be way too specific with your ingredients or what.

Its time consuming because  you have to dry the dung, first, you can't just use some sloppy fecal matter.

I think it still requires some sort of kindling though.

Yeah, did the drying and everything... just couldn't get the combination right of dung, kindling, etc.  Seemed a bit overboard on requiring specifics when you clearly have enough.

[Bushranger]

It took me a very long time to figure this out as well as requests asking questions about the dried dung cook fires to figure out the recipe. It's unfortunate because the example given only shows making a campfire with wood when I think that is probably the least common way to make a fire when wood is valuable and dung is cheap especially in Allanak and the south.

Tinder/Kindling is not used in a dung cook fire and you just have to get the right number of dried dung to make it.

[mansa]

It took me a very long time to figure this out as well as requests asking questions about the dried dung cook fires to figure out the recipe. It's unfortunate because the example given only shows making a campfire with wood when I think that is probably the least common way to make a fire when wood is valuable and dung is cheap especially in Allanak and the south.

....

Can you put in a request to change the helpfile to include another example?

[John]

Can you just post the example here? It's obnoxious that poor commoners who've used dung to fuel their fires all their life can't work out how to make a dung fire (and yet we're all graced with the knowledge of how to make a wood campfire).

Staff can delete the post if they view it's not allowed. But as I said, it's obnoxious and ridiculous that this isn't common knowledge.

[John]

Everyone can post on the forum though. So I'm saying if someone  knows the recipe for a dung fire that we post it on the forum until whichever staff member can update the help files does update them.

It's stupid that we don't have documented how to refill grills (and according to staff the only way I know involves a bug, a bug I will certainly keep exploiting until they tell me how to do it properly) or make dung fires despite the fact it's a basic and necessary ability to survive in Zalanthas (ICly survive, not survive from a coded perspective).

[Cind]

Making campfires is janky and I've only attempted it one time. I'm not going to jump through that many hoops to make a campfire that seems to burn even large things very quickly. The reason being that if I -could- make a campfire easily, I would expect it to be like the office watercooler, a center for roleplay. Then comes the issue of it burning things up that quickly, and if I'm playing in the south or don't have good scan I'm just not going to have access to that kind of fuel.

I was able to do some campfire rp, when someone else was feeding for one. Was pretty fun, and seems like it should be commonplace. But people just don't seem to make one that often, probably for the reasons above.

I think it would be great if they were fixed, and if (some) animals were afraid of them.

I'm sure the local mekillot would not be afraid of them.

[John]

Making campfires is janky and I've only attempted it one time. I'm not going to jump through that many hoops to make a campfire that seems to burn even large things very quickly. The reason being that if I -could- make a campfire easily, I would expect it to be like the office watercooler, a center for roleplay. Then comes the issue of it burning things up that quickly, and if I'm playing in the south or don't have good scan I'm just not going to have access to that kind of fuel.

I was able to do some campfire rp, when someone else was feeding for one. Was pretty fun, and seems like it should be commonplace. But people just don't seem to make one that often, probably for the reasons above.

I think it would be great if they were fixed, and if (some) animals were afraid of them.

I'm sure the local mekillot would not be afraid of them.

Campfires in the north are actually really easy.

"Forage kindling" almost always guarantees kindling.

A brand new Novice Cooking skill will have trouble in turning the kindling into tinder. After an hour or two of trying (IC hours) you should have 3 lots of tinder though.

Craft tinder 2.tinder 3.tinder into kindling turns it into kindling. DOn't worry if you fail, the tinder isn't destroyed.

Forage wood will almost always get a branch (depending on the grove). Craft branch into firewood will get you firewood every time (may take 3 branches though).

Craft kindling firewood 2.firewood 3.firewood works pretty easy (don't worry if you fail, nothing gets destroyed and you can try again).

1 campfire will run for 3 IC hours (30 RL minutes). You know the fire is about to go out when it "goes dim". Feed it 1 branch or 1 piece of firewood and it will become a medium fire again and last a good while. Worst case: you go through two branches or two lengths of firewood in 1 night.

I've seen people RP out campfires "back in the day" up north. It's pretty cool and thematic. I wish it was that easy and as well documented in the south. It's a big bugbear of mine that it isn't that well documented.

If you want to remove a campfire (perhaps you don't want to leave traces of your presence) then I believe (from memory) "clean room" when holding a broom does the trick, but it has been a couple of years since I've tried. Do note though, that hunt MAY have a chance of spotting the campfire (not sure if it is hardcoded into certain rooms or if it's because there was a PC made campfire in the room).
----
Does all of the above sound like a lot of IC info to post? Maybe. But it's also all 100% common sense. It's great that the code actually works how you would expect it to IRL and that fact shouldn't be hidden. Every single player knows that blowgun use branches from poison for the stalker class but we're going to obfuscate how campfires work? That doesn't make sense.

[rinthrat]

I goofed. Look at the next post.

[rinthrat]

Drying dung should require less cooking skill. It's not a hard thing to do, or shouldn't be. But right now it fails a LOT. It's annoying, does not make any sense, and I don't see it serving a purpose.

[Sokotra]

...and shouldn't we find plenty of dung lying around that is already dried and ready to be used as fuel?  The whole drying process seems to take too long for enough dung to make a campfire.  You should only need to do that if you've gathered all the dry dung sitting around and you have a hankering to play with the fresh stuff.   

From personal experience, there wasn't enough fresh dung lying around and the drying process and getting the right materials together took me a couple of in-game days, if I remember correctly.

Conclusion:  Seems broken, virtually everyone should be able to forage dried dung most places and get a campfire going in a few minutes.

[Feco]

I also think it is unreasonably difficult to get the materials to make a fire.  Campfires are fun and thematic, and it would be really neat if they were really, really easy to make.

Especially with shit you dig up in the desert.  Neat.

[John]

It'd make sense for "forage kindling" in the desert to produce dried dung. It's more dangerous then digging in the city (raiders, scrabs, gribblies), it's more costly (higher water cost) and there's more chance of failure (producing dried dung). But on the upside it's potentially quicker. Seems like a pretty good trade off to me.

[Riev]

It'd make sense for "forage kindling" in the desert to produce dried dung. It's more dangerous then digging in the city (raiders, scrabs, gribblies), it's more costly (higher water cost) and there's more chance of failure (producing dried dung). But on the upside it's potentially quicker. Seems like a pretty good trade off to me.

Honestly, I'm for this idea. Forage kindling in desert environment has a chance to find a dried lump of dung.

[Sokotra]

It'd make sense for "forage kindling" in the desert to produce dried dung. It's more dangerous then digging in the city (raiders, scrabs, gribblies), it's more costly (higher water cost) and there's more chance of failure (producing dried dung). But on the upside it's potentially quicker. Seems like a pretty good trade off to me.

Honestly, I'm for this idea. Forage kindling in desert environment has a chance to find a dried lump of dung.

I think they should make it fairly easy to find dried dung in the desert and some sort of dead, dried plant material or whatever.  There's plenty of animals, both virtual and actual npc's, that can produce dung... not just mounts.  Same thing within the city, pretty much, the dried dung should be the actual fuel and you can also craft it into kindling or tinder.  Drying fresh dung seems like it should be an unnecessary last resort in most cases.  I would think that there should be plenty of dead, dried stuff lying around most places in Zalanthas.

[Cerelum]

I've just randomly typed get dung in rooms that I know mounts will frequent, like the Caravan Way and gotten a few handfuls of shit.

I sorta wish that they didn't have a (null) description, so they weren't invisible to the look command.

Also, the drying dung thing is ridiculously difficult, but I'm all for things that increase cooking skill, because brew is hidden behind cooking skill for a few classes and everyone wants brew.

I'd be all for shit showing up where ever there is shit, then shit collectors would be more in demand.

A frilly, red-rob templar screws up his face, "This whole city is full of shit, soldiers find me someone to clean this street up by the afternoon!"

[Brytta Léofa]

"key dung" is what you want, brother.

[chrisdcoulombe]

Mo dung mo problems

[valeria]

I wish wet dung had a decay timer to dry out in the environment over time.  Pros: more dried dung for campfires.  Cons: less wet dung for the dung cart.

[path]

I don't see why the dung cart would distain dried dung. I imagine they think all dung is good dung.

[Akariel]

Campfires are made with the following recipe: 4x Resources, 1x Kindling
You can make kindling through the following recipe: 3x Tinder

You can make firewood by breaking down larger branches or logs.

You can make dried dung by spending time drying out certain dungs, mainly herbivorous.

You can make tinder through crafting various products that might be flammable around the Known. This includes small wood-stuffs, certain fungi and the like, ect.

Xalle and I looked into the process of fire-creation maybe 2-3 years back now. We made the system much easier to utilize, we also took off the crafting time for most portions of it. We did not, however, make it easy. We wanted the system to continue to be a struggle to keep up with. This is a resource starved world, not a scenic jaunt through the campground. Finding firewood should be difficult in a world with a minimal amount of trees.

Ideally, the idea was that people would attempt to prepare for ventures before they took them.

[rinthrat]

Why does drying dung take so long, and still fails what feels like half the time with advanced cooking, though? That seems to adds nothing but a hassle.

[Cerelum]

I was actually going to submit a request with a game bug on ding drying because of the time it takes as well.  However, I don't wanna become annoying by bugging everything.

[Sokotra]

Campfires are made with the following recipe: 4x Resources, 1x Kindling
You can make kindling through the following recipe: 3x Tinder

You can make firewood by breaking down larger branches or logs.

You can make dried dung by spending time drying out certain dungs, mainly herbivorous.

You can make tinder through crafting various products that might be flammable around the Known. This includes small wood-stuffs, certain fungi and the like, ect.

Xalle and I looked into the process of fire-creation maybe 2-3 years back now. We made the system much easier to utilize, we also took off the crafting time for most portions of it. We did not, however, make it easy. We wanted the system to continue to be a struggle to keep up with. This is a resource starved world, not a scenic jaunt through the campground. Finding firewood should be difficult in a world with a minimal amount of trees.

Ideally, the idea was that people would attempt to prepare for ventures before they took them.

It's mainly some issues with dung that doesn't seem very reasonable.  Currently it is much easier to make a fire with wood than it is with dung, I believe.  Being able to forage and otherwise find dried dung would seem to make sense and perhaps make the creation of dung-fires be on a similar level as wood-fires, at least as far as time and effort goes.

[Akariel]

You can find dung in almost every stable the Known over. There is a coded object, and you can codedly dig in it. I believe the syntax is 'dig <keyword>'.

That said, I probably should look at dung crafting times because I don't think we touched those.

[John]

Campfires are made with the following recipe: 4x Resources, 1x Kindling
You can make kindling through the following recipe: 3x Tinder

You can make firewood by breaking down larger branches or logs.

You can make dried dung by spending time drying out certain dungs, mainly herbivorous.

You can make tinder through crafting various products that might be flammable around the Known. This includes small wood-stuffs, certain fungi and the like, ect.

Xalle and I looked into the process of fire-creation maybe 2-3 years back now. We made the system much easier to utilize, we also took off the crafting time for most portions of it. We did not, however, make it easy. We wanted the system to continue to be a struggle to keep up with. This is a resource starved world, not a scenic jaunt through the campground. Finding firewood should be difficult in a world with a minimal amount of trees.

Ideally, the idea was that people would attempt to prepare for ventures before they took them.

Can you please check the 4xresource+kindling vs 3xresource+kindling?

I swear I could make medium campfires with only 3 lengths of firewood.

To also clarify: dried dung can also be turned into kindling.

As someone who has utilized campfires in the north they are 100% something you have to prepare for. Higher skilled characters intimately familiar with an area MAY be able to gather and craft the required resources at their destination. But it isnt guaranteed. So for that goal the system is 100% successful. Most people dont bother because at the moment their is minimal coded advantage. And because the recipe for dung campfires (until now) have been so esoteric as to be frustrating.

Finally campfires in the south seem of a similar difficulty as those in the north EXCEPT for the time (much longer in the south due to air drying dung). Creating tinder is a great way to boost your cooking skill in the north because its freaking difficult. 20 resources = 1 piece of tinder at a Novice skill. That's at least 1 IC hour worth of work.

Can we get grills coded to use dung with the syntax on their use clearly documented? Then we could introduce dried dung sellers and a need for people to seek out dung.

[John]

One of the code projects was to require recipes with cooked food to require actual fire in the room. Some recipes were converted and some rooms were updated to include the presence of virtual fires.

But the recipe conversion was never finished (I assume for playability reasons). If we were to make stables + mount sellers + gate rooms save rooms (so the contents persist over reboots) I expect all of the remaining recipes could be converted over without impacting too much on playability.

[Sokotra]

You can find dung in almost every stable the Known over. There is a coded object, and you can codedly dig in it. I believe the syntax is 'dig <keyword>'.

Yep, I realize that.  I meant finding already dried dung as opposed to having to go through the ridiculously long drying process unless for some reason you can't find dry dung in certain cases.  Currently you can't forage or otherwise find already dried dung, which should be abundantly available.

[oggotale]

Any character can make a campfire. The blurb about making camp in the wilderness refers to wilderness quit. You can quit in any wilderness room, like rangers could.

Dried dung will work for a campfire instead of firewood. I am not sure if branch objects even work without crafting them into fireworks first.

They should really be more direct about that instead of trying to make it immersive haha.

I remember getting very confused about that as a new player, thinking that every other class literally can't/aren't allowed to start campfires outside Allanak.

Also, what's the use of campfires other cooking and realism? Is the difficulty of putting them up a factor of them being able to make quit-safe rooms or better rest rates or something?

[Riev]

Cooking, realism, and there are terrible creatures at night that can attack you in the dark. At least with a campfire, you can see what is attacking you.

[Nameless Face]

Campfires are for dancing joyously around.  Sheesh.

[Cerelum]

Cooking, realism, and there are terrible creatures at night that can attack you in the dark. At least with a campfire, you can see what is attacking you.

I wish this was a thing.

I actually have spent whole nights out looking for nocturnal critters and finding none.

It would be sweet as shit if critters reacted to fire and came out during different times of the day.

[Namino]

Campfires are also pretty inconsistent at lighting up the darkness. Even after piling on enough wood to make a campfire as big as it will get, there's still a really good chance that you're just going to get sand swirling around you when you look.

Granted, the coded penalties of fighting something when it's a faint shape versus fighting 'Someone' when you're blind or in total darkness are worlds apart, especially if 'someone' is an enemy with nightsight, so campfires still are helpful in that regard, but it'd be nice if having a massive roaring bonfire was more of an effect on nighttime visibility outside of combat.

[Hauwke]

Campfires are also pretty inconsistent at lighting up the darkness. Even after piling on enough wood to make a campfire as big as it will get, there's still a really good chance that you're just going to get sand swirling around you when you look.

Granted, the coded penalties of fighting something when it's a faint shape versus fighting 'Someone' when you're blind or in total darkness are worlds apart, especially if 'someone' is an enemy with nightsight, so campfires still are helpful in that regard, but it'd be nice if having a massive roaring bonfire was more of an effect on nighttime visibility outside of combat.

That would be because they act as a light source like a torch. At least to my knowledge. They are thus still bound to the ambient light levels that are around.

[Cerelum]

I wish the sand blowing in your face thing wasn't a thing.

Maybe take that out and just replace it with darkness or light.

This mechanic can make it literally impossible to go places without knowing exact directions sometimes.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to power through a storm to Red Storm and ended up in the silt sea before I learned the foolproof directions.

[Veselka]

I wish the sand blowing in your face thing wasn't a thing.

Maybe take that out and just replace it with darkness or light.

This mechanic can make it literally impossible to go places without knowing exact directions sometimes.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to power through a storm to Red Storm and ended up in the silt sea before I learned the foolproof directions.

Isn't that the point of sandstorms in a desert world? It isn't supposed to be like getting on a freeway.

[Cerelum]

I wish the sand blowing in your face thing wasn't a thing.

Maybe take that out and just replace it with darkness or light.

This mechanic can make it literally impossible to go places without knowing exact directions sometimes.

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to power through a storm to Red Storm and ended up in the silt sea before I learned the foolproof directions.

Isn't that the point of sandstorms in a desert world? It isn't supposed to be like getting on a freeway.

Fair point, however, this is the challenge.

We aren't playing a real life simulator for everything.

We have flying invisible witches.

We have people shooting fireballs

We can bring a man back from the brink of death in a magick spell.

That's sorta the challenge of realism in a game format.

Sure we all want realism, but we also don't want to be cut off from whole sections of the game world that we very well MAY need to get to for sometimes RL days because a sandstorm kicked up that makes us unable to see anything at noon.

So I would say yes, Sandstorms suck, but we already are penalized on stamina drain on our mounts, vision distance, hunting skill and other things that are affected by sandstorms.

I'm sorta against being totally blind an unable to navigate because the wind picked up from a stringing sandstorm to a terrible one.

[Namino]

I think sandstorms themselves are fine. I think a sandstorm should prevent a campfire from working for illumination. If you cannot see during the day during a sandstorm, you ought not be able to see by the light of a campfire.

The problem is even with a large campfire and totally still winds, oftentimes you won't see anything but swirling sand. The campfire needs illumination buffs badly. Many phases of the moon provide much more light than a maximum size campfire does, and that's odd.

[oggotale]

I think sandstorms themselves are fine. I think a sandstorm should prevent a campfire from working for illumination. If you cannot see during the day during a sandstorm, you ought not be able to see by the light of a campfire.

The problem is even with a large campfire and totally still winds, oftentimes you won't see anything but swirling sand. The campfire needs illumination buffs badly. Many phases of the moon provide much more light than a maximum size campfire does, and that's odd.

If lore inconsistency is the issue here Id argue that wilderness rooms are meant to be bigger right, so yea technically you should be able to see your friend next to you around the campfire, if you can see him in the moonlight.

But, you would not see that beetle that walked in towards the ede of your "league" area, just based on campfire, you'll need moonlight for that, which gives the genera area a hint of visibility.

An intricate system taking this into account is a pipe dream, other than that the trade-off is between making both your friend and the beetle visible or both invisible (ideally your friend is and the beetle isn't). I think going with the latter option here maked sense.