Best ways to start a fire

[rokomata]

Hi again, I know it’s been only hours since I started my first thread but I felt that derailing that one wouldn’t do any good for adhering to basic forum ethics so here’s a new one.

I’m into my 6th day right now trying to survive in the post-apocalyptic world and so far I have only utilized one method of starting fires and that is to set a plank or two-by-four ablaze with my lighter. As much as two-by-fours are easy to come by, there’s only so many of them in a single community so I decided I’d better look for a better way to do my cooking than this.

Anyway I just looked up the ‘fire drill’ thing that is available to my character for crafting. To craft one however requires both string and no more than 2 skewers… at first I thought to myself:“What the hell is a skewer?” but after googling it I found that skewers are some sort of processed wood, though I still don’t know how to get my hands on a skewer. Does any one of you guys know?

Feel free to voice your opinions.

[Blaze1711]

Cut up a plank or heavy stick (mostly anything wooden) with a knife and you will get skewers and some other things.

[rokomata]

Oh, so it works just like cutting up clothing into rags and such? That I did not know, thanks a bunch!

EDIT:

I found that the fire drill doesn’t work exactly the way I thought it did. On the bright side of things, the skewers do qualify as flammable material. In other words, one two-by-four can be cut up into at least 10 skewers so that helps.

[Blaze1711]

Oh, so it works just like cutting up clothing into rags and such? That I did not know, thanks a bunch!

It will pop up a menu where you prompt what action to take, choose carve wood. Don’t mention it, we’re here to help!
BTW doesn’t works with pointy sticks.

[Wayfarer]

Has anyone noticed which fuels and methods (open fire in a shallow pit, fireplace, wood stove etc) make for the most efficient fire?

[woflsipder]

all of your junk , rotten foods , books that you can no longer learn from + a little paper wrapper or anything else that can burn will make an efficient fire that removes junk.

[grisamentum]

Don’t know if this still works, but once I cut down a tree and put a log in my fire pit (outdoors). The log could be relighted even when it was “burnt.” Infinite fuel source.

[Lexx]

all of your junk , rotten foods , books that you can no longer learn from + a little paper wrapper or anything else that can burn will make an efficient fire that removes junk.

This for sure. Just burn anything rotten and spare bits of wood. Easy to keep fueled with the amount of breakable furniture and trees you can saw up around.

[Rivet]

Cut up the corpses of your undead neighbors. They make good fuel for the bonfire too. Though I’d imagine the smell would take some getting used to.

Ugh imagine cooking over a fire fueled by rotten zombie chunks. Makes buffalo poo fueled fire sound good by comparison.

[rokomata]

Heh, I feel like I’m really starting to get the hang of things in Cataclysm:DDA.

One thing that worries me though is the fact that I went with ‘Dynamic’ spawning, which effectively prevents me from clearing the town of zombies, if I’m not mistaken. That is my understanding of the spawning system, please correct me if I’m wrong. Bad choices go a long way, it would seem. :S

My next order of business is to gather sinew from any mammals that I hunt down and kill so I can get myself a stone pot. I haven’t been able to find a single frying pan or pot so this will have to do when it comes to purifying water… especially that from the toilet which I tend to use the most

[Rivet]

Yep, dynamic spawn creates monster from thin air at intervals, static populates the world with monsters at generation and allows you to gradually clear areas of infestation.

[rokomata]

Wow, I should have gone with Static instead. There are times that I don’t listen to my gut feeling though, so it’s quite alright.

The good news is that I have become quite the master of the wilderness… at least when its wildlife is made of cougars, dogs and wolves. Acquiring food and clean water is no longer a demanding task as my survival skills are there to do the work for me.

And for the time being, I will stick to the easy stuff and keep out of harm’s way until I feel my character is trained enough to withstand more challenge from his surroundings. As a matter of fact, there’s a military outpost not far from where I’ve set up camp but I don’t like the turrets that stand guard at the outpost. My guess is, their machine guns would tear me to shreds and end this lovely round of surviving. That and a couple zombie soldiers are having a pool party over there. Just my luck!

[Wayfarer]

Hmm, I went with dynamic too. That’s a shame, I’d like to achieve a zombie-free town. Static spawn is nuts as far as I’m concerned, just way too much.

Yeah you get a bit of a routine/system going and you’re set. I too had troubles finding a pot, but managed to find enough string and butcher enough for sinew to make the crude stone counterpart.

[halberdsturgeon]

Dynamic spawn doesn’t mean infinite spawn. Towns have an allotment of zombies in either static or dynamic. In static the zombies are all placed around the town as soon as the tiles are generated. In dynamic the zombies spawn gradually in the presence of the player, with spawn sizes increasing and intervals decreasing in response to noise. You can clear towns of their zombie population in either spawn mode. The difference is that in static you have to go door to door killing every zombie you find, and in dynamic you have to make a bunch of noise and then destroy the cascade of spawn waves the game throws at you until it eventually runs out of zombies.

[rokomata]

Fantastic! Dynamic spawn isn’t so bad after all, eh? Truly a relief.

[Accursed91]

One safe way to lit a fire inside a building is to build a wood stove so far i have had no problem with it (i.e i have yet to accidently burn down my safe house while using it).

All you need in order to build it is an hack saw, one metal tank and a metal pipe

[Slax]

Run around with a brazier. Portable stove plus it’s an alright melee weapon.

[woflsipder]

Run around with a brazier. Portable stove plus it’s an alright melee weapon.

What’s the point of controlled fire if you’re not at your house?

[Slax]

Deep exploration, travel.

[Nemonole]

Agreed with slax. Just unintentionally set an entire underground cave on fire…

It just kept burning… Managed to huddle away in a fire-safe corner, but died of dehydration…