I know i'm probably just being a derp, but how do you get charcoal? At first I thought it was the charcoal smoker, but that USES charcoal. I've found a bit of charcoal around, but not much. I think you can make it, but with what?You need a charcoal kiln for that. I prefer the constructed version if you can manage it, but the portable one you light and drop can work if there’s nothing else.
Ah, I have so many possible crafting recipes it's hard to find the right one a lot. I think I can make the charcoal kiln, seeing as I have hundreds of things to possibly make. Shouldn't be too hard though. Just to know beforehand, what does it use? It'll be a while before i can get to it since I'm far away from my base. (and my two followers are slowpokes compared to me.)You can search things in the crafting menu by typing ‘F’, and then the search term (“charcoal” would be useful here)
I don’t have the recipe for charcoal kiln (the Item browser is down), but once you make one, you can craft a filled charcoal kiln with Fabrication 1 and:
40x splintered wood OR 6x two by four OR 8x heavy stick OR 40x bone OR 40x human bone OR 40x tainted bone OR 20x pine bough OR 1x log
1x charcoal kiln
Then you 'a’pply it, turning it into a lit charcoal kiln. After a long period of time, the lit charcoal kiln turns into a filled charcoal kiln, which you disassemble to get charcoal and an empty charcoal kiln.
The constructed version is different, and I have never used it.
Charcoal kiln takes logs, splintered wood, two-by-fours, tainted bones, pine boughs, heavy sticks, and bones.
Since every thing on that list but tainted bones and splintered wood have other, better uses than conversion into charcoal, I find myself using tainted bones* and splintered wood.
- 'B’utcher corrosive, acid, spitter, shocker, shocker brute, technician, bio-operator, or scientist zombies to get tainted bones. Which you were going to do anyway because you either want to prevent them from reviving without getting splashed with acid or because you wanted their CBMs.
Don’t forget that there are two different “making things” menus.
Crafting uses “&” (Shift+7 on most keyboards). I believe there was a charcoal kiln craft option in this menu, but I’ve always preferred the one you make using construction because I usually end up with a static base for a long time. I’ve never used the “crafted” kiln so I can’t tell you how it works.
Construction uses “*” (Shift+ 8 on most keyboards, or you could use the one on the Number pad. its right above the “9” there, no Shift necessary). That is the one I am more familiar with.
Once the kiln is made you’ll need to fill it, the more you fill it the more charcoal you’ll get (I believe that a full kiln will yield 250 charcoal). Once it’s full you will need to fire the kiln. The last time I tried it, the game required a nearby fire source to do so, which means that unless that has changed it’s probably a good idea to build a wood burning stove/fireplace, deploy a brazier near the kiln, or construct the kiln near one of the aforementioned. After firing and closing the kiln (accomplished by examining it) you will need to wait some time to get your charcoal.
The constructed kiln is quite a bit nicer, in that A) it makes however much you feel like putting into it instead of a fixed out (up to a fairly large max), and B) you can mix the types of stuff used to fill it (bones, logs, etc).