The "best" fuel

[Umbra.Animo]

So what would be the best fuel. and by that i mean burns for the longest over cost to get . like logs burn for a while but are heavy and take time to get. and i would preffer solid fuels over liquid fuels since they are easy to carry

[KiBoy]

Last time I’ve heard logs burned for the longest. If you have trouble with crafting then go into Construction menu and build firewood source or something like that. You will automatically dump fuel from the tile it’s built on into fire when you’re crafting or reading.

[Umbra.Animo]

thanks and i more talk burnest the longest with the least amount of effert logs are heavy take time to get and come in small amounts.

[Daeros13]

In my recent games, I have taken to burning bodies. Does anyone happen to know if they take longer than logs? When I examined the fire, it had 2 days to burn, but it was quite a few. And any idea where charcoal is on this scale? Although, with how it is created, may not be more efficient than just logs when it comes to energy expended to get versus energy returned.

[KiBoy]

In that case, you should probably still default to 2by4’s, I didn’t have much problem with getting enough firewood, also if you’re smart you can avoid wasting wood for light if you do most things you can with natural lightning.

And if you’re only doing a short few minute craft like boiling water all you really need is a splintered wood or two. Sure, they burn out very fast, but it’s not like splintered wood has that many practical uses.

Also, you can haul items along the ground using backslash, a single tree should give you around 10 logs from my experience and those should last you a while, it should only take a few hours to chop the tree into logs and haul them back to your base.

I still think prefer 2by4’s since they are more convenient to use. Just take a shopping cart to a nearby building, smash the furniture and you’ll have enough planks to last you for a good while, especially if, again, you’re good at using natural light and only using fire to cook or craft when it’s necessary.

[Trigon]

Generally you need a lot of an other kind of fuel to burn a body down completely. Me personally I just use heavy sticks and 2x4s. It works just fine for most purposes.

If I’m just cooking in a static base I usually mass produce charcoal and cook my breakfast on the smoker or a pile of broken twigs.

If you’re worried about burn times your first step should be getting a fireplace or wood stove, as those increase burn times significantly. A brazier helps a lot too and is easy to craft and move.

[Daeros13]

On the bodies, I actually did use a brazier. What actually got me started to do this was the number of roaches/plague vectors becoming insanely huge. I placed it an an intersection and burned everything I didn’t need, no more out of control roaches. (I know, next world that will be turned down off 100%)

I was just curious if, figuring in all steps to create charcoal and what all charcoal can make vs normal cooking fire, if charcoal was actually less efficient overall if you figure how much effort it was to get, lets say smoked meat vs cooked meat? Is the extra week (I think thats smoked meats current going bad time, 2 weeks?) worth all the extra effort now?

[psyxypher]

Thinking of turning down the Carrion level too, mostly because despite my desires to abuse it for Jerky Money, it gets real old real fast.

Personally, the best fuel for burning longterm is whatever is available. An oft-untapped source of fuel is the various clothing articles of the zombies. Rotten fat and tallow also burns for a long time (which is nice since it doesn’t last forever anymore…)

[Trigon]

Speaking of plague vectors I do have a habit of lighting bonfires of roach dirt and eggs.

[TheMurderUnicorn]

I would point you to a thread in which I contributed some vague but mildly helpful information about burn times: Which Fire source burns the longest?

And I’d point you at a more comprehensive thread from Pyrite: Zombie Science: How long does stuff burn?

Those were from August and September, respectively, but I don’t think fire has changed since then.

For my money, deconstructing furniture for a bunch of 2x4s usually does the trick. Otherwise I just bash baby trees. The ratio of keypresses/time invested versus burn time is more than acceptable.