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Bonfires

Introduction

Bonfires is the only way to produce lime, and the main way to produce ash. Many people also use them to produce charcoal. To make efficient use of the materials, ingredients must be added while the fire is burning. Leeks and/or dried papyrus are burnt into ash, limestone into lime, and wood into charcoal. Water can be added to reduce the heat of a fire, wood can be added to provide fuel for increased heat and to make charcoal. Dried flax can also be added but appears to do nothing.

Each ingredient has a range of temperatures within which it converts into the desired product. The temperature of a bonfire is not directly visible; it is inferred from the amount of wood that a fire burns in a 10-second tick when sufficient wood is available. The temperature increases by 1 every tick in which the fire had wood remaining in the previous tick. It decreases by 1 for each water added in the previous tick, and also when there is no wood unburnt. A bonfire that is lit and left alone will therefore increase in temperature until it runs out of wood, and subsequently decrease until it reaches 0.

Production

Recipes

Bonfire recipes are a tradeoff between effciency of ingredients, speed, and amount of attention and clicking required. Most recipes can be made much easier to handle by starting a beer kettle, which continously displays a synchronised count of seconds (see TeppyTime). The recipes below assume you are using a kettle, and that it starts counting down from 3600. If you have Quick Brew skill, it will start at 1200; adjust the numbers accordingly.

Lime

  1. Build some number of bonfires with 2 wood each, say 2 of them to begin with. Pin their menus.
  2. Start a beer kettle (or make use of one you're already running).
  3. When it reaches 3592(1192), light all the fires in turn.
  4. At 3580(1180), add 1 wood to all fires. Add more wood at 3570, 3560, and 3550(1170, 1150, 1160). This brings the fires up to the right temperature for making lime.
  5. At 3540(1140), add 30 limestone to each.
  6. Add 1 wood at 3530, 3510, 3490(1130, 1110, 1090), and so on each 20 seconds until 3250(850).
  7. After 3250, let the fire die out. You should be able to collect 15 lime (and some charcoal) from each fire.

(with water)A non-oscillating recipe that produces charcoal and lime:

  1. Light a 22-wood bonfire.
  2. At 12 wood, add 4 limestone.
  3. At 1 wood, add 1 jug of water.

(without water, harder IMHO)A non-oscillating recipe that produces charcoal and lime:

  1. Light a 22-wood bonfire.
  2. At 12 wood, add 2 limestone.
  3. At 0 wood, add 2 limestone.

A non-oscillating recipe that produces charcoal and lime with much less clicking:

  1. Build a 16-wood bonfire.
  2. Add 8 limestone.
  3. Light.

Bulk Limestone to Lime:

  1. Light a 561-wood bonfire.
  2. At 551 wood, add 100 limestone.
  3. Wait till 11 wood has been burnt (540 wood remaining), add 2 water.
  4. Add 2 water every 11 wood burnt (should be every 2 ticks) till end.

Oscillating Lime bonfire:

  1. Light a 2 wood bonfire.
  2. At 0 wood, add 1 wood.
  3. At 0 wood, add 1 wood.
  4. At 0 Wood, add 1 wood, 50 limestone.
  5. At 0 wood, add 1 wood and 1 water, repeat 49 times.

Ash

  1. As above, build bonfires with 2 wood each and pin their menus.
  2. Start a beer kettle.
  3. At 3592(1192), light all the fires.
  4. Add 1 wood at 3580(1180), 3570(1170), and so on each 10 seconds to 3490(1090)
  5. At 3480(1080), add 270 leeks to each fire.
  6. Add further wood at 3470, 3450, 3430, (1070, 1050, 1030) and so on each 20 seconds until 3230(830).
  7. Let it burn out, collect the ash and charcoal.

An oscillator that converts 90 dried papyrus to 50 ash:

  1. Build and light a 2-wood bonfire.
  2. When 0 wood remains, add 1 wood. Repeat 8 times.
  3. When 0 wood remains, add 1 wood and 90 dried papyrus.
  4. When 0 wood remains, add 1 wood and 1 water. Repeat 90 times.

Note: to get the amount of wood left pin the bonfire menu and click on it from time to time.

Another ash recipe that doesn't require stoking or a beer kettle:

  1. Build and light a 152-wood bonfire.
  2. When 142 wood remains, add 2 limestone. (This step is optional if you don't have limestone)
  3. When 124 wood remains, add 17 dried papyrus.
  4. When 107 wood remains, add 140 leeks.
  5. When 47 wood remains, add 5 water.
  6. Let the fire burn out.

100 leeks,116 wood. Get 11 ash, 2 charcoal

14 Dried Papyrus, 90 Leeks, only 92 Wood. Get 17 Ash, 2 Charcoal

9 Dried Papyrus 67 wood. Get 5 ash, 2 charcoal

Charcoal

Using a beer kettle, you can easily manage many charcoal fires at once. I personally have run as many as 40 fires using this method, but would suggest starting with 5 or less until you've had some practice (and start with short runs of 100 wood).

  1. Build bonfires with 4 wood each and pin their menus.
  2. Start a beer kettle.

  1. At 3583(1183), light all fires.
  2. At 3560(1160), add 1 wood to each fire. Repeat every 20 seconds (3540, 3520, 3500, etc) .. (1140, 1120, ...).
  3. Stop when you get tired or run out of wood. Let the fires burn out and collect the charcoal.

This recipe is horribly inefficient, but it's handy when you're just not in the mood to think at all:

  1. Build a 7-wood bonfire.
  2. Light it.
  3. Let it burn out. Collect the 2 charcoal.

Even more inefficient, but less clicking:

  1. Build a 16-wood bonfire.
  2. Light it.
  3. Let it burn out, collect the 4 charcoal.

Oscillating Charcoal Bonfire (An alternative to Charcoal Hearths/Ovens, but much more time-consuming):

  1. Light a 2-wood bonfire.
  2. At 0 wood, add 1 wood and 1 water...repeat 50 times. (If using 102 wood, 100 water then repeat this step another 50 times.)

Some clicking but quite efficient:

  1. Grab 6 wood from a chest
  2. Make a bonfire of 2 wood and fire it
  3. When there is no wood left, add 1 wood
  4. repeat until all 6 wood have been added
  5. wait until it burns out
  6. You should get 4 charcoal. This method is nice because with a little practice, you can start with 24 wood, and do 4 bonfires at once, and get 16 charcoal per go.

Speed Charcoal I thought this up and I was so excited it went right into the wiki. Basically theres a way to configure your setup to make putting down bonfires much, much faster. Long ago I pinned the Charcoal menu up and that made things faster, but I never thought of placing the menu so the "Bonfire" button and the "Build" button overlap in the upper left corner. Then, you turn on NumLock, and use the keypad to enter in your bonfire size. Then you can just double click the mouse with one hand, and key in the size (and enter) with the other hand on the keypad. Do this while you are running and you get a nice tight line of as many bonfires as you can carry wood for. I think this lets me place about 2.5 16 wood bonfires a second, which is a lot faster than how I used to place them. Also, using tab instead of the mouse makes for less errors, and setting yourself to walking in the emote menu gets those bonfires even closer! --Risky


I will try to explain the way I do bonfire-oscillation in non-engineer-English. First, the easiest way is to heat the bonfire up to desired temperature, then add both wood and water every tick. This works, but doing it without the water is slightly more wood efficient, since the fire cools down by 1 by itself if you don't add wood into it, but timing becomes a problem here.

The temperature and lime/ash/charcoal production is "calculated" at the end of each 10 second tick. Temperature rises if there is wood in the bonfire at the end of the 10 second tick; lime is produced if there is limestone in the fire at the end of the tick, etc. etc. If there is no wood in the fire at the end of the tick, temperature goes down by 1. Also, having water in the fire at the end of a tick pushes the temperature down.

I take lime as an example, since it is propably easiest.

  1. Fire 2 wood bonfire
  2. Total of 3 times, @ 0 wood, add 1 wood. The temperature should be 5 when the last wood burns.
  3. Again, @ 0 wood, add 1 wood and 2 limestone. At the end of this tick, heat raises to 6 and 1 limestone is consumed, 0.5 lime produced.
  4. Let one tick go by without adding wood. Temperature goes down to 5, one limestone is turned into 0.5 lime.
  5. Add 1 wood, 2 limestone.
  6. Let the fire cool for 1 tick.
  7. Add 1 wood, 2 limestone.
  8. keep repeating the last 2 steps until your head spins.

This is the basic principle of oscillating fire. You keep the temperature beween the limits by stoking and letting the fire cool naturally in turns. As I said, however, timing can be a problem (I personally do not like the beer thingy timing, I would rather use the kettles I have for cooking potash). One solution is the timer application (set it to 10 second), but since the tick is not 10 second sharp, this leads into syncing problems (you have to sync the timer every other tick). The solution is to use 2 fires and while you stoke one, you let the other cool down. It's not as hard as you think once you get the hang of it. I will try to explain it the best I can.

The idea is to heat 2 fires to the desired temperature and as explained earlier, you need to stoke every other tick and let the fire cool the other. Then stoke again etc. etc. Now, you can do the timing easily by running 2 fires.

  1. Build 2 bonfires, each with 2 wood.
  2. Fire bonfire A
  3. When A reaches 0 wood, fire the bonfire B as quickly as you can and add 1 wood to A.
  4. When A reaches 0 wood, add 1 wood to both fires. Now we're heating both fires up, A one step ahead of B.
  5. When A reaches 0 wood, add 1 wood to both fires. At the end of this tick, A is at 5 heat, B is at 4.
  6. When A reaches 0 wood, add 1 wood and 2 limestone to fire A and 1 wood to fire B. This is when it gets tricky, but try to bare with me. A has reached the oscillation temperature.
  7. When A reaches 0 wood, add 1 wood and 2 limestone to fire B. Let A cool down this tick. Now B has reached the needed temperature too.
  8. When B reaches 0 wood, add 1 wood and 2 limestone to fire A. Now its B's turn to cool down.
  9. When A reaches 0 wood, add 1 wood and 2 limestone to fire B.
  10. When B reaches 0 wood, add 1 wood and 2 limestone to fire A.
  11. Keep repeating.

So, once you reach the needed temperatures, you add wood and limestone to a fire and watch it burn. When the wood has burned, you move to the other fire, add 1 wood and 2 limestone and again, keep an eye on it. At 0 wood, move back to the other fire and refuel it. The actual oscillation is really not difficult, but the warming up part is. With lime you gotta keep the temp at 5-6, so there is no margin for error. Ash is easier, since the temperature range is wider, but you also have to get the heat much higher.

There is still room for improvement here. For example, you can add all the limestone at once, then just oscillate the fire, but I rather add the limestone every tick, since sooner or later I screw it up and I have to stop and start over. I know some people can correct the errors with fires, but they have some kinda telepathic connection with bonfires. I can't do it.

When I make ash, I heat the fire up as described before, and at about temperature 10-11 I throw in 90 leeks, then oscillate the fire somewhere between 11 and 13 (like 12-13-12-13) and add 2 dry papyrus every time I add 1 wood. I could also add the leeks with papyrus and wood, every second tick 1 wood, 2 papyrus and 20 leeks. If you can keep oscillating 2 (or 4) fires like this, you can make loads of ash in a matter of minutes once you got the fire heated up.

I hope you get something out from my babbling. My last advice is, use pen and paper, a lot of em. Experiment, make tables, figure the things that have been said here out yourself. Its pretty simple once you get it right. Making lime and ash may seem really slow and tedious at first, but it's not.

I'm not 100% sure all the tables and calculations here are correct, I haven't actually tried all these, but they should work in theory. Im typing this at work and I don't have my notes here, so please correct anything you find erroneus and make a note on the page telling how much I suck =p. Also, feel free to /chat rudolph and I try to share the little knowledge I got if I'm not busy/afk.


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Last edited August 31, 2004 11:00 am by pD9EA6F57.dip.t-dialin.net (diff)
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