148°

[Pillock]

Yes. So, I hadn't played for a wee while until recently, and I couldn't remember the precise details of how the forge worked. Having collected all the coal I found lying around in the ship, I thought I'd fire up the furnace and make meself a hatchet. (I had the hammer and a bunch of scrap metal and cloth - couldn't remember if you needed wood or not to make tools, so I brought some anyway.)

Seven bits of coal were the total amount on board. Seven bits of coal is enough to heat the forge up to 148°. The forge needs to be 150° in order to work.

I have come to the forum to complain! I do not feel I need elaborate more - my gripe should be obvious.

[nicko]

maybe add more wood to the furnace first, get it up to about 78c then add some coal, I thought six pieces of coal would do the trick.

if not first go to a cave and collect more pieces of coal, also get more metal,wood, cloth, food and water. Then fire up the beast and forge away like a happy blacksmith.

[Pillock]

51 minutes ago, nicko said:

maybe add more wood to the furnace first, get it up to about 78c then add some coal, I thought six pieces of coal would do the trick.

if not first go to a cave and collect more pieces of coal, also get more metal,wood, cloth, food and water. Then fire up the beast and forge away like a happy blacksmith.

Thanks for the help. but this is not the point.

Naturally on realising I was a mere 2° from the required operating temperature, I threw more fuel in - wood was all I had available. No avail. I smashed up crates and chucked in everything I could find, but without more coal I couldn't get the temperature to rise. I searched every nook and cranny of the ship and its surroundings to see if I'd missed any stray lumps, but no.

It left me feeling frustrated and cheated by arbitrary game mechanics, rather than foiled by my lack of knowledge (which I could have happily accepted). Either there should be nowhere near enough coal on the ship to get the forge up to temperature, thereby giving the inexperienced player an idea of what they will need to collect in future, so that they can learn; or, the amount of coal available there should be enough. Do NOT allow the player to get 99% of the requirements, only to be left unable to progress further. Otherwise, he starts questioning the mechanics - if I can forge metal at 150°, surely I could do so (perhaps slightly less efficiently) at 148°? It's frustrating, and poor game design. [Edit: not poor design, perhaps, but an accidental oversight that I feel needs addressing.]

Perhaps I could have got the fire hotter with wooden fuel before adding the coal and I would have been successful with the amount I had. But I wasn't to know that - the tool-tip only tells you to burn the fire for 20 minutes before adding coal, which is what I did. The annoying thing is not that I failed to use the forge correctly - as I said earlier, I could have accepted that - it was that I got so close to the required number and was then left unable to rectify my error.

148°... 150°. Grrrrr.

(Needless to say, I have since visited both mines in Desolation Point and collected about 30-40 bits of coal so that this won't happen to me again. But the initial experience still irks me.)

[Scyzara]

19 minutes ago, Pillock said:

Seven bits of coal were the total amount on board. Seven bits of coal is enough to heat the forge up to 148°. The forge needs to be 150° in order to work.

I have come to the forum to complain! I do not feel I need elaborate more - my gripe should be obvious.

The forge will stay at 148°C for several hours in your game. You can thus still easily go to one of the DP mines, pick up some more pieces of coal, return to the Riken and increase the temperature further. Apart from that you might want to follow nicko's advice in the future and simply not start forging attempts without proper wood reserves to get the fire going. Seven pieces of coal add 140°C themselves so you only have to add wood for 10°C (e.g. 2 pieces of cedar or 10 sticks), that's not much honestly. It's probably even enough to break down some of the wooden boxes inside the Riken to reach that.

[Pillock]

32 minutes ago, Scyzara said:

The forge will stay at 148°C for several hours in your game. You can thus still easily go to one of the DP mines, pick up some more pieces of coal, return to the Riken and increase the temperature further. 

It was about 7-8 hours. The weather was bad, night was on its way, and I didn't know exactly where I was going in order to get to the mines, so didn't feel I could risk doing that.

I now have 12L of water and about 15 torches, so I guess it's not all bad.

[EDIT: by the way, how is it possible to pull torches out of a furnace, when 1) it is 148°C and would incinerate your arm if you tried to do that; and 2) being a coal fire, there is virtually no wood in there to make a torch from anyway!?]

[cekivi]

Personally, I still think there are some things that need to be worked out with the fire mechanics. Like you said, not having a fire at 10C first and therefore only being able to reach 148C is a little ridiculous. 

Not to mention you should have the option to cover or smoother your fire so you can come back to it later to re-stoke it back to life.

And much as I like torches... being able to turn coal into torches is also a little silly

[Vhalkyrie]

What works for me is I first start a fire in a furnace with cedar/fir/sticks.  I put in enough of a mixture of those to bring the temperature up to 50C (approximately 8 hour burn time).  Then I throw in 5 coals, which brings the temperature up to an even 150C.  The temperature will not drop at this point until it starts to burn out, unless you light or make a torch.

[hauteecolerider]

The first time I tried using the forge, I had a similar experience. So I traipsed off to the TLD wiki, and discovered that you needed to bring the temp up high enough that the coal would add it the rest of the way. So I gathered a ton of wood, and started off with sticks. Maxed out the temp the sticks provided (I can't remember, but I think it was something like 7 or 8C), then added cedar until the temp wouldn't go higher, then added fir until the same. At this point I had a fire at around 50C (like @Vhalkyrie said), then put in the coals. Now I could forge happily, and I forged myself into starvation, exhaustion AND dehydration! At least I was warm!

[cekivi]

16 minutes ago, hauteecolerider said:

The first time I tried using the forge, I had a similar experience. So I traipsed off to the TLD wiki, and discovered that you needed to bring the temp up high enough that the coal would add it the rest of the way. So I gathered a ton of wood, and started off with sticks. Maxed out the temp the sticks provided (I can't remember, but I think it was something like 7 or 8C), then added cedar until the temp wouldn't go higher, then added fir until the same. At this point I had a fire at around 50C (like @Vhalkyrie said), then put in the coals. Now I could forge happily, and I forged myself into starvation, exhaustion AND dehydration! At least I was warm!

Sounds like the first time I crafted a wolfskin coat!

 

[piddy3825]

14 hours ago, Pillock said:

Yes. So, I hadn't played for a wee while until recently, and I couldn't remember the precise details of how the forge worked. Having collected all the coal I found lying around in the ship, I thought I'd fire up the furnace and make meself a hatchet. (I had the hammer and a bunch of scrap metal and cloth - couldn't remember if you needed wood or not to make tools, so I brought some anyway.)

Seven bits of coal were the total amount on board. Seven bits of coal is enough to heat the forge up to 148°. The forge needs to be 150° in order to work.

I have come to the forum to complain! I do not feel I need elaborate more - my gripe should be obvious.

I totally feel your pain, but not as bad as when I used the exact same pieces of coal and available wood to reach the appropriate temp range only to discover that I had forgotten the heavy hammer in the processing center...

[cekivi]

2 hours ago, piddy3825 said:

I totally feel your pain, but not as bad as when I used the exact same pieces of coal and available wood to reach the appropriate temp range only to discover that I had forgotten the heavy hammer in the processing center...

Huh, I could have sworn the hammer was a guaranteed drop on the ship... must be mistaken

[nicko]

5 hours ago, cekivi said:

Huh, I could have sworn the hammer was a guaranteed drop on the ship... must be mistaken

i'm pretty sure i also found my hacksaw and hammer in the processing center (buildings) either way I took one with me from another map just incase lol.