Infinite Campfire Wizardry.

[BugReportEnthusiast]

Disclaimer: While technically possible, this is not practical, at all. Even if you're running super low on fuel, this is still really stupid

I was looking at how fires work in the wiki and crunching some numbers, and this became apparent: 

If you're at Fire Starting level 5, and if the Air Temperature where you've built your campfire is -30c or lower, you are able to infinitely increase the campfire's duration without adding any additional fuel on it. 

Here's how it works! 

- With Fire Starting level 5, a stick increases fire duration by 11.25 minutes. (7.5 *1.5 = 11.25)
- Taking out a torch from a fire decreases fire duration by 10 minutes. 
- Fire duration is doubled with the Air temperature is -30c or lower.
- Breaking down a torch takes 2 minutes. 
- 1 real life second is 12 in game seconds.

This is all that's necessary to calculate how you can infinitely increase fire duration. I'm sure you can already see how it's done.

So: Take a torch out of a fire. -10 minutes. Break down the torch. -2 minutes, but it's actually -1 minute since the fire duration is doubled due to the -30c Air temperature. Add the stick back into the fire. +11.25 minutes. So, we lost 11 minutes of fire, and we gained 11.25 minutes of fire. +0.25 Minutes 
0.25 Minutes are 15 in game seconds, which is 1.25 real life seconds. 

In order for this to work, you need to be able to navigate the menu and click the "break down" button on the torch in less than 1.25 seconds for each torch you pull for there to be a net gain of fire duration. This is what makes it so impractical. 

If you could break down the torch in 0.5 seconds consistently every single time, you'd get a MASSIVE +9 in game seconds of extra fire duration each time you did this trick. 
To get 1 minute of extra fire, you'd need to do this 7 times. 10 extra minutes (1 sticks worth, ish), around 70 times.

So yeah, fun little thing. Technically possible is the best kind of possible. 

 

[I_eat_only_wolf_meat]

This sounds like it's much more fun to talk about than to actually do this.

[James Hickok]

Its a known cheesy mechanic doable but borring. The way to fix this would be to extend the duration of breaking down torches. 

[UpUpAway95]

13 hours ago, James Hickok said:

Its a known cheesy mechanic doable but borring. The way to fix this would be to extend the duration of breaking down torches. 

Not worth doing by players, which makes it not worth HL's time to fix either.

[LostRealist]

51 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

Not worth doing by players, which makes it not worth HL's time to fix either.

Well really, nobody should care indeed.

But given that I cannot imagine this would take more than two minutes to do, I can't bring myself to agree with that way to put it.