Iron Smelting tutorial

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Drojdier
 
Posts: 9
Joined: 20 Sep 2014, 21:09

Iron Smelting tutorial

Post by Drojdier » 22 Sep 2014, 14:13

I'll tell you how I did smelting on my own private server, I'm not sure it will apply to ALL public servers out there as some seem to be bugged.

First of, you can drop all the raw mats (fuel + ore) in a bag next to furnace and you can feed it from there so you won't have capacity issues.

- get a stack of iron ore; 70 or 80 is optimal, you'll see why further on. Please note that you cannot drop the iron ore in a bag, so don't mine the whole vein at once.
- get 100 billets or so. I recommend hardwood as it has higher quality and I strongly believe it affects the consumption/heating ability
- split your billets in stacks of 2 or 3
- create and equip a stone cruicible on a stick. Very important!
- load the furnace with the 70-80 iron ores and fill in the rest with billets. At 10 weight/billet, that means 2-3 pieces.
- light the furnace
- use bellows 3-4 times until it reaches 1500 degrees
- use bellows every 5-10 seconds and add billets as they get consumed
- after a while of doing that (30-60 seconds) you'll see an horizontal bar appear over the iron ore icon. This is the ore temperature bar that will slowly fill. When this is full, the ore is ready to be smelted. Do not confuse this with the furnace temperature; as in real life, they're different things.
- keep using bellows every 10 seconds or so and add billets. You'll notice the temp bar on the ore rising in small chunks (few milimeters). Using the bellows too often will not yield better results but you'll eventually get the hang on how often you need to click to get a small increase in temp. Trial and error, there's no real downside to clicking too often, the wood is consumed on a fixed time rate.
- when bar is filled, click smelt. You might need to "bellow" it a few more times after you see it full; might be a graphical bug, don't despair, you're close! Depending on the amount of ore you put inside, you'll get 3 options -> Iron ingot (for 20 ores), Iron bar (4 ore) or Iron nugget/lump (1 ore). Each of these has its uses, check wiki for more details.

Once you smelt the first time and get first "product", the remaining ore will still be in the furnace and will still have the hot temp. So keep pressing smelt while not forgetting to add billets (or the furnace will extinguish!) until you're done.

Now keep in mind that adding new ore will not make it insta-hot so it is important to initially put in as much ore as you can, while leaving room for 2-3 billets that keep being burned and keep re-adding.

Also, if you have some leftover hot ore that you can't turn into an ingot or a bar, smelt it into iron lumps. They're still useful.

The "smelting table" is the following:

1 Iron ingot = 5 Iron bars = 20 Iron ore = 40 Iron lumps

PS: this might apply to copper and other ores as well, I haven't tried yet.
PS2: I might add screenshots soon :D

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Phlar
 
Posts: 33
Joined: 29 Sep 2014, 09:38
Location: Netherlands

Re: Iron Smelting tutorial

Post by Phlar » 29 Sep 2014, 10:00

Good guide, but not the optimum way of doing it.

You forget the whole part about Charcoal.

Since I figured that out it went way better for me.

1. Use a Kiln to create Charcoal ("Pull out" when wood is heated) from Hardwood Billets on 4:1 ratio. 1 Charcoal is 1 point of weight and burns the same as 1 Hardwoord Billet. But you get 4 times more fuel which weighs less overall.

Meaning that in a Forge and Anvil with 100 room.
You use 80 slots for the Ore and 20 Charcoals (instead of 2 Hardwood Billets which way 10 slots).


Way less resources needed. 20 charcoal = 5 billets and weighs 20 slots.
versus
2 Billets which weighs 20 slots.

Cheers,
Phlar
Phlar Magnus
King of Dorestat
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APark
 
Posts: 2
Joined: 14 Mar 2015, 23:42

Re: Iron Smelting tutorial

Post by APark » 16 Mar 2015, 03:58

If you don't like clicking so much, I found every 30 seconds is the cap when using bellows for that burst (and thus the most optimal). Any more than 30 seconds, and you get the same burst amount as the 20 second mark.

I grabbed a timer app with an audible notification to help you make those timely clicks.

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