Charcoal Kiln

The Charcoal Kiln converts Wood into Charcoal in Windrose. Charcoal is the required fuel for every metal smelt at the Smelting Furnace, so the Kiln is part of the core smelting pipeline every player builds within the first few hours.

Recipe

Conversion

Ash is a secondary output. It is consumed later in the Millstones recipe for Homemade Gunpowder (10 Sulfur + 20 Ash = 10 Homemade Gunpowder), so saving Ash has long-term value.

Placement Tips

• Place the Kiln close to the Smelting Furnace so you can shuttle Charcoal quickly

• Keep a Wood chest nearby; low-tier Wood (not Hardwood or Mahogany) is best for charcoal production

• Run multiple Kilns in parallel during heavy smelting sessions

• Do not place under a roof - the Kiln is outdoors-only

See Also

• Charcoal - product

• Smelting Furnace - primary consumer

• Clay - build material

• Base Building - building overview

Kiln and Furnace Pairing in the Smelting Row

The build tutorial recommends running two charcoal kilns on the same outdoor smelting row as your Smelting Furnace pair. The layout: drop a narrow foundation strip off the side of your main hut, place two smelting furnaces in the middle, then flank them left and right with one charcoal kiln each, tilted slightly for a more natural look. The tilt is purely cosmetic; the kiln's output is unaffected. Two kilns beside two furnaces gives you fuel throughput that matches ore throughput during a heavy smelting session.

A single kiln can keep a single furnace fed with Charcoal so long as you dump wood into the kiln at the same pace you dump ore into the furnace. The moment you run two furnaces in parallel (one for copper, one for iron), you want two kilns so charcoal is never the bottleneck. Because wood is the most abundant resource on every starting island, doubling kiln output is usually cheaper than losing smelter uptime.

Ash Byproduct Pipeline

The Ash byproduct is not a throwaway resource. It is the primary input for the Millstones recipe that produces Gunpowder. The live Millstones recipe is 10 Sulfur and 20 Ash for 10 Homemade Gunpowder, and ash is consumed continuously once you start making firearm ammunition. A steady kiln running on spare wood logs produces ash in the background with zero extra work on your part, which feeds the gunpowder pipeline for firearms and bombs without a dedicated grinding session.

Practical consequence: never let the kiln sit idle. If you have extra wood in storage, queue it into the kiln before heading out on a long expedition. By the time you return, you will have a fresh stockpile of charcoal for smelting and a fresh stockpile of ash ready for gunpowder grinding at the Millstones. Ash stacks reasonably well in storage, so there is no penalty to overproducing.

Wood Type Selection

Any wood log works as input for the kiln, but the community recommendation is to save rare woods for building and feed the kiln low-tier Wood only. Hardwood and Mahogany are needed for higher-tier station attachments (Tool Shelf, Reagent Table) and late-game building recipes; burning them for charcoal is almost always a poor trade. Keep dedicated fuel wood stockpiles separate from your building wood stockpiles using a wooden label on the chest. The 1-to-1 conversion ratio means 100 Wood turns into 100 Charcoal, so plan your ingredient runs around how many ingots you expect to smelt.

Placement Checklist

• Outdoors only: the Kiln refuses to function under a roof. A partial canopy that leaves the top face exposed is sometimes tolerated, but a full roof tile directly above it voids placement.

• Inside bonfire radius: the Kiln must sit inside the Bonfire radius so wood pulls automatically from nearby chests.

• Wood chest proximity: keep a wood chest within a short walk of the kiln row. Ideally pair it with a dedicated ash chest on the other side so the ash byproduct ends up in a single stockpile for Millstone runs.

• Next to furnaces: charcoal produced here is consumed almost entirely by the neighbouring Smelting Furnace, so placing them adjacent on the same strip reduces the walking distance to effectively zero.

• Avoid clutter: the kiln billows smoke during operation. Do not place it directly under a balcony or second-floor window of your main building; the smoke texture will read as ambient haze indoors. Keeping it on the edge of the pier or on a dedicated strip keeps the main hall clean.

Run Multiple Kilns in Parallel

For heavy mining trips, three kilns in parallel is not overkill. If you have just returned from a foothills ore run with several hundred Copper Ore and Foothills Iron Ore waiting in a chest, a single kiln producing one charcoal per cycle becomes the bottleneck for the entire smelting pipeline. Running three kilns stacked against each furnace pair triples fuel output and lets you clear the ore backlog in a single long cooking session. Because kiln material cost is low (25 Wood + 20 Clay), extra kilns are cheap insurance against downtime.

Game Data

Properties

Build Cost

Duration: 1s

Unlocked By

• DISCOVERY Ingot and Charcoal Production

• Coastal Jungle

• Copper Ore

Comfort