The resource nobody farms on purpose and everybody runs out of
Charcoal is the quiet half of every raid. Sulfur gets all the attention because you have to go out and hit nodes for it — but every gunpowder craft needs one and a half times as much charcoal as sulfur.
Groups that plan their sulfur and forget their charcoal end up with a box of sulfur and nothing to mix it with.
Charcoal has no recipe and no blueprint. The only way to make it is to burn wood, and nearly the only thing you do with it is turn it into gunpowder. That combination is why people are always short of it.
How it works
| Stat | Value |
|---|---|
| How you get it | Burning wood in any wood-fuelled oven |
| Charcoal per wood | ~0.75 (a ~75% chance per wood burnt) |
| Craftable | No |
| Main use | Gunpowder |
| Stack size | 1,000 |
| Despawn on ground | 5 minutes |
| Recyclable | No |
The neat part: you get it for free while smelting. Run a furnace full of metal or sulfur ore and the wood that powers it leaves charcoal behind at the same time. You do not need ore in the oven for this to work — overfeeding wood is never wasted, it just becomes charcoal.
Which oven makes it fastest
| Oven | Wood per minute | Time for 1,000 wood |
|---|---|---|
| Small Oil Refinery | ~40 | ~25 minutes |
| Furnace / Large Furnace | — | ~33 minutes |
| Campfire | — | Over 2 hours |
The Small Oil Refinery is the fastest oven in the game for charcoal, and it doubles as low grade fuel production. One caveat: it is a smoky, visible structure, so build it behind high walls or in a courtyard.
Running several furnaces at once is the alternative, and it is the safer play — a single raid will not wipe out distributed production.
The trap: the Electric Furnace makes none
The Electric Furnace runs on power and burns no wood, so it produces zero charcoal.
It is faster than a Large Furnace and eliminates fuel costs entirely, which makes it the better oven for smelting. But if your base has gone fully electric, you will stop accumulating charcoal without noticing — until you queue a stack of C4 and find you are thousands short.
Keep at least one wood-burning furnace or refinery running on the side. If you use Electric Furnaces exclusively, you need another source for gunpowder production, full stop.
The gunpowder recipes — and the saving nobody uses
| Station | Recipe | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Workbench Level 1 | 30 charcoal + 20 sulfur | 10 gunpowder |
| Mixing Table | 20 charcoal + 20 sulfur | 10 gunpowder |
Using 20 charcoal instead of 30 is the single biggest charcoal saving in the game. A Mixing Table also crafts four stacks at once, so it saves time as well as resources.
Do the maths on a raid and it is not a small difference — it is a third of your wood chopping.
What each explosive actually costs in wood
This is the part that reframes charcoal as a wood problem. Divide the charcoal by 0.75 and you get the wood you have to burn.
| Item | Charcoal (workbench gunpowder) | Wood |
|---|---|---|
| C4 | 3,000 (2,000 mixed) | ~4,000 (~2,700 mixed) |
| Rocket | — | ~2,600 |
| Satchel | — | ~960 |
| HV Rocket | — | ~400 |
| F1 Grenade | — | ~120 |
A three-C4 armoured door is roughly 12,000 wood worth of charcoal — or 8,100 if you mix your gunpowder. That is why fast wood tools matter: a chainsaw or salvaged axe instead of a stone hatchet, and a wood tea before a big chopping run.
Other sources worth knowing
- Wreck debris. The burning gibs left by a downed Patrol Helicopter, a destroyed Bradley APC, or a crashed scrap heli can be harvested with a pickaxe or jackhammer for charcoal and metal fragments — once they cool down.
- The oil refinery. Every refining run leaves charcoal from the wood that heats it, so low grade production doubles as charcoal production.
- Recycling gunpowder. Gunpowder you find in crates or on dead raiders gives back about 1.8 charcoal and 1.2 sulfur per gunpowder at a monument recycler.
- Raiding and trading. Enemy furnaces and boxes are full of it, and some servers sell it at vending machines.
Habits that keep your boom flowing
- Mix your gunpowder. 20 charcoal instead of 30.
- Overfeed wood. Extra wood in a furnace is never wasted.
- Leave the furnace running after the ore is done if you need more.
- Keep at least one wood-burning oven if you have electrics.
- Run a refinery if you have crude — low grade and charcoal in one go.
- Automate the output. Industrial conveyors can pull charcoal and smelted ore into a box so the furnace never stalls on a full output slot. A furnace waiting for you to empty it is a furnace not producing.
- Store charcoal next to your sulfur, with the Mixing Table in the same room, so turning them into gunpowder is one trip.
- Do not burn low grade fuel to make charcoal. Low grade powers lanterns and the refinery; only wood makes charcoal.
Common mistakes
- Going all-electric and wondering where the charcoal went.
- Crafting gunpowder by hand at a Workbench 1 — 30 charcoal instead of 20.
- Discarding charcoal as a byproduct. Do not. Keep all of it.
- Burning low grade fuel in the hope of charcoal. It does nothing.
- Planning the sulfur and forgetting the charcoal.
- Forgetting the wipe. Charcoal is deleted with everything else on a wipe, so do not stockpile past the last Thursday.