Fust Survival Furnace and Smelting Guide

The furnace is the quiet engine of every Fust Survival wipe. You can clear beach starter goals with a rock, but you cannot reach Workbench 1, charcoal stockpiles, or a real raid budget without lighting a furnace under Tool Cupboard privilege. This guide is a deep walkthrough of the furnace UI, what each resource slot accepts, how wood becomes charcoal, how metal ore becomes Metal Fragments, and how those outputs feed crafting, resource gathering, fast progression, and raiding.

Numbers below are common early-access baselines. Vanilla versus modded or double-rate servers can change craft times and yields — always confirm live values in your instance.

When to place the furnace

Do not drop a furnace on the open beach. Clear the HUD starter track first (250 Wood, 100 Stones, Building Plan, foundation, door, Tool Cupboard, sleeping bag), Key Lock the door, then place the furnace inside privilege. A lit furnace is loud wealth. Unlocked furnaces are free loot for the next naked with a spear.

Craft the furnace from the DEPLOYABLES side of the Q menu once wood and related mats allow. Keep a separate wood pile for fuel so you do not accidentally burn the stack you still need for Tool Cupboard upkeep or Hammer upgrades.

Furnace UI walkthrough

Open the furnace with E. The interface is built around resource intake, fuel, output, and quick transfer buttons.

FOR RESOURCES slots

The furnace accepts dedicated resource inputs. In current early access builds, resource-oriented slots cover:

• Wood — Also ties into the fuel / charcoal path when burned.
• Metal Ore — Smelts into Metal Fragments.
• Sulfur Ore (Sulphur Ore) — Processes toward usable sulphur for gun powder crafts.
• HQM Ore — Higher-tier ore when you find it; treat as valuable and bank fragments or outputs carefully.
• Raw Meat — Cooks when you use the furnace as a food processor in addition to ore work.

Each ore-style slot can hold and smelt up to 5 ores per slot in the common layout. Fill slots deliberately: a mixed panic dump wastes ticks and makes TAKE ALL harder to parse when you are under pressure.

+50 and +ALL

Use +50 when you want controlled batches — for example fifty wood into a charcoal burn without emptying your entire building reserve. Use +ALL when you intentionally commit a full stack (a safe metal ore dump after a long farm, or a sulphur batch you are babysitting). Prefer +50 while you are still learning how fast your server consumes fuel.

FUEL

The FUEL section is where the furnace stays alive. Wood is the standard fuel. No fuel means no smelt, no charcoal production, and a cold box that still advertises your base if the chimney or placement is obvious. Keep fuel topped while you AFK nearby inside a locked shell; do not leave a roaring furnace in a single-door 1x1 while you tour oil rig.

OUTPUT

OUTPUT collects finished products: Metal Fragments from metal ore, charcoal from burned wood, cooked food from raw meat, and processed sulphur products from sulphur ore according to the live smelt rules on your build. Clear output often so slots do not stall.

LIGHT

LIGHT starts the burn. Confirm fuel and inputs before you light. Lighting an empty furnace wastes nothing but time; lighting a furnace full of ore with no wood wastes the moment you thought you were progressing.

TAKE ALL

TAKE ALL pulls output (and sometimes remaining contents depending on context) into your inventory in one action. Use it at the end of a smelt session before you leave base. Inventory full? Clear TAB space first — death drops carried items, and a failed TAKE ALL mid-raid defense is a bad story.

Charcoal path (wood → charcoal)

Burning wood does two jobs: it fuels smelts and it creates Charcoal. Charcoal is half of the gun powder recipe, not vendor trash.

Practical charcoal notes from early access play:

• Expect charcoal as a major byproduct of sustained wood burns. Community reports often describe on the order of roughly ~75% charcoal relative to wood burned as a rule-of-thumb feel — treat that as a server-specific observation, not a guaranteed UI percentage on every shard.
• Modded or double-rate servers may accelerate burn speed or change feel; confirm by timing a known wood stack on your instance.
• Budget wood in three buckets mentally: building / TC upkeep, furnace fuel, and emergency repairs after a raid.

Once charcoal stacks exist, combine with sulphur in Q. Common baseline: Sulphur 10 + Charcoal 10 → x10 Gun Powder. That gun powder feeds Explosives such as C4 / Timed Explosive Charge — details in the raiding guide.

Metal Fragments and Workbench 1

Metal Ore in the furnace becomes Metal Fragments. Fragments are the gate material for Workbench 1, commonly Metal Fragments 50 + Wood 500. That bench unlocks higher crafting rows you will not see as a beach naked.

Efficient fragment loop:

1. Craft a Stone Pickaxe (baseline Wood 200 + Stones 100) via crafting.
2. Mine metal nodes on a quiet route from resource gathering.
3. Return under TC, Key Locked.
4. Load Metal Ore (up to 5 per slot), add FUEL wood, LIGHT, then TAKE ALL fragments.
5. Craft Workbench 1 inside privilege in one sitting so fragment stacks are not tourist bait in a wood box by the door.

If you want the wider wipe route that uses fragments, monuments, and Military Crates to skip pure grind, read fast progression.

Sulphur, HQM, and meat in the same box

Sulfur Ore belongs in the furnace when you are ready to turn yellow-crystal farms into raid economy. Do not smelt sulphur in an unlocked shack next to Dome traffic.

HQM Ore is rarer wealth. Smelt it when the base is quiet and storage is deep behind an airlock. Exact downstream recipes can shift in alpha — check Q after output appears.

Raw Meat lets the furnace double as a cook station. Useful after wildlife or loot runs, but do not block all ore slots with food during a fragment push for Workbench 1. Sequence jobs: fragments first when gated, charcoal burns when raid prep starts, food when you are already safe.

Safety and placement habits

• Furnace inside Tool Cupboard range, behind Key Locked doors, ideally past an airlock (see base defense and base building).
• Never hotbar your only fragment or gun powder stack while stoking fuel.
• If you hear a raid, decide quickly: TAKE ALL valuables into deep storage or accept the loss and live for the rebuild.
• After any breach, rebuild the shell, then re-authorize the Tool Cupboard before you trust privilege again.
• On weekly Friday wipe servers, a perfect charcoal empire means nothing if you started it twelve hours before reset — time burns like wood.

How furnace work ties to the rest of the wiki

• Crafting — Where fragments and gun powder become benches and boom.
• Resource Gathering — Which nodes feed which slots.
• Fast Progression — Beach-to-metal route that assumes a furnace online early.
• Raiding — Why charcoal and sulphur exist.
• Monument Loot — When Outpost recycling supplements home smelting.
• Guides Hub — Full tutorial map.

Light the furnace only when the door locks. Smelt with a shopping list — fragments for Workbench 1, charcoal for gun powder, sulphur when you intend to spend it — and the wipe stops feeling like endless rock swinging.