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[JustMercy1994]

Because I require coal and flux to forge steel, if I am reading the wiki correctly. And even sites with multiple surface and deep metals, as well as flux stone don't seem to often have coal.

So how do I piss Santa off in Dwarf Fortress, so as to acquire his extremely useful gift of coal?

[nomad_delta]

If you aren't able to provoke an influx of coal out of sheer naughtiness, you might consider building a Wood Furnace in the workshops menu to burn wood to make your own.

-nomad_delta

[martinuzz]

And if you're on a treeless biome, dwarves caravans are a great source of wood. Just max the sliders on all types of wood during the trade agreement.

[JustMercy1994]

But charcoal isn't coal D: I need coal to make steel, right?

Edit: Too much eggnog. Clearly, this joke wasn't well thought out. Is bituminous coal required for steel production?

[nomad_delta]

Nope, it just needs a source of carbon.  Charcoal from burning wood will do just fine.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Refined coal is coal or charcoal bars. Bituminous coal and lignite are "ores" of coal. Burnt wood is charcoal. Neither wood or coal ore can be used as fuel; the two different fuels are exchangeable, identical in all but name.

[BuGGaTon]

I believe the game distinguishes the two as coke (made from lignite and bituminous coal) and charcoal (made from wood burning).

They're treated identically when it comes to any sort of fuel industry being both the carbon requirement and fuel requirement for steel production.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

...did I ninja you? Because I just said that.

[JustMercy1994]

Everyone calm down ;-; Be nice.

[greycat]

I'm looking at Steel and it seems pretty clear you can use either coke or charcoal.  I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from.  Nevertheless, the amount of wood you can get from the new mult-tile trees is truly staggering, and maybe should be mentioned more prominently.  I never understood the fascination with lignite and bituminous coal....

[Dr. Melon]

I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from.

I think the in-game cancellation notice is a little more obtuse, saying that it needs "refined coal" which could be the source of the misunderstanding.

[JustMercy1994]

I'm not sure where the confusion is coming from.

I think the in-game cancellation notice is a little more obtuse, saying that it needs "refined coal" which could be the source of the misunderstanding.

Yes, this is exactly it. Thank you. But it seems charcoal in bins were bugged, as referenced by other posts. So we didn't actually require any "refined coal" at all. Santa is useless in DF.

[greycat]

The presence of absence of bin-bugs is not clear at this point.  There were some, in older releases, for certain items.  I don't know if there still are, or if the older bugs affected coal specifically.

In any case,

• Bin bugs are irrelevant if your real issue was that you didn't know you can use charcoal for steel.
• Storing your charcoal/coke bars in bins is not necessary, nor even necessarily a good idea.

Personally, I store all of my forge-stuff in a minecart quantum stockpile.  The amount of real estate it takes to store ore stones without one is absolutely ludicrous in an underground fortress, not to mention the time it would take to haul one from the back of the ore-scape to the smelter (and wheelbarrows are not used to move things to a workshop -- it's hauled by hand).  So, I put all of my ore stones, metal bars, coke/charcoal bars, and bags of sand in a QSP.  If that makes me a filthy cheater, so be it.

[Deboche]

If that makes me a filthy cheater, so be it.

It doesn't. I see quantum stockpiles as a placeholder bug for whatever solves the storing problem. It doesn't make sense to lay out items in neat rows along the floor, especially stuff like charcoal. Until heaps are implemented, we're stuck with either rather large stockpiles or quantum stockpiles.

[Skully]

*REALIZES IT'S CHRISTMAS* :O
*facedesk* how am I so oblivious?