Raw ore is dead weight until you refine it. The Smelter is the structure that turns copper, tin, iron scrap and silver into ingots you can actually forge with, and it is the gate between stone-age gear and everything that comes after.
Quick answer: Pick up a single Surtling Core in a Black Forest Burial Chamber to unlock the recipe, then build the Smelter with 20 Stone and 5 Surtling Cores near a Workbench, on terrain or stone. Load ore into the left slot and Coal into the right, and ingots drop out of the chute at the front.
Unlock the Smelter recipe with a Surtling Core
The recipe appears in your hammer’s build menu the moment you pick up your first Surtling Core. It is a small black cube with a red-orange glow, and it also unlocks the Charcoal Kiln at the same time.
The reliable early source is a Burial Chamber in the Black Forest, one of those underground stone dungeons guarded by Skeletons. Cores sit in chests and on stands along the corridors and side rooms. Later on, Surtlings that spawn near fire geysers in the Swamp drop them too, but you do not need to wait that long.
Clear one chamber and you will usually walk out with several cores. Bring enough for both the Smelter and the Kiln if you can, since each costs five. If you only find five, build the Kiln first, stockpile coal, then break it down and rebuild it as a Smelter.
Smelter build cost and placement requirements
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Materials | Stone x20, Surtling core x5 |
| Station needed | Workbench in range |
| Valid ground | Terrain or stone structures only, not wood |
| Footprint | Roughly 3 x 4.25 x 2.6 metres |
| Durability | 2,000, and rain does not damage it |
| Refund | Hammer it down and all materials drop |
Stone is the easy half. Pick it up off the ground in any biome, mine it out of boulders and copper deposits with a pickaxe, or take it from Greydwarf drops.
Keep your Stone Axe and pickaxe repaired at the Workbench while you gather, since a worn tool slows the trip more than the walk does.
The placement rule trips up a lot of players. The Smelter refuses to sit on wooden floors, so either drop it straight on the dirt or raise the ground with a Hoe until it lines up with your building. A stone foundation works too.
How to build and load the Smelter
Note: while it is running, the Smelter gives off the Fire effect for about 4.5 metres in every direction. Do not sprint past it in a hurry.
Smelting speed, capacity and coal cost
| Value | Number |
|---|---|
| Ore capacity | 10 |
| Coal capacity | 20 |
| Time per ingot | 30 seconds |
| Fuel burn | 1 Coal every 15 seconds |
| Coal per ore | About 2 |
| Full load run time | Roughly 5 minutes for 10 ingots |
A full 20 coal is only just enough for a full 10 ore, so top up the fuel side whenever you refill the ore side. Every ore and scrap type smelts at the same rate, whether it is tin or silver.
Sleeping speeds it up. Time passes faster while you are in a bed, and the Smelter keeps processing through the night, so loading it before you sleep is the closest thing to free throughput in the game.
Getting Coal from a Charcoal Kiln
The Kiln uses the same recipe as the Smelter, 20 Stone and 5 Surtling Cores near a Workbench, and it converts wood into Coal. It holds 25 pieces of Wood, Fine Wood or Core Wood in any mix and produces one Coal at a time, burning through regular Wood first.
Coal also drops from Surtlings, turns up in chests, and comes out of food you leave burning on a cooking station, but none of that keeps pace with a Kiln.
Build the two side by side, angled slightly toward each other, with a chest between them. From one standing spot you can refill the Kiln, scoop the coal, feed the Smelter, and dump ingots into storage. The only thing worth walking for is the ore slot.
What the Smelter can process
| Input | Where you find it |
|---|---|
| Copper ore | Copper deposits in the Black Forest |
| Tin ore | Shorelines and water’s edge in the Black Forest |
| Scrap iron | Muddy scrap piles in Sunken Crypts, Swamp |
| Iron ore | Swamp |
| Silver ore | Mountains, needs an iron pickaxe |
| Copper scrap | Mistlands |
| Scrap bronze | Salvaged scrap |
Copper and tin ingots are the point of all this early on. Take two copper and one tin to a Forge and you get Bronze, which opens up the next tier of tools, weapons and armour.
Black metal scrap and flametal ore are not on this list. Those need a Blast Furnace, which is a separate structure unlocked much later.
Why the Smelter stops working
You know it is running when flames are visible, smoke is rising, and ingots are piling up at the chute. If it goes quiet, there are only a few real causes.
- Trapped smoke. The Smelter smothers itself if smoke builds up above it. Break out a ceiling tile or leave the roof open, and it relights once the air clears.
- No fuel. “You don’t have any Coal” means you are out; the message appears when you try to feed the right-hand slot with nothing in your pack.
- Wrong item. “You don’t have any processable items” means whatever you are holding is not something the Smelter accepts, or you are standing at the wrong side.
Smoke is the culprit far more often than fuel is, especially in indoor builds where a ceiling looks open but is not.
Once the Smelter is fed and venting properly it runs unattended, which makes it worth putting behind walls or stakes. Raids target your base, and losing a loaded furnace mid-run costs you the ore as well as the structure. Set it up somewhere defensible, keep the Kiln next to it, and metal stops being the thing that holds you back.
