Copper Ingots are one of the first processed materials you'll need in Starsand Island, and they feed into a surprisingly long list of crafting recipes. You'll encounter the requirement early — the game's tutorial asks you to smelt a batch while working through the "Become an Apprentice Crafter" quest — but the multi-step process trips up a lot of new players because it involves three separate crafting stations and several raw resources.
Quick answer: Smelt Copper Ingots at a Furnace using 4 Copper Ore and 1 Charcoal per Ingot. Each Ingot takes six seconds to process.
Equipment you need before smelting
You cannot make Copper Ingots at a Worktable. Two dedicated stations are required: a Charcoal Kiln (to produce Charcoal) and a Furnace (to smelt the Ingot itself). Both blueprints unlock during the Apprentice Crafter questline, so you should have access to them early.
The crafting costs for each station differ slightly depending on which version of the recipe your game presents. One common recipe asks for 5 Stones for both the Furnace and the Charcoal Kiln, built at a Worktable. Another version lists 13 Stone and 10 Gold for the Furnace and 8 Stone and 10 Gold for the Kiln. If your recipe includes a Gold cost, you'll want to mine Gold deposits around the island before building these stations. Either way, Stones come from smashing ordinary rocks with your Pickaxe.
Where to find Copper Ore
Copper Ore comes from distinctive rock nodes that have orange gems embedded in them. Hit these nodes with your Pickaxe, and you'll collect the ore. Loose pieces of Copper Ore also spawn on the ground in certain areas, though nodes yield significantly more per trip.
The Islandpedia claims Copper can appear anywhere, but in practice, it clusters in a handful of reliable spots:
- North of your house — the path heading away from your home plot has several Copper nodes and is the most convenient early-game farming spot.
- South of your house plot — rock nodes near the pathway leading toward the Moonlit Forest.
- Moonlit Forest entrance (Evernight Forest area) — scattered nodes and ground spawns.
- Beyond the stone door you break during the Warm Light quest.
- Gate of Life region inside the Moonlit Forest.
All resource nodes in Starsand Island respawn in fixed locations after some time, so once you memorize a good route, you can revisit it whenever you need more ore.
How to make Charcoal
Charcoal doesn't drop from the world — you produce it at a Charcoal Kiln. The Kiln itself is built at a Worktable using Stones (and Gold, if your recipe requires it).
Once the Kiln is placed, interact with it and supply the following materials to create one piece of Charcoal:
| Material | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Softwood | 1–3 (varies by recipe version) |
| Fiber | 2 |
Some players see a recipe of 1 Softwood + 2 Fiber, while others report 3 Softwood + 2 Fiber. Softwood drops from chopping trees with an Axe, and Fiber is gathered from tall grass and bushes. Both are abundant near your starting home, so stocking up shouldn't take long.
Smelting Copper Ingots at the Furnace
Step 1: Place your Furnace if you haven't already. It can go on your home plot or anywhere you have building permission.
Step 2: Interact with the Furnace and select Copper Ingot from the recipe list. Each Ingot requires 4 Copper Ore and 1 Charcoal. Some versions of the recipe also require 22 Gold per Ingot, so keep Gold on hand if your game asks for it.
Step 3: Confirm the craft. The smelting process takes just six seconds. Once it finishes, interact with the Furnace again to collect the finished Ingot into your backpack.
You'll know it worked when the Copper Ingot appears in your inventory. If a quest objective is tied to crafting Ingots — like the Skateboard quest — the quest tracker should update immediately after you collect the Ingot from the Furnace. If the quest doesn't complete, double-check that you're collecting the finished product rather than leaving it sitting in the Furnace output.
What Copper Ingots are used for
The first major use is the Skateboard, which requires three Copper Ingots and is part of the early tutorial progression. Beyond that, Copper Ingots appear in a wide range of tool recipes as you advance through crafter ranks. At the Apprentice tier, the Chrono Rod fishing tool needs 3 Copper Ingots alongside 10 Fiber and a Wooden Rod. Moving into the Junior tier, several upgraded fishing rods — the Silent Rod, Cloud Rod — each call for 3 Copper Ingots as well. Upgraded farming and combat tools like the Wide Hoe, Bronze Watering Can, Impact Axe, and Impact Pickaxe all consume raw Copper or Copper Ingots in varying amounts.
Because so many recipes depend on this material, it's worth establishing a regular Copper Ore farming loop early. Keeping a reserve of 15–20 Copper Ingots will prevent bottlenecks as you unlock higher-tier crafting through Zerini's crafter certification quests.
Copper Ingots sit at the foundation of nearly every meaningful upgrade path in Starsand Island. The smelting process is straightforward once you have the right stations built, and the six-second processing time means you can churn out a full stack in under two minutes. Focus on locking down a reliable Copper Ore route north of your house or near the Moonlit Forest entrance, keep your Charcoal Kiln fed, and you'll never be short on Ingots when the next crafting milestone arrives.