Pottery
NOTE: Pottery mechanics are a work in progress and have not been released yet.
Ashfall has a comprehensive pottery mechanic where you can harvest, temper, shape, decorate and fire clay into a range of functional pottery items. Each stage is outlined here with instructions on how to navigate this mechanic.
Clay deposits can be found wherever there is dirt, sand or mud near bodies of water. They appear as a patch of cracks in the terrain.
Each clay deposit can be harvested numerous times before depleting. They will generally give between 15 and 20 clay per harvest, up to a total of around 50 clay. Simply look at a deposit and activate it to begin harvesting.
Tempering is an optional, but strongly recommended step that will strengthen your clay and reduce the chance of it cracking or shattering during firing.
Temper is made from "grog", which is crushed up pieces of old broken pottery. You will need a mortar and pestle in your inventory and broken pottery in order to create temper. See the Pottery Damage section for how to obtain broken pottery.
Once you have your raw clay, broken pottery and mortar and pestle, place a single piece of clay into the world (or attach to a pottery wheel), activate, and select "Temper".
There are two ways to shape clay: hand-shaping and wheel-throwing. In either case, the clay will be shaped into a piece of damp, unfired pottery. This needs to be dried, (optionally) decorated, then fired in order to become a functional item.
Hand-shaping can be done with no special equipment, and can be done to create items such as brick moulds.
Place a single piece of raw or tempered clay into the world, activate and press "Shape" to bring up the shaping menu. Select a shape you meet the requirements for (see Pottery Skill section), and press "Confirm".
Open the hand-shaping menu to craft bricks and brick moulds. Crafting bricks by hand is time consuming, so it is better to shape and fire a brick mould. Once fired, place the brick mould on the ground and activate in order to quickly turn raw clay in your inventory into clay bricks. Clay bricks are needed to build a kiln.
Wheel-throwing allows you to shape various rounded items such as cups, goblets, cooking pots and more.
A pottery wheel can be bushcrafted using wood and rope, and placed into the world. You can add clay by either dragging raw/tempered clay onto the wheel, or activating the wheel and selecting "Add clay". Once added, you can choose to temper raw clay, or begin throwing. Select a shape you meet the requirements for (see Pottery Skill section), and press "Confirm".
Unfired pottery is damp after being shaped, and should be dried before attempting to fire. You can attempt to fire damp clay, but the chance of it cracking or breaking will be significantly increased. Unfired pottery also needs to be at least "Leather-dry" in order to be decorated.
There are two ways to dry clay. The safest way to dry clay is to simply leave it somewhere sheltered from the rain and let it air dry. You can also dry it by heating it up at a campfire, which will make it dry significantly faster, but will introduce stress to the clay and can increase its chance of cracking/breaking when fired.
The ideal way to dry clay is to place it on the stones around a campfire, where it will only receive a portion of the heat generated by the fire, allowing it to heat up without reaching dangerous temperatures.
Once your unfired pottery is at least "Leather-dry", it can be decorated. There are various types of decoration: engraving, slips/washes and glazes. Each have their own ingredient, tool and firing temperature requirements, outlined below:
Engravings require just a knife in your inventory.
Slips and washes require basic ingredients such as wood ash and charcoal (which can be obtained by destroyed campfires after they have burned up).
Glazes tend to use rare, expensive ingredients such as fire salts, and require "Glaze Firing" temperature to be reached. As such, glazed items can not be fired at a campfire, as they are unable to reach these temperatures. Instead, you will need to fire them in a kiln.
Firing can be done at any fire source, with varying degrees of difficulty. Place your dried, unfired pottery on the fire source, and bring it up to bisque firing (for un-glazed items) or glaze firing (for glazed items) temperature. Once your pottery items reach their required firing temperature, they will begin firing. An item's firing progress will be displayed on its tooltip. Once it's firing progress reaches 100%, it will turn into a functional, fired version of the item. However, the fired item is still at risk of cracking/breaking if it cools too abruptly. So once your items are fired, allow the fire source to burn through its remaining fuel until it extinguishes, so that your items cool down slowly. Once cooled, you can safely remove the items and begin using them.
Bellows are necessary for reaching and maintaining higher firing temperatures. They can be purchased or bushcrafted. Attach them to a campfire or kiln by either dropping them onto it, or selecting "Add utensil" in the activate menu. Once attached, press [MODIFIER_KEY](default Shift) + activate in order to use them. The bellows will animate, and the tooltip of the fire source will show the bellows effect. The bellows effect increases the temperature of the fire source, as well as the fuel consumption rate. This effect will diminish over time, fully expiring after about 6 hours.
Campfires can be used for firing un-glazed items. However, they are not ideal, as they can only just reach firing temperatures, and only with the aid of bellows. As such, in order to be successful firing at a campfire, you will need to monitor it regularly and keep its temperature from dropping. This will involve re-fueling and re-applying bellows every hour or so to maximise the chance of your pottery surviving the firing process.
Kilns are much better suited at firing pottery, and can reach temperatures needed for firing glazed pottery. To craft a kiln, equip a clay brick to open the brick crafting menu. Kilns require many clay bricks to craft, so you will want to hand-shape a brick mould to speed up the process.
The front few bricks of a kiln can be removed to access the inside of the kiln and place items into it. Simply activate and press "Open Kiln" while it is below firing temperatures.
Cracked pottery can still be fired successfully, but the final product will have noticeable cracks in it and its sell value will be greatly reduced.
Once cracked, pottery becomes at risk of breaking entirely. Broken pottery can be collected and used as grog for tempering your next batch of raw clay.
There are a number of ways for pottery to crack and break:
Pottery builds up stress as it encounters unfavourable conditions, such as being heated while still damp, dropping below firing temperatures before it has finished firing, or cooling too quickly after firing. Stress quickly accumulates, and the more stressed the pottery is, the more likely it is to crack and eventually break
If you have a fired piece of pottery you don't like, simply whack it with a weapon and it will crack. Hit it again and it will shatter.
The pottery skill determines what shapes and decorations are available to you. It also determines the "quality" of your pottery. Higher quality pottery is less likely to crack/break during firing, and is worth more once successfully fired.
The following actions increase your pottery skill:
- Tempering raw clay
- Shaping clay into unfired pottery
- Decorating a piece of pottery
- Successfully firing a piece of pottery
