🔥 Smelting Guide

The Standalone Smelter is a craftable tool that melts certain items down into molten metal, which you can then cast into a mould to form a bullion bar. It behaves much like a gas cooker: craft one by combining a portable gas stove or portable gas lamp with 5 metal sheets. You then attach a gas canister with enough gas to run it, plus a metal crucible to hold the molten metal. The crucible is crafted from 1 metal sheet + a hammer and is durable, so you won't need to make many.

Fully assembled, the smelter looks like this:

The items you want to smelt (coins or nuggets) aren't added directly to the crucible — instead you attach them to the smelter's Metal slot, as shown here:

You can attach up to 50 coins or nuggets in the slot — they stack in tens in your inventory, but combine up to 50 once attached to the smelter. To convert them to molten metal, simply switch the smelter on. (Toggling it on and off too quickly can be a little janky — if it doesn't work the first time, just turn it off and on again.) When it starts, the smelter's slots lock instantly and the crucible changes appearance to show molten metal inside. After roughly 2 minutes the slots unlock and you can interact with it again.

Here's how it looks while locked:

A few things to note:

• The time to unlock depends on how much you've added — the more nuggets, the longer it takes.
• The smelter does not turn itself off when it unlocks; switch it off yourself.
• You can't move the smelter or turn it off while it's locked.
• You can't mix metals: molten gold in the crucible won't accept, say, silver necklaces.
• You can't pick up a crucible with molten metal in it unless you're wearing gloves (any gloves will do).
• While the crucible is hotter than 80°C it can't go into storage or your inventory. Below 80°C the contents solidify into metallic nuggets and it can be stored — or you can hold it, look at the ground, and empty it.
• Re-attaching a filled crucible to the smelter reheats it; above 80°C it becomes molten again. The metal must be molten to cast.
• A crucible holds up to 250 units and can't overflow. Add more than it can hold and it either processes them one by one (nuggets) or refuses (items worth more than 1 unit).

The items you can smelt are:

• Gold, silver and copper coins
• Gold, silver and copper nuggets
• Bullion bars — re-melt a bar back into molten metal (see below)

Where you find these varies with the conditions of the event. When smelting, coins and nuggets are each worth 1 unit of molten metal. This matters for casting, and it also affects smelting time, since the total number of units determines how long the smelter stays locked.

Casting bullion

To cast bullion, hold the crucible of molten metal in your hands and point it at a bullion mould. You need 50 units in the crucible to cast, and each cast slightly reduces the mould's health until it's ruined and can no longer be used.

The bullion mould is crafted by using a knife on 25 lumps of clay. Clay lumps are found around the map in industrial, village, farm and military areas.

You need 50 units to cast one bullion bar — so a full crucible (250 units) makes five bars.

Re-melting bullion

You can turn a bullion bar back into molten metal: attach a single bullion to the smelter's dedicated Bullion slot (one at a time) and switch it on. It melts back into 50 units. If you also have coins or nuggets attached, those smelt first, and the bullion then melts only if the crucible has room for its full 50 units — so nothing is ever lost to overflow. A bullion takes proportionally longer to melt than a coin, reflecting its size.

Building Permits

A Permit Mould — crafted the same way as the bullion mould, by using a knife on 25 lumps of clay — casts a Building Permit from 10 units of molten gold. Pour a gold crucible onto the permit mould exactly as you cast a bullion. (Permits are needed for Tier 3 entrances and various SkyWarren stages — see the Building Costs guide.)

The same smelter powers SkyWarren

This Stand-Alone Smelter and crucible aren't just for coins — they're also how you smelt Armour Plates into steel and cast the Tier 4 vault parts and vault door for underground bases. That chain (plate carriers → armour plates → molten steel → clay moulds → cast parts) is covered in the Lighting & Vault Materials guide.