Let’s talk about fire. I think that everyone can agree with me when I say that being able to turn a campfire on and off by pressing [F] is terribly unrealistic and clunky. Therefore, today I have resolved to make a “quick and short” post about building fires in UII, as well as several small mechanics that could affect fire building and lighting.
A fire is composed of three main elements, which can be illustrated by the diagram provided below:
The Fire Triangle
Removing any one of these components causes the fire in question to be extinguished, and likewise a fire cannot exist in the first place in the abcense of one of its components.
Without sufficient heat, the fire can neither start nor continue, as fire itself is actually just flaming gas rather than a physical object, and requires heat to vaporize the fuel in order to burn. Without fuel, the fire has nothing to burn, and therefore will also stop. Finally, all fires require oxygen as an oxidizer as one of the reactants of the chemical reaction of fire.
Now that we’ve covered the actual components of a fire, we can get onto the actual making of a fire. The following steps are universally accepted as the best way to get a fire going, although there are of course exceptions such as manufactured fire logs which are made of sawdust and paraffin and are therefore really easy to light.
- Step 1: Tinder
No, not the dating app. Tinder is fine, easily flammable material that catches fire easily from a spark at the minimum. It’s the fundamental and arguably most important step of making a fire as it has to be absolutely dry, as in not a single drop of moisture. Common materials include char cloth, birch bark, cotton balls, any of the alkaline earth metals such as magnesium, and paper. I’ll go into more detail about individual examples of tinder and other materials of making a fire later in the appendix portion of this topic. Really, any flammable material will work as tinder as long as it is finely divided, which increases surface area, and is again, absolutely dry.
- Step 2: Kindling
The next step up from tinder, kindling is second stage of making a fire and is used to increase the size of the flames enough to ignite the main bulk of the fuel. Examples of kindling include small sticks, twigs, and cardboard. A good rule of thumb is anything from the diameter of a pen to one of your fingers is a good size for kindling.
- Step 3: Fuel
The bulk of the fire, this roughly encompasses any combustible material that is larger than kindling, up to and including entire logs of wood.
- Step 4: Arrangement
A teepee fire, in which tinder is placed in the center, with kindling and fuel stacked on top of each other in order of smallest to largest
The arrangement of the fire heavy affects how the fire itself burns, with the teepee arrangement as shown above being the easiest and most commonly used layout. Additional types will be included in the appendix.
- Optional: Accelerant
An accelerant is any type of substance, usually a liquid, that “accelerates” the development of the fire. This is basically the “cure-all” to starting a fire, as it can boost the chances of the fire igniting to 100% almost all the time, unless, of course, your tinder is fucking wet. These include gasoline, lighter fuel, etc.
- Step 5: Lighting
After all the previous steps have been taken, you can now light the fire. Methods of igniting the fire will be included in the appendix.
Congratulations, you now have a fire 
As for how this can be correctly implemented into UII, a system similar to that of The Long Dark would work quite well, in my opinion.
Appendix
Additional examples of tinder
- Magnesium shavings
- Char cloth
- Fatwood (resin-impregnated wood from dead conifers such as pine trees)
- Birch bark
- Dry bread
- Shoe polish
- Bird down
- Manufactured tinder (such as tinder cubes or cotton balls impregnated with petroleum jelly)
Additional fire arrangements
-
Star fire
Firewood is layed out in the pattern shown, which allows the fire to burn all throughout the night with little to no maintenance as the logs are pushed towards the center. -
Cabin fire
In this arrangement the fuel is built in a crisscross manner that allows maximum heat output.
Additional methods of lighting fires
- Lighters
- Matches
- Ferrocerium lighter rods
- Fire pistons
- Magnifying lens
- Fire plough
- Bow drill
- Flint and steel