Guides:Pottery(tutorial)

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Summary

Pottery involves the creation of items from clay, which are then hardened by being baked within a fire. Jars and flasks can be used to carry water, and bowls can be used to cook food. For better food you will need a metal frying pan.

Trained skills

Skills that are used and thus trained by this Tutorial

• Pottery

Assumed knowledge

Information you are expected to know or have obtained from other tutorials

• Woodcutting Tutorial
• Digging Tutorial

Items needed

Raw materials

Raw materials are consumed in the process of creating the item

• Clay
• Kindling
• Log, peat OR tar

Necessary tools

Necessary tools that are required to make the item

• Campfire, oven OR forge
• Steel and flint

Useful tools

Useful tools help improve the quality of an item, or complete incomplete items

• Wooden clay shaper
• wooden spatula
• Water(In pottery jar)
• Clay

Items covered in this tutorial

• Pottery bowl

  Pottery bowls can be used to cook, but they can also be used for a limited form of personal storage; those with cooking skill often use them to store and separate various foodstuffs grown from farming and various herbs found from foraging

• Pottery jar

  Pottery jars are used to store water, which can be drunk to reduce thirst, but is also used to improve various other items produced by pottery and blacksmithing. Flasks can also carry water, but far less, which is why jars are almost exclusively used for the task

• Pottery flask

  Pottery flasks can be used to store small items. They can store water, but jars store much more. They are best for storing small, unrelated items you may carry a lot of such as different coins

Creating pots

Making

1. Unless you have clay in your inventory you will need to locate a source of it.
   1. Clay is found on clay tiles, then dig that tile to add clay into your inventory to use.
      1. If you have a low Digging Skill, you cannot dig on slopes. If this effects you you should find a flat source of clay, or drop Dirt on the lower corners to raise them up and reduce slope. (See the Digging Tutorial for more info)
2. In your inventory you will have a Body icon. By clicking the '+' symbols you can expand it out to see the various parts, you will need to activate either your left or right hand by double-clicking on Body > (right or left) arm > hand.
3. With your hand active, right click the clay, Create > Containers > (select which container you want to make).
   1. If you want to improve the quality of your clay item now is the time. Examining it (right click, Examine) will tell you the current quality, damage and what items are required to improve it. If you activate those items, right clicking your clay item will give you an Improve option. If you fail to improve it you will damage it.
      1. IMPORTANT - You can no improve the clay item after they are turned into pottery items. You should Improve it before you make the pottery item.
4. Unless you have a kindling in your inventory you will need to make it. You will also need logs, peat or tar to fuel the fire once you have started it.
   1. Create Kindling from logs with a Carving knife. (See the Woodcutting Tutorial for more info).
5. Once you have a finished clay item you will need fire. You may use a forge, an oven or you will need to make a campfire. In either case you will need to fuel it shortly with logs or some other flammable material in your inventory such as peat or tar. If the fire goes out the process will not be completed
   1. If you have a forge or oven, activate your steel and flint, right click the forge and light it. This will consume your kindling, you will need to add fuel to it shortly or it will burn out.
   2. If you choose to make a campfire, find the tile you wish to make it on, activate your steel and flint, right click your kindling, Create > Container > Campfire. This will consume your kindling, you will need to add fuel to it shortly or it will burn out.
6. Right click, open your forge, oven or campfire. Drag the clay item from your inventory into it.
   1. You will now have to wait. Depending on the quality of the forge, oven or campfire as well as how brightly it burns (both can be seen by right click, Examine) this may take a longer or shorter period of time. Generally a forge is faster than a oven which in turn is faster than a campfire. Go do something else, like botanizing and foraging tiles for food.
7. Open the forge, oven or campfire again. If you see a pottery item instead of a clay item the process is complete, otherwise you can examine the clay bowl to see how hot it is. Clay items need to be glowing from heat before they are finished.

Using

Clay items

There are some uses to clay (i.e. not baked and turned into pottery) items:

• Adding: To add to a container, select the item you want to add from your inventory and drag it over over the container.

• Removing: To remove an item from a container, open it, select the item you wish to move and drag it outside of it into the rest of your inventory.

• Opening / Closing: In order to open a container to see how much it contains click the '+' symbol next to it, the items will appear below it and the symbol will become a '-'. In order to close it, click the '-', items within it will be hidden and the symbol will become a '+'.

• Filling: Walk up to a water source as though to drink. Activate your container, then on a water tile right click and select Fill. Your container now contains as much water as it can hold.

  You can fill it with any other liquids, such as lye and dye. It can only contain one type of liquid. If it has e.g. QL9 lye in it with room for more, you may only add lye on it, and it will mix with the lye already present - that means the QL is averaged. It can be used to mix dye colors (e.g. mix red and white dye to create pink).

• Drinking: If your jar contains water, Open your jar, On the water Right click > Drink. The weight of the water will be reduced and your thirst will be reduced.

• Improving: If an item requires water to be improved, find the water inside a container and activate it. Then on the item in question, right click and there should be an Improve option.

Pottery items

Once clay items are baked, they decay slower, but can't be improved or repaired anymore. In addition to all the above uses, pottery items can also be used to:

• Cooking: You can make hot food with a pottery bowl. Add things into your bowl and then put it into a oven, forge or campfire. For more detail see hot food cooking.

• Creating a compass: You can create a compass with a pottery jar, a needle and olive oil. See compass for details.

Hints & Tips

• Patience is a virtue. Clay items must be heated up a great deal, and unless you have a high quality Forge this will take some time... remember to keep it fueled or the fire will go out and you will have to start again.

• When you attempt an item at a low skill level you will often fail and have to start again, sometimes you will partially succeed and create an 'Unfinished item', where you have a choice... if you have the tools necessary to complete the item, or the time and resources to create them you can use those items to complete the unfinished item, if you can't or won't then your best bet is just to try over again. Completing unfinished items is not a waste of time though, items finally produced this way are of higher quality than items produced immediately

• If you want a pottery item of a specific quality you will need to improve it to that quality while it is still a clay item instead of a pottery one. This means you should improve it before you put it into the fire.