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Fire and fluids

Lava and water have always moved on their own. Now you can move them too: build right into them, carry them in a bucket, and pour them where you want them. And mind what lava does to anything made of wood.

Lava glows, breathes and bubbles now, with embers drifting up from it and a shimmer of heat over it, and torches and furnaces throw sparks (Effects and animation).

Building in lava and water

• Any solid block (stone, dirt, planks, glass, brick, deepstone...) goes into a tile of lava or water: it takes the fluid's place, as if the tile were open air.
• Lava and water hold a block up. Out in the open a new block needs something beside it to build against, and lava and water count. So you can fill a lake from its middle, or lay a bridge straight out across a lava lake.
• Not everything goes in. Torches, doors, furniture, stations, gates, the Home Stone and the defences (Home brick, Ironbound blocks, spikes...) keep their own rules: they never go into fluid. Put a plain block there first and build on that, or dig it out again and put them in the air.
• Lava and water themselves are not blocks you can put down. Carry them in a bucket.

The bucket

Made at an Anvil from 3 iron bars.

• Scoop: hold an empty bucket and right click water or lava that stands still (in reach): that one tile is gone, and you hold a Water bucket or a Lava bucket. Water or lava running from somewhere fills nothing (see below).
• Pour: right click open air, a plant or a fire with a full bucket: there is still water (or lava) there, and the bucket is empty again. Water poured on lava, or lava on water, makes basalt.
• The bucket stays in its place on your hotbar, full or empty, so you can scoop and pour, scoop and pour.
• A full bucket sells for what the bucket is worth: the water or lava in it sells for nothing.
• On a phone ACTION says SCOOP or POUR and uses the tile in front of you (tilt the stick up or down for the one above or below); with nothing in front for the bucket it does nothing at all. A tap on water or lava (or on open air, with a full bucket) uses the bucket where you tap.
• Where it will not: in towns and ports (down to 8 rows under the street: deeper down it works as anywhere); on ground someone else's Home holds; in dungeons; lava on the land a town grows back around it (water is fine there: the land grows back over it); lava within a tile of anyone, you included (it runs, and that close it runs into them); basalt where someone stands.
• What you pour is a build. On open ground it dries up 2 hours later, like anything else you build there. On your Home's land it stays.
• Lava you pour is yours. For 10 minutes it carries your name, and so does everything it flows into and every fire it lights. To another player it is your blow, by the same rules as your sword: with your PvP off (outside the Contested Wilds, and unless they attacked you first) it does them no harm at all, and it never touches your group. With PvP on it hurts them, it marks you as a hit would (orange for hurting someone who has PvP off), and a death in it is your kill: a murder, if they had PvP off. Your own lava hurts you as any lava does.
• On your own Home's land lava you pour (with a bucket, or with a spout of yours) carries no name: it is your Home's own, and burns whoever stands in it as the Deep's lava does, PvP or not. A visitor it gets loses nothing (on someone else's land a guest never does), and nobody is marked a murderer for it. Poured anywhere else, it is yours as above.
• Lava is fuel. In a furnace's fuel slot a Lava bucket smelts 12 items (charcoal smelts 8), and as its lava goes into the fire the empty bucket comes back to your bag. That holds while you are away too (a furnace keeps smelting for up to 2 hours), and a furnace broken with Lava buckets still in its fuel slot gives them back full.

Flowing and still

• Lava and water sit still until something opens beside them. Then they fall, and spread sideways from where they land: water up to 5 tiles, lava up to 4.
• What flows is fed by what it came from. Take the feed away (scoop it up, or put a block into it) and the flow dries up behind it, tile by tile, down a shaft and along the floor. Still water and still lava (lakes, the sea, the lava of the deep, anything poured from a bucket) never dry up.
• So to get rid of a flow, deal with where it comes from. To drain a pool, scoop its still water a tile at a time: each hole you make fills from the still water beside it (running water, which dries once no still water is left).
• Only still water and lava fill a bucket (or a flask): a flowing tile gives nothing. Scoop its source instead.
• A flow is still a flow after the server restarts: it does not turn into new still water.
• Lava and water keep to their own ground. Nothing flows onto a Home's land, lit or cold, or into an old plot still lapsing, from outside it: a stranger's water or lava stops at its edge, and your crops and torches stay dry. What is inside already (the cave's own, or what you pour on your own land) flows as it would anywhere, but only inside: it stops at the edge going out. Nor does anything flow into a town's ground, down to 8 rows under its street (see Homes and land); deeper under a town, lava and water flow as anywhere.
• Near a town, where the land grows back, lava under the ground runs when you open a block beside it, as anywhere (the land puts it back with the rest after a few minutes). It never comes up into the open air there.

Under water: your breath

• With your head under water you hold your breath: 20 seconds, shown by a bar under your life. In the air it comes back quickly. With none left the water takes 5% of your life a second until you come up, and armour does not help. Not in towns. (The Drowned Halls far below keep their own, harder rule: see The Drowned Halls.)
• The Diving helm (an Anvil: 4 iron bars and 4 glass) makes your breath last five times as long (100 seconds), there too; each + of its upgrade a little longer.
• For lava, wear the Emberward suit (an Anvil: 6 embersteel bars, 16 ember dust, 8 basalt): lava does you no harm and you swim in it (see Tools and elevators).

Lava on the move

• Lava burns its way through everything loose that grows in its path: grass, flowers, vines, roots, cobwebs, mushrooms and glowcaps, moss, bones, urns, stalagmites and stalactites, crystals, cactus, skyblooms, and what grows in the bands below. It flows on into them as into open air, and they are gone (nothing drops). A flow across a meadow no longer stops at the first tuft of grass.
• It runs 4 tiles sideways from where it lands, one more than it used to.
• It still stops at what is made: ladders, doors, chests, stations, emberwork, and anything kept as it was (a landmark's own stone). It takes a torch, as it always did.
• It never flows into a town's ground (down to 8 rows under the street), onto the land a town grows back round it, or onto a Home's land from outside it.
• It stops at a band's floor. In the Twenty, each band's lava stays in its band: lava that reaches the last row of a band cools there to basalt instead of pouring into the band below. The Ember Sea's lakes no longer run down a chimney through every band under them; lava that had already leaked below is gone (not what you carried down in a bucket and poured on a Home's land).
• So mind a lava pool at the edge of a meadow: more of it reaches the surface than it did, and where it meets wood, fire and water, there is fire, and basalt.

Fire

Lava sets alight what burns beside it, and anything that burns put down beside lava catches at once.

How long things burn, about:

• 1 second: cobwebs.
• 1.5 seconds: grass, flowers, skyblooms.
• 2 seconds: vines, roots, crops.
• 2.5 seconds: lantern moss, glowcaps, deep glowcaps.
• 3 seconds: leaves, pine needles.
• 3.5 seconds: a lever, a pressure plate (the wooden emberwork).
• 4 seconds: a ladder (only from a fire beside it, never from lava: see below).
• 5 seconds: a bed, a table, a chair, an armor stand, a weapon rack, a trophy mount, a giant mushroom cap, a drop-floor (the planks of emberwork's trapdoor).
• 6 seconds: planks, a bookshelf, a door, a giant mushroom stem.
• 7 seconds: wood, a deep bookcase.
• 9 seconds: a log.

• A burning block flickers for its time and is gone: nothing drops.
• A torch never burns, and a ladder catches only from a fire beside it, never from lava: light your way and climb past a lava pool as you always have. (Lava running into a torch's own tile still takes it.)
• What rests on something that burns burns with it: a lever on a burning wall, a plate or a table on a burning floor catches with it rather than drop off.
• Fire creeps to what burns beside it, most easily upwards (heat rises), hardly at all downwards, but it does not run far: it dies out within four steps of the lava that lit it. Leaves and grass catch quickly, wood slowly.
• A door burns whole, both halves, and its lock goes with it. What an armor stand, weapon rack or trophy mount held goes back to whoever put it there (or drops by it). A crop that burns is gone; the soil stays.
• Lava cannot run into a fire. It waits until the fire has burnt out, then flows on.
• Standing in fire hurts, about 12 life a second, and armour does not help. Grown standing in it are hurt too, except Grown of fire. A fire lit by lava someone poured is their blow to other players, as the lava is.
• Putting it out: water running into it, a Water bucket poured on it, or a block put into it (that smothers it). Rain (and storms) puts out a fire with nothing but sky above it within a moment, and ground under the open sky does not catch while it rains. Caves, roofs and the Deep stay dry.
• Fire never burns in towns and ports (down to 8 rows under the street), on the land a town grows back, in dungeons, or on anyone's held ground: a Home's land, lit or cold, and an old plot still lapsing. It does not spread into them either, so nobody's Home burns because a stranger poured lava at its edge, even after a lost raid. Chests, stations, gates, the Home Stone, the defences, and anything that cannot be dug, never burn anywhere.
• At most 600 fires burn in the whole world at once.

Tips

• Building near lava? Use stone, brick or basalt, not wood. A Water bucket by a wooden house is cheap.
• A flow you cannot stop from where you stand: find its still source and scoop it, or wall it in with one block.
• Lava buckets are worth carrying up from the Ember Sea: each one smelts 12 bars, and the bucket comes back for more.

See also Homes and land for what a Home's land holds, The Deep for the lava seas below, and Weather and cooking for when it rains.