So I have been looking into alternate fuel sources for my furnaces and in several places online its been suggested that Oil and Dry wood both have the longest burn time. However neither of these fuel sources seem to actually work when placed into furnaces. Is this an issue within the game? has something changed and the information I am finding no longer accurate? (Info I found was dated between March 25th and June 3rd). I also was unable to use these fuels in cauldrons as well. If this is by design then why does Oil have a “combustible” trait but seem to be unable to be used as such?
I use oil in furnaces and stove.
You put the fish in the fluid dispenser right? I know it’s a dumb question but oil works for many people.
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Yes I pressed the fish into oil. However when placing the resulting oil into furnaces it does not work. I do not know if it matters but I am using improved furnaces. I did find that I could use the oil in campfires but so far that is the only crafting station that seems to be able to use it as a fuel. As you alluded too I am attempting (Or was planning) to farm oil using a fishery as this seemed easier than looking for coal. As a bonus its been suggested that Oil has a longer burn time than coal.
I have not tried on the improved furnaces yet, did you try using oil on stoves or alchemy bench? Those work for me too. At least the first versions not the improved.
As for the farming, hell yea! At first you might find you don’t have enough so you put more fish traps, then all of a sudden you start getting way more than you are using. I have 18 fish traps give or take, and I don’t take any from them anymore. With 2 large chests full of oil, it takes a while to even burn a single stack.
Oil and dry wood work as fuel options in furnaces on our PS4 server. Yes, the unsavory fishes go into the fluid press for the best ratio of oil production. The other fish work too, but at a much worse ratio.
Can confirm it works. Been using it for ages on PC, started playing Xbox at release, using it ever since. We have a 200 trap fishery and we use it for oil, ichor, and fish strips. Then oil we use for furnaces, cauldrons, stove, and fires.
Use the blue fish for oil/ichor.
I didn’t know Oil worked as a fuel source.
This game blows my mind sometimes, always something new to learn.
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I play on Xbox and oil works in all my stations. So it’s probably something your doing or Maybe a bug in your server or download.
Totally Agree! It’s great how many different ways there are to make and use resources. I didn’t realise you could even squish the fishes to get oil until fairly recently, and that was a life saver!
You can also squish coal in fluid press to get tar, in case people don’t know. 
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oils is best fuel source by far. My clan use only oil in all crafting stations. Its so easy to get compared to the other fuel sources and it last a lot longer than everything else.
You can but it’s not efficient. I got a junglenroute that nets me around 3500 tar per 10 minute trip farming reptile hide and feline pelt.
Its really just a question as to whether you want to farm coal->tar or bark->tar. I had a small outpost right beside some coal nodes and it was immensely more convientant and efficient to turn it into tar than go off trying to get much bark.
Update: So after a little more playing around with this it seems that you have to remove any other fuel source from the crafting station (Furnace, Cauldron, ect.) before it will reflect a burn time for the new fuel. This includes burning off the last few seconds of other type of fuel currently being burned. The last part is what got me. I was taking the coal out and replacing it with oil but there was still a few seconds of burn time left on the coal and it effectively made it seem as if putting oil in the furnace wasn’t doing anything. Thanks to everyone for the feedback though. I think its really great how helpful this community is.
Yes you have to remove other fuel sources, and let the current fuel run out.
You can use oil for fuel in every machine except the dryer and tannery, which both take bark.
Its really a world of difference. You couldn’t get enough coal to make it even 1/4 as efficient in the 10 minutes I can harvest bark and hides. You’ll also have multiple oil presses running without the use of any named thralls.
Coal is kind of obsolete, I haven’t mined coal in half a year lol.
Tanning hides amd pelts generates leather and tar. Use the leather or trash it. Save the tar to make steelfire or many other items.
The only drawback here is you need ample bark for fuel in the tanner.
LOL me too, I thought it was OIL as in cooking oil not as fuel, but google says fish oil or vegetable oil can be used as power source/fuel.
Now all the more reason that I want FISHTRAP to work properly and decay longer for people that live far from water. Because my base is a bit far from water but everytime I put fishtraps they always despawn because I didn’t visit them regularly/everyday.
Are you clustering 6+ fishtraps in a row? It’ possible that if you are not, they may be suffering from having the shortened decay timer.