In vanilla, players often build separate stations: blast furnaces for ore, smokers for food, and rows of furnaces for everything else. Fast Smelt gives every cooking block and every smeltable item the same one-tick speed, so you can make your setup much smaller.
Deciding what to build
- Speed is no longer a reason to choose one block over another. Regular furnaces, blast furnaces, smokers and campfires all cook at the same rate.
- Regular furnaces are the most flexible choice. They accept every smeltable item, and with this pack they match the blast furnace and smoker in speed.
- Build blast furnaces or smokers only for looks or habit. They will not speed things up any further.
A compact layout
1. Place one or two regular furnaces near your storage.
2. Keep a chest of fuel next to them so refuelling is quick.
3. Add a campfire nearby if you want a fuel-free way to cook food.
4. If you automate with hoppers, connect them to a single furnace first. Hoppers move items at their own fixed pace, so the furnace will often be waiting for them rather than the other way around. Add more furnaces only if you notice items backing up.
Saving resources
Because one furnace now does the work of many, you spend less stone on large furnace arrays. Use those materials for other projects. This is especially useful early in a new world, when resources are scarce.