F1 help ought to cover smoking

[PALU]

The changes to smoking of food has made it quite a chore to perform, which is probably a reflection of the reality, but, more importantly, is quite impenetrable to players. There's really a need to explain both how much wood you need to use, how often you need to repeat the burning, as well as for how long you need to do it. None of these steps are intuitively obvious to people not familiar with smoking, and even those who are may well know how to use it as a means of cooking (for immediate/near term consumption) rather than a means of long term preservation.

[Plotinus]

at least ten firewood or 50 branches once a day, if you skip a day you can put twice as much to make up for it, but try not to skip too many days.

[Plotinus]

i'm not sure the F1 should give the exact numbers, it should be more like "Light the fireplace once a day with enough wood that the fire stays actively burning for over an hour."

[Sami]

The changes to smoking of food has made it quite a chore to perform, which is probably a reflection of the reality, but, more importantly, is quite impenetrable to players. There's really a need to explain both how much wood you need to use, how often you need to repeat the burning, as well as for how long you need to do it. None of these steps are intuitively obvious to people not familiar with smoking, and even those who are may well know how to use it as a means of cooking (for immediate/near term consumption) rather than a means of long term preservation.

Hear, hear. All the practical information of these can be found from the news.txt, but that's not the most friendly source - at least for beginners - during the gameplay.
We've now added SMOKING and FIREPLACE game encyclopedia entries, of which SMOKING is highlighted in the cookery menu Smoking option.
We aren't likely to give exact numbers of many firewoods to burn, but it's stated that to keep fire burning for 3-4 hours equals to proper heating, and for smoking a daily warming is preferred. This is largely copy & pasting the news.txt entries with few edits.

[PALU]

Great to hear!

I'm not sure a burning duration is that much of a help, though. The character probably would have a feel for how much firewood that would require, but most players probably won't, and thus would have to personally have to experiment to find out what the characters would already know (or look up tips like those provided by Plotinus). Thus, I would suggest providing a suggested firewood range, so it still wouldn't be a set amount (essentially translating 3-4 hours into the required amount of firewood, while still retaining the time as a reference/education).
Something along the lines of "setting a fire to run for 3-4 hours using around X-Y pieces of firewood."

[Plotinus]

Maybe as a compromise it could say "You can look at the fireplace with F3 to see how long the fire will burn"