A blast charge is a placeable excavation explosive. It can be lit by flint and steel, adjacent fire or lava, or an adjacent cell already in the powered machinery graph. The following are abstract crafting-grid recipes in the game.
Craft the parts
- Blast powder: Coal / sulfur / mineral salt in one row produces four powder.
- Blast charge: oak plank / powder / oak plank; powder / powder / powder; oak plank / powder / oak plank. It uses four oak planks and five powder and produces one charge.
- Flint and steel: iron ingot / basalt in one row produces one tool.
These recipe outputs have IDs above 500, so the current crafting matcher requires their exact ingredient types. Use actual Coal for powder and actual Oak planks for the charge; the usual charcoal or alternate-plank substitutes from older recipes do not apply. Sulfur and mineral salt occur in underground deposits generated in newer worlds. An old world's existing terrain does not gain every new deposit just because the game was updated.
Ignite by hand
Place the charge, select flint and steel, aim at the charge, and right-click. The placed block becomes a primed entity with a 3.5-second simulation fuse. Move away immediately. The normal hand-ignition routine does not provide a safe/unprime toggle.
Terrain excavation reaches roughly 4.6 blocks from the blast center. Damage can reach bodies within roughly 7 blocks, subject to the routines' visibility rules for the player, animals, and residents. Do not use the edge of the terrain crater as a safe standing distance. The charge also affects nearby companion bodies. Test excavation away from homes, animals, other players' builds, and your own storage.
A remote lever trigger
- Place a charge at the excavation target.
- Lay a copper-conduit route ending in a cell with a face touching the charge. The charge does not need to be part of the conductor path itself.
- Put a lever in the only route from a coal dynamo to the conduit. Leave the lever off while building.
- Put the control point comfortably more than seven blocks from the charge. The circuit can span up to 64 connection steps from the dynamo, within its overall graph limit.
- Add Coal to the dynamo, move to the remote control point, and toggle the lever on.
- Adjacent powered cells are checked periodically, so the automatic ignition may wait up to about a second before starting the normal 3.5-second fuse. A delay is not proof the charge is safe to approach.
Avoid running another powered branch around the lever. Adjacent actual fire or lava can also prime a charge regardless of your intended switch state.
Chain reactions and aftermath
A nearby charge inside the excavation radius is primed with a shorter chain fuse rather than simply disappearing. Separate charges from the rest of your workshop and do not arrange a test beside a store of spare charges.
The blast removes many ordinary terrain and building blocks, creates effects, and drops some physical debris. It is not guaranteed to recover every destroyed block. Obsidian, basalt, water, lava, and the lowest protected world layer are excluded from ordinary charge removal. A blast can damage settlement property and count as an incident with its own consequences.
Primed charges and their remaining fuses are saved. Saving and reopening the world does not turn a primed charge back into a safe inventory item. Inspect a test site's surroundings before lighting it; once the fuse has begun, treat it as live.
Exact crafting patterns
One item per occupied grid slot. A dot is an empty slot. Outputs and ingredient counts below come from the current crafting definitions.