SMELTING
Smelting, also known as melting, baking, cooking, burning, and producing, is a method of producing refined goods in Minecraft. It has the same idea as crafting; one must put in acceptable ingredients, and a corresponding output will be given. However, smelting utilizes furnace blocks, which have a unique interface: one "input" field for the object that will be heated, one field for the fuel, and one "output" field for the final smelted product. For example, two saplings (fuel) could be used to smelt one wood (input) into one charcoal (output). To smelt something, an input material and a fuel must be loaded into the furnace. It will begin to smelt on its own and will continue to work if the menu is closed and the player leaves. When the furnace begins to smelt, it will consume one piece of fuel and the fire gauge will fill up. As the input smelts, the fire gauge will slowly recede until it is gone, and then the next piece of fuel will be used. If there is no more fuel left, the furnace will be interrupted and the current item being smelted will be left raw. However, if fuel is burning and runs out of input, the fire gauge will continue to burn down, wasting the burn time left. Once the fire gauge is out, no more fuel will be used. As things smelt, an arrow icon represents the cooking process. Each smelting operation takes 10 seconds and the progress will be shown on the arrow. If the furnace runs out of fuel before the arrow is filled up, then the input will not be smelted and the process will have to be repeated. When the arrow fills up completely, one input item will be put into the output field as an output item. If the player leaves a furnace while it is smelting and travels so far that the chunks unload, the smelting process will halt until the player returns. Smelting will also pause if one leaves the dimension the furnace is located in. If the player sleeps in a bed while a furnace is smelting, the furnace's progress will be the same as if the bed had not been used and no additional time had passed. This is because when a player sleeps in a bed, no time actually passes. Instead, the game sets the time of day to morning.