Cellar/Draft
Cellars are a type of room that is used to preserve food or ripen cheese by setting the temperature of the room to 5°c and slowing down spoilage. Cellars can only be constructed by stone, soil, ceramic, or ore.
Construction
Cellars must be formed using the following block types:
- Stone
- Soil
- Ceramic
- Ore
The size of the cellar cannot exceed 9 blocks in length, 7 blocks in width, and 7 blocks in height (9x7x7). The volume within the room cannot exceed 150 blocks. For maximum space efficiency it is better to make the room rectangular or a cube as the volume is checked as a rectangular bounding box. This means an irregularly shaped cellar would be checked as if it was a rectangular to determine its volume, and thus may have more volume than intended.
Effectiveness
Cellars are more effective when constructed underground where no block is exposed to sunlight. If the cellar is constructed with other types of blocks not suitable for a cellar then the effectiveness will decrease depending on the amount of legal and illegal blocks used to create the cellar.
If the temperature outside the cellar falls below 5°c then that temperature will be used instead.
Penalties
The effectiveness of the cellar is reduced a maximum of 40% based on the amount of blocks exposed to air This means cellars created underground is more effective than one created above the ground. This penalty is reduced based on the number of exposed and unexposed blocks to create the room using the following formula:
Number of exposed blocks / (Number of exposed block + Number of unexposed blocks)
This means that as less blocks are exposed to sunlight the more the penalty is reduced and larger cellars are less affected by exposed blocks. Any cellar completely underground has this penalty negated.
Here is a table of examples showing how this penalty is adjusted based on exposure:
| Exposed Blocks (#) | Unexposed Blocks (#) | Reduced Penalty (%) | New Exposure Penalty (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 4 | -17% | 33% |
| 0 | Any number | -100% | 0% |
| 10 | 50 | -83% | 6.8% |
40% for each other type of block used. This means that if 3 other blocks of the wrong type are used then the room ceases to be a cellar.
Any blocks may be used to create a cellar, but some blocks are more effective in use for cellars. Blocks in the stone, soil, ceramic, or ore classes are the best insulators, and will each add 1 to the cooling block total. The one exception being farmland which gives 3 to the non-cooling block total, as do trapdoors. Airtight doors add 3 per block of space they occupy when open and 1 per block when closed to the non-cooling block total. The game creates the cooling score by dividing the non-cooling block total by the cooling block total and capping the number at 1, for 100%.
Protip:
Because of the way the game searches for insulating walls, any blocks built inside the cellar that have a full face and that aren’t insulating will lower your score! So make sure that if you’re going to build walls, platforms, or shelving to hold things like barrels and vessels that you build them out of insulating materials, or you use the chisel to make them no longer count as solid walls! Open doors count against your score more than any other kind of block as well so make sure to use doors sparingly and to keep them closed whenever possible. |
As a result, the most effective cellars are made of highly insulating blocks (stone, soil, ceramic or brick, ore) and are closed with airtight doors.
Food Preservation
The main use of cellars is for food preservation, however cellars reduce the rate of spoilage for any good stored inside whether it is a food or not. This reduced rate of spoilage stacks with container types, so placing storage vessels and sealed crocks into a cellar can drastically extend the shelf-life of any food inside them.
When calculating how fast food will spoil in a cellar, the game first creates a cellar effectiveness score, which starts at 100%. Up to 40% can be deducted based on the skylight score (that is, the amount of sunlight the cellar receives), and up to 50% can be deducted based on the cellar's cooling score.
The air temperature inside the cellar will never be greater than the air temperature outside. When the effectiveness of the cellar is 100%, the air temperature will cap at 5°C. Otherwise the game will calculate air temperature inside the cellar based on the effectiveness score and skylight score, in addition to how much sunlight is in the container block being affected.
Protip:
Because there is no minimum size for a cellar, burying a vessel in a cube of soil is an extremely effective way of preserving food early-game. Just dig out the top block or a side block to access it, then replace it to seal it again. Make sure the vessel is surrounded on every side by a cooling block and never build with anything transparent or you won’t get the full bonus! |
Cheese Ripening
Cellars can also used to ripen cheese, by lowering its perish rate until it can ripen before it spoils. Cheese can only ripen when placed onto a shelf with a perish rate of 0.5x or lower. Cheddar does not have to be made in a cellar and can be made outside if it is cold enough, while blue cheese must be made in a special kind of open-air cellar with at least one open exit and the shelf must have a sunlight level below 2. This special open-air cellar will not count as an ordinary room, so it will not get the normal bonus for cooling. Blue cheese still needs to be ripened with a perish rate of 0.5x or lower, however, so blue cheese can only be ripened when it is cold enough outside to lower the perish rate to the necessary level.
Protip:
Remember if you’re trying to build an open-air cellar for ripening blue cheese, /debug rooms hi will always show those as red, but you can fill in the hole before using the command to check and make sure that it counts as a room, and then dig out the hole to make it open-air again. Placing the shelf as far away from the hole as possible and including a long and/or twisty corridor to get in and out of the cellar can help keep sunlight low as well. |
