Salem

When you're out and abouts coaling, there is a chance to get a "Psychotic Episode" known as the "all-consuming flame", if you want to avoid bursting up in flames or the flame eating all of your buckets and other wooden things in your inventory (had a bad experience with this), I suggest you just shift click it into your backpack.
The backpack is treated as a different inventory (my guess anyway) and the fire will not find anything to burn and will die.

Now I personally have been thinking it was just super handy, but have come to think it might be a bug. thoughts?

Its likely intentional but I'm sure JC can change it to spread to your backpack if you want him to.

I was without backpack once and had to dump all my coals on the ground only to pick them later with 500 clicks =(((

As crule as JC can be he is not out to ruin our lives. Most of the psychotic episodes are just to make sure people keep an eye on what they are doing and to help prevent botting ^.^

Lusewing wrote:As crule as JC can be he is not out to ruin our lives. Most of the psychotic episodes are just to make sure people keep an eye on what they are doing and to help prevent botting ^.^

But that doesn't stop anyone from botting at all....

Dallane wrote:

Lusewing wrote:As crule as JC can be he is not out to ruin our lives. Most of the psychotic episodes are just to make sure people keep an eye on what they are doing and to help prevent botting ^.^

But that doesn't stop anyone from botting at all....

yea I don't understand how this flame stops botting, if you can remove it this easily

Nah, I recall some serious losses when I came back from a break due to this mechanic. At this point, who cares anyway. Back to the point, yes I think the backpack also should burn.

It isn't botting if I start collecting a coal clamp and tab out.

The justification I've heard for adding these insanity events, was so that people who play a lot have some extra work to do.
Whilst its super annoying to lose your steel shovel, I do think it's kinda fun that I have to go whittle some wood, or smoke some tobacco.
And even though a Bi-effect of this has been less people afk'ing in Boston, I personally find it highly unlikely that it was added to stop botting.
Because there are a lot of things that would work better to stop botting, whilst this doesn't really stop botting, but forces people to improve their bots.

And to address the fact that "JC isn't a complete monster" I am fairly certain that JC would implement some boogie man that would eat you when you went to sleep with a cursed teddy bear, and this would ofc permanently kill you. He just hasn't gotten there yet.

So I think the backpack thing is more of an oversight than a easy way out for us, because JC wouldn't leave tears un-claimed. I mean they're implementing meat spoilage, MEAT spoilage! so it is not like they are trying to make the game easy.

It's not a bug; but it's easy to avoid.

Just wait 36-48 hours before collecting coal from finished piles.

I have been hit 3x... but always from 'fresh' piles... never from older ones.

Also noticed you are more likely to get 'hit' from fresh piles if you attempt to collect more than 100+ coal in any one attempt. Besides... if you do get hit... you'll dump less on the ground moving smaller quantities.

(I get this might not be a problem if your Sparks/Ember prof (that provides bonus to coal yield) is <300 ... but something to keep in mind down the road.)