The campfire burns down like a real one. About a quarter of the way through a lay, one stick sags and falls in, a couple go with it, and the rest follow. The fallen sticks burn shorter into the coals. Sticks you put on lean against the cone while it stands, and once it has fallen they are laid across the fire, fresh brown wood that blackens as it burns.
Its bed builds up as it burns. The more wood a fire has burned, the wider and ashier its bed of coals gets: black charcoal pieces with cracked grain, half-burnt stick ends and drifts of pale ash, glowing in a few spots by day and dimly through its cracks at night, graying over as the fire burns down and after it goes out. It carries over in saves and is the same for everyone in multiplayer.
The flames burn from the wood: each tongue rises from a stick or from the coals under the lay, narrow enough that you can see the bed through them. At night the fire lights the ground the way a real fire does, bright close to the flames and fading into darkness a few steps away, where it used to floodlight the whole camp, and thin wisps of smoke catch its light.
