your pickup radius should exceed the fire area such that if food falls in the fire from the cooking rack, you can just drive by and collect it. I have this problem all the time with my current kitchen. As for the cauldron, this sounds like your smoke isn't vented properly. I have not had any trouble with it at all,: the cauldron does not block smoke and make it do anything other than go straight up.
cooking fires and smoke should not kill you even if you are not eating at home. But I can't recommend enough eating at least 1 food at home, whether its just lizard tail or grilled deer, honey, jerky, or other total crap. The difference is that you don't heal without at least a little something, so slow attrition of smoke etc can get you over time.

Never have taken damage or died using the cauldron.. you can bring it very close to the edge of the fire towards you I mean.. I'm nowhere near my hearth when I'm using is..

Fire sources create smoke "objects" (a bubble that is just under a meter in diameter) that determine where smoke is seen and where smoke damage is taken. Each bubble floats up at a certain rate and can be redirected/constrained by construction objects and other smoke objects. The fire source cannot create another smoke object if there is an existing one in the way and will briefly snuff itself out if it goes too long without being allowed to create more smoke (it will immediately re-light once it's able to do so, but you're without fire benefits in the meantime).

This makes it possible to create safe smoke chambers without any kind of venting. The trick is in designing it to be able to hold enough smoke that smoke objects will despawn as quickly as they're being created without backing up so much that they get in the way of the fireplace staying lit (or spilling out and becoming a hazard). To make sure you never see the smoke trying to puff out of the box, create a second set of walls and floors inside it that is a half-meter from the surface in question.

In my case, I usually just add an extra two-meter space above each level of my house/keep, with holes on the underside for the fire sources to smoke into and walled spaces for stairs to run through.

Next time I have time to hop onto a server where I have finished construction work, I'll take some screenshots of what I mean.

Any good suggestions for setting up the cauldron such that there is no chance of turning into a gravestone from smoke while you're cooking? There seems to be a fine line between "Too Far" and potentially dead. At least that's the case the way I set things up, just dropping the cauldron on top of, and near the edge of a hearth.

Then there's the food on the rack. Too far away and the food falls into the fire. Too close and you're a gravestone if you're not careful.

I don't remember ever having issues with the cauldron. You're using hearth with it, correct? I think the smoke spawns at the center point of the hearth, so as long as the cauldron or something else is not directly on top of it, it should be ok...

I wouldn't doing anything in the game when you have 25 HP though. It's just too easy to go that way, for any reason. Fall damage, fire, smoke, obliterator(?), magical radiation, greylings... Being a home-viking even in meadows can be dangerous. :p

Ok, back to square one. It was a simple aesthetic and visual tricks.

Originally posted by Ghevd:

45 degree roof pieces hidden inside the chimney. One a few blocks higher than the other and staggered placement.

Should be enough room for smoke to vent and enough cover to block the rain.

Chimney will have to be wider than what is seen in video since that's a furnace.

I'll give a try to this, on paper it's a good idea. Hope it work.

Thank you all.

Edit: It was raining when I start the game, and yeah, the 45° rooftop work well.
Now I have to modify all of my chimney

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936339242
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936339255

This one works too but it's weird :P
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936339306

you can move the smoke over, such that the chimney needs no roof.
what you do for that is put roof tiles above the fire, the 45 degree ones (important) and it will shift the smoke towards the top of the roof tile, over one. Then you can go straight up and have no roof, because the fire isn't under the rain anymore. You can use this to condense a 2 tile smoke from hearth to 1 tile as well, but it may need a little TLC to avoid smokeout.

also: the oven burns without anything inside it and is not put out by rain. you can do it this way instead, but a real home is gonna need a hearth/fire to cook with at some point and hearth gives the wanted comfort too.

many (most??) online builds used cheating to get there, from rotation of parts that isn't allowed to integrity changes and more. Its not always easy to tell.

Is your goal just a look? Or a working home?

If you want actual utility together with aesthetics, you could use the hanging or standing braziers. They emit enough smoke to have it needed vented out, and especially the hanging brazier you can place inside your home in blind spots which may not be covered by the hearth or hot tub. This is relevant for maintaining the resting state as well as getting dry as soon as possible if required.

As an example, I'm thinking about putting a brazier somewhere on my second floor so I can have a fire near me even when I'm using the stairs or staying in corners which are sadly out of reach by the hot tub and the hearth all the way in the back.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936342843

The baking oven seems to burn through wood much faster than the tub or hearth, so I wouldn't keep that fueled to perpetuity, or at least I'd advise thinking twice before you do.

Originally posted by haut/bas:

Ok, back to square one. It was a simple aesthetic and visual tricks.

Originally posted by Ghevd:

45 degree roof pieces hidden inside the chimney. One a few blocks higher than the other and staggered placement.

Should be enough room for smoke to vent and enough cover to block the rain.

Chimney will have to be wider than what is seen in video since that's a furnace.

I'll give a try to this, on paper it's a good idea. Hope it work.

Thank you all.

Edit: It was raining when I start the game, and yeah, the 45° rooftop work well.
Now I have to modify all of my chimney

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936339242
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936339255

This one works too but it's weird :P
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2936339306

Smoke doesn't need to vent if there is enough space for it to dissipate, and those fireplaces are at least close to having enough space, so you could probably cap them with whatever you wanted.

My standard large fireplace is two hearths next to each other with somewhere around 3-high 2x4 stone walls surrounding it, with stone floor blocks to cap it off. That completely seals it so no bats can get in, yet provides enough space above for the smoke to dissipate.

It looks like your first two fireplaces are similar, but 1 block shorter, which might still be enough.

I just deal with the smoke.

The thing at 3:50 is a smelter or blast furnace inside a house, and a fire hazard.

Originally posted by Rhapsody:

The thing at 3:50 is a smelter or blast furnace inside a house, and a fire hazard.

correct all thats done is they have progressed to blast furnace or smelter and raised it up in side the house so it sticks out the top... can be done just as easy with stone floors without using iron... But to put a chimney over a hearth to cook on .. not gunna work , this just aesthetically looks like a chimney from out side and provides a comfort bonus. but no cooking.

It's probably pretty noisy as well, and needs to be fed with not just coal but also metal to fire up.

This is why I don't usually look on YT for ideas on what to make. That video in particular just shows pretty-looking things which may or may not actually do anything useful, all the while not showing the construction process, or how to acquire materials for them (probably spawned with console in this case). Not to judge, but the purpose of these type of videos seems to be to attract clicks and views and little else. Might be a fun thing to watch, but poor thing to learn anything from.

You'll learn more by doing things yourself, including failing at things, or finding a video channel or guide which does things your way instead of showing "10 cool things you can do" kinda content.

heres some of my chimneys one has hearth on ground floor and smelterBlast furnace above using same chimney (yes a lot of work:-) )

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2005827551389513492/E5850E07A66AB3C9B8FA93865B0B8115CCA4B87D/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2005827551389515753/D20D25E7D6EE63395103BDE62F5D1C4CBAA16605/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2005827551389517354/AD6FC1F13B9C834D900FE725281E777753CE9A24/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2005827551389526296/9C63B05BB3118D592398A9887BEA5281B98FD32E/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2005827551389529154/0CAF8F159DCF71F3063FA016F5DC8453D0EC5892/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/2005827551389533221/40B43377111F68AE21E20C71140BAFF3B30D9ADF/?imw=5000&imh=5000&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=false

45 degree roof pieces hidden inside the chimney. One a few blocks higher than the other and staggered placement.

Should be enough room for smoke to vent and enough cover to block the rain.