Well I'm clearly doing something wrong, I can't find coal anywhere...

You need to put 10 wood in. Putting only one wont work.

 

As of now in the latest update, you can smelt Unrefined Wood to get Coal. The ratio goes 10 / 1.
From my own roughly 80 hours of game time, Moon planets are laced with coal compared to their more visually stunning counterparts.

So do this:
1. Get some wood to smelt.
2. Fly to the closest moon planet.
3. Get a surplus of coal to keep your ship from screaming " FEED ME " when dilly dallying about your daily space life.

Hope this helped.

 

BAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!

Okay, sorry to laugh but that's really funny. xD

Anyway, if I were you, I would start a new character. Chances are that you probably haven't gotten very far on that planet anyway. If you really want to keep that character, then you're just going to have to save and save and prey that you don't end up on another coal-less planet lol.

 

I was having the same issue, then I started mining more methodically, and using my torches VERY sparingly. I ended up with a nice stack of coal, although it did feel like work, it was very satisfying. Even with the new wood to coal mechanic, I'm still branch mining for coal, and finding it's not quite as rare as I had thought, unless they plumped the spawn rate a bit last patch.

 

no you should be able to use the regular furnace. you need 10 wood for 1 coal though.

 

Coal is still super rare, comparatively. I get enough to keep me in the sky, but only by scouring every planet I visit. :/

 

you can smelt 10 wood in a furnace to get 1 coal. they didnt completely take wood out as a fuel source, it just cant be used for a 1:1 exchange anymore. it is now 10:2 exchange for fuel. but you get a lot of wood from a forest, which as far as i know you ALWAYS start on. i cleared a planet of trees yesterday and got over 8000 wood. as for the wood in furnace not smelting, its only certain ones. like certain "Unrefined Wood" that looks slightly different from the other that i have been smelting will not smelt. not sure if that is a bug(which seems likely) or if it was intended that certain colors of unrefined wood cant be smelted

 

I can't find iron ore to save my life. Spent 3 hours scouring my starting planet and ended up with 14; obviously some balancing is still needed

 

You'll want to smelt wood or otherwise make sacrifices to Nuffle before creating a new character.

 

I am using the basic furnace for melting wood but it is expensive it cost 10 wood for 1 coal!

 

So, I decided to go to the planet you're stuck on to see if you truly are shit out of luck on Coal. You aren't. Within 15 minutes (granted this was with the speed of a Diamond Drill) I found 172 coal: http://puu.sh/5MYTr.jpg, an underground miniature city, and an underground bone biome with a few Diamond Ores.

You simply aren't exploring. To start you off, dig straight down between the two torches in my screenshot (which is at the camp 2 seconds to the right of spawn) for a single cluster of 35 Coal.

 

Not everyone digs down though. So it would be hard for him to know exactly were the coal is.

 

I normally don't either, I've just normally found good stuff to be near points of interest such as that camp, so I picked a spot and dug down. The cache of coal was connected to the natural cave system seen in the screenshot, so it could have been found that way as well. I then proceeded to explore cave systems and other points of interest like normal and found much more.

 

Also just a question but is 172 coal enough to leave the system? I know you probably had more but its just a question.

 

Yes, 1 Coal provides 2 fuel. With 172 Coal he would have enough fuel to leave the system he's on and hop between quite a few planets in a new system.

 

10 wood in the stone smelter will give you 1 coal. Hopefully that helps.

 

Using wood in the past updates spoiled me :/.

 

Well with my planet ive got a fairly decent amount of ores but most of it underground is replaced with gold platinum and diamonds

 

I still have problems finding coal.