Go to either the black forest on val or the red forest on crys isles and use a wyvs/crystal wyvs wing flap attack and youll get tons of charcoal. U can also burn a ton of wood in an indus forge

Burn wood in industrial forge for fast charcoal

Go to gen 1 volcano with a trusty Dino and a megatherium that took you ages to find and hit all the trees and you should get some charcoal (u[p so more people can see)

If there is a part of the map that is charred or a lava area there are trees that drop charcoal

Use more than 100 campfire and put 100 woods for each

Now you make air pollution for ark

Don't discard in early game. Later on it can be used for many things, including gunpowder.

Go to the red forest on Crystal isles, or any charcoal forest and use the stryder on the trees, you get 6k-9k charcoal per tree

If you are on Rag then go break the trees in the volcano area and bam you have several thousand charcoal

For ragnarok go to the volcano and gather charcoal from the burnt trees

Best way to farm this late game is use tek gauntlets on the charcoal trees on crystal I was getting 600+ per hit on smalls