How valuable is it? I can imagine dwarfs, sorcerers, or even other wizards making elaborate drowning traps for valuable statues.
In version .32 it has [MATERIAL_VALUE:1]. I raised it to 10 for good measure.
Oddly, they don't appear in the list of statues in Fortress Mode, even when they're accessible. It's dangerous to harvest such an item. In the arena, I dropped a red wizard into the water (he died with a burst of steam and left a fire statue behind), then spawned a swimmer to get the statue:
As soon as I picked it up my hand started to melt, so I dropped it and let the bleeding stop.
I carried on through my fat burning away and made it out of the water. I dropped then statue and looked at it, it was abnormally dense but otherwise normal enough. I grabbed it again, intending to use it as a weapon, but it disappeared, leaving me with only this:
It didn't seem to burn anything, not even the slugman whose face I grabbed with the fire covered hand. When I went into the water again, the fire disappeared.
Observations:
- Items that spawn with a hot fixed temperature in water neither ignite nor affect the temperature of the area around them, yet they are still hot when picked up
- Such items lose stability when interacted with outside the water
- Standing on the item does not transfer heat
Edit: It's as though water can't "douse" the "magic fire" but can only keep it confined to one shape. Additional experiments yielded similar results. I think lowering the heat damage point for the fire material will make the item fade away over time, even in water.