Awakening townsfolk not eating prepared food? Also, Resturaunt requirements?

[Uratoh]

I've actually already built a 'base' resturaunt, with the Dining Room and Simple Kitchen, but can I expand the kitchen and make it 'not' a simple kitchen, but some other kind, while retaining Resturaunt status?

And how do I make my townsfolk actually eat all the food that's been generously prepared for them and stored in the kitchen box instead of waking up in the building thats right next to the restu, running out to the field, getting a strawberry, running back, and eating it in the restu? they're clearly not 'seeing' the stuff.

[lilisaur]

Can't change the kitchen type. Only Simple Kitchen works. Anything else elimintates the Restaurant combo. NPC behavior is no different with or without, and in fact cooks will generate a bit more gratitude in upgraded kitchens like Agricultural Kitchen. But you'll be missing the specific background audio when nearby though, and no icon on your minimap if you use a different type.

Consider moving some food from the chest to Simple Supper Sets on Dining Tables in the Dining Room. NPCs will preferentially eat in a Dining Room if there's food on the plates and bowls on the tables (and the path to the seat isn't blocked by walls). They next select from a chest, but only if there's more than 5 of a given food. Then they'll scavenge the fields. So it sounds like the Dining Room is vacant and not enough of certain types of food in the chest. Villager NPCs who cook (wearing red or an apron - not the blue vests), will occasionally move food to tables for you (as will later NPC types like Dancer), but Lillian's the only one you start with so you might have to lend a hand until you get another cook. (Easier at Furrowfield when you had Saffron cooking and delivering to tables as well.) I've you've got 20 food, best to split it 4 plates of 5 each than 1 plate of 20.

Also, not clear if NPCs run through the kitchen, or through the Dining Room. I always set it up such that Bedroom (like a Farmer's Lodge) connects to Dining Room. Might make a difference to how the NPCs behave.

[Uratoh]

They don't run through either, they just run right past the door to the ensemble. I manually stuck food in the table setups and they all rushed that in the morning, so the problem is 'NPCs are not putting food in the tables'. I've got Lillian and another red villager, neither of them seem to show any interest in it. gonna move a bunnyfolk over and see if they care.

[lilisaur]

And more than 5 of a food in the chest? I see them move things like Sweeties often early in the game. Unless your chest only has five of them, they should be moving them to table periodically, unless there's some obstacle in the way. Clearly your up to the point of having Babs - shes another I know that both cooks and delivers to tables (Dancers just deliver I think)

[Uratoh]

Yeah, I've beaten the main story. for some reason, they're just not transferring the food, the box is full of like 50+ cooked foods, etc. I can put it in myself just fine and it's great, which will last a few days, but I'd like to figure out what's going wrong here @_@. Is there any way to share a steam image in a discussion so I can show my setup?

[Uratoh]

I found the problem. I was using the 'Bread Basket' item for the dining sets, and for whatever reason the NPCs don't recognize it as 'put food here'. I replaced them with Simple Supper Sets and they're sticking food in properly now.

[lilisaur]

That makes sense. Builder can put food into Bread Basket but NPCs won't. I thought they still ate from things like this but maybe not. I'll have to check the numbers after a few games days on my main island to see if they decrease.

[Uratoh]

They did EAT food from it if I put some in myself, but they won't put food into the bread baskets themselves, to clarify.

[BoxingBud]

Sometimes they do sometimes they don't still years later. Even within the boundaries of the land etc etc. the games ambitious and great but the player should have more control over the AI, no one starves to death etc so the game is not harder or easier with more direct AI control