pro-tip: coolers can keep your food fresh without electricity

[ambi]

i just stumbled on a camp site next to the river near west point, and it had a cooler.

https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Cooler

i'm about three weeks into the game, and the cooler had FRESH ham. highly unusual. my guess is that the cooler can slow down the rotting process. every other perishable food that i've found is rotten.

so if or when you find yourself without electricity, collect coolers to keep your perishables.

[sokolov]

Pretty sure you just caused the camp to spawn in with the items by going into the cell for the first time, coolers actually don't do anything right now other than being fancy storage.

[Pherdnut]

Also ham takes a pretty long time to rot even outside of a fridge.

[stevasaur]

Originally posted by Sokolov:

Pretty sure you just caused the camp to spawn in with the items by going into the cell for the first time, coolers actually don't do anything right now other than being fancy storage.

This. There were a few other world events that would spawn inexplicably-fresh perishables in earlier versions of Beta 41 (like the birthday party house with fresh cake weeks into the apocalypse).

Most of them were caught and fixed, but it sounds like you found a fairly rare camping event that not enough people encountered/reported.

[Gargoyle's Bite]

The camping event seems to spawn the food in fresh regardless of when you find it. Currently the coolers don't do anything at all other than storage, there's a mod that adds ice packs and makes the coolers usable however.

[admos]

Originally posted by miss shapiro:

i just stumbled on a camp site next to the river near west point, and it had a cooler.
https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Cooler
collect coolers to keep your perishables.

Bad advice, currently, as coolers don't keep food fresh.
Maybe they'll change that in the future if ice is added in the cooler, though.

You found a bugged encounter, congratulations, hopefully it gets fixed!

[ambi]

damn, that sucks. i was going to go on an expedition to find more coolers lol

[Raven78uk]

There is a mod on workshop which makes them chill items like fridge.

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by admos:

Originally posted by miss shapiro:

i just stumbled on a camp site next to the river near west point, and it had a cooler.
https://pzwiki.net/wiki/Cooler
collect coolers to keep your perishables.

Bad advice, currently, as coolers don't keep food fresh.
Maybe they'll change that in the future if ice is added in the cooler, though.

You found a bugged encounter, congratulations, hopefully it gets fixed!

Yep, coolers dont work, however, those encounters are actually not bugged.
They are and were deliberately so afaik. Basicly you stumbled upon a camp of survivors whom were freshly devoured. So their stuff is yours.
You can find this way, fish, rice(in cooking pot), ham, and a few other fresh food.
It is similar to the birthday party encounter where you can find fresh cakes. (Of course these encounters get a bit funny the later you encounter them in the game. So encountering a birthday party event 8 months after you started the game is always a lucky strike:D)

To Miss Shapiro, if you are unsure about something check the pzwiki, the forum, test it out, and then ask if still unsure. When i first found a cooler i also thought it will keep the food for say a bit more fresh, but when i placed foodstuff in it, and noticed it rotted the same way as the ones not inside, i realized it does not work. (And i cussed for wasting foodstuff:D)