Food production

[Phoenix]

At the moment food production is a huge chore and a lot of messing about trying to gather (random) items to make meals. The biggest issue I am having though is getting enough seeds to use in traps to feed 2 players constantly. The developer needs to rethink how food is prepare and how much stuff is available and increase how often you get seeds from trees and bushes... Honestly 20 trees and bushes got me one seed and this is the norm. Food does need to be in the game but currently it is just not fun.

[SleepyEyez]

Rebuild, don't reload.

Default material return rates on different game difficulties and strategies:

Peaceful: 100%
Strategy: Just demolish the animal trap with a claw hammer and then rebuild.

Easy: 90%
Strategy: Get Novice Demo Man and then the Demolish command from the claw hammer gives 100% refund.

Normal: 70%
Strategy: Get Senior Demo Man for full refund from the Demolish command (it becomes 105% but is capped at 100%).

Hard: 50%
Strategy: Get Veteran Demo Man for full refund from Demolish.

Survival: 30%
Strategy: Get Veteran Demo Man for a total of 80% refund from Demolish. Since the numbers get rounded up, every animal trap ingredient is fully refunded except for the leaves - only 4 leaves are lost.

Challenging: 10%
Strategy: Get Veteran Demo Man for a total of 60% refund from Demolish. The boulder and seeds are fully refunded due to rounding-up effect. Only 1 tree branch and 8 leaves are lost.

Legend: 0%
Strategy: Grind bushes and hunt for food.

The Demo Man strategy is applicable to many other structures such as farms, plantations, mining machines, etc. However, if you ever want to get into PvP, the most powerful application is the mobile base/kill zone (the inventory/hidden storage boxes are the base, and the mobile floating bait + trebuchets combo is the ultimate kill zone), since one must keep relocating in PvP.

P.S. For late game purpose, the best way to get massive amount of seeds on Hard or below is investing in tons of level 1 farms using the Demo Man strategy. To save space, farms can be vertically stacked along a column. Every 14 in-game hours, a level 1 farm yields 2+ seeds. The quickest way to get manure is from robbing green/blue/red boxes around the world, and also from recycling Pesticides and Fertilizers found in those boxes. By robbing I mean getting Jogger perks so as to grab the boxes and then run away to avoid combat. The seeds from farms are not for food but for making more farms and then plantations and bird houses, which are needed in the late game when day waves become annoyingly stronger.

P.S.2 One tricky and reusable food for recovering Condition is the raw large meat. First, reduce your HP to below 10. The cheapest way of reducing HP is by jumping inside a lowered wooden foundation or by swimming so as to run out of stamina, triggering the adrenaline mode. When the HP is below 10, eat the raw large meat at a sleeping bag + research table to commit suicide. Whatever food that kills you will not be lost so the meat will stay in the corpse for reuse. The large meat gives you 20 Condition and then kills you, and in order to respawn, you will have to pay 10 Condition. So, by doing all this, you gain a net 10 Condition in the end. Recover the corpse and repeat till your Condition has been increased to 1 white bar (10 Condition) away from the max. Then spec back what was dropped at the research table.

[drchrisms]

Since Food's the issue, you can also go around and look for high Rabbit/Fox traffic. Put Barbed Fences there for free Small Animal Meat. Be sure to do this a bit far from your base as they might aggro zombies if for some reason, pathing wasn't found.

Also, those Barbed Fences can aggro Bears, Wolves, Stags and Foxes that aren't killed and will go to you. More free food :)