So, how does dieting, strength, and athleticism work now?

[La Criatura Espada]

With calories in the mix, has the entire system been changed? Or do we still have to deal with good and bad eating points?

[Andi]

It's become very easy. Just keep a surplus of calories during the day and do your thing. Doesn't matter what you eat /drink (bars, soda, meat) just keep calories eaten higher than calories burnt. But make sure it's even or little in the negatives before you sleep, otherwise you're getting weight. Swing a weapon if you have some left. Counter resets every day at dawn.

Swinging weapons raises your strength, carrying logs and diving is raising athleticism. Cap is at 2 points a day.

On the one hand i find it easier now, but on the other it's very annoying after a while imo, since you always have to keep an eye on it.

You may also look here:

https://theforest.gamepedia.com/Strength

It's very well explained. Also search for athleticism and weight and you're good to go. 😉

[SergeTroy]

As an addendum to that, losing weight is a slow and tedious process. You need to be burning calories above what you've eaten. The best actions for that seem to be swimming (sharks!) or walking / sprinting while carrying logs (0.5 / sec walking, 1 / sec while sprinting, plus 0.5 for carrying logs). You can increase that by contininously jumping (2/sec). I don't think you can lose more than 1 pound a day.

I got irritated at having a weight of 207 (lost track while cave diving) and lost 2 pounds in 2 or 3 days by eating nothing but berries (blueberies, blackberries) while continously going around my little island retreat in a circle. The walking and jumping was easily handled by macros, but I still had to hold shift when my energy was good for it, and turn the mouse to avoid going into the ocean. Keeping in mind that a day in game is around 38 minutes, that was something like an hour and a quarter spent doing nothing but the above.

Supposedly the minimum weight is 155 but I'll be damned how you can reach that without console commands or losing your mind in real life. If somebody can find a better way to lose weight in this game, please post here.

[Syncourt]

Originally posted by Andi:

On the one hand i find it easier now, but on the other it's very annoying after a while imo, since you always have to keep an eye on it.

Yeah well they have a habbit of bandaid fixing things instead of taking the better path and spending time developing features to be better.

The old system did have many flaws. Flaws we pointed out very often that were never given attention to. Mainly that it was impossible to know exactly how it all worked without reading up about it and the only way to gain strength was by cutting trees. Vegetation was completely pointless in the end once we nailed every aspect of the diet mechanics, because eating meat at the right moment (when your stomach began to flash red at 64%) netted good nutrition every time. Which also made eating fresh quality large meats pointless because you didn't need that to fill you up.

If only they refined the old system a bit instead:
Made each food and meat quality privide variying amounts of good nutrition (like calories).
Provide overeating points depending how much food is wasted by eating more than your stomach can hold.
Reduce nutrition earned when overeating depending how much food was wasted.
Lower undereating mark to 20% full (and make stomach flash at 20% full too).
Multiply undereating points earned while starving (0% full).
Rename the tree cut counter (bodybuilding points?) and added/improved gain from other actions (swinging weapons, climbing, swimming, transporting logs ect.) with more gains provided by the heavier muscle building actions.
Prevented gains toward the counter points while starving.
Give % penalty to strength depending on how underweight you are (altheticism style).

We would have had a very simple system much like the calories system, where all you had to do was watch your stomach icon, avoid regular junkfood and exercise. You wouldn't have needed any additional stats on the stats page for it because every positive or negative effect would be self explanatory having an obvious and logical reason to anybody wondering why they are gaining/losing weight or strength.

Replacing it with the calories system was unecessary, unintuitive and uncreactive and actually requires more effort to plan and monitor than it did before. The new system is just less impressive and unique to the old one.

Personally I'd not have minded if they included both systems with calories being implemented to effect athleticism gains and weight. So if you ate a lot but didnt exercise much and had accumilated too many calories, your athleticism gains would stop. Burning calories you dont have would count for undereating points.

But that's me... If I was an indie dev, I'd much rather be spending the extra time making features better. More creative. Unique and Fun. Instead of trying to find ways to implement worn mechanics that require less work to get the most basic effect of what they originally wanted in the game.

I often wonder where the love is for thier creation.

Sorry to hijack... but your question is already answered anyway.

[Andi]

Originally posted by Syncourt:

Originally posted by Andi:

On the one hand i find it easier now, but on the other it's very annoying after a while imo, since you always have to keep an eye on it.

Yeah well they have a habbit of bandaid fixing things instead of taking the better path and spending time developing features to be better.

The old system did have many flaws. Flaws we pointed out very often that were never given attention to. Mainly that it was impossible to know exactly how it all worked without reading up about it and the only way to gain strength was by cutting trees. Vegetation was completely pointless in the end once we nailed every aspect of the diet mechanics, because eating meat at the right moment (when your stomach began to flash red at 64%) netted good nutrition every time. Which also made eating fresh quality large meats pointless because you didn't need that to fill you up.

If only they refined the old system a bit instead:
Made each food and meat quality privide variying amounts of good nutrition (like calories).
Provide overeating points depending how much food is wasted by eating more than your stomach can hold.
Reduce nutrition earned when overeating depending how much food was wasted.
Lower undereating mark to 20% full (and make stomach flash at 20% full too).
Multiply undereating points earned while starving (0% full).
Rename the tree cut counter (bodybuilding points?) and added/improved gain from other actions (swinging weapons, climbing, swimming, transporting logs ect.) with more gains provided by the heavier muscle building actions.
Prevented gains toward the counter points while starving.
Give % penalty to strength depending on how underweight you are (altheticism style).

We would have had a very simple system much like the calories system, where all you had to do was watch your stomach icon, avoid regular junkfood and exercise. You wouldn't have needed any additional stats on the stats page for it because every positive or negative effect would be self explanatory having an obvious and logical reason to anybody wondering why they are gaining/losing weight or strength.

Replacing it with the calories system was unecessary, unintuitive and uncreactive and actually requires more effort to plan and monitor than it did before. The new system is just less impressive and unique to the old one.

Personally I'd not have minded if they included both systems with calories being implemented to effect athleticism gains and weight. So if you ate a lot but didnt exercise much and had accumilated too many calories, your athleticism gains would stop. Burning calories you dont have would count for undereating points.

But that's me... If I was an indie dev, I'd much rather be spending the extra time making features better. More creative. Unique and Fun. Instead of trying to find ways to implement worn mechanics that require less work to get the most basic effect of what they originally wanted in the game.

I often wonder where the love is for thier creation.

Sorry to hijack... but your question is already answered anyway.

+1! Let's hope devs read this and rethink the ♥♥♥♥♥ we have now.

How's my guy getting hungry when i still have a plus of 2k calories?? All that makes no sense if you ask me.

[SergeTroy]

Personally like the current system, and the fix to eating too much is to have some sort of bloated effect or the like. Similarly, if you go through too many calories via attacking or whatever, you should get hungry quicker. Still, 1.0

[Syncourt]

Originally posted by SergeTroy:

Personally like the current system

I don't think the calories system is a bad system. I just feel like the developers attempted to do something a lot more innovative with the old diet system. It was very original and interesting way of dealing with weight and strength if you understood the way it worked, but it's few flaws needed addressing and some of it needed some expanding to make it really shine.

But instead of refining it or explaining it, they just gave up on it. People who didn't understand the system and had trouble with it complained too much. So the devs abandoned it and went for something basic, easy to design and easy to understand. Though much less impressive.

As somebody who understood the way it worked, I was rather disappointed to see it scrapped instead of being further developed.

[Ghostlight]

This thread alone has made me decide NOT to return to this game next week, bringing the 2 new players I was planning on bringing.

I mean......caring about diet, calories and exercise in a survival game? lmao No thanks!

[RageMojo]

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

This thread alone has made me decide NOT to return to this game next week, bringing the 2 new players I was planning on bringing.

I mean......caring about diet, calories and exercise in a survival game? lmao No thanks!

Thats why it was changed for the better and dont listen to the people above. The old system sucked. The idea soda cans were littered everywhere but you could touch them was ridiculous. Paying attention to simple calorie count is better, it just needs to be more appropriately tied to hunger.

[DanteBrane]

Originally posted by RageMojo:

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

This thread alone has made me decide NOT to return to this game next week, bringing the 2 new players I was planning on bringing.

I mean......caring about diet, calories and exercise in a survival game? lmao No thanks!

Thats why it was changed for the better and dont listen to the people above. The old system sucked. The idea soda cans were littered everywhere but you could touch them was ridiculous. Paying attention to simple calorie count is better, it just needs to be more appropriately tied to hunger.

Calories would have been smart to implement from the start. I agree that the old system was dumb since you had to stay away from soda and candy, you're gonna eat whatever you can get If you're trying to survive. If the calorie counter was tied to the actual hunger icon, then it would be better. You can have like 3000 calories consumed but your stomach will keep flashing saying that you're hungry.

[Syncourt]

Originally posted by RageMojo:

The idea soda cans were littered everywhere but you could touch them was ridiculous. Paying attention to simple calorie count is better, it just needs to be more appropriately tied to hunger.

Originally posted by DanteBrane:

I agree that the old system was dumb since you had to stay away from soda and candy

Actually once we figured out the diet system 100% (which was only about a week or 2 before they changed it) it was so easy to generate massive amounts of good nutrition that you could keep it higher than bad nutrition relatively easy. Meaning you could regularly drink soda or eat snacks, just not living off them.

As for my suggestion in my earlier post, i didn't say that snacks and soda should be negative or provide overeating points. Everything should have had it's own nutrition value and that's where the effects would have been because they would have supplied none.

They would have had an impact on calories and athleticism though had they combined the systems like my suggestion. Which is pretty much how they work atm. So not much difference between the 2 in regards to junkfood. Like I said, the old one was not perfect, but was in need of refining.

The biggest problem I see even now is that it's so easy to collect water and meat that there is no need for soda or snacks anyway.

Originally posted by Ghostlight:

This thread alone has made me decide NOT to return to this game next week, bringing the 2 new players I was planning on bringing.

I mean......caring about diet, calories and exercise in a survival game? lmao No thanks!

You don't even need to worry about it because the positives and negatives are not a great deal. I would not let that alone deter you from playing. Just ignore it. It's just a little reward for taking an extra effort is all.

I personally like the idea of adding a bit of realism to the game where somebody surviving in such a situation should be fighting to stop themselves from becoming a skinny, weak skeleton. Only problem with it is that there's so much food that the problem lies more with trying not to get fat. The opposite of how it would be in a survival situation.

[BreadPit]

The whole system looks like rocket science to me.
In the end I'm left wondering why my strength goes down when all I did all day was chopping trees and carrying logs while eating berries, meat and drinking clean water.

Pretty sure your average middle-aged man who lived an average life of having an office job and watching netflix would gain strength instead of losing it in such a situation.

But meh, "realism" I guess. I can't be bothered to check for some calories counter so I hope it'll be fine to ignore it completely. So far I went from the 21 or something default strength down to 12 though...

[La Criatura Espada]

Originally posted by BreadPit:

The whole system looks like rocket science to me.
In the end I'm left wondering why my strength goes down when all I did all day was chopping trees and carrying logs while eating berries, meat and drinking clean water.

Pretty sure your average middle-aged man who lived an average life of having an office job and watching netflix would gain strength instead of losing it in such a situation.

But meh, "realism" I guess. I can't be bothered to check for some calories counter so I hope it'll be fine to ignore it completely. So far I went from the 21 or something default strength down to 12 though...

The system changed recently. Just keep calories above burnt, so no more rocket science!

[Syncourt]

Originally posted by BreadPit:

Pretty sure your average middle-aged man who lived an average life of having an office job and watching netflix would gain strength instead of losing it in such a situation.

But meh, "realism" I guess. I can't be bothered to check for some calories counter so I hope it'll be fine to ignore it completely. So far I went from the 21 or something default strength down to 12 though...

Strength wouldn't be hard to build realisically with how abundant food is in The Forest. But were it more a struggle to get food and the person were often starving and underweight it would be a very different story.

You can see the calories counter on the stats page in your survival manual.

[phoenix_death12]

Originally posted by BreadPit:

Pretty sure your average middle-aged man who lived an average life of having an office job and watching netflix would gain strength instead of losing it in such a situation.

Actually we're a survivalist expert

[SergeTroy]

Originally posted by phoenix_death12:

Originally posted by BreadPit:

Pretty sure your average middle-aged man who lived an average life of having an office job and watching netflix would gain strength instead of losing it in such a situation.

Actually we're a survivalist expert

Also, you can absolutely wear yourself out with exhaustive physical activities without proper pacing and choice in diet. Considering we're a modern survival expert, we probably are still going to be dealt a hard blow with not having access to a smoothie maker or various other options available in society. Don't we have a bit of a belly starting out? I don't recall looking across in multi player and seeing a 1980's Arnold Schwartzenneger staring back.