Food and Water....

[Fatum]

So some friends wanted to host a server so I reinstalled the game for the first time in a while. Noticed there's been some updates. We can not find enough food anywhere...water is easy enough once you can boil it, but food is scarse....with the base food decay rate meaning each character has to eat about 58.6 cows worth of meat per day to stay fed, where is one supposed to find that kind of food? How do you change the rate, I'm not hosting but I could pass the info on. they said they looked at the options but didnt see anything about food or water rates.

But yeah...when you sit there and eat 5 eggs 4 peices of meat, a pot of stew, and 2 cans of food and you still have a debuff saying you are hungry...pretty bad game design. Didn't used to be like this, so why did they change it?

[Roland]

Actually...the design is based on cooking meals for filling food that make it so that you don't have to eat or drink as often. If you eat the basic stuff like eggs or grilled meat as separate food items you will be eating all the time and barely keeping up with your stamina draining your food bar. But put the egg and meat together into a bacon and eggs meal and suddenly you don't have to eat all the time. Stews, pies, and dishes like spaghetti and steak and potatoes will give you even better results. Canned food is low tier and will result in you needing to keep finding more and more and eating all the time if you only eat that stuff.

The same with drinks. Make goldenrod tea and you will stay hydrated a lot longer between drinks but just drink water and you will be drinking a lot more frequently.

So you are supposed to progress in this game from basic to high tier. It is the same with weapons and tools. Using a stone axe the whole game or a wooden club the whole game is not going to give the best results which is why we upgrade to steel axes and steel maces. You need to do the same with food and water which means someone in the group needs to perk into cooking.

[Thompson]

Food and water levels don't rise right away after eating or drinking something. You have to give it time. So say your food is at 70 and you eat something to give you +10 food. You have to give the game time before it reaches 80.

It's a dumb thing in this game and can often cause you to drink and eat alot more than you need to.

[SuperMeatBag]

Iron gut.

[ShadedMJ]

Originally posted by Fatum:

...with the base food decay rate ...

You might be complaining about a mod because the base game does not have food decay.

[Jonnson]

I've noticed that if you make the map mostly flat that more farms will spawn. Most of the towns on a 100% flat map will have 30 farms around them. This tells me that farms appear more often in flat areas.

Farming makes for the most, and the best food. Even if you dont have towns with alot of farms, you can still obtain a few seeds. Use those seeds to make your own farm. Food is now infinite. I usually have infinite food by day 2-3, sometimes on day 1, depending on which test I feel like doing.

Traders sell seeds. (a potato is a seed, mushrooms are seeds)

The skill, living off the land, is how you obtain more seeds and more food when harvesting. You need rank 2, so 4 skill points.

[Roland]

Originally posted by ShadedMJ:

Originally posted by Fatum:

...with the base food decay rate ...

You might be complaining about a mod because the base game does not have food decay.

I think he meant the "decay" of the food bar meaning it depletes too fast for his taste.

[Timedye]

You're probably going to starve to death at least once early on, unless you get lucky and find a big food store. I play at 300% loot these days, so it's not quite so brutal early on.

There's a mod that will let you build chicken coops, and you use corn to create chicken feed to get eggs. It's a great add-on if you find it difficult to find eggs.

[Humpenstilzchen]

How do you not have tons of meat already? This game literally throws critters at you nonstop. You can aquire huge amounts of meat without even actively hunting, just by killing things left and right on your way to objectives.

I wish hunting were less trivial in this game tbh, but that´s another topic.

If you rely on canned food, forget about it. It barely fills you up. Put one point into the cooking perk and then make bacon and eggs, that should fix your food situation for now.

[william_es]

In this game, you have to think of cooked food & drink like you would in an MMO. Generally, in most MMO's, you have different tiers of food/drink, and you eventually outgrow the lower level stuff. It still satisfies hunger/thirst, but the buff doesn't last as long, and doesn't keep up with increased demand. You have to make higher tier foods (out of rarer and rarer ingredients) to keep pace with higher level gameplay.

If you're still eating canned food, and little bits of charred meat, then it's not providing enough of a food buff.

As roland said above, you should be graduating to higher tier foods that provide a longer lasting effect. Once you start eating things like steak and potatoes, and other multi ingredient meals, you will notice a HUGE reduction in how often you have to eat.

[YoshiRed]

I always need food and never found anything lol

[SiEgE]

Originally posted by Fatum:

So some friends wanted to host a server so I reinstalled the game for the first time in a while. Noticed there's been some updates. We can not find enough food anywhere...water is easy enough once you can boil it, but food is scarse....with the base food decay rate meaning each character has to eat about 58.6 cows worth of meat per day to stay fed, where is one supposed to find that kind of food? How do you change the rate, I'm not hosting but I could pass the info on. they said they looked at the options but didnt see anything about food or water rates.

But yeah...when you sit there and eat 5 eggs 4 peices of meat, a pot of stew, and 2 cans of food and you still have a debuff saying you are hungry...pretty bad game design. Didn't used to be like this, so why did they change it?

It is a good game design you were just not ready for ;)
Challenge can be fun, but you need to understand what you're being challenged with, first.

1) You need to jump-start with food making perks. Recipe food restores much more than what you'd get straight from a can, or found growing in the wilderness. Go for boiled/grilled meat and "eggs and bacon" recipe. Don't shy hunting rabbits, chickens, deer. Don't waste all your ammo on zombies, save up some ammo for hunting.
2) Trader sometimes has big packs of good food. But NEVER buy small food off him. It is like 3-4 times more costly this way. Instead - look and mark each and every vending machine you can find. Visit them everyday and buy stuff off it. If you're doing that regularly enough, you can possibly stack up plenty of food.
3) Do not leave the starter biome early. Grassy biome has plenty of wild food, eggs, and POIs with stuff growing on its backyard. Many POIs have their kitchens on their first floor. You can try and bust in through a window. That would be especially useful if you've got good tools early on.
4) Boil yourself some red tea. It reduces your food usage, when doing stamina-intense work.
5) Best tip to have enough food - save up your energy. Keep in mind that any stamina draining activities would drain your food storage. And so will do any damage you're having regenerated. That is especially true if you've picked the regeneration perk - it doesn't magically give you bonus hitpoints, and instead just speeds up the food-to-health conversion rate. If you're one of those clumsy people who are never on their full health, you'll be the one eating through your team's food supply.

[Fatum]

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

How do you not have tons of meat already? This game literally throws critters at you nonstop. You can aquire huge amounts of meat without even actively hunting, just by killing things left and right on your way to objectives.

I wish hunting were less trivial in this game tbh, but that´s another topic.

If you rely on canned food, forget about it. It barely fills you up. Put one point into the cooking perk and then make bacon and eggs, that should fix your food situation for now.

because 10 raw meat = 1 cooked 10 cooked meat to not be hungry anymore...is @$U@_ stupid.

[YoshiRed]

Originally posted by Fatum:

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

How do you not have tons of meat already? This game literally throws critters at you nonstop. You can aquire huge amounts of meat without even actively hunting, just by killing things left and right on your way to objectives.

I wish hunting were less trivial in this game tbh, but that´s another topic.

If you rely on canned food, forget about it. It barely fills you up. Put one point into the cooking perk and then make bacon and eggs, that should fix your food situation for now.

because 10 raw meat = 1 cooked 10 cooked meat to not be hungry anymore...is @$U@_ stupid.

agree lol, we lost 4 raw meat for no reason

[Humpenstilzchen]

Originally posted by Fatum:

Originally posted by Humpenstilzchen:

How do you not have tons of meat already? This game literally throws critters at you nonstop. You can aquire huge amounts of meat without even actively hunting, just by killing things left and right on your way to objectives.

I wish hunting were less trivial in this game tbh, but that´s another topic.

If you rely on canned food, forget about it. It barely fills you up. Put one point into the cooking perk and then make bacon and eggs, that should fix your food situation for now.

because 10 raw meat = 1 cooked 10 cooked meat to not be hungry anymore...is @$U@_ stupid.

That is just for balance reasons and I agree it´s silly. Put a point into cooking perk and make bacon and eggs they fill a lot more. Also just by killing rabbits and chickens and the ocasional wolves you should have so much meat that you don´t care about the 10/1 ratio. If you don´t have tons of meat stored you are doing something very wrong.

[SiEgE]

Originally posted by YoshiRed:

Originally posted by Fatum:

because 10 raw meat = 1 cooked 10 cooked meat to not be hungry anymore...is @$U@_ stupid.

agree lol, we lost 4 raw meat for no reason

Cause it is a recipe for cases when you have literally nothing else but meat. Proper meal is a balanced meal. It is not that hard to find some eggs for eggs and bacon.