Adjusting thirst and hunger rates

[GAMING_Alligator]

The frequency of needing to find / synthesize food and drink seems way too high and is getting in the way of enjoying the game for me, so following guides on the internet I've switched my game to Freedom to not have to constantly worry about easting / drinking.

Don't like completely disabling them though as it feels a bit like cheating, so is there any way to slow down the rate at which the hunger and thirst meters deplete?

Seriously, if you swallow 3 fish whole and down 3 bottles of water in one meal, you shouldn't have to immediately gets hungry / thirsty again a few minutes alterwards!

[Lobo'ren]

Creative and Freedom are about enjoying the game. Leave survival alone if it's too challenging for you.

[Demolition414]

carry some cured fish and some bottles of water and you'll be sorted,

[GAMING_Alligator]

Originally posted by MiddleAgedWerewolf:

Creative and Freedom are about enjoying the game. Leave survival alone if it's too challenging for you.

I don't mind a bit of challenge, hence wanting to adjust the rate and not turn these things off completely. Right now it just feels like a grind to me, which I don't find fun.

If there's no way to hack an ini file or similar to do this I guess I'll keep on playing creative...

[TheTool]

You can change the game mode via the console.

[Arasine]

The food / drink rates (along with carry capacity) in most survival games are way off realistic. I guess someone once decided for us realism wasnt desirable in a realistic survival simulation..

[Slate]

Make your way to the floating island and get some Marblemelons, make an interior planter and your food & water needs are history. Harvest one to get four seeds and then eat 3 full size plants, then replant the seeds you harvested. Repeating this cycle cures your hunger and thirst needs, you can also grow them in the Cyclops.

[Ǵ̶͓̂͑lí̴̤̀̄́tcĥ̸]

I hate to necro but I agree with this. It's not that food and water and such is hard to come by - but a combination of a lot of sort of dumb design decisions that have a proxy effect on each other making early game exploration constantly interrupted and annoying.

Day/Night happens a little too quickly -> Frequency of eating and drinking (mostly drinking) is too high -> Drink Frequency is the worst but takes the most time to satiate, you need to pretty much always carry around like 10 waters, and seemingly 20 mins later they're gone and you're thirsty again hunting down salt and coral, interrupting everything else -> Other means involve planting and such, but seeds for some very very odd reason take up FOUR inventory slots when things like Power Cells take up ONE ...... so on and so forth.

It's a lot better to manage slightly later in the game when you're base is set up with plantable food and you can cycle them out - but the combination of needing so much water, small inventory space and unstackable items, some item sizes being ridiculous, short day/night cycle leading to more necessity for water and food (again, mostly water, which is more annoying than food to acquire AND has a much faster rate of decrease)...etc. makes early game just annoying to be honest. It's like, immediately stack up on tons and tons of bleach (like, fill up multiple containers) and immediately beeline the floating island, or be constantly interrupted by "Seek Fluid Intake" and spend more time looking for salt than exploring.

There is a console command to increase the day/night cycle time, which everything from food/thirst rate to the time it takes to build items depends on. So while increasing that time also increases the time it takes for you to get hungry or thirsty again, it also makes everything else take longer too. Up to you if that's worth it.

The survival mode would have been vastly superior if everything happend about half as fast, imo. But then again, as said, it does become a non issue mid-late game with pots and Water Filtration and so on. And it doesn't make the game sh*t or anything - but it is a pretty big critique of mine because the interruptions are just frequent enough to be irritating.

[Cougarific]

Originally posted by ⊂╫i└└ i∩':

It's a lot better to manage slightly later in the game when you're base is set up with plantable food and you can cycle them out

Originally posted by ⊂╫i└└ i∩':

it does become a non issue mid-late game with pots and Water Filtration and so on.

Yes, survival games have this progression thing going on.

Surviving starts out hard then gets easier as you progress through the game and find or craft new gear, recipes and items to help you survive.

I can't think of a single survival game that doesn't abide by this mechanic.

If you're finding the early game too difficult there are mods to make it easier available from the Nexus.

[Ǵ̶͓̂͑lí̴̤̀̄́tcĥ̸]

Not once did I say it was difficult (first sentence in my post is contrary to that), but thanks for the suggestion. Not sure if it was sarcasm, or fanboyism causing lack of contextual awareness or what - your whole post is confusing since it addresses nothing I've brought up. Just feels like the typical vanilla egocentric response with a touch of smug. But thanks, lol.

I have hundreds of hours in just about every survival game, from The Forest to Ark to even Green Hell. It's one of my favorite genres. ALL of them have a much better early game than Subnautica when it comes to thirst and hunger alone, which is the only thing I am talking about here - but it is all tied to the day night cycle and other things I brought up (like inventory).

So let me repeat again it is all too frequent and inventory size is iffy in this game as well (only an issue since you need so much water). Especially (and almost primarily) thirst - and the means of dealing with thirst is a pace killer, which doesn't exist in the other games in the same way due to having a lot more ways to cure thirst.

Ark lets you drink right out of the ocean. The Forest can have you spam rain collectors almost immediately plus you're constantly filled with soda and the like. Green Hell has sh*t growing everywhere despite being way more mechanically demanding than Subnautica with micronutrients and stuff, and water is even provided via rain there as well (sometimes with detriments). They are paced and solved better in those games. Progression for thirst and hunger specifically are superior..although Green Hell does have a bit of a carb issue.

Sub starts annoying and immediately becomes too simple (with knowledge of the floating isles and the like), but even then it still interrupts you constantly due to pace unless like half your inventory is full of water at all times, which shares space with other inventory items and nothing stacks. It's hard to describe man, but the flow is off. Takes 5 bladders or 3-4 disinfected waters to cure thirst and within 20 minutes "Seek Fluid Intake" again. You have to have a fabricator to make water, which means you must stop your exploration to return to the base or cyclopse to make it if you're out, which means you have to make TONS to avoid running out so you're interrupted less. The other means of getting water pretty much all supply 10 max (outside of the Stillsuit), and the plant variants of this take up FOUR inventory slots. Yet food (for hunger) is everywhere, all variants take 1 inventory slot, can be cooked on the go with a heat knife and hunger lowers like 1/3 the speed of thirst despite that. It's...like wtf, lol.

[miklkit]

Subnautica was in EA for what, 4-5 years, so the time cycles were surely discussed and adjusted. I kinda doubt that the devs will change it now.

The whole time cycle feels a little fast to me too but as you have already stated, you can change it yourself if it bothers you that much.

[Ǵ̶͓̂͑lí̴̤̀̄́tcĥ̸]

I know they won't change it. It's just a critique of mine, and it mostly just affects thirst. The other issues I mentioned like inventory and stuff would be fine (although seeds taking 4 slots is preposterous) if not for the proxy effect of how frequent and time consuming thirst can be to cure without having to use up so much inventory space to stock water (which detriments resource collection, which is one of the points of exploration -> this is part of the chain). It's the only thing about the game that annoys me, which on a game as close to near perfection as this one, sticks out like a third nipple.

There's other stuff I can point out too about the game, minor stuff - like despite 5ish years, they still have an issue with music cutting in and out depending on when you enter/exit a biome or whatever (still not entirely sure what triggers music, but I've had it turn on as soon as I entered the Shallows only to immediately cut out again when I turn and enter Grassy or Kelp zones) and the fact that the water plane on the inside of the Moonpool is clipping through the exterior of it (all they have to do is shrink that plane a little in the engine, it's so easy a fix I don't know why it hasn't been yet), etc. And the well known pop-in stuff which, despite supposedly being an Engine issue and unfixable, is actually made better with a simple ini(json) edit (but man, this can annihilate performance).

But regardless of small hiccups like that I still absolutely freaking love the hell out of this game. I just wish thirst wasn't so intent on trying to stall that.

[Cougarific]

Originally posted by ⊂╫i└└ i∩':

unless like half your inventory is full of water at all times

Originally posted by ⊂╫i└└ i∩':

Takes 5 bladders or 3-4 disinfected waters to cure thirst and within 20 minutes "Seek Fluid Intake" again.

It just feels like you're exaggerating a bit which is fine, we get the point.

Try this: Dedicate half an in-game day to gathering salt and coral - just 5x salt and coral will give you 10x 30ml bottles of water.

Supplement that by stopping to cut and eat any water-providing plants you happen to swim or walk by (Bulbs, Bulbo Trees, Marblemelons, Lantern Fruit - even Creepvines give a tiny amount of water).

But it really sounds like your problems all boil down to inventory management. If inventory and storage sizes are too small for you, there are mods on the Nexus to address that.

[Cougarific]

Just out of curiosity, did you get the game for free on Epic?

[Ǵ̶͓̂͑lí̴̤̀̄́tcĥ̸]

No, lol. I have hundreds of hours in Subnautica too dude I've been here since EA. I still just don't like the thirst mechanic, that's all. I suppose the confusion you might have spawns from why I posted, which to be honest is simply due to recent irritation at the issue giving me cause to b*tch about it I suppose, lol.

And yes, I already mentioned dedicating time to hoard Bleach being the best solution - I've also mentioned the plants, the floating island, all of that multiple times so I'm not sure what your hangup is. But that solution is part of the issue - there is no flow to it whatsoever whereas everything else, including hunger, does have flow (food is everywhere, cooked on the go with heat knife, etc. - thirst requires fabricator or a mostly useless swimsuit and can only be reasonably gained/carried from 2 resources as all the rest, like plants/fruit, only offer 10 water and take up 4 inventory slots). Thirst frequency is an inturruption that affects every other aspect of the game. Nothing else interrupts flow like thirst does. Third nipple.

[miklkit]

I normally carry 4 small and 2 large water and always run out of storage space and need to return long before that gets used, so it isn't an issue. In real life I drink a lot more often than I eat too so it feels ok. As always YMMV.