Cook all meat at once or leave it for later meals?

[WhatCanYouDo]

I have never thought about this, but what is the best thing to do to spare matches? Should you cook all meat at once and let it stay outside (so it doesnt get moldy) or just cook the pieces you need for a meal and the same with water by storing it.

[draxthewickedone]

Just cook it all. Raw meat decay 2-3 times faster then cooked meat. Water does not decay so no reason not to boil huge amounts at once.

Old trick, but it still works for saving matches. Light a torch, then use torch to start fire. If you fail, you will still have burning torch. That way you will spend just one match.

Also, if you're outside and you have enough wood, there is no reason not to make two or three fires at once. In the end, you will spend same amount of wood as if you made one fire. But you will spend less time cooking.

Try to find a place that can protect your fires from wind and do not feed them too much wood at once. That way you will not lose much wood even if they are blown out.

[bili00777]

My opinion...depends a lil.. if you wanna save on matches (only really needed on loper imo) then cook the meat when you must so you dont starve or have other plans that need fire, lets say boiling water, and have enough firewood...
If you have mag lens, then on a sunny day ofc
If you wanna preserve the meat as long as possible cook when its on 50%
If you dont have lvl 5 cooking then 50% condition is the “last moment to start cooking to avoid food poisoning

On my run i have lvl 5 cooking so i cook when there is a sunny day, usually once a week and boil water at the same time..i always have a stash of atleast 50 but usually 100 sticks or more for the occasion;)

[WhatCanYouDo]

Originally posted by draxthewickedone:

Just cook it all. Raw meat decay 2-3 times faster then cooked meat. Water does not decay so no reason not to boil huge amounts at once.

Old trick, but it still works for saving matches. Light a torch, then use torch to start fire. If you fail, you will still have burning torch. That way you will spend just one match.

Also, if you're outside and you have enough wood, there is no reason not to make two or three fires at once. In the end, you will spend same amount of wood as if you made one fire. But you will spend less time cooking.

Try to find a place that can protect your fires from wind and do not feed them too much wood at once. That way you will not lose much wood even if they are blown out.

Ye, but I thought about cooking all the meat and leave it outside so it does not decay and then when I am hungry I eat the cooked meat, but with the water I usually boil the water to have like 5L on me.

[WhatCanYouDo]

Originally posted by bili00777:

My opinion...depends a lil.. if you wanna save on matches (only really needed on loper imo) then cook the meat when you must so you dont starve or have other plans that need fire, lets say boiling water, and have enough firewood...
If you have mag lens, then on a sunny day ofc
If you wanna preserve the meat as long as possible cook when its on 50%
If you dont have lvl 5 cooking then 50% condition is the “last moment to start cooking to avoid food poisoning

On my run i have lvl 5 cooking so i cook when there is a sunny day, usually once a week and boil water at the same time..i always have a stash of atleast 50 but usually 100 sticks or more for the occasion;)

Does the mag lens decay over use? Because I got one, but I am not sure how to repair it as it does not come up any options like other items.

[draxthewickedone]

Your meat will decay even when outside, but much slower than when stored inside. Also raw meat decay faster than cooked.

Example:

venison raw, inside: 20% decay per day
venison cooked, inside: 10% decay per day
venison raw, outside: 2% decay per day
venison cooked, outside: 1% decay per day

So if you cook it and leave it outside it will last the longest. Like bili00777 pointed out you can prolong it even further if you leave it raw for 25 days and then cook it since items that are cooked get 50% condition increase. So, raw meat 50% condition will be 100% condition once cooked.

But it is a question do you have something else to eat while waiting 25 days, will you be there when 25 days pass or god knows where, also how much meat do you have to cook anyway.
No point in waiting to cook say 5 or 10 kg if that meat will be long eaten before 25 days pass.
But if you have 50 kg of meat, it makes sense to wait.

I assumed that you do not have that amount of meat, that's why i gave you an advice to just cook it all and leave it outside.

Mag lens can not be repaired, but it does not decay ether so no worries.

[JiffyPopKids]

It depends. If you have like a moose and a bear, just cook one of them and leave the other for until you're done with the former. For example, once I was stalker with level 4 cooking. I killed a moose & bear on the same day and got both them home within the week. I was still only level four, so I still had a chance of getting Intestinal parasites from the bear meat. So, I cooked the moose and a few other things and that got me up to level 5 cooking. I ate everything I had cooked and then cooked the bear, which was still at 90% after I cooked it. :D

[iheartmyocd]

I always cook everything cookable asap - meat, fish, canned food, medicines, coffee, everything. (The one exception being if it's only a bit of stuff, I might stockpile it up until it warrants a good long fire). I then chuck it outside and leave it. Always cook on a fire/stove with 2 or more cooking slots when you can, because you can get a LOT more done that way, but cook everything you can.

Cooking five is the holy grail of an extended run and every single cooked item is a skill point closer to it, while every single uncooked item is skill point that isn't getting applied. I always give cooking skill the most love, focus and attention above all of the others, because all of those piles of cooked stuff I have left scattered and rotting around the various maps immediately become massive food caches the instant I hit cooking 5. Pile of rotting meat and rusty cans one day, centralized mountain of thousands upon thousands of calories the next lol.

The quicker you get to cooking 5 the longer your run will be, and the more you cook the quicker you will get to cooking 5. Of course it's circumstantial to a degree and you might have days where you want to stockpile meat or whatever outside of a cave until you reach a point where you absolutely HAVE to spend a couple of days outside so a nice sheltered spot and a pile of things to do will be very nice to have, but overall my personal rule of thumb is up until cooking hits level five, cook everything you can as efficiently and as soon as you can.

[iwasa]

Meat, cooked and raw, decays inside or outside. A matter of how fast. In Pilgrim, where I play, it runs like 1% a day for either outside and 3% for cooked and 6% for raw inside. I heard that it goes faster in the harder modes, so this is just for example.

Once you get to level 5 cooking where food poisoning (and parasites) are nominally not a problem, unless you make a mistake, you can eat completely ruined cooked meat (0% condition) though you have to do it through the radial menu or direct from inventory. At least so far, like a lot of things that people do, it can be changed at dev discretion in some future update.

Currently, you can still cook completely ruined raw meat (0% condition) which upgrades it to mouldy (50% condition). Again subject to change in a future update but it has been basically so through early access (at least when I got the game).

From a pure efficiency aspect, if you got the time, fuel, and raw meat, cooking it all in one go means you won't have to expend another match to cook more if you didn't cook it all and the cooked meat runs short. Of course you might run out of time and fatigue. You'd probably want to make a lot of water if you do mass cooking.

There is always the magnifying lens which works on sunny day and makes for an alternate way to start a fire without expending a match.

So cooking everything is a strategy and whether it is right for you, depends on what you want to do and the circumstances. Good luck whichever choice you make.