does meat last any longer if placed in the cold?

[Double Deez Nuts]

or freezer?

[dande48]

Yup, and you can make your own cache from stones to store it in. You can also harvest your meat in tiny pieces and cook it to quickly level up your cooking skill. Once you're at level 5, it no longer matters if your food is spoiled or not.

[Serchine]

Meat is best dumped on the cold outdoor ground in this game. Dont ask why, it's science.

[Thompson]

Originally posted by dande313:

Yup, and you can make your own cache from stones to store it in.

Originally posted by Serchine:

Meat is best dumped on the cold outdoor ground in this game. Dont ask why, it's science.

Meat slowly decays in both caches and on the ground. The difference is, it decays slower in caches. This is also dependent on settings as well. For example, on interloper where food decays much faster, it's best to store food in rock caches.

However, there's also a limit to how many caches you can have so you may have to use both the ground and caches. At least I do anyhow.

[Double Deez Nuts]

so i found this decay spreadsheet on the wiki. turns out food does last entire months in the snow
https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Decay

Originally posted by Serchine:

Meat is best dumped on the cold outdoor ground in this game. Dont ask why, it's science.

i knew it was a thing irl but wasnt sure if the game simulated it

[Bobywan]

Meat is to be stored outisde, either cooked or not.
Once you have cooking skill level 5, you can eat ruined meat anyway without risk.

[_i_hannibal_i_]

Personally, I store food outside on the door step of houses/cabins/lodges.
I prefer to cook it, then move it outside, but gameplay sometimes changes my priorities, then I store it raw (sometimes even in quarters) and I cook it later on.

[Double Deez Nuts]

Originally posted by _i_hannibal_i_:

Personally, I store food outside on the door step of houses/cabins/lodges.
I prefer to cook it, then move it outside, but gameplay sometimes changes my priorities, then I store it raw (sometimes even in quarters) and I cook it later on.

wont the wolves eat it if theyre near it?

[Bobywan]

Originally posted by Double Deez Nuts:

Originally posted by _i_hannibal_i_:

Personally, I store food outside on the door step of houses/cabins/lodges.
I prefer to cook it, then move it outside, but gameplay sometimes changes my priorities, then I store it raw (sometimes even in quarters) and I cook it later on.

wont the wolves eat it if theyre near it?

Unless a wolf see you drop it as a decoy, no, they won't eat it.

[Battlegiraffe]

I find it difficult to just dump cooked meat for storage on the ground outdoors even if the wolves won't eat it. I prefer to put large supplies of cooked meat in the trunks of nearby cars - this seems to have the same preserving effect, plus I get the added peace of mind (even if it's just imagined) that no wild animals will get it.
I once returned to an area (Quonset garage in CH) where I had stashed some meat in a car trunk and then left for quite a long time - when I got back, the meat was degraded a bit but still good.

[iwasa]

The devs set it up that there is "inside" and "outside" as regards to things like meat and fish deterioration. Inside they decay faster, raw they decay even faster. Outside they decay at about the same rate cooked and raw.

So any place inside is Inside and has the associated decay rate and any place outside is Outside and has the associated decay rate.

I believe that since the game, story mode aka Wintermute, was only supposed to be a short period of time (the initial old decay time was 100 days) things like food preservation and whether being in freezing conditions preserved food was largely ignored. I also think that the devs decided that ruined food being edible (even if there was a chance of food poisoning) mitigated the utter lack of food preservation since ruined food (unless put into a container) would exist indefinitely.