Does Ruined food in a container despawn?

[jswilliams]

OK, lost a pair of Mukluks when I hopped back in my game a couple of days ago. No big deal. Now I've lost sadly 4 Ruined Fish that I found on my only successful, but unplanned beachcombing (but thanks for the Birch and rifle cartridge!)

No idea when it happened and not worried about, just hoping a stabilized save comes through soon.

Oh and it's rather fiendish of you all how some snow...piles? especially around porches and houses in general swallow dropped items.

[IFIYGD]

Yes. Ruined items, including fish and meat, placed in a container, will despawn. It's really the only garbage disposal we have in the game.

And if you have items dropped get swallowed by snow outside, or the floor inside, take an F8 screenshot, upload it from your desktop into Artwork, and post it in a bug report in the Techniucal Issues subforum, so Hinterland can see the co-ordinates of where this is happening. AFAIK, stuff is not supposed to be eaten by terrain or texture layers. (Don't drop anything on the floor by the fire barrel downstairs in Hibernia, the floor eats stuff...)

[jswilliams]

But....But...I CARRIED it. All the way back. And it was sooooo HEAVY

[jswilliams]

But thanks. Lesson learned on all that.

[IFIYGD]

It is a good way to get rid of ruined tools, clothing, fish and meat though. If you leave it on the ground, it will stay there, ruined forever. And yes, you can cook ruined meat and fish back to 50%, but until you have Level 5 Cooking Skill, eating that 50% meat or fish is very risky business. Want it off the snow and gone from your game, instead of staring at you every time you go out your front door? Stick it in a container inside, leave the game. Gone forever the next day. It does help with cleaning up the clutter. ;)

And why would you put fish in a cintainer indoors anyway? It degrades so quickly! If it's still edible, leave it out in the snow, where it only decays 1 %/day. Keeping meat and fish indoors is just wasting valuable food. Just imagine if we had Smell-o-vision? The stench coming from your monitor from the rotting food inside your cabin would be... ewwwwwwwww. *gag*

[jswilliams]

I thought food in any container was safe, so I put some in there to organize it..one look to see how much was left, etc. etc.

Now it seems like food kept in the drawer of a fish hut held up just fine. I didn't notice a severe decay since that fish was in there for...a week?

[IFIYGD]

Yeah, decay rates don;t change nased on in container or out of container. It is Indoors or Outdoors that matters. The only time a contaier really matters if if you put anything 0% in it. 0% in a container, indoors or outdoors, will despawn when you exit the game. If you have 0% meat or fish you want to hang onto to cook back up to 50%, either to eat (after Cooking Level5) or to use as a decoy, store it outside of a container s it doesn't despawn.

There is a good guide called "Game Mechanics- Know The World To Surivive It" in the Guides section. May be a bit out of date with some of the new clothing, but it will give you a good idication of decay rates for foods, tools, clothing. Indoors and Outdoors. Can't say how spot in things are after the most recent update. But it's a good guide to check out.
(It is out of date a bit for clothing, just looked. But the author is supposedly working on updating all of the data.Which may take a while for them to do good, solid, cotrolled tests to get conclusive results that are replicable.)

(Edit- and Fishing huts are considered "outdoors", which is why folks use them to prevent or treat Cabin Fever.)

[iwasa]

The only ruined items that will not disappear from inside a container are items that spawned in the container at the start of the sandbox. I have occasionally pulled ruined items (0%) from trunks, drawers, and whatnot. Of course, if you take them out and then put them back in they disappear. Not sure if when you search a container and it shows you a ruined item that if you don't take it and just (I think) right click to put it back whether that would make it disappear like any other ruined item put into a container.