Preserving Bin - working as intended?

[Scoob]

Hi all,

I had a query regarding the preserving bin - I've built several (powered by Spark Powder) to keep my food fresh longer.

The description says how it dries out the food to make it last longer, however this is not the case. When placed in the bin the foods expiry time is increase by a useful amount instantly, however, the moment you remove it, the expiry time is reduced massively.

For example, I'd cooked some Meat and placed it in one of my bins, the expiry time before spoiling was increased to over an hour. Nice. However, removing three pieces of cooked meat to take with me on my next outing saw it drop to a little over TWO minutes once in my inventory. Placing it on one of my Dino bumped it up a bit, but not even close to long enough for a days resource gathering.

I tested this several times. I gather fresh meat, cooked it within two minutes and stored it in a bin right away seeing a 2hr+ expiry time. I leave it for a good hour or so in game, collect it later (showing just over an hour expiry) and the moment I remove it from the bit the expiry drops to under 3 minutes!

I'm not 100% sure of the intended preservation mechanic, I can see that items get a huge boost right away when placed in the bin, loose it instantly if removed right away returning to a "normal" expiry. However, items that have been in a bin for extended periods, rather than gaining time when removed (they've supposedly been dried out) they seem to drop to just a few minutes.

As a result of this I still store my food in bins, however when I need to eat / make something from berries, I grab the food and use it right away, it's pointless carrying it with me - which was the whole point of food preservation.

In essence these bits seem to act like a fridge, they keep the food from spoiling longer while in the bin. However, the description suggests food "smoked" in this way should last a little longer when removed, but it seems like some separate timer continues to tick down and this expiry gets applied to the food upon removal.

Note: I've not tested making Jerky using Oil yet, possibly that does allow for very long lasting food.

Note 2: I've had spoiled meat appear in one of my bins a couple of minutes after checking showing the oldest food expiring in 20 minutes or so.

Note 3: often meat - both cooked and uncooked - will not stack. I.e. I have a stack of 30 raw meat showing (for example) a 7 minute expiry time. I pop it in a bin and the expiry time increases (good) but my one stack has turned into two stacks, one with a much lower expiry.

So, anybody seeing the same, do you understand what's going on? My results are not so consistent.

Cheers,

Scoob.

[Splosions]

I put 8 prime cooked meat in a bin with stacks of oil and spark powder. In 8 hours of REAL LIFE time it made 3 jerky.

That is crap

[Gazer75]

If they made it real it would take a lot longer :P

[Scoob]

Damn, that's somewhat excessive Splosions! I wonder if "normal" preservation - i.e. without the oil - requires the meat to be left in a bit for a similar length of time. Also, I wonder if I get one stack turning into two stacks when adding meat based on the time I added it or something?

Would be nice to know the exact mechanic. Really, if we had to leave a stack of meat in say one game day for it to retain its preservation when removed, I'd be happy with that.

Scoob.

[Splosions]

Originally posted by Gazer75:

If they made it real it would take a lot longer :P

NO if they made it real life, all the meat would turn to jerky at the same time after 8 hours

[Gazer75]

The spoil timer is probably percentage based. Basically going from 100% to 0. But the time is different depending on where the item is. So if the time is 1 day for 100-0 in the Bin and 5 minutes for the inventory then an item at 50% will show 12 hours in Bin and 2m30s when moved to inventory.

[Xuhybrid]

It spoils slower if you just have Sparkpowder. It converts it to jerky if you put Oil in it.

[Gazer75]

AFAIK with only sparkpowder the bin acts as a refrigerator, just with lower timer.

[Scoob]

Originally posted by Gazer75:

The spoil timer is probably percentage based. Basically going from 100% to 0. But the time is different depending on where the item is. So if the time is 1 day for 100-0 in the Bin and 5 minutes for the inventory then an item at 50% will show 12 hours in Bin and 2m30s when moved to inventory.

Yeah, a % method like that might explain what I'm seeing. Meat at 100% timer - 6 minutes in inventory, 12 minutes on a dino and 120 minutes in a bin. This degrades to 50% so 60 minutes in the bin, 6 on a Dino and 3 in my inventory. So, the meat has technically kept an additional 57 minutes by being stored in the bin, in affect, but it has to be used right away on removal.

However, I still get ZERO expiry time boost once I remove stuff from the bin, making it only good for storing stuff. I have to use anything I take from it within 2-3 minutes usually - this includes berries, not just raw and cooked meat.

Basically meat will keep for longer while in the bin, but the process in no way preserves the meat once removed from the bin - unless oil is added.

Scoob.

[Scoob]

Originally posted by Gazer75:

AFAIK with only sparkpowder the bin acts as a refrigerator, just with lower timer.

Yep, that was my conclusion too. Though the description does mention drying out the meat, which should improve preservation times once removed too. Not as much as making Jerky using oil, but still by quite a lot just from smoking it.

Scoob.

[Xuhybrid]

It was possible before to put meat into your dino to get a 40+ minute spoil timer, then take it out and it would keep its timer. That was fixed though.

[hishido]

you cannot tame dinos with jerky sadly :-(

[Gazer75]

When I was saying that it would tak a lot longer in real life before I was thinking about a different preserving method used here i Norway for over a 1000 years. Its kind of like making jerky, but there is no heating involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curing_(food_preservation)
My dad used to do it with some parts of sheep meat.

[ShawnDaGeek]

recipe here

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=460286153

[[CNT] Malov]

The preservation chamber should require things like coal/logs/spark powder to make jerky not oil. Oil is way too hard to farm at the moment and makes it impossible to blossom outside of the stone age.

[[Vilu]]

And your milk goes bad faster when you take it out of the refrigerator.

The preserving is nothing more than lower level version of the 55lvl refrigerator