Shipwrecked: Some Great, Easy Home Base Food Sources

A few tips for really good and easy food sources for a home base. Part of choosing where to locate a home base and keeping yourself fed.

Fishermerms and Tidal Pools

Fishermerms live in the Tidal Marsh biome. They will catch fish for you and leave them laying on the ground for you to pick up.

Tidal pools are also good for fishing with a fishing pole without getting a Sea Hound after you, if you don't have Fishermerms. They provide an endless supply of fish 24/7.



When you get the fish, hang them on drying racks. Drying racks make jerky. Small Jerky replenishes 8 health, 12.5 hunger, and 10 sanity when eaten!! It also lasts for a good while in your inventory.



With fishermerms and drying racks you will have all the food you could ever want. This is the easiest, most abundant, least resource intensive, best source of quality food I know of.

Save rot to fertilize your transplanted grass or berries, gardens, or just to burn in the firepit.

Crabbits

Crabbits live in the Beach biome. Find a spot with lots of Crabbit Dens (holes) to build your base near. Put traps on top of them. Hang the Fish Morsels on drying racks for tons of jerky. Small Jerky replenishes 8 health, 12.5 hunger, and 10 sanity when eaten!! It also lasts for a good while in your inventory.


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Crabbits use up more time and resources than Fishermerms because you have to keep making traps. But it's probably easier to find a lot of crabbit dens together than it is to find some fishermerms. You're going to need a good supply of grass and twigs to keep this going. You can dig up grass plants anywhere and plant them near your base and fertilize them with rot or manure. Twigs can be transplanted and don't need fertilization.

One way to get a bunch of rot: collect seeds and put them in a chest until they rot.

Bee Boxes and Honey

This is worth mentioning because it's easy, can be built anywhere, and honey lasts a very long time in your inventory. Honey can also be used to make honey ham in the crockpot, which is a good meal. Honey will fix hunger and health, not sanity.

Honey is good for 3 health, 9.375 hunger, and 0 sanity just by itself and lasts a long time in your inventory and it always fresh on the bee box.

Honey ham replenishes 30 health, 75 hunger, and 5 sanity when eaten, and requires two meats and one honey to make. One meat can be monster meat. Large jerky counts as one meat in the crockpot. Small jerky counts as 1/2 meat. So if you have a spider close by, you can use a monster meat and two small jerkies for your meat. One honey and that's it.

To build bee boxes you will need to find some beehives. Capture 4 bees with a net, then kill the hive to get the honeycomb. Don't forget to feed the bees while they're in your inventory or they'll die.


Very important! Your bee boxes require flowers close to them to make honey!

To get flowers, go where there are flowers, make a net, capture butterflies. Your net will capture 10 butterflies before it self destructs, ten butterflies will be good for two or maybe three bee boxes. While the butterflies are in your inventory, remember to feed them or they will die!





Plant the butterflies on jungle tiles near your bee boxes. Use a pitchfork to place some jungle tiles if necessary. The bees will spread flowers on jungle, magma field, tidal marsh, meadow, and beach biomes for sure when the bee boxes and original flowers are on jungle tiles. I have planted flowers on meadow and beach tiles and the bees did not make more flowers. The bee boxes were also on beach and meadow. That's my experience, I don't know if something else was causing a problem.

** Important Update: I have a new base, and I placed jungle tiles, and I placed bee boxes and flowers and the bees are not spreading the flowers. I thought the secret was the jungle tiles, but it's not. I don't know what it is.

Bees kill crocodogs and other bad guys if they attack them, just watched the bees from one bee box kill a crocodog. I've seen natural hives kill lots of bad guys, but definitely this was a bee box killing.

When you've been away from your base for a while, the honey on the bee box is always fresh. Another reason to love bee boxes.

The picture below is from ten flowers made by planting butterflies on jungle tiles that I transferred from a different island, and two bee boxes, also on the jungle tiles. (See first picture in this section.) All of the extra flowers were made by the bees.

You will end up with lots of flowers, bees, butterflies, and honey, and it will all be very nice.

**Update 8/3/2024
I had two bee boxes on the sand surrounded by 10 - 15 flowers making lots of honey but not spreading flowers around. I built some wildbore houses nearby and planted some flowers for them, so a little distance from the bee boxes but within the bees' range, and suddenly the bees were spreading flowers everywhere. Maybe that is the secret to getting them to spread flowers everywhere? But look out for flowers near your fire and crockpot because they turn to evil flowers on the full moon and will drain your sanity.



If you like this guide, please give some stars. Thanks.

[Crunch]

Crabbits I consider tedious but I did not consider the merm pond fish, that's a really neat strategy!

[Big Bobby Sue]

"One suggestion; don't use drying racks. The time invested vs what you actually get is never actually worth it unless you specifically need jerky. (Which you never will, perogis are better health anyways.) Just make meatballs instead. Otherwise, amazing guide, and I use these strats on every SW run." -- the father


the father: I disagree. Jerky is one of the best food items. It fulfills health, hunger, and sanity, and it lasts pretty long in your inventory. It also converts a fish item into a meat item for the purposes of the crock pot, if that's what you want.

Further, pierogi has the same exact benefits as fishsticks and fishsticks are much easier to find the ingredients for. 1 fish item (including limpet and crabbits), 1 twig, two fillers. If you're not in shipwrecked, pierogi may be easier but then, make meatballs (like you said).

Thanks for your comment.

[camomille ♥]

One suggestion; don't use drying racks. The time invested vs what you actually get is never actually worth it unless you specifically need jerky. (Which you never will, perogis are better health anyways.) Just make meatballs instead. Otherwise, amazing guide, and I use these strats on every SW run.