Food and You (Dying)

[Knight of Stars]

As of now DS is a game where you going to either die in the first few days or survive and thrive. Now I think we have to do something about that last part. If we look at history we will see that population and survival increased as food became more abundant. Now lets look at all our sources of food:

• Rabbits
• Moles
• Koalefants
• Beefalo
• Birch Guardians/trees
• Monsters
• Pigs
• Bees
• Mushrooms
• Farms
• Berries
• Carrots
• Caves
• Birds
• Bird cage
• Volt goats
• Tall birds
• Giants
• Frogs
• Fish
• A LOT MORE

With an Ice box its fairly easy to keep food to a good usable state before it becomes unusable or harmful. So with all this food how do we starve? We need  Tainted meat, Cross Contamination, Food sickness, Mold, Bears, mice and other thieving animals... or Krampusnauts (Kevin one time mentioned this and I hope its coming badly). These guys can raid our camps, eat our farms (thats a gobbler's job). I have an idea as to how they can be achieved.

 

Bears: Strong enemy, that will sleep at you base and destroy any container with food in it.

 

Mice: Passive, but are able to raid your food containers and bring it back to their hole and once they do more mice will come to you camp and create burrows around it. They can make your food diseased (undetectable)

 

Food Sickness: Undetectable. Hunger and Sanity decreases rapidly and only 1/4 of benifits are gained from eating. Not only that but the character can vomit if they eat again, producing rot and decreasing hunger and sanity a set amount. Solved by cooking food on a fire. Or eating a certain stomach calming item. Contaminated Foods can be used in a crock pot and poison the dish. (Shove that in your Dragon Pie)

 

Tainted meat: Meats will have a chance to have nasty hunger and health effects and your character will have a food sickness debuff when eaten raw. Solved by cooking on a fire, but If placed in an ice box or crockpot. Other foods become tainted (If they are cooked than they are done for). Meats that are already cooked that become tainted (by placing raw meat in the ice box) can't be used in a meat effigy. If so then the meat effigy will take the health of the player, but not revive them. Can be regained with destruction.

 

Cross Contamination: When you make your ice box you will need to have another one for your nonmeat items. If they are mixed there is a chance your uncooked veggies or honey will carry the Food sickness debuff. Solved by cooking food on a fire.

 

Mold: Your ice boxes need to be cleaned reguarly or mold can happen. Your Ice box begins to look dirty and if it progress your food becomes moldy and can eventually turn to rot. Moldy food has the same debuff as spolied and can harm the player a set amount. Increased chance during spring, but decreased chance during summer and winter.

 

I am hoping this will add to the difficulty of the game and reduce the safety net

[Knight of Stars]

The Krampusnauts... you get the picture. PURE evil.

 

LET US STARVE IN A WONDERFUL CYCLE OF DEATH...

 

Oh yeah and please share some Ideas I would love to hear some fun ways to mess with the cycle of development.

[Battal]

I think Kevin (the lead developer) stated somewhere that Starving is rarely what kills people - it's just there to bar people from doing everything they want to do.

[Knight of Stars]

I think Kevin (the lead developer) stated somewhere that Starving is rarely what kills people - it's just there to bar people from doing everything they want to do.

 

Yeah, that makes sense, but it is starving is becoming less and less important. My hope is that this will make people forage more and take some time away from thier other more important tasks and that will kill them... along with making summer and winter harder.

[Battal]

Yeah, that makes sense, but it is starving is becoming less and less important. My hope is that this will make people forage more and take some time away from thier other more important tasks and that will kill them... along with making summer and winter harder.

 

Raising the difficulty is always, good, don't get my wrong, but making things micromanegy is a whole other story.  The devs don't want starving to become a complete barrier from stopping anyone from doing anything.

 

[InaneDugong]

Aye, whilst I like lots of these ideas, the issue with implementing them is it brings the focus entirely on the Food proponent of starving. The thing is: starving in Don't Starve and in reality isn't just about food you've foraged going off or being stolen or, well, bad stuff happening to it, it's also about the ascertaining. 

 

Honestly, if you took many of the elements of Don't Starve and fleshed them out a bit more, you might find that starving does become an issue. 

[Parrotoss]

For the bear idea, there is already the Bearger giant that does the same thing, so it should probably be enough. As for the mice idea, I find it really plausible and would make players take note of were and how their food is stored. Perhaps the diseased opponent could be implemented later in order not to over complicate things.

I recall that diseases and sicknesses were considered before, but time constrictions or something, it got dropped.

Since there is a new DLC, sickness should be added, especially if it will play a role in seasons.

The growing of mold could even be strategically beneficial as mold could be used to craft a higher tier medicine that could be used against sicknesses--not the most accurate depiction, but it would serve as a balance.

 

Adding new things into the game is fine as long as there are steps that can be easily used against it.

Mold could give rotting (or rot) an alternative use and excessive food won't be as wasted.