What is the current food meta?

[superhanz]

So I took a break for a year and I'm excited about rediscovering the game. A lot has changed since I bought the game in alpha and I'm thankful that the developer used our advice as a community. I still remember when he introduced food growth requirements that you had to meet with just 3 degrees Celsius as margin. It was not fun, but he changed it immediately after criticism.

I don't have much time to play and I want to see as much game content while I can play. What is the most effective food and resource meta right now? I want to rush to late game and pick up where I stopped before it was invented. I mean space exploration and meteors.

 

Okay bye.

[SamLogan]

https://oni-assistant.com/tools/foodcalculator

[Lacost]

Liceloaf in the early game, stuffed berries in the midgame and barbeque in the lategame.

I personally dislike mushrooms, especially with the new disease system that makes slimelung more obnoxious.

 

[Gurgel]

2 hours ago, Lacost said:

Liceloaf in the early game, stuffed berries in the midgame and barbeque in the lategame.

I personally dislike mushrooms, especially with the new disease system that makes slimelung more obnoxious.

 

Alternatively, mushrooms directly (or with liceloaf or mush-bars to get a bit more time to set them up), and pepper bread from wild ingredients as end-game. For a bit less effect, omelettes from ranching as mid-to-end game food.

All these options work. For maximum moral (which can be restricted to astronauts) you probably want barbecue or pepper bread as end-game food. Note that on most maps, wild sleet wheat will only feed 12...16 dupes or so if you preserve all of it. Wild peppernuts are non-problematic, so you will usually bake pepper bread.

[natanstarke]

Mushrooms are hands down the best food ever till very late game where barbeque is super strong especially if you have a pincha pepper farm using fertilizer " uses less polluted water and need like 4 of them to feed 16 dupes that way". I made that calc using the already mentioned above food calculator.

Edit: and mushrooms is for its high kcall and easy setup for early game.

[WanderingKid]

I disagree with liceloaf and mush bars.  Build more farms, you'll lose less dupe time (and water).

Early flip to shrooms to get off the dirt loss before you run into trouble.  Also it takes 1/4 of the time to upkeep for the farms.

BBQ is then my personal choice when I decide to get off mushroom.  Mind you, my astronauts take raw mushrooms with them as a food supplement.  Anything after mushroom is "Because you can" not "Because you need to."  Wild pincha and Voles make for a delicious sandwich though.

[Technoincubus]

Shrooms early, with puft farm and near-unlimited slime means they are one of the best sustainable food, and then pepper-related food, with native peppers

[Saturnus]

Bristle blossom is my preferred food.

Eat it raw early game.

Cook to gristle berry mid game.

Combine with pincha peppers for stuffed berries late game.

BBQ and Pepper bread is Fools Gold. No dupe "needs" the additional +4 morale boost of them when stuffed berries easily puts morale into the 40s. You'd have to make every dupe have almost every skill tree max'ed to ever need that high morale.

[Coolthulhu]

12 minutes ago, Saturnus said:

BBQ and Pepper bread is Fools Gold.

It's not. BBQ can be produced cheaper than stuffed berries. The soul food bonus offsets cycles with missed meals due to tight schedule or return from rocket.

On low-water maps, "anti-vegan" diet is the meta.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

2 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Bristle blossom is my preferred food.

Eat it raw early game.

Cook to gristle berry mid game.

Combine with pincha peppers for stuffed berries late game.

BBQ and Pepper bread is Fools Gold. No dupe "needs" the additional +4 morale boost of them when stuffed berries easily puts morale into the 40s. You'd have to make every dupe have almost every skill tree max'ed to ever need that high morale.

Ehh, why would you wait to start with cooking it until midgame? Cooking it is basically a free calorie and morale bonus.

@superhanz Food meta depends a bit on what you prefer really. I personally go for gristle berry very early, but without enough blossom seeds so early on, I am forced to fill it up with mealwood until I actually have enough seeds. I never went personally for mushrooms because of the slimelung issues that come with the slime, but you can do it. Also, you can supplement with omelettes once you go ranching. Infact, early on omelettes will be the highest food quality, and with 2-3 full hatch ranches you can just do without farms with a low dupe count (3 full ranches can roughly support 11 duplicants).

Later in the game you can start to go for the higher morale food. As Saturnus said, you don't necessarily need to go for highest quality foods, but stuffed berry is a must. However, BBQ might be an excellent way to get rid of meat. Try to leave as many wild plants intact as you can, especially sleat wheet.

[Yunru]

Egg is my meta. Because if you store raw egg above 70-something (72 I believe) Celsius it'll cook itself into an omelette. Sorry chef, you're not needed!

[Mr.Trueba]

I never make liceloaf or mush bars. For me its a waste of resources.

I use mealwood the very first cycles and after turn to bristle blossom. In mid-game and late game I use the wild pincha peppers to make stuffed berry.

I don't like neither mushrooms, because I just dig the necessary to make a path for my dupes and the puft farms are very laggy.

Most of people will tell you that mushrooms are the best, but I don't think so. I prefer a easy automatization and bristle only need water, nothing more easy to get. (:

 

[kerosene]

Build a lot of planter boxes and eat raw lice. Cooking them requires too much time. Only cook them if you need more calories but don't have the time or seeds.

Mushrooms take some investment to set up properly but are very resource and work efficient. The delivery of slime to mushroom farm tiles should be automated. The slime must be kept under water or under 2 kg gas pressure to prevent offgassing.

Is it important to sterilize the slime? I think it can pass germs to the mushrooms which could be problematic.

Late game: I heard shove voles ranching gives a lot of meat for little work.

[Gurgel]

4 hours ago, kerosene said:

Mushrooms take some investment to set up properly but are very resource and work efficient. The delivery of slime to mushroom farm tiles should be automated. The slime must be kept under water or under 2 kg gas pressure to prevent offgassing.

You can just place deodorizers next to the slime storage. 

4 hours ago, kerosene said:

Is it important to sterilize the slime? I think it can pass germs to the mushrooms which could be problematic.

Never have done that and never had serious problems. You should produce medicine packs anyways now (which is easy). Expect to need about 1.5/cycle or so with 12 dupes and active slime-mining (no suits), i.e. 8 Balm Lilies are enough for 12 dupes for me. 

[Saturnus]

10 hours ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

Ehh, why would you wait to start with cooking it until midgame? Cooking it is basically a free calorie and morale bonus.

Requires a dupe with cooking skill to use the grill. It's not a primary necessity to cook them right away. So when I say early game, I mean very early game. But I also usually rush dupes to exosuit skill so that all dupes are in exosuits straight out of bed before cycle 100.

[ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy]

7 hours ago, Saturnus said:

Requires a dupe with cooking skill to use the grill. It's not a primary necessity to cook them right away. So when I say early game, I mean very early game. But I also usually rush dupes to exosuit skill so that all dupes are in exosuits straight out of bed before cycle 100.

Imo, it's worth the skill point early on. The earlier you get to do it, the more water you can save by dialling back farms. It is also a bit of a necessity for me as I try to stretch the first cycles without a replenishable food source, thus basically living on muckroot. After that I definitely need calories fast, which cooking is excellent for.

[Gurgel]

7 hours ago, ToiDiaeRaRIsuOy said:

It is also a bit of a necessity for me as I try to stretch the first cycles without a replenishable food source, thus basically living on muckroot. After that I definitely need calories fast, which cooking is excellent for.

Same here. Just tried to get to 12 dupes and full fried mushroom supply (3 plants per dupe) as fast as possible and found that it is entirely doable before cycle 50. Not frying these mushrooms is not an option though.