Different Direction for Cooking Rework/Update

[GelatinousCube]

So it seems like most players want new dishes to be added to make certain ingredients more valuable or worthwhile. I've seen some great suggestions for specific recipes as well as various ideas for cooking overhauls or reworks - I really like the wheat idea posted a while ago.

What I would like to see is probably going to be an unpopular opinion but hear me out first! So lately many players are just eating raw veggies as their predominant food source - they can restore all three stats easily and because you can now farm them on masse thanks to RWYS you can easily just farm veggies and not use anything else for food (so long as you aren't Wigfrid obviously). Honey is the only other food source that you can just survive off solely without much work once it is set up - yes there are plenty of other very easy food sources but Farming and Bee Boxes are the two that don't require any fighting or combat and give huge amounts of food that can easily sustain you on its own without any need for crockpots. Meat farms can be automated but Meat can only restore sanity when made into Jerky or meals and unless cooked actually damages your sanity. Meat to me feels perfectly balanced and as it should be, honey while yes crazy good does require some set up and you do have to dodge bees (or have some way to avoid them) when gathering it - it also barely produces in Winter.

Veggies however can be grown all year round, have no combat involved (The Lord but he rarely shows up, is easy, can be relocated forever etc), give huge yields, have great shelf life and restore massive amounts of health and hunger and when cooked into the right meals (which have insanely easy recipes - Potato Spirals and I forget the other) provide a huge amount of sanity. Just as an aside Sanity can be easily solved via a Tam or other clothing and many like to be insane the majority of the time to farm nightmare fuel - hunger and health are the main two stats that food is used for anyway and they are what veggies do best. Literally a few good harvests of giant Veggies can last you the entire game year and more if you know what you are doing. Honestly they just seem too strong right now - they provide a crazy amount of health and hunger that frankly trivializes Crockpot dishes that exist purely for those purposes - why cook Pierogi or other healing or hunger dishes when you can restore more stats with raw/cooked veggies, save time on cooking and not have to gather other ingredients to make recipes work? Pretty much so long as you aren't Wigfrid and you don't mind/enjoy farming and do so every once in a while you can ignore every other food source in the game entirely and never need a crockpot. Actual dishes and using the Crockpot to me personally at least seems like it should be a straight upgrade and is sort of like the next tier up of cooking if you will to simply cooking raw ingredients over a fire or eating them raw - taking the time to use correct ingredients, learn which recipes are best for your play style (and what ingredients you amass the most of), wait through the cooking time and set up enough crockpots to efficiently cook multiple meals should be rewarded and should give you a greater benefit than skipping all of this to eat raw food no?
Now it may sound like I'm a biased Wigfrid main and I just want to Nerf raw Veggies into the ground but here is the kicker -

What I propose is that overall raw and cooked veggies and fruits on their own all receive reductions to the stats they restore, in some cases cut in half. To make up for this however all existing veggie dishes should receive strong buffs as well as slightly longer cooking times to balance this. We should also receive a handful of new useful veggie dishes especially ones for those that do not have unique recipes yet.

Lots of people want new recipes, certain people want a rework or overhaul for cooking and to me raw veggies just seem too good right now and essentially remove the need to ever use a Crockpot. With veggies providing less stats but much greater ones when cooked into the right dishes we would cover all those bases. Crockpots and actual dishes would once again take their rightful place as King of Food, cooking becomes a bit more exciting and beneficial with stronger dishes and the entire mechanic gets a bit of a refresh. Farming would still be just as good as you would now just use all your veggies for the great meals they can make rather than eating them raw. We would have more variety and veggies would really just become even stronger but would require more time and hard work in order to do so.

I would also like to see new meat dishes, especially some more unique ones for Drumsticks and Bat Wings as a Wig main as all the changes I've suggested only benefit me when I am playing as someone else which is not that often. I just feel like veggies are in a weird place right now and should be more similar to meat based dishes where you can get a little more bang for your buck making strong crockpot dishes instead of eating it raw/cooked.

 

[Chesmu]

So the actual effect of this will be forcing a group of players to change their play-style if they want to keep playing, while not in their style! You get where this is going, defeating the purpose of gaming, which is having fun.

If a player goes through a lot of micromanaging and micro-chores to collect a lot of raws, and spends their time eating them one by one, they deserve the benefit from it, while some decide to not do all that, do less stuff passively but gain extremely good dishes by cooking whole meals.

For example, it's like asking a nerf for Football Helmet stats, because some people are not using Log Suit often enough.

As a conclusion, the current system is perfect, the raw foods are nerfed not by having low stats, but by having a very good alternative to them called cooking, which has it's own levels, to cook complicated dishes or just meatballs; This way everyone can enjoy the game their way, if someone travels the map a lot, they benefit from raw food, if other bases and farms a lot, they cook which is good both for themselves and for the players that come back from adventuring.

PS. No, raw food doesn't remove the need for cooking, if you are to fight bosses you need to cook some stuff.

 

[GelatinousCube]

With how much veggies like cooked potato heal you can most definitely go without crockpot foods for a boss fight. Easily.

It wouldn't completely change that playstyle as raw veggies provide SO MUCH raw stats right now that even if they were nerfed you could still survive off them alone just not quite as efficiently.

Also I would agree with a lot of what you have said however crockpot recipes at the moment (at least a lot of them - plenty are fine) are really not worth it whatsoever compared to eating the individual ingredients separately especially when it contains vegetables. This didn't use to be a problem but with the huge yields we can get from farming now veggies are way too strong.

The very concept of the crockpot and cooking recipes is to get more out of your food (stat wise, saving space and increasing spoilage time) and right now the crockpot is barely/rarely necessary and you can easily get by eating raw/cooked veggies.

Anytime I am not playing as Wigfrid it is SO MUCH MORE efficient simply eating raw/cooked veggies and honey than ever bothering to cook anything. I can get huge amounts of healing and hunger from veggies and a Tam fixes any sanity issues.

At the very least crockpot dishes (especially veggie ones) need a massive buff to keep them worthwhile.

 

9 hours ago, Chesmu said:

If a player goes through a lot of micromanaging and micro-chores to collect a lot of raws, and spends their time eating them one by one, they deserve the benefit from it,

This is the problem though, you can easily amass huge amounts of veggies with little work. You can make a couple of harvests last an in game year or more meaning you only need to focus on food for a fraction of the ingame year and can ignore it for more or less the rest.