Should Meatballs, Pierogi and other recipes be nerfed?

[Azamagon]

On 5/3/2021 at 7:14 PM, Cheggf said:

It already is a noob trap like ratatouille and fist full of jam, and it already is only effective if you're using ice. Nearly every single way you can make meatballs will not give any stats, take stats away, or give such a small amount that it's not worth waiting for it to cook in the crock pot.

Fist Full of Jam and Ratatouille are more noob traps by far though. They definitely need Ice to be profitable.

But Meatballs can take a Monster Meat and 3 Red Mushrooms for great profit in contrast, so it's far less of a noob trap than the other two. Ice just makes the recipe even more awesome.

Quote

Other than Warly, Wigfrid, and people who don't know how to use the crock pot, meatballs already aren't made very much because it spoils fast, doesn't give much hunger, and barely gives any health. And why do you even hate ice so much? Kelp is a much better filler, which you would still be able to use with this weird nerf.

That weird nerf would do nothing to people who know how to use the crock pot and just make everyone who doesn't slightly more wasteful. Or they'll just keep making wet goop over and over again and not understand.

Eh, what? A lot of people use Meatballs because of their extreme efficiency with the right ingredients. Sure, spoilage might be one reason some don't like them too much, but I think another reason is people likely don't use them because they don't know how efficient they actually are - and maybe also because they are boring to make, and want variety or whatnot (which I can attest to myself).

But saying they don't give much hunger is ridiculously untrue, because Meatballs is one of the most efficient recipe gain-per-ingredients-wise (if not counting fillers in the conversion factors). To keep this post less cluttered, I'll put the stats of proof in the following spoiler:

Spoiler

9 most efficient recipes, in total statgains, if compared to their most efficient individual stats (like cooked forms, and dried form for Kelps), and only counting ice+twigs if they are necessary for the recipe (i.e. being non-fillers):

1. Dragonpie = 87,5 statsgain (Compared to 1 Dragon Fruit + 3 Twigs)
2. Meatballs = 64,75 statsgain (Compared to 1 Monster Meat + 3 Ice)
3. Jellybeans = 51,1 statsgain (Compared to 1 Royal Jelly + 3 Ice)
4. Wobster Bisque = 39,35 statsgain (Compared to 1 Wobster, 1 Ice, 2 Twigs)
5. Meaty Stew = 37,83 statsgain (Compared to 1 Monster Meat, 1 Leafy Meat, 1 Meat, 1 Ice)
6. Milkmade Hat = 36,6 statsgain (Compared to 1 Nostril, 1 Kelp, 1 Milk, 1 Twig)
7a + 7b. Wobster Dinner  + Fishstick = 34,5 statsgain (Compared to 1 Wobster, 1 Butter, 2 Ice) / (Compared to 1 Fish Morsel, 1 Twig, 2 Ice)
8. Ratatouille = 33,6 statsgain (Compared to 1 Red Cap, 3 Ice)
9a + 9b. Froggle Bunwich + Barnacle Pita = 29 statsgain  (Compared to 1 Frog Leg, 1 Red Cap, 2 Twigs) / (Compared to 1 Barnacle, 1 Red Cap, 2 Twigs)

9 most efficient recipes, in HUNGER gains, if compared to their most efficient individual stats (like cooked forms, and dried form for Kelps), and only counting ice+twigs if they are necessary for the recipe (i.e. being non-fillers):

1. Dragonpie = 62,5 hungergain (Compared to 1 Dragon Fruit + 3 Twigs)
2. Meatballs = 50 hungergain (Compared to 1 Morsel + 3 Ice)
3. Milkmade Hat = 49,04 (Compared to 1 Nostril, 1 Kelp, 1 Milk, 1 Twig)
4. Meaty Stew = 29,17 hungergain (Compared to 1 Monster Meat, 1 Leafy Meat, 1 Meat, 1 Ice)
5a + 5b. Ratatouille + Fist Full of Jam = 25 hungergain (Compared to 1 Red Cap + 3 Ice) / (Compared to 1 Berry + 3 Ice)
6. Butter Muffin = 14,06 hungergain (Compared to 1 Butterfly Wings, 1 Red Cap, 2 Twigs)
7a + 7b + 7c + 7d. Froggle Bunwich + Barnacle Pita + Stuffed Fish Heads + Fishsticks = 12,5 hungergain  (Compared to 1 Frog Leg, 1 Red Cap, 2 Twigs) / (Compared to 1 Barnacle, 1 Red Cap, 2 Twigs) / (Compared to 1 Barnacle, 2 Fish Morsels, 1 Twig) / (Compared to 1 Fish Morsel, 1 Twig, 2 Ice)
8. Turkey Dinner = 7,81 hungergain (Compared to 2 Drumsticks, 1 Morsel, 1 Red Cap)
9. Kabobs = 7,08 hungergain (Compared to 1 Morsel, 1 Twig, 2 Ice)

You can speak from a place of emotions as much as you want, but the stats speak for themselves. Meatballs are the 2nd best allrounder, and 2nd best hungerfiller. Despite being one of the easiest recipes to make in the game. Low hungergains only count if you use Berries or some other valueable fooditem as filler. And it still is generally better than FFoJ and Ratatouille in that regards, because, say, a cooked Morsel and 3 cooked Berries is at least a 12,5 raw gain in regards to hunger (62,5 instead of 50). Meatballs, for a noob-dish, is EXTREMELY forgiving.

Also Kelp as filler? Imo that's really wasteful, as it's a decent Sanity-booster food via Dried Kelp, whereas Ice is an everlasting filler in a fridge (sure, not collectable all year around, I'll give you that).

So while nerfing Meatballs stats like I suggested at first is maybe too harsh and putting it in the FFoJ and Ratatouille area, it is not without reason I suggested that at first (as you can see from the stats). But I still think @Masked Koopa was on to a better solution, with reducing the Ice-amount allowed, as it only makes really affects more experienced players, and they'll likely be able to adapt to such a change. Even then though, I think Meatballs need to be nerfed a tad (to like 50 hunger), as it's still supergood using a meat and 3 Red Caps, for example.

 

[Friendly Grass]

41 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

 

 

 

So you’re agreeing that meatballs is only efficient with ice?

Why the hell do you have red caps on you?

How is “total stat gain” useful?

Aren’t you supposed to use multiple different scenarios and calculate percent gain?

Meatball hunger gain

Spoiler

 

3 ice + 1 morsel = 222% gain

3 ice + 1 monster meat = 144% gain

3 kelp+ 1 monster = 37% gain

3 carrots/eggs/berries + 1 monster = 11% gain

3 carrots/eggs/berries + 1 meat = 0% gain

2 carrots + 1 monster + 1 meat = 9% loss

3 juicy berries + 1 meat = 32% loss

3 corn + 1 meat = 38% loss

 

Meaty stew hunger gain

Spoiler

1 leafy + 1 monster + 2 morsel/frog = 150% gain

leafy + monster + meat + ice = 141% gain

Monster + 2 meat + carrot/berry = 88% gain

Monster + 3 meat = 85% gain

4 big meat = 50% gain

*Note: I assumed the form (cooked or raw) that has the highest hunger value. 

Also, I don’t understand the argument that meaty stew “is more niche” or “less versatile”. There are many different combinations you can do, I almost always find meaty stew ingredients passively in my fridge, and now with leafy meat, big meat isn’t even required.

However, big meat is extremely accessible, you get it passively from killing useful mobs, and it’s incredibly fast and reliable to farm via werepigs and volt goats. In multiplayer meaty stew can often be less readily available for sure, and that’s when you turn to farming!

One person would need to gather 252 ice every winter to live off of meatballs. 

[Azamagon]

54 minutes ago, Friendly Grass said:

So you’re agreeing that meatballs is only efficient with ice?

Why the hell do you have red caps on you?

How is “total stat gain” useful?

Aren’t you supposed to use multiple different scenarios and calculate percent gain?

Meatball hunger gain

  Hide contents

 

3 ice + 1 morsel = 222% gain

3 ice + 1 monster meat = 144% gain

3 kelp+ 1 monster = 37% gain

3 carrots/eggs/berries + 1 monster = 11% gain

3 carrots/eggs/berries + 1 meat = 0% gain

2 carrots + 1 monster + 1 meat = 9% loss

3 juicy berries + 1 meat = 32% loss

3 corn + 1 meat = 38% loss

 

Meaty stew hunger gain

  Hide contents

1 leafy + 1 monster + 2 morsel/frog = 150% gain

leafy + monster + meat + ice = 141% gain

Monster + 2 meat + carrot/berry = 88% gain

Monster + 3 meat = 85% gain

4 big meat = 50% gain

*Note: I assumed the form (cooked or raw) that has the highest hunger value. 

Also, I don’t understand the argument that meaty stew “is more niche” or “less versatile”. There are many different combinations you can do, I almost always find meaty stew ingredients passively in my fridge, and now with leafy meat, big meat isn’t even required.

However, big meat is extremely accessible, you get it passively from killing useful mobs, and it’s incredibly fast and reliable to farm via werepigs and volt goats. In multiplayer meaty stew can often be less readily available for sure, and that’s when you turn to farming!

One person would need to gather 252 ice every winter to live off of meatballs. 

1) Meatball is by far the most important with ice (and mushrooms), yes.

2) Cuz it's an existing fooditem you can pick up for free? It works just fine as a filler

3) If you are low on all stats, for example? Sometimes you are hungry and insane, sometimes you're hungry and hurt. Sometimes you're all three.

4) I was talking about most potent scenarios. I could make a "most inefficient" recipes too, but you should avoid those anyway, so what's the point? That's only really useful to scold bad cooks :P

5) I don't count all 4 items, if you are using pure fillers. A piece of ice or twig shouldn't count, neither for nor against, if they are not an essential part of the recipe. I guess that can be debatted, but that was my angle on it at least.

About your numbers, if you wanna count all 4 items at all times, corrected ones in bold:

Spoiler

MEATBALLS;

3 ice + 1 morsel = 222% gain

3 ice + 1 monster meat = 144% gain

3 kelp+ 1 monster = 33% gain

3 carrots/eggs/berries + 1 monster = 11% gain

Equal or losses are irrelevant.

MEATY STEW:

1 leafy + 1 monster + 2 morsel/frog = 140% gain

leafy + monster + meat + ice = 131% gain

Monster + 2 meat + carrot/berry = 85% gain

Monster + 3 meat = 60% gain

4 big meat = 50% gain

Regardless, sure, only with Ice (or Red Caps) are Meatballs more efficient than Meaty Stew. And that's even if you count the fillers as an actual fooditem! (like I said, unessential ice, twigs and mushrooms don't count imo). But should that really be considered ok for a "starter" food to be competitive with Meaty Stew, and even capable of surpassing it?

[Friendly Grass]

6 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

About your numbers, if you wanna count all 4 items at all times, corrected ones in bold:

  Reveal hidden contents

Oh, very strange. I did whip this up fast, but I can’t believe I made so many errors. Well, thanks for the corrections ... 

15 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

I don't count all 4 items, if you are using pure fillers. A piece of ice or twig shouldn't count, neither for nor against, if they are not an essential part of the recipe. I guess that can be debatted, but that was my angle on it at least.

Ice and twigs aren’t free, and they have other uses.

22 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

I was talking about most potent scenarios. I could make a "most inefficient" recipes too, but you should avoid those anyway, so what's the point? That's only to really useful to scold bad cooking :P

It should be about being efficient with the ingredients you have on hand. And also to scold bad cooking because I see people on pubs use farm veggies to make meatballs. And I’m also debunking the argument that meatballs are versatile.

24 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

Cuz it's an existing fooditem you can pick up for free? It works just fine as a filler

Okay but how often do you come across red caps and bother picking and saving them? You can pick lots of other things for free, too.

30 minutes ago, Azamagon said:

But should that really be considered ok for a "starter" food though

Oh, you didn’t say anything about a “starter” food before :P

Sure, I might make the occasional meatball during the first winter. And in multiplayer I make them more.

[Masked Koopa]

I think it's worth pointing out that part of the equation here is the ability to easily make use of what is normally a detrimental food item to eat. While for longer term players this isn't really a big deal, with it just being see as about as useful as any other meat for most purposes, for new players it can often be difficult to get their hands on other sources of meat, and they don't have the time management or knowledge or a bird cage to create eggs. I think most of us were there at some point. And in such a context it is easy to see why meatballs may be a little unreasonable, since you are turning a heavily penalized form of meat into a no-downsides high hunger dish. From such a context it's not hard to see why they might be seen as a little too strong, especially if you're used to minecraft where rotten flesh is all but useless and food is ironically less abundant despite being an easier game overall.

That having been said, it's not really as applicable as it may have once been, as with the introduction of farms you can now produce a variety of powerful dishes very easily, making mining for ice as a food source a total waste of time. While I do still think ice shouldn't be so freely usable as filler, that's mostly because I want ways to produce ice during any season for making icecream, veggie stinger, that warly asparagus drink that cools you down, melonsicle, etc, and there would be obvious balance issues if this were to be possible in the current state of things.

I would argue pierogi are a much better candidate for a nerf than anything else, largely because of how abundant the needed ingredients are compared to most other healing foods. Trail Mix is only easily obtainable during autumn. Flower salad is only obtainable during summer. Fishsticks (although these are also pretty overpowered) and surf n turf require going down to the caves or are otherwise not easily available in winter, and are difficult to amass in large quantities. By contrast pierogi can be made year-round with monster meat and cactus, or stone fruit, or veggies from the new farms, or even just picking wild carrots. I would argue that a nerf down to 30 healing would still make them a valuable source of healing, but it would at least give the player incentive to pursue more long-term solutions to the matter of healing. Pierogi are also not a food deserving of a 20 day perish timer, considering how abundant the ingredients are. While I do think that a lot of foods should have perish timers even higher than 20 days to incentivize more complex food late game as opposed to chugging honey, pierogi is one of the few foods that actually has a disproportionate perish time for how powerful it is.

[Azamagon]

9 hours ago, Friendly Grass said:

 

Oh, very strange. I did whip this up fast, but I can’t believe I made so many errors. Well, thanks for the corrections ... 

Ice and twigs aren’t free, and they have other uses.

It should be about being efficient with the ingredients you have on hand. And also to scold bad cooking because I see people on pubs use farm veggies to make meatballs. And I’m also debunking the argument that meatballs are versatile.

Okay but how often do you come across red caps and bother picking and saving them? You can pick lots of other things for free, too.

Oh, you didn’t say anything about a “starter” food before :P

Sure, I might make the occasional meatball during the first winter. And in multiplayer I make them more.

1) No worries, just me being annoyingly nitpicky :P

2) That's true I guess. I was thinking more as fooditems they (and red caps) are basicly non-foods and generally easier to come by than most fooditems.

3) Good point. I'm just torn on counting all 4 items at all times, because Red Caps in particular otherwise heavily skews results in "overall boosts" and "sanity boosts", due to their -10 sanity when cooked. I dunno, I'll have to rethink my position on the calculations I guess :P

4) Often enough to use them as random fillers But I'm also very casual, so maybe I'm dumb for picking them up lol.

5) Eh, I thought it was kinda implied (due to talking about it in comparison with FFoJ and Ratatouille). :P

-------------------------------------------------

Overall though, I'm kinda torn on the food balance (moreso now, since currently calculate only the "active" fooditems, rather than fillers as well - but might reconsider it). I feel there's four priorities overall:

1st - Buff the very underpowered recipes, like Pumpkin Cookies, Fruit Medley, Asparagus Soup, Ceviche and most other fish recipes (which isn't Fish Sticks and Wobster Bisque).

2nd - Change the bad recipes, indirectly buffing/nerfing some underpowered/overpowered recipes. For example: Ceviche from 2 fish to 1, Seafood Gumbo allowing equal fish and meat (along with big statbuffs) while Surf n' Turf needs more meat than fish, Barnacle Linguine from 2 Veggies to 1, Dragonpie requiring 1 Egg etc.

3rd - Nerf some too powerful raw ingredients (Potatoes and Toma Roots in particular, considering how they are so common yet so powerful)

4th - Consider nerfing or changing up the "extremely variable" foods, mainly Meatballs.

As a sidenote: Pierogi definitely is not OP, as it's actually not that good in overall statchanges. At least, they're not something I'd consider high priority.

So yeah, while I think Meatballs could see some changes, I also feel it's of the lowest priority of all food balancing issues.

[BadScra]

I'm not here for about whatever recipe. I'm here for about bird in a cage.

Why bird WON'T die if it ate too much cooked monster meat? Most mobs (including Bearger) will die if they ate too much monster meat (or unhealthy food). Weird...

I'm not a talkative person, by the way.

[kilobit]

the virgin meatballs vs the chad bacon and eggs (i have no idea if you can still feed birds monster meat for eggs though)

[AllFunNGamez]

51 minutes ago, BadScra said:

I'm not here for about whatever recipe. I'm here for about bird in a cage.

Why bird WON'T die if it ate too much cooked monster meat? Most mobs (including Bearger) will die if they ate too much monster meat (or unhealthy food). Weird...

I'm not a talkative person, by the way.

I don't know why but that is so true....

[Cheggf]

8 hours ago, Azamagon said:

Fist Full of Jam and Ratatouille are more noob traps by far though. They definitely need Ice to be profitable.

But Meatballs can take a Monster Meat and 3 Red Mushrooms for great profit in contrast, so it's far less of a noob trap than the other two. Ice just makes the recipe even more awesome.

Monster meat & 3 red caps turns 56.3 hunger into 62.5 for a 6.2 hunger profit. If you're for some reason gathering redcaps as not Wormwood either meatballs or ratatouille would be able to get rid of the damage they cause. Or any recipe that accepts vegetables, really. But why are you gathering red caps?

Using your own weird logic ratatouille is the most efficient recipe in the game because making it with 4 red caps turns 0 safe hunger into 25. So it looks like we should nerf ratatouille, the best recipe in the game. It creates 25 hunger out of thin air for no effort.

8 hours ago, Azamagon said:

Eh, what? A lot of people use Meatballs because of their extreme efficiency with the right ingredients.

I have spent the last several comments explaining how meatballs are extremely inefficient and generally a waste of time. A lot of people use meatballs because they literally do not know a single recipe in the crock pot other than meatballs. They fall under my "don't know how to use the crock pot" category.

8 hours ago, Azamagon said:

You can speak from a place of emotions as much as you want, but the stats speak for themselves.

You are projecting.

[Spirit Glow]

3 hours ago, Cheggf said:

But why are you gathering red caps?

 

What's wrong with gathering red caps?

[FreyaMaluk]

I would prefer a rework on food recipes in general.

Some really need some love

[AllFunNGamez]

4 hours ago, FreyaMaluk said:

I would prefer a rework on food recipes in general.

Some really need some love

They really do.

[Ellilea]

On 5/3/2021 at 8:13 AM, Masked Koopa said:

You could make the same argument regarding fistfull of jam, where the main utility is to be able to use meat as filler by turning it into eggs, so arguably the reverse to benefit wigfrid, I would suppose?

Personally I think instead of nerfing meatballs, doing something about ice being a full filler would be a better idea. Either making it classify as inedible like nightmare fuel/twigs/bone shards or setting a cap on how many you can use as filler would make it less silly in terms of how well it synergizes with monster meat, but also make it more reasonable to then let the player access ice in other ways, making recipes that require ice a little more accessible. Like perhaps being able to freeze and then mine ponds using an ice staff.  

I think it's fine to like the way things are RN, but in my opinion ice lies in a bit of a tricky situation in that while it is needed for some neat recipes and a pretty important summer item (assuming you don't go to caves, which many players do not), it is also a rather powerful filler for how accessible it is and must therefore be quite limited by season. I understand being able to use 1 or even 2 ice, but 3 ice being equal to any other filler just seems a little off to me.

I think "Waiter 101" is a mod that solves this beautifully, turning icey recipes into soups or broths that are far less filling and make total sense. It also deals in a great way with mushrooms through Mushroom Malady, and rebalances a whole lot of other stuff. Highly recommend that mod for anyone looking to refresh some cooking strategies and try new culinary things

[DarkPulse91]

Pierogi shouldn't be nerfed because it's already not that good compared to other dishes like surf n turf and beefy greens.

I just don't see how having to get gold, silk, reeds, and all that just to get eggs for pierogi that doesn't even give that much hunger is not worth it.. when 1 leafy meat and 3 stone fruit heals just as much and double the hunger. And if I really need healing, surf in turf for 2 large fish and 2 monster meat is plenty easy to get.

 

I also don't feel meatballs should be nerfed mostly because they aren't as God like as people say. A very reliable dish that's easy to make and gives about 60 hunger isn't bad at all, but notice how people keep trying to make the most effective meat ball recipes, because it's easy to waste stuff on them. 1 meat and 3 corn can give meat balls and thats easily a waste of those ingredients. So the only reason it's good is because it has those cheap recipes, but not every recipe is good.