Overhauling of Cooking Mechanics

[ZombieDupe]

10 minutes ago, Starlogy said:

I would be okay with Klei adding a more complex way to make food IF they kept the Crockpot the way it was.

That way, if people want a nice, easy way to make food then the Crockpot is right there and ready to go. Adding a more complex way to make food could make it so it's more suitable to feeding teams of people, versus being able to help yourself with the Crockpot.

I suppose magic or ancient variants of cooking pots could be a bit more like the old system without the need to take out food in time and such, which would balance it out and not make the additional system pointless. But having two different cooking systems side by side wouldn't feel right. I don't like the fact that we have two fishing rod types for no reason in particular, leaving both seems cheap and lazy. If we are going to have a decent overhaul, it should be done right with one system left in tact that works excellently.

[SinancoTheBest]

9 hours ago, Starlogy said:

I would be okay with Klei adding a more complex way to make food IF they kept the Crockpot the way it was.

That way, if people want a nice, easy way to make food then the Crockpot is right there and ready to go. Adding a more complex way to make food could make it so it's more suitable to feeding teams of people, versus being able to help yourself with the Crockpot.

Yess, this is the way to go if they were to make additions to the dish mechanics. The 2019 additions to Winter's Feast were interesting on that matter, giving a stone oven where you can cook feasts to lay on dining tables and eat together for various stat effects. Of course that is very gimmicky to the winter's feast event but that sort of creativity could be interesting if they decided to add more variety to cooking mechanics. As long as the crock pot stays the same, I wouldn't mind if they added cool new ways of cooking like the casserole oven in Gorge for interesting bonus effects, such as serving for multiple people.

[Theukon-dos]

An overhaul to cooking mechanics would be inconvenient more than anything. The crock pot already works really well for what it wants to do.

 

The current problem with Crock Pot is less about the stats of dishes, and more so the fact that there will always be recipes that are just easier to get than others, and that the benefit the harder recipes provide rarely balences out the increased time investment.

 

Meatballs, for example. While their "OPness" is definitly overblown, they're still a super good recipe despite their relativly low stats. Why? Because they're so cheap to mass-produce, that you could make half a dozen meatballs in the amount of effort that it takes too farm some higher-tier foods. While ice results in the highest raw-stat return, many players are likely going to use berries due to ease of farming. And because you can reliable farm the 1 meat needed with a spider den, it's entirely reasonable to have a fully self-sufficient food source by day 5.

 

And really, this is where the real discrepency starts. Not only are some ingredients dramatically easier to get than others, but the harder ingredients rarely result in higher-tier food dishes.

Meat is super easy to farm. Monstermeat only needs a spider den to obtain, and large meat is easy to farm with some moved pig houses.

Veggies are also easy to farm thanks to RWYS. But even with farms, there are still obvious "Best" crops to farm, either because they're easy to keep fertilized (Potatoma farms) Or have blatently better uses than other crops (Dragonfruit, Tomaroots, Potatoes).

Fish are very slow to farm, especially late game. And they're used in very few dishes that can match the previous two mentioned food sources. If you're catching fish, it's either for Surf n' Turf or Fish Sticks. Probably the latter, given that you're trading 60 HP and a meat item for +18 sanity.

Wobsters specifically are decent. They're still a bit slow to catch, but they're reliably in the same place, and are used for some powerful dish

 

Probably other things I'm forgetting, but the point of the matter is that there's little reason to go after rarer foods when, more often than not, more common foods do the job just as well while being several times easier to get.

 

For example, why should I go set up a Sea Weed and bull kelp farm for Barnacle Nigiri when I can get the exact same effect with a spider den and some mushrooms. Why should I bother making Melonsickles when Veggie stingers are easier to make and restore 50% more sanity. Heck, I'm not even sure you really need a crockpot any more with how busted some veggies are on their own. Potatoes in particular grow in 3/4 seasons, restore the same amount of food as meat, and restore a whopping 20 hp each. Not to mention you can harvest stacks upon stacks of them with fairly little work. Trust me when I say you can live off farm crops alone, because I have.

 

The point is, with the way that food is currently implemented in the game, the easier option is almost always the best one. And honestly I don't know how to fix this. This sort of problem is prevalent in 90% of survival games, I've found. The only game I've seen completely avoid it is Valheim. And I'd call that game closer to an RPG than a survival game.