Crock Pot food/General food buffs

[Masked Koopa]

Crock pot dishes:

Ratatouille

• Hunger: 25 -> 37.5

Currently needlessly worse than fist full of jam in almost every capacity, to the point where it makes veggies look like leafy meat or monster meat - something you're punished for using, despite the fact that veggies serve as perfectly good filler for non fruit dishes.

Fruit Medley

• Hunger: 25 -> 56.25
• Health: 20 -> 30
• Sanity: 5 -> 15

An extremely weak dish for one that requires at bare minimum 2 full value fruits with two berries on top - with many of them already healing a decent amount when cooked. And while one could argue this is an easy dish to make in the wilds biome using bananas, the same can be said in regards to surf n' turf, which doesn't require a food that attracts monkies or at least forces you to be around them. These changes make it a copy of figatoni statwise, with figatoni allowing for passive ingredient production via big trees + stonefruit while this would be something one could make using bananas or by mixing early fruit crops together.

Fish Tacos

• Sanity: 5 -> 25

The sanity game's a lot less competed for in the realms of the ocean, and this would make fish tacos a significant boon to anyone looking for sanity on the ocean, or to anyone who doesn't mind fishing and farms corn. And tacos are a pretty cool food, even with fish, so a high sanity gain isn't out of the question.

Kabobs

• Now requires 2 twigs.
• No longer restricts the number of meats.
• Cooking time: 40 seconds -> 5 seconds.

Due to their need for 2 edible fillers, Kabobs do a poor job at competing with the ubiquitous meatballs, and instead serve as some sort of extremely niche dish where you somehow have a limited amount of meat, a lot but not quite enough filler, and a twig for each kabob. 

This would change it into a more "emergency ration" type dish, where you toss in a monster meat or two with 2 twigs and accept the loss in efficiency in exchange for a quick way to make monster meat palatable, or turn 2 morsels into something a wee bit better.

Stuffed Eggplant

• Hunger: 37.5 -> 62.5
• Health: 3 -> 20
• Sanity:  5 -> 15
• Now excludes meats.

Eggplants are not only a farm crop, which is already a pretty time and effort committed way to produce food, but they're also a very potent crop, granting 25 hunger and 20 hp when cooked, making this dish's poor stats completely unjustified. This will make it a sort of mini dragonpie, with a bigger sanity gain, and eggplant being more common crop that's in season earlier in exchange for it requiring a veggie to cook + having lower stats. It should exclude meats to be more consistent with other veggie/fruit dishes, and prevent it from interrupting people's meatball attempts (even if it is better statwise).

Turkey Dinner

• Drumsticks used can now be cooked.

I get that it's a fun novelty to have a dish exclude the cooked version, but if it's going to be a mechanic, it should be reserved for a dish people are actually going to make on a regular basis, like meaty stew or bacon and eggs or w/e.

Unagi

• Spoil time: 10 days -> 20 days
• Sanity: 5 -> 10
• Hunger: 18.75 -> 25
• Cooking time: 10s -> 5s

It's going to be difficult to compete with Surf n' Turf in terms of crock pot wilds food, so these changes should make it a good long-lasting food, similar to jerky, with the fast cook time making it relatively easy to mass produce, making it a decent food for longer ruins trips.

Asparagus Soup

• Health: 20 -> 30
• Hunger: 18.75 -> 25
• Now allows inedibles
• Vegetable requirement 1.5 -> 0.5

Asparagus soup is a pitiful dish for one made exclusively from a farm crop, and this is especially egregious given the requirements were raised from those in hamlet, where they are ground-food like carrots. These changes revert it back to the hamlet cooking requirements, as well as removing the lower hunger than asparagus, and making it a little more potent healing-wise than cooked fruit/potato/etc.

Barnacle Linguine

• Health: 10 -> 40
• Sanity: 20 -> 5
• Spoil time: 6 days -> 10 days

There's little to no room for a dish that requires this much setup to be a sanity food, especially not with a hunger requirement this high. Sanity food is better when it's small snacks or a food where you might just just so happen to have the ingredients on hand, which isn't ever going to be the case with barnacles due to what a boat hazard sea weeds are. If someone's cooking with barnacles, they're going to want healing and hunger food from it. This'll make it a better version of beefy greens in terms of spoilage at the price of significantly more potential for accidents.

Barnacle Nigiri

• Health: 40 -> 60

If someone's not only dealing with seaweeds, but also getting eggs for their barnacle dishes, I think it's fair they be given the same healing value as Wobster bisque or Surf N' Turf. 

Barnacle Pita

• Spoil time: 15 days -> 40 days.
• Cooking time: 40 seconds -> 15 seconds.

While one could argue that this is too large a spoil time, it being wrapped up in a dough package makes it believable enough, and the stats on this food are incredibly mediocre even when compared to the other barnacle dishes as they are right now, despite the fact that any player with access to barnacles is going to have much better foods at their disposal. This will make it an interesting food for those prefer not to wrap their food, with much better hunger and healing per food item than honey, but with the much more dangerous seaweeds as the ones you're stealing from, and with the need to get veggies and twig filler for every food item.

Stuffed Fish Heads

• Hunger: 75 -> 100

A fast spoiling dish that requires both barnacles and either a large fish, or several fish morsels. A boost to hunger should make it a decent option for those whom have a good level of access to fish, as well as an alright source of hunger for Warly players. While 100 hunger from a dish is a first for the game, the same was true for 56.25 hunger dishes, which were added in the waterlogged update.

California Roll

• Spoil time: 10 days -> 20 days.
• Hunger: 37.5 -> 56.25

This currently doesn't hold much of a niche, as it's converting around 43.75 hunger into 37.5, at the benefit of a small amount of healing. This is essentially a butter muffin that costs at least 3 edible ingredients, one of which would be a large ocean fish, or a full 4 edible ingredients. Giving it jerky-level spoilage time and a high hunger value would make it a decent dish for the ocean, as well as a neat alternative to drying your kelp if you want lasting food.

Ceviche

• Health: 20 -> 60

An extremely high fish requirement means that the fishsticks the player could have made with said fish should be fairly compensated. It's really no different to Wobster bisque in terms of requirements, in fact it's arguably more difficult since Wobsters at least tend to live close to land, which is where all the ice is, wheras fish with more than 0.5 meat value are either in caves or deeper ocean.

Creamy potato puree

• Health: 20 -> 30
• Spoil time: 15 days -> 20 days
• Now accepts inedible filler

As a food requiring three farm crops, with potato already having spiraled tubers and their cooked version at their disposal, creamy potato puree is a pretty underwhelming dish as it is. These buffs should at least give it a more potent role as a superfood for all 3 stats that also lasts a good amount of time, essentially a jerky that you work harder for, but can produce in bulk better if you're diligent about farming it.

Banana pop

• Sanity: 33 ->50
• Spoil time: 3 days -> 6 days
• Health: 20 -> 30

Two ingredients that will rarely see one another deserve to make something a lot more potent. While it's in theory a very cheap recipe, the reality of it is more of a scavenger hunt of some of the most far-removed resources, and certainly not significantly easier to get than Jelly salad, or even ice cream.

Figatoni

• Spoil time: 6 days -> 15 days

A decent dish bogged down heavily by a spoil time much too short for the level of work required. It makes sense that Beefy greens would have a short spoil timer - lureplants are pretty much gifted wholesale to the player. Figatoni requires a player to either live out in the middle of the ocean, or take the time to bring a seed home and tend to it many times.

Figgy Frogwich

• Actually worthwhile stats, or some sort of special effect like working as chum when dropped in the water.

I can understand the thought process behind pretty much every food in the game except this one. If it's meant to be a joke food it's not particularly funny, just a fig version of reasonably useful froggle bunwich, I think the fig stuffed trunk is a much funnier novelty food. Frog legs aren't even something you'll find near figs in the first place, and it's inferior to Figkabab in practically every area. Which still isn't an amazing dish, but at least you can feasibly get the ingredients in the waterlogged biome.

Fig-Stuffed Trunk

• Hunger: 56.25 -> 150

If someone's not only not opting to turn their trunky prize into a vest, but is actually taking it out on boat trips, I think it's only fair that they wouldn't have to snackrifice any hunger value and have it just be a direct upgrade to the cooked trunk in every regard.

Guacamole

• Hunger: 37.5 -> 75

An interesting prospective dish for the early game - collect moleworms, drop em at oasis, and bonk them once they dig their burrows. Then combine cactus with worm + two twigs for a healing + hunger combination food that's cheap and works even throughout winter. 

Currently it's just a joke food, but I think it could be legitimately interesting as a foodsource if it being more setup and region-specific than meatballs was rewarded with a much higher hunger value.

Melonsicle

• Sanity: 20 -> 15
• Spoil time: 3 days -> 6 days
• Now creates 3 per batch.

Currently a pretty useless dish, given what a needy plant watermelon is, and essentially just ensures the only use of a melon is putting it on your head for slight cooling. This would give it a pretty good sanity value, and give real incentive to farm melons for a lot of sanity snack food.

Flower Salad

• Hunger: 12.5 -> 37.5

While it's by no means a bad dish, it's also exclusive to the last season of the four, meaning as far a healing goes, players are probably going to have secured a better source before this is available. Making it less hunger inefficient would at least make it a little more tempting to cook up a few during summer.

Seafood Gumbo

• Health: 40 -> 60
• Hunger: 37.5 -> 75
• Crock pot priority: 10 -> 35
• Now excludes eels (or requires large fish meat idk which is easier)

Eels being a requirement for the seafood based dish is a result of poor planning in regards to giving fish meat value, and the easiest way to fix this would be to simply make it a better version of surf n' turf, with the same health value, and a greater hunger value. As I see it, the best use of this dish would be to reward ocean fishing, so eels shouldn't be an acceptable alternative due to being much easier to attain, and already having surf n' turf and unagi as uses over the large fish meat alternative.

Stuffed Pepper Poppers

• Now allows inedibles

An incredibly poor dish that has essentially zero use currently, and seems to be mostly a relic from the times when farm plots were much more expensive, and controlling your crop output was a late game luxury. This'll at least make it a reasonably cheap use of peppers.

Vegetable Stinger

• Now allows inedibles
• Vegetable requirement: 1.5 -> 1

An unreasonably expensive dish given it requires both an asparagus or tomato AND two vegetables, one of which has to be full value. This would allow it to be made with two half value veggies - like kelp or mushroom, or with a full value veggie, an inedible, a tomato and an ice.

Pumpkin Cookies

• Now gives 2 cookies per batch.
• Now excludes meats.

Essentially turns two honey into 15 sanity while sacrificing all hunger from the honey, and all hp gain from both the honey and the pumpkin when cooked, a total of 14 health, and 18.75 hunger is being sacrificed. This is especially poor given that pumpkin is already a food so potent it's on par with many crock pot dishes. This would make the crock pot dish reflect the value of the ingredients used, and make it a worthy dish for pumpkin as a vegetable.

Salsa Fresca

• Sanity: 33 -> 50

A very expensive dish due to the requirement of 2 different farm crops, as well as rejecting not just meat and inedible, but even eggs as filler.

Spicy Chili

• Sanity: 0 -> 15

Not too expensive, and pretty alright for Willow players, but still generally outclassed in the early game, which is realistically the only place this is going to be used. Making it a sanity dish would give it a use as a way to easily to turn early game meats and veggies into a passable amount of sanity.

Milkmade Hat

• Can now be refueled using milk for 50% more durability.

A cool item, but making a new hat every time heavily undermines its practicality, especially since mole noses are a relatively rare drop.

Mandrake Soup, Powdercake, Waffles

• Now excludes meat.

Other than the dishes above, these are the remaining exceptions to the "If it has meat in it, it's going to be a meat dish" rule. While one could argue there's no balance reason to not allow them to be cooked with meat, the same holds true for every other dish that allows eggs. It isn't even a consistent "rare food" pattern either, as Jellybeans and Dragonpie both also reject meat. I think it's a good idea to make it a VERY consistent pattern that adding meat will ALWAYS make a meat dish (or wet goop lol).

Raw ingredients:

Ice

• Ponds can now be mined for 3 ice when frozen, and can be frozen using an Ice staff.

Ice is currently in a strange place where it is a very potent general filler for inexperienced players, but ends up being heavily held back by the fact that Winter is one of the busier seasons, and thus not the best time to be mining huge amounts, and the fact that getting a large amount of it isn't a process that can be sped up with greater resources - which heavily limits the application of dishes like Ice Cream, Ceviche, Melonsicle, etc. I feel like forcing the player to use an ice staff charge would make it a pricy idea for early on, while making mass ice production in the late game just as feasible as other foodstuffs.

Butter

• New pure yellow variation, created through some process from Voltgoat milk (Uses same item slot, similar behavior to batskin or tiny guano).

By no means an unusual suggestion for this forum, but it often involves butterfly wings to some capacity, which to me isn't needed - it's fine for butter to be available without any sort of butterfly. Voltgoat milk is still a very expensive resource, but it can be gotten in consistent quantities thanks to Voltgoats being a year-round phenomenon, and something the player can increase in quantity, as well as spend time putting into pens, and protecting them from lighting via the new above average trees.

Eggs

• No longer counted as meat in any capacity:
  • Bunnymen will no longer get aggressive over the player having them.
  • Wigfrid will refuse to eat them, while Wurt and Merms will accept them, with hatching Tallbird eggs being a possible exception.
  • Hounds, Spiders, and any other carnivores will now not eat them.
  • Pig king WILL accept eggs, since his trade requirements go beyond strictly meat (he rejects monster meat and meatballs).
  • All of the above also applies to eggnog.

Eggs are a mandatory ingredient of both Puffed Potato Soufflé and Waffles, two dishes not counted as meat in any capacity. They are also valid filler for the overwhelming majority of vegetable dishes, and just generally speaking a big part of Wurt's playstyle if she isn't making heavy use of the Reap What You Sow farm plots. If milk and honey can have their own class of food beyond "meat, fish, fruit and vegetable", then it stands to reason eggs can gain this status as well to prevent this inconsistent and confusing behavior with eggs. Wurt players will appreciate the extra winter option, and Wigfrid players won't really miss being able to eat eggs.

Mandrakes

• Merp! Merp! Meep! Merp!
• Can now be fed to a bird for a chance(?) at dropping farm plot seeds for mandrakes.
• VERY needy plants - consume 8 of all nutrient types, and require a lot of water.
• Spawn a mandrake when picked, making live mandrakes renewable.
• Giant mandrakes spawn giga mandrakes when picked, which must be killed before they can be smashed into smaller mandrakes.
• Instead of rotting, giant mandrake plants become aged mandrake. Aged mandrake spawns an elder mandrake when picked, which drop the usual living logs instead.

Mandrake soup as it stands is currently a joke item, which I think it a pretty big shame, given it would be a very practical food for beefalo users and Wurt players. Live mandrakes are also nonrenewable, which is a wee bit sad for base builders, given that they make for some nice decoration, and Carrats already do a good job at substituting wild carrots. Plus, it would be pretty neat to have a plant that's genuinely difficult to keep happy, as well as give us lore for how Elder Mandrakes are created, and let us have them in DST without it feeling like a Hamlet port - what with them being pretty great analogues to the RWYS giant crops. I've tried to balance it out so that it'll be hard for early worlds to get more mandrakes early on without a thorough understanding of the farm system + a significant amount of prep work, while making it very much feasible to get quite a lot of them in the late game.

Pomegranate and Durian

• Wild durian can be found growing in both the aboveground and caves swamp biomes.
• Wild pomegranate can be found growing in the cave meadows biome.
• These act the same as wild carrots - they respawn elsewhere in the world when destroyed, and never spoil.

These fruits are both incredibly bad for farm crops given their total lack of any exclusive dish. They have no true niche, and there's honestly little reason not to just make them like carrots - a wild foodstuff that allows the player to feed them to a bird to gain extra seeds faster, justifying the lack of exclusive dishes. This will also make Wurt and Wortox's preference of them an actually useful early game perk, and make the swamp seem like a place merms could actually live. While the hp restoration of cooked pomegranate may appear problematic, it's not too different to the butterflies available on the surface meadows biome. The cave meadows biome also just generally needs more foodstuffs, and this would be an interesting way to populate it.

[DajeKotlyar]

I love things about mandrakes

[ArubaroBeefalo]

there isnt the need of buffing all the recipes, a lot of them are a punish like ratatoille or stuffed eggplant

and other buffs are unnecessary since dishes like salsa fresca or fruit medley in the ruins are already very powerful

is true that recipes like fish tacos are trully underwhelming. i wish klei reevaluates most of the fish dishes but i see this suggestion as buff everything which im not 100% with you, i like having bad dishes so you need to chose if you wanna waste ingredients right now in a bad dish or look sfter other ingredients to get more stats

 

2 hours ago, Masked Koopa said:

• Drumsticks used can now be cooked.

I get that it's a fun novelty to have a dish exclude the cooked version, but if it's going to be a mechanic, it should be reserved for a dish people are actually going to make on a regular basis, like meaty stew or bacon and eggs or w/e.

this is because you cant use cook turkey to do that dish in irl, i like the detail

[QuartzBeam]

It's astounding how quickly that post went from reasonable requests to calling every crock pot dish under the sun underpowered and in need of a buff.

(Also, fun fact: Creamy Potato Puree is amazing.)

[HumanBean150]

I think that a lot of recipes are starting to blend together, there's not much setting each one apart, which means that a select few will probably be chosen as the "best".

Recipes could stand to have more interesting stats, like movement speed, damage resistance, temperature adjustments. 

Difficult to do without interfering with Warly's role though, but something should probably change.

[Masked Koopa]

6 hours ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

there isnt the need of buffing all the recipes, a lot of them are a punish like ratatoille or stuffed eggplant

and other buffs are unnecessary since dishes like salsa fresca or fruit medley in the ruins are already very powerful

Why do players need to be punished for using eggplant to cook? Why are players rewarded for filling the crock pot with fish or meat, and punished significantly less for filling it with berries, but filling it with carrots or mushrooms requires giving them an extremely shoddy dish? These seem like totally arbitrary "punishments".

 

24 minutes ago, HumanBean150 said:

I think that a lot of recipes are starting to blend together, there's not much setting each one apart, which means that a select few will probably be chosen as the "best".

The aim here isn't to make every dish be used, but rather, to make every dish be able to be used without the player feeling like they're playing in an explicitly suboptimal way. Plus, many dishes have different application, or can be made as a result of the player's choices - notably barnacles and the fig dishes, as well as the farm crop dishes. I don't see these buffs even changing the early game meta in any drastic way, just making the alternatives a lot more rewarding, and giving players increased options in the late game.

 

6 hours ago, QuartzBeam said:

It's astounding how quickly that post went from reasonable requests to calling every crock pot dish under the sun underpowered and in need of a buff.

(Also, fun fact: Creamy Potato Puree is amazing.)

I didn't call every dish under the sun underpowered. I called the dishes that are underpowered underpowered. If you like potato puree more power to ya, I just think it's pretty weak for a dish that requires 3 farm crops.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

1 hour ago, Masked Koopa said:

Why do players need to be punished for using eggplant to cook? Why are players rewarded for filling the crock pot with fish or meat, and punished significantly less for filling it with berries, but filling it with carrots or mushrooms requires giving them an extremely shoddy dish? These seem like totally arbitrary "punishments"

because is better to use it for healing. Is like ratatoille, is a punish so new players dont survive by filling the crockpot with berries and carrots. also punish you in case you dont farm enough of something. The same happens by using 2 potatoes to cook pierogi

dst is about managing resources and that punish new players

other dishes arent strong because they are emergency dishes that rewards players who knows to adapt like fruit medley saving your ass in the ruins or chili when you dont know how to farm ingredients for better healing options