Forum's Opinion on meatballs being the only thing anyone eats ever.

[Szczuku]

Well there's just no reason to go sailing to gather barnacles or ocean fish and cook the ''cool, new recipe'' when you can simply slap a leafy meat and 3 berries for a meal that more or less fills half of most characters' hunger bar.

Once you find 3 meals to fill your 3 main stats there's no reason to cook anything else unless you happen to have the ingredients.

I'd never go out of my way to cook barnacle-related recipes but if I happen to have some barnacles on me after sailing, I will put them and random ingredients to the crockpot and if it happens to make a special dish- cool; if it makes meatballs- also cool.

[jan Mele]

4 hours ago, Dextops said:

Also no one relies solely on jelly beans that is why blue caps exist and are a much better method than pierogis. Having a shovel and going into caves gives a lot more benefit than trying to make.

Tbh, it just depends on what biomes with mushrooms are close. Meat is something I always have anyway. 

[Dextops]

9 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

You do realize that cooked blue caps hurt you, right? This method both makes them less efficient for healing, and over doubles the quantity of blue caps that you need.

yes i do but i was using just sustaining on blue caps as my example there are many sanity methods that can be used

 

9 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

I repeat myself. Hardest solo boss in the game. The only time I've ever killed QB myself was with a modded item that hard countered her.

mole method would help but that does take a start up cost and remembering to panflute every 20 seconds if it becomes dusk and/or night

 

9 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

1. They still drop sanity

2. Why the hell are you using a shovel? They can't regrow if you dig them up.

sanity is one of the easiest things to manage and the shovel is to get a massive start up cost while trees still exist

 

9 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Getting meatballs set up is much easier than getting Bacon and Eggs set up, and by that point, there is 0 practical difference between 300 hunger worth of meatballs and 300 hunger worth of Bacon and Eggs.

it is way more easier to mass produce bacon and eggs and with meatballs abysmal hunger stat a lot of the time eating the ingredients instead of making meatballs, so yes there is a massive difference. with a more efficient diet you are saving a lot of time. How good something is, in my eyes, is how efficient it is to other methods 

4 hours ago, jan Mele said:

Tbh, it just depends on what biomes with mushrooms are close. Meat is something I always have anyway. 

yeah that is fine just know that there are better alternatives out there and with all that meat you could make honey hams if you have the honey

[ArubaroBeefalo]

18 hours ago, Notecja said:

local Womwood was a little crazy.

[Milordo]

7 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

snip

A really well cool detailed post about hunger and food in dst. Really well done Theukon, i like it a lot. You deserved the potato cup 

I wanna add that it seems @Dextops has more a "speedrun playstyle" meanwhile yours, a normal one. In these kind of topics it is always good to take in account different playstyles and early game/ mid game / end game phases. For example when Dextops said "dig every blue mushrooms you encounter" you logically said "why? If i want more mushrooms for Pierogies, i leave them be because diggin up make them diseappear = therefore less blue mushrooms for later" but if Dextops only goal is speedrunning towards, i dunno all bosses, it makes more sense and more efficient digging up mushrooms. 

Great thread tho guys 

[GetNerfedOn]

While meatballs and pierogi are efficient choices i do use, I like being varied in diet occasionally. 

When opportunities arise i like to pack Bacon and Eggs on long trips, watch my hunger bar degrade to nothing to get the most of a Meaty Stew, bring along tons of farmed Dragonpies to the ruins, spam Trailmix in boss fights, keep some pumpkin cookies for sanity, nom spicy chili for absolutely no particular reason but liking its design, the list goes on. With the presence of Milky Whites i've also been able to use Ice Cream as a straight-off-the-crockpot sanity restore, too. Leafy meat having its own recipes also was a really nice change.

If only i could actually mass-produce Bibingka and use it as a survival food. It would definitely dethrone Dragonpie as my favorite food.

[CameoAppearance]

I counted the recipes I make on purpose often enough to know the recipe and came up with 23, although that's counting three that I only bother with in singleplayer. And most of them are from no later than Reign of Giants, except for a couple that require Hamlet ingredients. Still, I like to have options. The staple crockpot foods of my diet are basically the same as everyone else's, but I enjoy mixing it up.

[Theukon-dos]

5 hours ago, Dextops said:

yes i do but i was using just sustaining on blue caps as my example there are many sanity methods that can be used

Fair, but my point is that those methods still take time, thus keeping them from being the objective "best option" as you claim they are.

5 hours ago, Dextops said:

mole method would help but that does take a start up cost and remembering to panflute every 20 seconds if it becomes dusk and/or night

You really want me to cheese this boss, don't you?

5 hours ago, Dextops said:

sanity is one of the easiest things to manage and the shovel is to get a massive start up cost while trees still exist

So what you're saying is that the player should actively hinder their abilities to get healing in the future, just so that they can get an immediate burst of healing now, that may or may not end up spoiling if they're not getting hit enough?

5 hours ago, Dextops said:

it is way more easier to mass produce bacon and eggs and with meatballs abysmal hunger stat a lot of the time eating the ingredients instead of making meatballs, so yes there is a massive difference. with a more efficient diet you are saving a lot of time. How good something is, in my eyes, is how efficient it is to other methods 

How is it easier to mass-produce bacon and eggs? The easiest recipes require atleast 4 items of meat, and unless you want to gamble on Monster Lasagna, requires a pure meat aswell. In that case, you could just make 4 meatballs with easy to mass-produce filler. Not to mention there's a much higher investment cost there if you want to farm raw meat. 

5 hours ago, Dextops said:

yeah that is fine just know that there are better alternatives out there and with all that meat you could make honey hams if you have the honey

Yes, there are better alternatives, it's just rare that those alternatives are worth the time.

[Dextops]

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Fair, but my point is that those methods still take time, thus keeping them from being the objective "best option" as you claim they are.

 

they take far less time than mass producing pierogis

 

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

You really want me to cheese this boss, don't you?

yes

 

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

So what you're saying is that the player should actively hinder their abilities to get healing in the future, just so that they can get an immediate burst of healing now, that may or may not end up spoiling if they're not getting hit enough?

because later on you need far less blue caps due to having jelly beans if you decide not to cheese her, and if you do cheese her you don't need to dig up many in the first place.

 

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

How is it easier to mass-produce bacon and eggs? The easiest recipes require atleast 4 items of meat, and unless you want to gamble on Monster Lasagna, requires a pure meat aswell. In that case, you could just make 4 meatballs with easy to mass-produce filler. Not to mention there's a much higher investment cost there if you want to farm raw meat. 

meat farms exist especially volt goat farms which produce an abundant amount of meat so tbh bad example on my part, a better example would be honey ham and meaty stews which are way way more easier to mass produce and they have one and done set ups that beat meatballs in every category. Also a lot of meatball recipes are inefficient to the degree you should just eat the ingredients cooked, only really worthwhile with monster meat and ice. Any other ingredients and you should be making other recipes 

 

3 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

Yes, there are better alternatives, it's just rare that those alternatives are worth the time.

i am not judging the examples i gave only on stat spread though that is a criteria i am basing them on how easy they are to mass produce, how much hunger it gives compared to the ingredients, spoil time, and how long it takes to set up and how much that set up costs. With the examples i gave being honey ham and meaty stew both of these fit these criteria extremely well. Meatballs fail a lot in most of these criteria 

[lakhnish]

My Crockpot meals during the first year or two:

• Meaty Stew
• Bacon N Eggs
• Perogies
• Honey Ham & Honey Nuggets (if big meat is low)
• Jellybeans
• The odd Turkey Dinner

I don't have any sanity crockpot meals, but that's because I eat cooked cactus and cooked blue/green caps for sanity (or I pick flowers). Otherwise, the rest of my typical diet without crockpot meals is:

• Carrots
• Berries
• Cooked Meat
• Blue/Green Caps
• Cooked Cactus

[maradyne]

Pierogis end up being a staple whenever I'm playing vanilla solo longer-term, because hound waves drop far too much meat for hunger value to ever actually be a concern. But if it ever does, say in the case of multiplayer, supplementing it with spiders or pig/bunny/whatever meat is pretty minimal effort.
Or a Lureplant boat. Leafy meat being acceptable meat for a crockpot is ridiculously powerful.
...and if you have meat, then you have eggs.

But yea. Pierogi supremacy.
Heals more than Bacon, allowing for more flexibility.
Get some kelp or stone fruit, and you've got infinite low-effort veggies.
Put your cooking area near the veggies with a bunch of crockpots, and the batches can be done quickly.

 

 

 

bees offend me with their presence

[Mantispidae]

I really like cooking variety, and often play with mods that add more recipes just for the fun of having more things to go out and get to make more stuff.

Just hanging around during general play I usually just make whatever is convenient to stock up on, which as a wormwood player can have a decent chunk of variety to it due to crop seasonality or whatever seeds are around. But yeah, I actually do find it a lot of fun to go out and 'hunt' ingredients of different types to fill out the cookbook or just for a change of pace, and mods help me keep that going even longer. 

Playing with friends, I usually help bulk up a big farm with stuff like dragonfruit/potatoes/etc and then start farming the stuff i think thats just fun to have around like garlics and pomegranate- and once the food worry is out of the way its free game to go goof around with things like cave bananas, barnacles, whatever else.

[LinknAllie]

I've got every crockpot recipe memorized

[Echsrick]

11 minutes ago, LinknAllie said:

I've got every crockpot recipe memorized

tell me, whats the best way to make frog sandwich?

[Dextops]

13 minutes ago, Dr.Medic said:

tell me, whats the best way to make frog sandwich?

you don't

[Falkenpelz]

As much as I like making a variety of dishes just because they look cool, I mostly end up traveling the world and eating any crap from the ground. You might as well hire me for your world as a trash disposer.

(I once ate three monster lasagnas in a row on a public. Some idiot Warly made them and left the lasagnas of shame in the fridge, so I offered myself up for the team to dispose of this eyesore.)

[Juny Pear]

So here's a "hot" take.

I think meatballs are probably the most overrated dish in the game and there are way better options people neglect. And I'm not just talking about more "rare" or "difficult" to make recipes, even with ingredients you can get fairly easily you can cook foods that are over all better. Hell, sometimes you don't even need to cook them into a crockpot dish for them to be extremely good options.

I will acknowledge that meatballs are a super simple recipe ingredients wise, but that's about all the credit I can give it compared to other options such as meaty stews, honey hams and nuggets (nuggets especially for woodie), potatoes, pumpkin, asparagus, eggplant, you get the idea.

That being said I do not want to tell people what and what not to cook and eat, all I'm saying is that I think meatballs are both boring and not as good as a lot of people give them credit for.

[Atkvin]

I would say the food system works well enough for what it aims to do - DST is more a sandbox than a realistic survival simulator. Even the ocean stuff works to give alternatives to food while sailing (not outcompete land food) - the ocean just needs much more content and rewards that benefit survival in different and more impactful ways. Cooking and hunger are not very difficult mechanics in Don't Starve Together past the initial barrier to entry figuring out how to gather the ingredients: food is never in short supply if you know where to look, and what to prepare.

imo the bigger problem is the cooking system UI / UX. You can mod in food values, crockpot prediction and even a whole wizardly-coded list system that organizes and shows you which food you can nearly cook when you even have some of the ingredients in your inventory (big kudos to the people who made that, my memory fails me).

But even with all that, cooking still feels like a mess.. unless it really stands out or is cheap as dirt (my new love @ leafy meat recipes), players will default to what they can soundly recall AND easily gather ingredients for when already juggling everything else in the game that is more interesting.

In the Gorge, cooking works much better because 1) figuring out recipes of specific food types, which dish to use for each craving, and optimizing gathering ingredients for IS the puzzle that the entire gamemode is built around, and 2) you don't actually eat the food to care about stuff like which food can trivialize stat management more, and so long as you can pass the craving you can progress - although there is a value system to more fancy and difficult foods that grants players the ability to make more fancy food and eventually win.

[Echsrick]

11 hours ago, Dextops said:

you don't

yes there is, its called 1 frog legs 1 red mushroom and 2 sticks

[goblinball]

When I play wormwood, the only thing I’m ever doing is mass producing dragonfruit. Once I’ve gotten through the first spring and summer in a year, dragonpies become the only thing I ever eat (along with some occasional leafy meat from lureplants). I don’t even eat them for the good healing, I eat them exclusively for the hunger and if I don’t they’ll all spoil because there’s so many of them.

[SinancoTheBest]

1 hour ago, goblinball said:

When I play wormwood, the only thing I’m ever doing is mass producing dragonfruit. Once I’ve gotten through the first spring and summer in a year, dragonpies become the only thing I ever eat (along with some occasional leafy meat from lureplants). I don’t even eat them for the good healing, I eat them exclusively for the hunger and if I don’t they’ll all spoil because there’s so many of them.

Why not mass farm something that's good for hunger like corn, eggplants or pumpkin instead?

[goblinball]

26 minutes ago, SinancoTheBest said:

Why not mass farm something that's good for hunger like corn, eggplants or pumpkin instead?

Idk!!!!!!

[LinknAllie]

On 3/10/2022 at 10:22 PM, Dr.Medic said:

tell me, whats the best way to make frog sandwich?

Well there's no real best way.  But the way I usually make it (if I ever do) is 1 frog leg, 2 carrots, and 1 mushroom

[ArubaroBeefalo]

7 minutes ago, LinknAllie said:

Well there's no real best way.  But the way I usually make it (if I ever do) is 1 frog leg, 2 carrots, and 1 mushroom

you only need 1 veggie+frog leg, you can use 2 sticks or whatever to fill the empty slots

edit: except honey since it will result in nuggets

 

[LinknAllie]

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

you only need 1 veggie+frog leg, you can use 2 sticks or whatever to fill the empty slots

edit: except honey since it will result in nuggets

 

Good to know.  Even though I never really make the froggle bunwich anymore.