Polar Bearger Bin Appreciation Post

[Maxil20]

I don’t see a lot of people talk about this item here, which shocks me. Of all the items added in this year, this one has shaken my gameplay up the most (which, given the fact repair kits were also added in this same year, says a lot).

One of my biggest issues in lategame DST was about crockpot foods, primarily the spoilage aspect of them. One of the biggest reasons I refused to use the crockpot lategame was how fast so many of the “best” foods spoiled. Every crockpot dish (that wasn’t powdercakes or jellybeans) would spoil in 20 days or less, and many of those spoiled in 10 days or less (in particular, the ones I always thought about but refrained from using was figatoni/barnacle linguine, which spoiled in 6). This sounds like a lot of time, but it really isn’t that long when playing long term. 1-2 hours can pass by very fast when you are planning out builds and gathering resources, and that quickly results in a lot of crockpot foods going stale/spoiling. This is especially bad for sanity and HP restoring foods, because the sanity aspect is outright negated and the health aspect is cut to a third when playing almost every single character in the game. You could get around this by using bundle wraps to take a few items out at a time, but I never really enjoyed using that playstyle at all (I do not like separating ~4-5 of a crockpot dish out of the bundle, crafting the bundle again, and putting all of the dishes back every 6-7 days, especially because they will slowly still lose spoilage while out of a bundle and that can rapidly add up).

This is why I usually defaulted to honey in long term worlds. While it’s not exactly shocking how good honey is to many at this point, one of the biggest reasons I used it was how exceptional the spoilage time of it is, at 40 days. It was so good that you could have an entire bundle of honey and eat all of it before it ever went stale as a normal hunger drain character, keeping you fed for exactly 20 days. On top of that, it provides decent healing, and if you have a crockpot you can cook it into taffy in a pinch if you needed to (I personally used dried kelp, as that also was easy to gather and had a good perish time of 20 days).

The polar bearger bin, though? This changes the scope of dishes in a lategame context entirely. Now, all of a sudden, every crockpot dish can be reevaluated when they can last up to 20 times longer then normal. This has massive applications, a lot of which I’ve enjoyed trying to utilize:

-It makes a lot of dishes much more rewarding to go out of your way to bulk farm and use. A great example of this is tall scotch eggs. I never felt motivated to really go out of my way to get this dish, as while it has extreme health/hunger restoration, the effort of doing so is another story. If you are not lucky enough to get a tallfort, its not too unlikely a world has less then half a dozen tallbirds on the map (my world, in particular, had 1). And if you did go through the effort, you still had to frequently restock the dish as it spoiled in 15 days. The bin changes this into 300, making it realistic to take an entire stack of tall scotch eggs with you and be set for hunger for 80 days in addition to keeping your health topped off the majority of the time. I ended up deciding to raise smallbirds, which I have never done before, in order to try out and end up using this dish. It was certainly an endeavor, and quite a stressful experience at the end (I still hope they make it so tallbirds don’t attack smallish tallbirds….), but the reward has been excellent! Other great examples of this are figatoni/barnacle linguine (great for general stats and easy to cook in bulk ,but had a spoilage time of 6 days). 

-Even if you don’t want to diversify food sources and just want to make dishes for hunger needs to get by, meaty stew still works excellent with the bin, and lategame can easily be made in bulk amounts. Even stale stews will very likely restore a significant amount more hunger with the ingredients used! Jellybeans can also be put into the bin, allowing it to serve as a good way to keep hunger and health needs in a single slot (bonus points for also being an easy way to keep the powder buffs, as well!)

-I’m much more inclined to keep and use Warly’s exclusive dishes for whatever needs I need them for. Love it or not, the strat of binge making warly exclusive dishes and swapping to another character never really struck out for me, especially with how fairly quick a lot of the dishes spoiled. As a result, it wasn’t too uncommon for me to take out 1-2 volt goat chaud froid for combat needs tops and/or 2 dozen dragon chili salads for winter and just keep the rest in a bundle at base and practically never use any of Warly’s other exclusive dishes. The bin, however, makes this much more attainable. I can pretty realistically carry a bunch of the buff dishes such as fish corden bleu and feel like I’m actually getting use out of them without feeling like I’m wasting them to spoilage and never using the buffs for anything. A number of Warly’s non buff but stat foods, such as moqueca, also get much more time in the spotlight for me because of this.

Overall, I think the bin is a fantastic addition to DST in an endgame context. Crockpot dishes are great early to midgame, but now they feel like they have a respectable place to me in the endgame with the bin and allowing you to keep 6 of whatever dish you desire. Weather you just wanna go plain and simple and shove a bunch of meaty stews/pierogi/jelly salads into it or diversify with more unique sources and be rewarded greatly, the choice is up to you!

[DownloadADuck]

it make funny cake spoil even slower

 

[Jakepeng99]

I wish it took in dried foods too.

[Horsheen]

[JustAFlower]

Finally, the perfect place for my Powder cakes.

[Brago-sama]

Im just glad i can eat figatoni/barnacle dishes outside of base now. I love my barnacle linguine

[BezKa]

I really appreciate the sound design. That fwoop it does when you open and close it is just

 

[MagicalStorm]

I haated opening bundle wraps, getting the stuff from the ground, eating, bundling it up again and moving on with my life

The bin turned all that into a simple inventory I have to open and close, it is a godsend