Drying racks, long shelflife foods (and apparently discussions about food balance and player experience; veterans vs forumites)

[Y0sH]

Would an upgraded drying rack that has a small fire underneath that dries the meat quicker based on the flame level of the campfire work or is it the jerky itself that's the issue? I have to say this or cooking in general never really impacts my playstyle much, I'm play more of a nomad/forager tbh. However this does seem like something that warrants a little "refresh" of sorts.

 

[Brago-sama]

I just wanna dry more things. Where are my berry raisains/Dried fruits klei (Also it better not be 1 berry per drying rack lmao)

Edited April 1 by Brago-sama

[ButterStuffed]

2 hours ago, Y0sH said:

Would an upgraded drying rack that has a small fire underneath that dries the meat quicker based on the flame level of the campfire work or is it the jerky itself that's the issue? I have to say this or cooking in general never really impacts my playstyle much, I'm play more of a nomad/forager tbh. However this does seem like something that warrants a little "refresh" of sorts.

 

Maybe a smoke shack, fueled by charcoal or other flammables, that lets you make variations of jerky?

Fruit jerky, fish jerky, salt cured jerky, smoked jerky, etc.

Could be an interesting way to make drying racks more interesting than set and forget.

[kroban]

On 3/30/2024 at 1:08 PM, Gashzer said:

I know everyone in the forums hates giving a single character perks like this but Walter could get 2-3 skills that radically boost jerky's drying speed/stats.

We see Walter eat jerky during his short and hes a character that can hunt koalefants really easy for big meat and jerky provides him the perfect mix of health and sanity healing for boss fights. Assuming you are using his pinecone hat and body armour ofc.

Honestly, at first I thought this would be a bad idea (like, perks for jerky?). Thinking about it more I ended up agreeing a lot with this, it would be a HUGE buff for Walter while also adding more relevance to the drying racks. Hes one of the few characters that can stack lots of small jerky in early game, if he has a perk that would give him let's say +15 on all stats when eating jerky you could just live out of farming small animals, big jerky would become even better, and it would overall help a lot with his sanity/missing health issues taking advantage of something he's already good at.

Edited April 1 by kroban

[Dingle]

I'd like some combination of having jerky last longer, and maybe going back to the old design of it not losing freshness until you take it off the drying rack. As of now I never use jerky anymore, though sometimes I make racks for kelp.

If my meat is spoiling, I just turn it into eggs if I want a refresh. Bacon and eggs, pierogi, or just giving 40 eggs at a time to Pig King for gold.

[Theukon-dos]

I just wanted to pop in to congratulate you. Why? Because this take was so bad that it managed to cool down my DST burnout and get me to start another world just so I could set up some jerky racks.

 

In all seriousness though. Jerky Racks are a certified good enough. Sure. You might be able to get some objectively better healing items with a similar amount of effort. But jerky is cheap past a one-time investment, spoils slowly so it's easy to stockpile or keep on hand. And is moderately easy to produce in bulk.

It does what it wants to do without any fuss. And that's enough value in and of itself if you ask me.

[chirsg]

31 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

I just wanted to pop in to congratulate you. Why? Because this take was so bad that it managed to cool down my DST burnout and get me to start another world just so I could set up some jerky racks.

 

In all seriousness though. Jerky Racks are a certified good enough. Sure. You might be able to get some objectively better healing items with a similar amount of effort. But jerky is cheap past a one-time investment, spoils slowly so it's easy to stockpile or keep on hand. And is moderately easy to produce in bulk.

It does what it wants to do without any fuss. And that's enough value in and of itself if you ask me.

But why would you use jerky if you have a polar bearger bin?

[Theukon-dos]

7 minutes ago, chirsg said:

But why would you use jerky if you have a polar bearger bin?

Because I don't have a Polar Bearger bin??? Even if I started this world with rifts enabled, I wouldn't get a Polar Bearger bin until atleast a whole in-game year in.

[Reecitz]

Just now, Theukon-dos said:

Because I don't have a Polar Bearger bin??? Even if I started this world with rifts enabled, I wouldn't get a Polar Bearger bin until atleast a whole in-game year in.

You must forgive himself; he automatically assumes everyone here is a veteran. 

[Theukon-dos]

8 minutes ago, Reecitz said:

You must forgive himself; he automatically assumes everyone here is a veteran. 

I mean. I am pretty experienced at the game all things considered. But the Polar Bearger bin is still a really late-game item no matter which way you slice it.

[chirsg]

13 minutes ago, Theukon-dos said:

Because I don't have a Polar Bearger bin??? Even if I started this world with rifts enabled, I wouldn't get a Polar Bearger bin until atleast a whole in-game year in.

It just doesn't seem like a good investment to me in the face of the bearger bin. Sure, jerky is a good food in a vacuum, but long term, it's a lot of space for a lot of hassle when it comes to storage and lunchboxes.

I've got a setup of 80 jerky racks and I would never do it again because such a thing has no space in a polar bearger bin. Acknowledging the shortcomings of jerky isn't such a terrible thing imo. I've stated this a few times in this thread, but because it's 4 pages, I don't expect people to read my posts specifically. 

[Theukon-dos]

28 minutes ago, chirsg said:

It just doesn't seem like a good investment to me in the face of the bearger bin. Sure, jerky is a good food in a vacuum, but long term, it's a lot of space for a lot of hassle when it comes to storage and lunchboxes.

I've got a setup of 80 jerky racks and I would never do it again because such a thing has no space in a polar bearger bin. Acknowledging the shortcomings of jerky isn't such a terrible thing imo. I've stated this a few times in this thread, but because it's 4 pages, I don't expect people to read my posts specifically. 

My brother in Christ you're looking at quite possibly hundreds of days between being able to set up jerky racks and getting the polar bearger bin. Those racks will pay themselves off far, far before you can even get the bin. Well. Maybe not 80 of them. But a good 8-16 racks are more than enough to keep the player going early on.

 

[chirsg]

1 hour ago, Theukon-dos said:

My brother in Christ you're looking at quite possibly hundreds of days between being able to set up jerky racks and getting the polar bearger bin. Those racks will pay themselves off far, far before you can even get the bin. Well. Maybe not 80 of them. But a good 8-16 racks are more than enough to keep the player going early on.

 

idk. I've lived without a crockpot for an extended period of time, only eating monster meat and cooked meat before I killed champion. The work I would have had to do in order to get the jerky racks would have been a humongous sink. Also, the material cost is hard to justify, not to mention the space. Even 8 racks takes up like 6 tiles or so. 6 tiles. 6. crockpots only take up 4 with a 6 crock setup. 

If bundle wrapping were the contemporary method of storing food, I'd agree with you. Why even cook? It's convoluted. The thing about jerky vs crcokpot foods is the grass tax. Every single time you get hungry, taht's 3x grass and a time sink where you need to use 2 entire work animations to wrap and unwrap.

 

If you're looking for someone to agree with you that in a world where bearger bin is absent, I'll throw you one. yes. Jerky racks could be one of the best things you can do with meat if not THE best at that stage of the game. If you choose for whatever reason to never activate rifts, then jerky is king. 

 

However, in the case of cc's demise and rifts activated, in my experience, jerky is completely and utterly obsolete. Like, totally obsolete. I can't even stress it. Racks become an exceptional waste of space. You have to agree that there has to be room for some re-adjustment to jerky for it to live in a world where polar bearger bins exist. 
If there were room in a bearger bin for jerky, that would go a long way.

Would you disagree for a space in the bearger bin for jerky?

TO supplement, the beauty of this game is how it avoids obsoleting tools and weapons. Even in a planar world, the most amount of damage you can inflict, dark sword is still king. Jerky being done dirty like this because of a nonsense magic pocket fridge should be a crime. I don't want this sort of horizontal progression. Giving jerky a small leg up would alleviate this, and not have it become a casualty of vertical progression.

[Theukon-dos]

4 minutes ago, chirsg said:

idk. I've lived without a crockpot for an extended period of time, only eating monster meat and cooked meat before I killed champion. The work I would have had to do in order to get the jerky racks would have been a humongous sink. Also, the material cost is hard to justify, not to mention the space. Even 8 racks takes up like 6 tiles or so. 6 tiles. 6. crockpots only take up 4 with a 6 crock setup. 

If bundle wrapping were the contemporary method of storing food, I'd agree with you. Why even cook? It's convoluted. The thing about jerky vs crcokpot foods is the grass tax. Every single time you get hungry, taht's 3x grass and a time sink where you need to use 2 entire work animations to wrap and unwrap.

 

If you're looking for someone to agree with you that in a world where bearger bin is absent, I'll throw you one. yes. Jerky racks could be one of the best things you can do with meat if not THE best at that stage of the game. If you choose for whatever reason to never activate rifts, then jerky is king. 

 

However, in the case of cc's demise and rifts activated, in my experience, jerky is completely and utterly obsolete. Like, totally obsolete. I can't even stress it. Racks become an exceptional waste of space. You have to agree that there has to be room for some re-adjustment to jerky for it to live in a world where polar bearger bins exist. 
If there were room in a bearger bin for jerky, that would go a long way.

Would you disagree for a space in the bearger bin for jerky?

TO supplement, the beauty of this game is how it avoids obsoleting tools and weapons. Even in a planar world, the most amount of damage you can inflict, dark sword is still king. Jerky being done dirty like this because of a nonsense magic pocket fridge should be a crime. I don't want this sort of horizontal progression. Giving jerky a small leg up would alleviate this, and not have it become a casualty of vertical progression.

I mean I'm not opposed to jerky being storable in a Polar Bearger bin. I'm just completely failing to follow your logic.

"Racks are expensive" If you're building dozens of them sure. But early on you only need 6-8 of them, which is less than 2 stacks of grass worth. The biggest thing it's costing you is inventory space given how easy that much grass is to stockpile when you're just running around the world.

"Racks take up a lot of space" Where you going to use that space for anything else? if DST was a game where managing your space was important I'd agree here. But it's not. Sure the world isn't infinite. But even the most dedicated of Megabasers would struggle to make use of their entire world to the point where the space needed for a drying rack array has too much opportunity cost to be worth it.

"Jerky becomes irrelevant after beating CC" But it's not irrelevant before beating CC. It still has genuine utility for a vast majority of the game, unless you're someone who spends thousands upon thousands of hours on a single world.

[Falkenpelz]

There are players, who never beat CC and don't really aim for it. Drying racks are just a classic to me, works in DS, works in DST. Dries kelp, florp.

[Frosty_Mentos]

7 hours ago, Theukon-dos said:

I just wanted to pop in to congratulate you. Why? Because this take was so bad that it managed to cool down my DST burnout and get me to start another world just so I could set up some jerky racks.

-w- You're welcome, I guess?
From personal experience I would very rarely ever thing about drying racks cause there's so many other farms I set up that ends up being funneled into making bacon and eggs, pierogi or saltbox for my potatoes/fruits. I try taming riding beefalo early to travel to any place I want so speed really helps a lot in food gathering.

If I need something very easy I could gather in short amounts of time - I go dig shrooms or go to ruins for food, cause monkeys give both banana and meat to fill all needs for every stat while shrooms generally a good backup veggie I can gather quick.

Most of my plays it's only been those few things while sometimes honey because it's a really good filler often than not.

Drying racks always felt too clunky to want to build that I'd rather have a bundling wrap earlier, set geckos up nearby or be Maxwell to deal with the grass tax with ease.

I tried jerky many times, but it never satisfies me personally just cause of poor spoilage rate that are just like bacon and eggs and pierogi who have one of highest spoilage times to be around.

I don't keep jerky cause of smaller stack size that for some reason exists despite them being more like sheets of meat after drying. I can have a stack of pie, daiquiri, bacon and eggs and pierogi in that bundle, but jerky has too little space for me to be appealed on keeping.

I never make big meat farms until much much later in-game for them being too slow for my taste, and least likely I'd make drying racks that's just cause they're a huge structure and doesn't keep much dried food to want to have that many of them.

It stopped being good to me due to old and new food options appearing to satisfying most of my needs while jerky remains as non safe food to keep and too slow to heal. While I can't deny that jerky's stats are quite decent and I'd rather have them a lot more than breakfast skillets or several other dishes I do think that there's too many problems with that item and structure for me to care about to want make anything on it or even keep the jerky.

In conclusion is that jerky never really fit in well with the rest of food options and storing. Bundling wraps might be the main culprit to keeping me sated and healthy and keeping jerky in one makes less sense.

[NoodlemanNed]

i dont think jerky is super good right now but it feels like every mention of it tends to exaggerate how bad it actually is. Its certainly not better than a handful of strong crock pot dishes, but even when considering bearger bin its far more useful than a majority of food sources in the game due to being really cheap after you slog through setting up your drying racks.

a little buff to jerky would be great since its one of the more unique food sources but please for the love of god stop acting like its less useful than ratatouille.

[Antynomity]

Aaaand you went to the lengths of putting 'veterans Vs forumites' in the title, all the credibility you had in my eyes in this post have just poofed away.

 

I love segregating the entire community into two small groups of people!

[Valase]

I think that they are great, especially for characters like Wickerbottom, and they pair nicely with the bearger backpack.

I think that someone mentioned the fact that the bearger bin does not accepts it, but by the time that you have one, you want it to be filled with stronger items, things like meaty stew for hunger, banana shake for sanity and pierOPs for health, not a jack of all trades such as jerky.

[SonicDen220]

For how I play the game, drying racks are perfectly solid. I don't even rely on bundling wraps (the constant bundling/unbundling is tedious for me). Drying racks aren't expensive to set up and just 20 is enough for the entire playthrough. I also like preserving and cycling food naturally (probably because I don't like bundle wraps), so for me it's usually – put meat into salt box -> it spoils, put it on a drying rack -> it gets fully refreshed -> it spoils again -> turn it into eggs. I like this aspect of the game and removing it with bundle wraps would make the game less fun for me (even when I do use bundles, it's usually just bundling the food and never opening the bundle ever again).

As for polar bearger bin... For my pace of playing the game (I do celestial champion only about 300+ days in, and that's being generously fast), it's not relevant for most of my playtime. I'm not against being able to put jerky into it, because it wouldn't make much difference.

[GetNerfedOn]

cries in warly

[Well-met]

17 hours ago, chirsg said:

It just doesn't seem like a good investment to me in the face of the bearger bin. Sure, jerky is a good food in a vacuum, but long term, it's a lot of space for a lot of hassle when it comes to storage and lunchboxes.

I've got a setup of 80 jerky racks and I would never do it again because such a thing has no space in a polar bearger bin. Acknowledging the shortcomings of jerky isn't such a terrible thing imo. I've stated this a few times in this thread, but because it's 4 pages, I don't expect people to read my posts specifically. 

thats your mistake for making 80.

20 is good enough.

[SapoLover]

I would use jerky more if I didn't feel bad about wasting the hp and sanity stats. Outside of that, i think they just have a space issue.

[cybers2001]

On 4/1/2024 at 1:28 AM, cropo said:

Gonna have to disagree, being a meat product shouldn't influence the eating speed of it. If I can slam an entire pie into my mouth for a massive burst of heal and hunger, with an extremely long shelf life, I should be able to eat a 25 hunger item with a quick bite especially when it takes literal days to "Cook". It would make mass-farming them and then using them in a battle more meaningful, because as a a strict sustenance item it is indeed lacking and it shouldn't be buffed to fill that role in my opinion.

Nah, faster eating speed is a reward for bothering with farming at all in the first place. Despite how much Klei improved the farming system, it's still pointless when I get piles of meat and honey for barely any extra effort.

[Jakepeng99]

On 4/3/2024 at 2:03 AM, chirsg said:

But why would you use jerky if you have a polar bearger bin?

Bad reasoning. 10 days before it is stale, that is 80 minutes which is long enough. For Wx it is 160 minutes.

Bearger bin does not make it unusable.

18 hours ago, Antynomity said:

Aaaand you went to the lengths of putting 'veterans Vs forumites' in the title, all the credibility you had in my eyes in this post have just poofed away.

 

I love segregating the entire community into two small groups of people!

I thought veterans and formites were the same people so i am confused lol