Regular drying racks could use an UI update to be like Walter's, as well as to be connectable to each other with shared UI if they are close enough

[Pig Princess]

I always liked drying racks for their concept, but I noticed that with thousands of hours passing I started to use them less and less (even before bearger bin), and reason is in how long it takes to perform each animation one by one to prepare even stack of jerky, not to mention all the walking for big drying rack fields. At some point I used mod for lazy forager to be able to harvest them while riding beefalo, but even then putting things on drying racks was tiring. But when Walter's portable drying rack was added, I realised that it's exactly what regular racks need to feel much better to use. I want the ability to connect drying racks like one can connect lamp posts from Year of the Debth Worm - and code is already there - and interact with them in single UI window where I could quickly put and take everything with shift-clicks instead of performing boring walking and picking animation for every piece of meat on it - and code is already there as well!

This won't make Walter's drying racks less valuable in any way: their value is in being portable, free and not requiring any extra place to be built (relevant for boats and significant thing to plan around even for 20-ish drying rack field), which is very valuable for scout character. If I play as Walter, I'm going to use portable drying racks skill even after I'm able to have 20+ racks at base, because it just feels good to passively convert any sort of meat into corresponding jerky, especially meat from random fights that would otherwise be unpicked (bat wings, morsels from monkeys, meat from random otters, random monster meat for extra snacks for Woby, etc.).

The goal of this post is to suggest improvement in terms of interaction. Drying racks could use other ideas to improve them, such as to allow more products to be dried on them (mushrooms, vegetables, berries - including for crafting and not for food), to allow usage of spices during drying period to alter some stats and enhance usage of things like salt, pepper, garlic, onion, etc. Jerky could be allowed to store in salt boxes/bearger bins/have other ways to preserve them even longer than any other food like spoiling at very slow rate if left on drying rack outside of rain, etc. However, it's something for a different potential post, it's something that can shift attention from interaction improvement, but UI is something that I feel would benefit everyone in any scenario without need to developing entirely new concepts and writing code from scratch, which is why this post is only about this suggestion.

[_mylilsunshine_]

if they do do something about the drying rack, i hope that they wouldn't use the same meat icon for the ui. people were wondering if you can dry kelp/fish on the rack because the meat icon makes it seem like it's meat exclusive, so a change would be nice

[Dyzrespect]

Your suggestion about the Depth Worms lanterns adaptation is incredible. Even if they just made all drying racks identical to Woby's, all able to hold 3 meats since they require 3 ropes anyways, that would also be servicable. The massive amount of space drying setups take in your base is less of a challenge and more of a tedious annoyance these days, and of course as you said, even with mods, going through interacting with all of them adds to that tedium immensely.

[Pig Princess]

Aside from bumping the topic, I would like to mention that it should be possible to put dryable object to drying rack like right now, i. e. by hovering over the drying rack and clicking without specifically openening UI first. It could work like putting items in the chest, where player can just put an item into it without opening first, which opens chest itself. That way single drying rack would not be more interaction-intensive than right now.

[Pig Princess]

I think topic is worth a bump.

[Anis5240]

I just want at least the rack can dry 2 items. 3 is um uh there and 4 just gonna make the whole thing crowded.

[Reiko24]

I’d really like to be able to season meat and other stuff before drying it, giving it some effect, not the same as Warly’s.

i also really like the idea of drying mushrooms, berries, veggies. I mean, we do that in real life. Why not here?

[Crimson Hollow]

Incredible suggestions, all of them.

Could be nice if we are allowed to take the meat off before its dried though, especially for indecisive players like me lol

[mykenception]

drying racks do need some needed update, lots of people don't use them in their bases because of the intensive cost to make enough impact on your gameplay

I want more dried kelp pls

[_mylilsunshine_]

57 minutes ago, mykenception said:

drying racks do need some needed update, lots of people don't use them in their bases because of the intensive cost to make enough impact on your gameplay

I want more dried kelp pls

i love dried kelp, such a power food but gated behind the silly cost of building the racks, finding space for the racks, and waiting for it to dry. not a fan of cooking so i love munchies like dried kelp and jerky but they're such a pain

[Peasant]

I posted something similar when new Walter tree came out. Making the normal drying racks be able to dry 3 pieces of meat would be good, and also compensate for the 3 ropes used in crafting them