Suggestion: Allow Jerky and Ham Bat in Salt Box in Don't Starve Together

[nicework]

Dear Klei Team,

I hope this message finds you well. I’d like to humbly suggest a small adjustment to the Salt Box mechanic: allowing Jerky and Ham Bat to be stored inside it. Here’s why this change would make sense:

Logical Consistency: The Salt Box is designed to preserve low-moisture foods. Both Jerky and Ham Bat are dried, non-perishable items, making them a perfect thematic fit.

Balance Considerations:

The Drying Rack requires 9 Cut Grass to craft, which is resource-intensive early-game.

It occupies significant space (a whole tile) yet only processes one item at a time.

Weather dependency (rain stops drying) further limits its reliability.

Allowing Salt Box to store these items would reduce frustration without undermining the Drying Rack’s role, as it’s still needed for production.

Thank you for considering this feedback! Your work on DST continues to inspire us all.

[Wawchik]

Jerky already takes forever to spoil, and hambat isn't supposed to be used for long

And why did you describe downsides of drying rack? Salt box doesn't fix any of them

[Pop Guy]

Brilliant suggestion, I totally agree!

[gaymime]

i agree that jerky should be allowed in the salt-box

[readkey]

Maybe introduce an upgrade version of  drying rack like Woby’s, which can dry 3 meat at the same time. 

[GrapeVruit]

On the topic of salt and Hambats, It'd be cool for Warly to have a skill that allowed him to restore a Hambat's freshness with salt when his skill tree came. 

[Frosty_Mentos]

3 hours ago, readkey said:

Maybe introduce an upgrade version of  drying rack like Woby’s, which can dry 3 meat at the same time. 

I mean, it already costs 3 rope per each damn rack. It would make sense just to allow more meat per rack instead of making a billion of them. Could make meat dry slower as result from having too much meat near each other as a nerf, but yea drying racks need some tweak.

[Bumber64]

19 hours ago, Wawchik said:

Jerky already takes forever to spoil

20 days. No longer than pierogi, etc.

[Crimson Hollow]

18 hours ago, GrapeVruit said:

On the topic of salt and Hambats, It'd be cool for Warly to have a skill that allowed him to restore a Hambat's freshness with salt when his skill tree came. 

Very interesting idea, like a chef being good at making food with food. In fact if hes able to gain easier access to salt, he can also use it to reduce the spoilage rate of hambat and idk, get some other buffs because "salt in the wound"  lol

18 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

20 days. No longer than pierogi, etc.

and the thing is, stale jerky doesnt restore sanity which is probably the only edge it has over pierogi or sth. 

[Wawchik]

38 minutes ago, Bumber64 said:

20 days. No longer than pierogi, etc.

Yeah, that's a lot, 40 days in the icebox and even longer during winter 

[SpookyXy]

14 minutes ago, Wawchik said:

Yeah, that's a lot, 40 days in the icebox and even longer during winter 

But jerky cant be placed in a bearger bin.

[Swiyss]

jerky in the salt box should have something like 90 days of spoilage. In Brazil, we have a salted meat recipe that lasts over 3 months in the fridge completely. It's when you cover the meat completely with salt for the very first days it has been harvested, then dry it in the sun for 1 day. Some even say it can last 1 year in the fridge if the meat is big enough, and it's basically a different dry age method.

Klei can also just allow Warly to dry age meat as well, which would be very fun.

[Wawchik]

3 hours ago, SpookyXy said:

But jerky cant be placed in a bearger bin.

The post is about salt box

[SpookyXy]

7 hours ago, Wawchik said:

The post is about salt box

The main reason people want jerky to be placed in the salt box (besides making thematic sense) is because jerky is completely outclassed as a food source. They are expensive to set up, difficult to mass produce due to the time investment, are practically useless 1/4 of the year and have lower stats than crockpot food. 

Their main niche is their long spoilage time but they get outclassed again by uncooked food in the salt box and crockpot food in the bearger bin. Jerky gets left in the dust because it cant benefit from either of these things.

[Wawchik]

14 minutes ago, SpookyXy said:

They are expensive to set up, difficult to mass produce due to the time investment, are practically useless 1/4 of the year and have lower stats than crockpot food. 

No, they are not. Yes, it takes a lot of grass, but... It's grass, just collect more grass than you usually do, and while drying rack is useless during spring, you'd still have jerky left in your fridge with 35~ spoilage timer. And, obviously, jerky is outclassed by crockpot food, because it isn't crockpot food, it's just 1 meat with better stats. 

You're not supposed to use drying racks as your main source of food, it's literally just a meat upgrader and I think it's crazy for 1 meat to last more than a year in saltbox. Also, bearger bin is post rift, why do you even need jerky post rift, just have a stack of each food you need

[Well-met]

as someone who runs entire worlds around jerky, no it would be overpowered.

Hambat should definitely be able to go in crockpots and be eatable by monsters though.

 

[Szczuku]

What would be the benefit of allowing jerky in the salt box?

You already get raw meat lasting 20x longer in the salt box, then drying racks reset it's freshness to 100% when it turns into jerky and you can keep jerky which lasts 20 days and you can keep it in an ice box so that it lasts twice as long

Mate, that's enough time for you to get a new piece of raw meat. Allowing jerky into the salt box so that it lasts even longer is just redundant

[reddocc]

I think it's too late for this to happen It would've been nice to have this in the same update the salt box was added.

The best current alternative currently is the preserver made of icker goo

[Walrusst]

I could see people just wanting to have one vessel for sorting fully uncooked crock pot ingredients and one for dishes and cooked items.

I think this honestly probably makes less of an impact either way with the redundancy argument being a bit funny. Sure it means its probably more work than it needs to be, but also it being sorta redundant makes it harmless to do since being able to reset the meat after  30 days of salt box for another 40 days is already a year of meat duration (Wow.)
 

Stuff like the butterfly wings would be overpowered in a salt box, just I don't see anyone asking for that. Its a strong resource thats scarce for parts of the year rather than something that outlasts the only season where you struggle to make it. There aren't that many raw things that would be imbalanced here... But they do exist.

The one problem is the salt box is one of the most dirt simple codewise items in the game so overhauling it would be more effort than you might think.
Just cause its just automatically parsing items that has a cooked version, rather than using a human curated list like woby does.
So the only argument I can really float on either side here is that while its probably more harmless than people would say, its also more complicated than it might be worth.

I know, this is coming from me, king of overcomplicated ideas.

[Bumber64]

3 hours ago, Szczuku said:

What would be the benefit of allowing jerky in the salt box?

You already get raw meat lasting 20x longer in the salt box, then drying racks reset it's freshness to 100% when it turns into jerky and you can keep jerky which lasts 20 days and you can keep it in an ice box so that it lasts twice as long

Mate, that's enough time for you to get a new piece of raw meat. Allowing jerky into the salt box so that it lasts even longer is just redundant

How many players actually wait for meat to be nearly rotten to put it on the rack? Even if you can be bothered to micromanage that, you need enough racks or some of the meat is going to rot. You can also just instantly turn the spoiled meat into eggs for less effort.

If you're going to use the jerky as crock pot meat, you should ideally do so immediately to make up for your other spoiling ingredients. Dishes work in the ice box just as well, and you can carry them in the polar bin later.

For the investment put in w/r/t crock foods, jerky should be able to be preserved a really long time. The salt box is also fairly useless with its restrictions. Imagine if it was practical to store one ingredient type outside of a bundle/gift wrap after all the investment.