Suggestions to make fishing, cooking and farming more rewarding or less time consuming in the late game

[Azule]

I’m writing this article because I love DST’s farming (thank you, "Reap what you Sow"!) and fishing mechanics, and I believe they deserve more attention from Klei.

Fishing Overhaul:

Fishing has a cool minigame compared to others games, but it currently lacks incentive. The problem is that fish-based food isn’t worth the effort compared to land-based options like Meatballs or Pierogi, which are easier to make and restore similar stats (though I do think these dishes are overpowered and discourage players from experimenting with rare ingredients—but that’s a topic for another post).

To make fishing more rewarding, Klei could introduce fish-specific recipes that grant unique buffs, similar to Shipwrecked’s tropical fish recipe (the ones that provide sanity or speed boosts). For example:

Dishes combining farmed crops and fish could grant temporary damage boosts against Shadow or Lunar-aligned enemies.  A recipe that might grant critical-hit effects akin to Weregoose’s knockback.

A fishing net made with scrap and silk or some boss drop that could catch a whole shoal with a single minigame but has few uses. A better endgame fish farm like Shipwrecked (but less OP) for every meat used as bait fill in two days the farm with 3/4 fishes in shallow waters and 2/3 in medium/deep. Small sharks or Rockjaw attacks when retrieving, similar to shipwrecked as well.

A Warly skill tree could further enhance these recipes, adding synergy with his existing chef-themed perks.

 

Farming Improvements:

Farming is functional, but it’s totally skippable (which is fine, the problem is that we have less time consuming activities that give the same stats) unless you’re playing Warly. Void Sickle harvest Seaweed instantly, following this logic, here are some late-game quality-of-life adjustments which could reduce the grind:

Introduce a Lunar/Dreadstone Hoe to till soil faster.

Add an irrigation system (like Hamlet’s or Stardew Valley’s sprinklers) to automate watering if fueled with water. 

More specific dishes made with specific crops and ingredients that give buffs, like a vegetable dish that reduces the hunger drain for 3 days (try different vegetables that compete for nutrients, for example).

 

Cooking Expansion:

Cooking could use late-game upgrades and make it less time consuming, and maybe use fuel like tar (which currently has little use in the game), here are some ideas:

Buff some existing and difficult recipes, the player should feel more rewarded when eating a Guacamole than a Meatballs

A Grill (inspired by Oxygen Not Included’s machines) to unlock high-tier recipes requiring rare ingredients.

A Lunar/Shadow Crock Pot that cooks 2 dishes at once, streamlining bulk preparation.

 

These changes would make fishing and farming feel more integral to progression while rewarding players who invest time in mastering these systems.

[AliceShiki]

I feel like Surf'n''turf and Trawlers already help making fishing a valuable option.

[hyoton123]

Fishing: trawler if you dont like it; fish if you do (i like fishing, i find it fun…sometimes, so i do it to relax)

 

farming: see fishing but it’s even more optional, i wouldnt mind an auto hoe tool though…I hate clicking

 

cooking: the purpose of guacamole is to show the moleworm who’s boss. wait…tar? from shipwrecked?

[Cheggf]

Meatballs are some of the highest effort and lowest reward food in the entire game. I have no idea how you could look at things like the fish trawler and angler's guide and think "Yeah, these are just way too inefficient for me. I'd rather spend 40 minutes walking around the world grabbing ice so I can make a dish that spoils fast and restores nothing but hunger".

[Wawchik]

Meatballs and pierogi aren't overpowered, they're just easily accessible, because you'll probably have the ingredients for them at any time but if you care to put effort into other healing dishes, they will most probably be better than literally emptying your whole ice box to make pierogi 

And there are good fishing based food, for example, Wobster soup gives 60 health and 10 sanity for 1 Wobster and 3 ice, isn't that strong? 10 day spoilage is decent and they always cook fresh 

[Radicaljoe]

See, what's annoying is we DO have a lunar hoe, but it doesn't do anything special, it's just welded to a shovel. 

As for fishing, I think the trawl nets and fish food from Pearl and other methods of fishing like the trident or catapults make it interesting enough. 
 

An issue I have with both farming and cooking is the lack of value. I hope one day for a RWYS update but for cooking. 
Example, there is no difference in using a dead rabbit and 3 berries than using 1 large meat and 3 corn in a crockpot. Warly is the only charcter that benefits from farming more than pumpkin, dragonfruits, tomato and potato. But that's because his spices and couple of different foods actually require said ingredients. It doesn't matter you spent 5 days farming that onion as Wilson, it's just as valuable as picking a carrot off the floor 10 tiles away from base in the crockpot.

In terms of ingredient quality there's no real difference, you don't often get more reward for more effort. Though I understand the running joke is "Starve is in the game name and the food is the least of your worries."

Also, a lot of crockpot foods are bad, when was the last time you saw a person make banana daquiri or fish tacos or pumpkin cookies? The effort for those ingredients are either way too high for the payout, or are outclassed by a similar dish that's less effort (Banana shakes and fish sticks for the first two mentioned)

I love the Heaps of Foods mod because it adds a lot of different ingredients AND adds a ton of food options for them as well. Growing corn or asparagus are actually meaningful because there's some interesting foods you can make using only those ingredients.

[Cheggf]

53 minutes ago, Radicaljoe said:

An issue I have with both farming and cooking is the lack of value. I hope one day for a RWYS update but for cooking. 
Example, there is no difference in using a dead rabbit and 3 berries than using 1 large meat and 3 corn in a crockpot.

This is literally a skill issue. You are asking for cooking to be automatic where you throw in any random ingredients and always get the best result. That's the exact opposite of RWYS where they made farming greatly reward knowledge of how the system works, the same way cooking is right now. 

[ChintzyGnat]

I just want a better way to cook alot of dishes easily. I dont mind farming 100 good dishes if it didn't take 3 days to cook it all

[Well-met]

Just now, ChintzyGnat said:

I just want a better way to cook alot of dishes easily. I dont mind farming 100 good dishes if it didn't take 3 days to cook it all

elastispacer for cooking pots

[DegenerateFurry]

1 hour ago, Cheggf said:

Meatballs are some of the highest effort and lowest reward food in the entire game. I have no idea how you could look at things like the fish trawler and angler's guide and think "Yeah, these are just way too inefficient for me. I'd rather spend 40 minutes walking around the world grabbing ice so I can make a dish that spoils fast and restores nothing but hunger".

It's not ice-specific, though? Meatballs are made with one monster meat and three of whatever you happen to have on you. I dunno who told you that you need ice for meatballs, but they're lying, ice is just the most hunger value optimal-way to make them and nobody actually cares about that because of how abundant food is in this game.

Meatballs become super-duper low effort the second you have a reliable and passive source of veggies - kelp especially since that just grows quickly by itself once planted and never requires fertilizer, but also mushroom farms or stonefruit. So, after you have a base built, they're the lowest-effort hunger food in the game. The game gives you a wave of hound-flavored monster meat every several days and that's literally several free meatballs if you have kelp growing.

But, early-game, they're a staple because you can just throw in a morsel or a monster meat plus some berries, carrots, ice, or whatever else that isn't a stick or 2+ monster meat total. The bit that makes them strong in the early-game is that they convert monster meat (which is not safe to eat if you're not Webber) into something that is safe to eat and has either the same or slightly more hunger value than whatever you're putting in the pot to make them.

[Radicaljoe]

40 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

This is literally a skill issue. You are asking for cooking to be automatic where you throw in any random ingredients and always get the best result. That's the exact opposite of RWYS where they made farming greatly reward knowledge of how the system works, the same way cooking is right now. 

That could not be further from what I am asking. Like I said there is no reward for using higher quality ingredients, even if you go through the trouble of getting them that meatball will still be the same 68 hunger.  You can use the knowledge to know that you should have eaten the ingredients raw and not interacted with the crockpot at all. But that still doesn't address the issue that your quality ingredients didn't do anything helpful in the pot at all.

Also the knowledge of learning that you can magically turn 100 hunger into 68 hunger is not the same level as plant knowledge. Farming is explicitly more effort and care=more product, the crockpot is commonly the opposite of that where more effort can often mean less product.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Radicaljoe said:

That could not be further from what I am asking. Like I said there is no reward for using higher quality ingredients, even if you go through the trouble of getting them that meatball will still be the same 68 hunger.  You can use the knowledge to know that you should have eaten the ingredients raw and not interacted with the crockpot at all. But that still doesn't address the issue that your quality ingredients didn't do anything helpful in the pot at all.

There is a reward for using higher quality ingredients. Meatballs is one of the worst dishes in the game. It spoils fast, it doesn't restore much hunger, it doesn't really restore any health or sanity. That dish sucks. Of course you get a bad dish when you use bad ingredients. Gather better ingredients to make better dishes like bacon & eggs, honey ham, dragonpie, turkey dinner, fishsticks, surf 'n' turf, beefy greens, flower salad, veggie burgers, salsa fresca, jelly salad, ice cream, banana pops, vegetable stingers, etc.

1 hour ago, Radicaljoe said:

Also the knowledge of learning that you can magically turn 100 hunger into 68 hunger is not the same level as plant knowledge. Farming is explicitly more effort and care=more product, the crockpot is commonly the opposite of that where more effort can often mean less product.

Cooking is explicitly more effort & care = more product. If you want to make a comparison for farming, wasting high value items on making meatballs is like planting tons of the same valuable out of season crop over & over again without giving it any fertilizer, then wasting your time watering it when you're not giving it any nutrients, you're overcrowding it, and you're growing it out of season. The effort in cooking comes in acquiring the ingredients, and the care comes in making the proper recipes with them. 

[hyoton123]

2 hours ago, Radicaljoe said:

Farming is explicitly more effort and care=more product, the crockpot is commonly the opposite of that where more effort can often mean less product.

I get what youre saying, but farming and the crockpot really are meant to be different. The crockpot is less work in some ways (top end recipes are extremely efficient) and more in others (easy to trade down if you arent careful). Farming is more predictable, low end product and linear. Thats on purpose and it’s good to have both.

[Spunney]

I think something overlooked in this discussion is that farming is primarily a method to feed large groups of players. As a solo player, or maybe in the world with just 1-2 other self-sufficient friends, yeah farming can be a bit of a waste of time. But for large servers with many players, it's extremely useful as a tool to keep them all fed without everyone having to fight over scarce resources all of the time.

...I do kinda think fishing sucks though, yeah. I mean the actual act of fishing with a fishing rod itself sucks, and not anything involving canons or those big net traps. I don't even think it's necessarily that inefficient, I just think it's very confusingly designed and, to be honest, I still don't really know how it works, and it's not like I've never tried to look into it @-@

[reddocc]

I do think farming is super rewarding, especially if you focus In spamming nutrients, you can grow so many gigants at the same time if you skip combos and focus in gathering the nutrients yourself, just remember that a plot can only hold up to 12~ arrows of nutrients at the time. Keep in mind I play as Wormwood and plant the leftover seeds directly on the ground for storing plants(if they rot they will eventually turn to regular crops again).

Is true that the most painful part of farming is tilling the soil, and I think klei should give us a bomb or something that prepares the ground with 9 tilled ground.

For late game tools for farming we have the brightshade smasher, the shadow reaper and the lazy forager.

[FillerText]

15 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Meatballs are some of the highest effort and lowest reward food in the entire game. I have no idea how you could look at things like the fish trawler and angler's guide and think "Yeah, these are just way too inefficient for me. I'd rather spend 40 minutes walking around the world grabbing ice so I can make a dish that spoils fast and restores nothing but hunger".

My Ice box lives up to it's name by being a box filled with Ice I never use. Anybody who says Meatballs are too good should consider playing the game without them, and they would quickly realize it makes absolutely no difference. You don't even need any conscious effort to stop using Meatballs because you will naturally just gravitate to something else as you become a better chef.

[FillerText]

14 hours ago, DegenerateFurry said:

It's not ice-specific, though? Meatballs are made with one monster meat and three of whatever you happen to have on you. I dunno who told you that you need ice for meatballs, but they're lying, ice is just the most hunger value optimal-way to make them and nobody actually cares about that because of how abundant food is in this game.

Meatballs become super-duper low effort the second you have a reliable and passive source of veggies - kelp especially since that just grows quickly by itself once planted and never requires fertilizer, but also mushroom farms or stonefruit. So, after you have a base built, they're the lowest-effort hunger food in the game. The game gives you a wave of hound-flavored monster meat every several days and that's literally several free meatballs if you have kelp growing.

But, early-game, they're a staple because you can just throw in a morsel or a monster meat plus some berries, carrots, ice, or whatever else that isn't a stick or 2+ monster meat total. The bit that makes them strong in the early-game is that they convert monster meat (which is not safe to eat if you're not Webber) into something that is safe to eat and has either the same or slightly more hunger value than whatever you're putting in the pot to make them.

If food is so abundant, then why does it matter to you if you get a 12 hunger net gain? 

[nicolas103]

Ocean Fishing with a rod is extremely underwhelming, and time consuming for sure. I feel its only minigame at this point.

Trawls nets really arent bad tho, tbh, but this really just goes around the fact fishing with a rod on the ocean sucks.

Maybe fish weight could play an actual role in how much fish meat you get? With better Bobbers, Spinners, correct bait making the fish you reel in weight more?

Or even more unique, and semi dangerous fish to catch that reward more fish. Like a hammer head shark that literally hammers your boat, idk.

 

Farming is in a really good spot already the worst part is just tilling. Which for sure could see improvement.

Maybe the Garden Digamajig can also till as a 2nd function? Or maybe the tilling lasts until season change or something.

Just less tilling in general would be enough for me.

 

As for cooking im actually pretty okay with how it is now, but for sure i feel some recipes just take too long compared to other cheaper, and more efficient foods. So im not against crockpot improvements/upgrades.

A lot of recipes are genuinely okay, but a more varied stat spread between recipes would go a long way. The generic 37.5 Hunger, 5 Sanity on most foods is quite lame.

[Azule]

21 hours ago, hyoton123 said:

Fishing: trawler if you dont like it; fish if you do (i like fishing, i find it fun…sometimes, so i do it to relax)

 

farming: see fishing but it’s even more optional, i wouldnt mind an auto hoe tool though…I hate clicking

 

cooking: the purpose of guacamole is to show the moleworm who’s boss. wait…tar? from shipwrecked?

I forgot the name, it isn't Tar, sorry. It is the Inker drop

[Azule]

21 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Meatballs are some of the highest effort and lowest reward food in the entire game. I have no idea how you could look at things like the fish trawler and angler's guide and think "Yeah, these are just way too inefficient for me. I'd rather spend 40 minutes walking around the world grabbing ice so I can make a dish that spoils fast and restores nothing but hunger".

Trawlers are efficient with Wickerbotton, and it' is so much worst tham the Fish farm from Ship. You don't spend 40 minutes grabbing ice! Normally you will have all ingredients you need by just walk to your objectives and stop for 30 seconds to mine it in winter.

[Azule]

21 hours ago, Radicaljoe said:

See, what's annoying is we DO have a lunar hoe, but it doesn't do anything special, it's just welded to a shovel. 

As for fishing, I think the trawl nets and fish food from Pearl and other methods of fishing like the trident or catapults make it interesting enough. 
 

An issue I have with both farming and cooking is the lack of value. I hope one day for a RWYS update but for cooking. 
Example, there is no difference in using a dead rabbit and 3 berries than using 1 large meat and 3 corn in a crockpot. Warly is the only charcter that benefits from farming more than pumpkin, dragonfruits, tomato and potato. But that's because his spices and couple of different foods actually require said ingredients. It doesn't matter you spent 5 days farming that onion as Wilson, it's just as valuable as picking a carrot off the floor 10 tiles away from base in the crockpot.

In terms of ingredient quality there's no real difference, you don't often get more reward for more effort. Though I understand the running joke is "Starve is in the game name and the food is the least of your worries."

Also, a lot of crockpot foods are bad, when was the last time you saw a person make banana daquiri or fish tacos or pumpkin cookies? The effort for those ingredients are either way too high for the payout, or are outclassed by a similar dish that's less effort (Banana shakes and fish sticks for the first two mentioned)

I love the Heaps of Foods mod because it adds a lot of different ingredients AND adds a ton of food options for them as well. Growing corn or asparagus are actually meaningful because there's some interesting foods you can make using only those ingredients.

I will look into this mod, thank you!

[DegenerateFurry]

6 hours ago, FillerText said:

If food is so abundant, then why does it matter to you if you get a 12 hunger net gain? 

It... doesn't, really? The main point of my post is that meatballs turn monster meat and three whatevers from -20 HP (or -3 if you cook the monster meat over a fire first) to +3 HP, +62.5 hunger. The fact that you get an extra 6.25 - 13.8 hunger depending on your ingredients is just another bonus. You're taking something that's borderline inedible and making it purely beneficial.

[WilsonHiggs]

Catching fishes with canons, tridents and tents aren't bad and farming isn't a bad food source, specially if your goal is to get sanity

[Arepantera]

I think fishing is doomed to be an unused mechanic forever, because almost every game does the typical "yeah throw that thing, wait like 10 seconds and reel that thing for one miserable fish". Thankfully there are other methods to get fish like wicker's books combined with canons.

Farming can be enjoyable but it's also a time sink that doesn't give you good rewards for getting good scores, it will always be better to just plant 9-10 plants in one spot with a friendly fly nearby to get 1 fruit and 1 seed, than it is to spend a massive amount of time trying to get giants. IMO if a fruit were to give 2 seeds or if it becomes a giant, then it should automatically use 1 of those seeds to replant itself in the same spot they were.

Everything else looks weak when I can just use monster meat and stone fruit to mass produce pierogi.