Food spoilage?

[mobius187]

1: Realism isn't always a good thing. Game balance is, but different people have different ideas about what is "too difficult".

Correct. It's the careful balance between realism and fun gameplay.

Food spoilage is a great way to deal with the ease with which players can currently stockpile infinite food supplies, but making it *too* complicated/realistic takes away from the cartoony game-y aspect, and adds more boring scutwork. Kevin's idea seems close to the far end of complexity, beyond which this idea could become hindrance rather than help.

That may be the case, but I think that's where he wants us to provide feedback and tell him which aspects of his idea we like and which are just "too much" (i.e. needless complexity). In my previous examples I used Project Zomboid as a measuring stick because their rot system seems more basic, and maybe that's the way we should go? A bare bones system could be:

1) Food has two states, "Fresh" and "Rotten".

2) Each food item has its own "freshness" counter.

3) Once the "freshness" counter reaches 0 (days) the food becomes "Rotten Food".

4) "Rotten Food" stacks to 40, but if the player or container has no room it drops to the ground.

5) Cooking/freezing food adds a multiplier to the "freshness" counter

Suggestion #5 could be removed if it makes the matter too complex, although I could only see that being the case for freezing/storing food, as what happens when the player removes the food item. Cooking on the other hand permanently changes the food's state.

2: "Canning" doesn't actually mean you have to use cans. Apparently, it also includes glass jars, in modern usage, and for the purposes of don't starve, should mean any sealable container.

Fair enough. Kevin did mention clay jars, maybe the intention is that we will be able to craft them and use them to create preserved foods (i.e. the jar wouldn't be a container, like a chest, but part of the crafting formula... only using a crock pot).

We already have the most important element for food preservation: Preservatives (honey works. Salt would be better.) Smoke is also usable.

Agreed. Although I didn't know honey was a preservative... only that it preserves extremely well (itself). When I think of preserving food I normally think of turning fruits/vegetables into preserves through boiling/canning them, or salting/smoking meats (i.e. jerky).

A smokehouse, using grass for fuel (very small amount of fire is used for smoking foods) would be a great addition.

That's true, but is allowing us to craft a new placeable, the smokehouse, really the way to go? I'm more partial to the current minimalist approach the game takes towards crafting/cooking. As such I would mind just using the existing placeable, the crock pot, for this task. For example:

1) Meat Morsel + Grass = Smoked Meat

2) Ham + Grass = Smoked Ham

3) Meat Morsel + Salt = Salted Meat

4) Ect...

Obviously the extra slots in the crock pot could be to create larger meals, like how Meaty Stew works.

But canning would be another great option, requiring two new elements: A container (say, a clay pot) and a seal (wax. Specifically beeswax, which should be a drop from beehives and a harvestable product from bee boxes, or alternatively, should be obtained from honeycomb, which would then have to be renewable and a lot more common) To top the clay pot you could simply have it come with a clay lid, and seal the lid with wax, but more interesting would be to seal it with paper (papyrus) or cloth (made from beefalo wool, probably) treated with wax.

Yes, I agree about the clay pots. It works as a simpler (and less Minecraft) solution than crafting glass jars (i.e. melting sand into glass) or needing to find them (say, on a Beach biome...). Finding clay could also give another purpose to the shovel and maybe another (non-renewable) resource to the swamp.

I also like the idea of beeswax, as I myself have requested it before. Of course my suggestion was connected with crafting candles and included refining silk into string (like how grass is refined into rope). While I know beeswax comes from the honeycomb, I think the Devs want to limit them as the "essential" beebox component, like spider egg sacs. In this case it's just simpler to have it as another resource you can collect from a bee box (IMHO).

Lastly, why not use our staple metal for the lid and use gold ore? It sounds like a simpler option.

3: Kevin, please correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe when Kevin said that food will "stack linearly" he means that the stack's total freshness will simply be the unweighted (linear) average of the stacked elements. There's no "top" or "bottom" of the stack, you just get one big mess of food with freshness the average of all the elements.

I believe you are probably correct. My assumption was based more on my own ideas on how the system might function rather than what Kevin wrote.

This is not (as pointed out by others) realistic, but it is fine for the game, and well-balanced. "But, that means you can add a little bit of good food to a pile of bad food and make (barely) good food!" Yup. And that's not only game-balanced (the good food loses *exactly* as much freshness as the bad food gains) but it's also realistic. Using bad food as filler in recipes is an ancient and honorable tradition... And what would you do with the combined stack of barely-fresh food? You'd cook it over the fire or stuff it in the crock-pot immediately, or it would just go bad again, just like in life.

Meh. For now I'll just agree that having a rot system in the game is good enough, no matter how it works. Once it's in the game we can see how it works out. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, then we can suggest changes. let's just get something in to start combating food hoarding.

The single unit of "seeds" is "seeds", not "seed". Nowhere in Don't Starve does it say how many seeds are in a "seeds". Also, it's a game.

True. I suppose I assumed there was only one because when you plant crops it only returns one fruit/vegetable. But I now recall the icon for the seeds showed several.

And on the anti-seeds front: Several people have pointed out how long seeds last if kept dry (or "properly stored") and I just want to ask any of you if you've ever tried to keep anything dry in the wilderness without modern artificial materials (plastics, foils, et c.)? I do think seeds should last longer than other stuff, and maybe they could even turn into sprouts instead of going bad? But definitely they would not last forever without preservation.

So what are you suggesting? Should seeds have a different timespan for freshness?

And roasting or toasting the seeds should make them last longer, not shorter. It's good for realism and game balance, because cooking the seeds does take time, effort, and resources.

I assume then we would use the multiplier suggested by Kevin for cooked foods.

I like the idea of food spoilage, but I feel that farming has been nerfed more than enough already. Without having turbo plots, it is very very hard to grow enough food to self sustain as long as you have the seeds to do it. with food spoilage however, I feel like it will make those efforts worthless for the most part. I have found myself using the crock pot more and more to cool monster meat to supplement my meager farm. and store some food.

True. Maybe farming will need to be rebalanced after rot is added to the game. It's for this reason I wanted to distance seeds from "food" and synch it up more with being primarily useful for farming.

Honey. Using honey in the preservation process and allowing bees to hibernate in winter makes it so people have to decide whether to use it to keep their food fresh, or to heal. It will make the resource naturally more limited without overdoing it. Honey doesn't spoil and was used in the preservation process because it is actually antiseptic. They even use it to treat wounds because it kills germs.

I'm of the opion that, as we would not collect honet during winter, that it could be kept primarily as a healing source (since it's the best one we have right now). To this end I suggest that using salt, smoke, and pots to preserve food works best.

If you try to make it too hard to get regular food during winter, people will be playing sim-canning instead of Don't Starve in order to make it through winter.

I think it's all a matter of preparation. After all, I wouldn't want preserved food to last forever. And if the preserved food loses it effectiveness (to satiate Hunger) then it would force players to decide between extending the lifespan of their foods or getting the most out of eating it fresh (i.e. un-canned). As such, players would eat fresh foods during spring/summer and then begin preserving foods during autumn in preparation for winter. Eat preserved foods during winter, supplemented with whatever they can find, and then return to eating fresh foods in spring.

No veggies is awesome, of course bees hibernate in winter so no new honey till spring either, but pigs respawn slower now and other sources should remain available.

Players would just start hunting pig men for an easy food supply during winter. Rather, I suggest that pig men go into "hibernation", staying inside they houses, during winter. All you would lose is you hunting/logging team, and the exploit of a readily available ham source.

Making it so that the dried food takes a lot more to keep you fed will result in grinding, and I know you are trying to avoid that.

That's a balance issue. For example, say you had a cucumber and eating it restores +25 to the Stomach. Now you preserve it in a clay jar and it becomes a Pickle that, when eaten, restores +15 to the Stomach. It's only 10 less, but to balance it the Pickle lasts much longer than the Cucumber (in terms of freshness). Also, we are talking about crops, so there is a limit to exactly how much "grinding" you can do with them.

We could make drying racks out of rope and sticks to dry fish and meat on.

It's always an option, same as the smoke house. But I think we should just use what Klei has already given to us, the multi-purpose crock pot.

Edit: And about the meat effigies... I disagree that they should spoil, but maybe they should have a limit to the number you can make, like only 1 at a time?

That's an option, one of several players have discussed/suggested.

Also, cooking spoiled meat should not result in fresh cooked meat. That not only makes no sense, but imbalances the entire system.

By "spoiled meat", do you mean meat that's reached 0 freshness? If so, then Kevin mentioned it becomes wet goop (not meat).

[Sliver]

1) Food has two states, "Fresh" and "Rotten".

2) Each food item has its own "freshness" counter.

3) Once the "freshness" counter reaches 0 (days) the food becomes "Rotten Food".

4) "Rotten Food" stacks to 40, but if the player or container has no room it drops to the ground.

5) Cooking/freezing food adds a multiplier to the "freshness" counter

I really like this system, my only addition is that food should certainly have three states: Fresh, Stale, and Spoiled. It doesn't make things too complicated as it should still just have a counter on it. "Stale in 2 days," then "Spoiled in 3 days." It's easy to understand and keep up with, adds an extra element, and keeps people from just waiting to eat food on the last day of its freshness. With only two sates, you would basically just stay five days behind your food supply at all times.

Stale will make it give 20% less food, making it only slightly less potent than fresh, where Spoiled food should give like 80% less food and take a bit of health.

Also, another benefit to the 2-or-3 state spoilage system is that fewer art assets have to be made.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Sliver

[The Pig Whisperer]

Correct. It's the careful balance between realism and fun gameplay.

1) Food has two states, "Fresh" and "Rotten".

2) Each food item has its own "freshness" counter.

3) Once the "freshness" counter reaches 0 (days) the food becomes "Rotten Food".

4) "Rotten Food" stacks to 40, but if the player or container has no room it drops to the ground.

5) Cooking/freezing food adds a multiplier to the "freshness" counter

So your idea is basically Kevin's proposal, but without all the gradations? I would prefer to have at least visual gradations so we can know when the food is about to go bad... Otherwise, sounds fine to me.

Fair enough. Kevin did mention clay jars, maybe the intention is that we will be able to craft them and use them to create preserved foods (i.e. the jar wouldn't be a container, like a chest, but part of the crafting formula... only using a crock pot).

Agreed. Although I didn't know honey was a preservative... only that it preserves extremely well (itself). When I think of preserving food I normally think of turning fruits/vegetables into preserves through boiling/canning them, or salting/smoking meats (i.e. jerky).

I did not know either, but when I thought about it, it's very sugary, and sugar is definitely a preservative (think berry preserves/jam/jelly). I feel that Sir Mentlegen will never forgive us if we do not advocate for salted meats. Given the value/rarity of salt in pre-industrial worlds, however, I suspect that salted meats might be a special treat and smoked far more common.

That's true, but is allowing us to craft a new placeable, the smokehouse, really the way to go? I'm more partial to the current minimalist approach the game takes towards crafting/cooking. As such I would mind just using the existing placeable, the crock pot, for this task. For example:

1) Meat Morsel + Grass = Smoked Meat

2) Ham + Grass = Smoked Ham

3) Meat Morsel + Salt = Salted Meat

4) Ect...

Simplicity is a plus. If we can make waffles in the crockpot, I see no reason not to make bacon or smoked fish in it!

Yes, I agree about the clay pots. It works as a simpler (and less Minecraft) solution than crafting glass jars (i.e. melting sand into glass) or needing to find them (say, on a Beach biome...). Finding clay could also give another purpose to the shovel and maybe another (non-renewable) resource to the swamp.

Glass is really not realistic in this situation, although realism, as I said at the top, is not necessarily a good thing. In any case, if we can fire our own ceramics (in the crockpot? That might be a stretch) clay pots will do just fine. The recipe for pickles then would be Cucumber + Clay Pot + papyrus + wax... I guess? The problem there is it greatly limits recipes. Better would be to ignore the top & seal, or make it part of the making of the pot... Empty Pot = Clay + Clay + Papyrus + Wax, Pickles = Cucumber + Salt + <spice> + Empty Pot... Eating a canned food produces an empty clay pot... Which means if they stack, there will be clay pots falling on the ground if you eat when your inventory is full.

I also like the idea of beeswax, as I myself have requested it before. Of course my suggestion was connected with crafting candles and included refining silk into string (like how grass is refined into rope). While I know beeswax comes from the honeycomb, I think the Devs want to limit them as the "essential" beebox component, like spider egg sacs. In this case it's just simpler to have it as another resource you can collect from a bee box (IMHO).

This is why I proposed Wax first, and honeycomb as an alternative. Wax would just be when you got honeycomb that was incomplete or damaged... Not enough to start a new hive. With the new mapgen's tendency to produce enough beehives to get one well started on bee boxes, I see no problem at all with keeping that resource non-renewable.

Lastly, why not use our staple metal for the lid and use gold ore? It sounds like a simpler option.

It makes sense, sorta... Gold is soft enough to stretch thin, bend over a lip on the pot, and seal with a moderate heat. Occam's razor for game design would suggest using gold. I guess this depends on whether we can count on every map having a pig king... Because gold has been somewhat hard to come by in my current game. No pig king I've found yet, and very nasty combos of spiders, tallbirds, and the occasional hound attack in rocky biomes. If the intent of Klei is to make the Pig King accessible, and that's a bug that will be corrected, use gold for anything.

Meh. For now I'll just agree that having a rot system in the game is good enough, no matter how it works. Once it's in the game we can see how it works out. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, then we can suggest changes. let's just get something in to start combating food hoarding.

I don't mind food hoarding. What bothers me is the idea that it will be possible to turtle all the way through winter, avoiding the hardest parts of the game. A moderate amount of turtling seems entirely appropriate for winter, but if it's easy if you just spent the whole spring, summer, and fall building chests and filling them with corn, berries, eggplants, carrots, honey, and monster meat, then the game will force a tradeoff between survivability and fun, and that, I think, is the essence of grind. Game should not punish you for doing the fun stuff, no matter what the fun stuff happens to be, for you.

True. I suppose I assumed there was only one because when you plant crops it only returns one fruit/vegetable. But I now recall the icon for the seeds showed several.

When you are planting seeds a certain percentage always fail to germinate. I think that percentage is higher for wild/early domesticated seeds than it is for modern packet seeds, but I'm just guessing. I think not knowing what the seeds are would greatly increase it, since you don't know how deep to plant, what sort of soil, how much water, et c. I've always assumed that the crops themselves are not individual but rather represent a modest portion (if you cook them, the pumpkins might be several sweet pumpkins, but if you make a lantern, you probably picked one carving pumpkin. Apparently, they aren't the same species in the real world. Who knew? In Don't Starve, it seems suitable to imagine they are different pumpkins from the same plant.) The main point, however, is that it's a game, and the food values are based on balance and fun, not on realism.

So what are you suggesting? Should seeds have a different timespan for freshness?

Yes. Everything should have its own time scale for spoilage.

I assume then we would use the multiplier suggested by Kevin for cooked foods.

Again, I think even cooked foods would reasonably have their own timeframes for spoilage.

[Little Teemo]

must...eat....all...the...meat...before....spoilage...update....nomnomnomnomnom

[Cryten]

I think food spoilage would encourage several new behaviours:

1 - Hoarding of food would still occur but people will begin to hoard them in thier unpicked states. This would add emphasis to farms, and berry fields.

2 - Rabbit warrens would become much less a popular camp site priority since they would become a site for emergency food more then as a stockpile site.

3 - High value foods would become much more important. camps will naturally be more setup to produce high hnger quenching food items so you can go on several days of exploration, come home and rapidly bump yourself back up to max food.

4 - This adds a semi hidden noob punishment system, not knowing how to preserve food or to collect high value items will quickly hurt newbies but provide little in the way of barriers to established players.

These are my thoughts on what spoilage could do for player behaviour. I do not pretend to understand player behaviour fully It is just my interpretations of player habits.

[Dr. Chaos]

1 - Hoarding of food would still occur but people will begin to hoard them in thier unpicked states. This would add emphasis to farms, and berry fields.

Not if they rot if just left alone on the farm/field after becoming fully grown.

[sirmentlegen]

Not if they rot if just left alone on the farm/field after becoming fully grown.

the whole resion berry's and crops rot outside of the crop is that they do not get anymore water to them if in real life your crops and berries could stay there.

[Syd]

1 - Hoarding of food would still occur but people will begin to hoard them in thier unpicked states. This would add emphasis to farms, and berry fields.

This in particular I think could be countered by making fruits/vegetables get overly ripe and drop off to rot away if left on the plant for too long. Same thing can be applied to cooked food that's left in a crock pot; it'll rot away if you just leave it there.

[Dr. Chaos]

the whole resion berry's and crops rot outside of the crop is that they do not get anymore water to them if in real life your crops and berries could stay there.

Dammit! My brain was trying to warn me about this.

I knew I said something stupid.

[9600bauds]

Food should very definitely be as good (or almost as good) as freshly-obtained food until it's considerably spoiled. It's cool if eating a week old turkey leg gives you next to no hunger value, but not cool if eating a three day old one gives you half of what it should. That would require extreme micro-managing of food and encourage farms to always have fresh food, which is arguably not what you want to shoehorn players into.

To clarify myself, what I mean is that, assuming a piece of meat spoils over one week, the "spoiled food" penalties should only start to apply after the 5th day or so. Or at least, make food act this way when being cooked (i.e. 5 day old morsel is less effective or tasty than fresh morsel, but makes for a just as good cooking ingredient until it starts to spoil completely. Kind of like short-term preserving.)

Edited January 7, 2013 by 9600bauds

[CheeseThief]

I'm also not fussed on the idea that the older food is the less stamina it restores. Stale food doesn't become less filling or nutritious, it's just stale. There is a very fine line between safe to eat and food poisoning though, so I'd be fine with food being either fresh or ruined.

Ruined food, unless tossed into a compost bin or dug into the ground should attract hounds and spiders, Wilson with his pockets full of rotting meat and veggies would be quite... pungent.

Of course root veggies should last for ages if tossed in a chest, like 30 in game days or something, where as meat that's left on the ground should be spoiled and maggoty in one.

[The Pig Whisperer]

I'm also not fussed on the idea that the older food is the less stamina it restores. Stale food doesn't become less filling or nutritious, it's just stale. There is a very fine line between safe to eat and food poisoning though, so I'd be fine with food being either fresh or ruined.

Ruined food, unless tossed into a compost bin or dug into the ground should attract hounds and spiders, Wilson with his pockets full of rotting meat and veggies would be quite... pungent.

Of course root veggies should last for ages if tossed in a chest, like 30 in game days or something, where as meat that's left on the ground should be spoiled and maggoty in one.

You may not have noticed, but food in this game has magical healing properties. Cooked food produces more sustenance than the raw ingredients it is made from. So I'm not sure that the food system is meant to be ultra-realistic. Basically, the game wants to reward you for the extra effort it takes to make the food taste better (or acquire better-tasting food to begin with.) When you are in the wilderness in real life, you try to make your food taste better because it tastes better. In Don't Starve, better-tasting food is instead more filling or provides more healing. This makes perfect sense, as I see it, from a gameplay perspective. And the natural extension to this idea would be that as food grows stale or rotten, it provides less healing and sustenance.

[daldingo]

You may not have noticed, but food in this game has magical healing properties. Cooked food produces more sustenance than the raw ingredients it is made from. So I'm not sure that the food system is meant to be ultra-realistic. Basically, the game wants to reward you for the extra effort it takes to make the food taste better (or acquire better-tasting food to begin with.) When you are in the wilderness in real life, you try to make your food taste better because it tastes better. In Don't Starve, better-tasting food is instead more filling or provides more healing. This makes perfect sense, as I see it, from a gameplay perspective. And the natural extension to this idea would be that as food grows stale or rotten, it provides less healing and sustenance.

There is a difference in going after realism, and going after what "feels" right. Killing a rabbit before dark, and saving it until the following night to eat shouldn't decrease the amount of hunger or health it restores. Same for a carrot I picked yesterday. It's fine if the food spoils and is inedible after a week. But this idea of value rapidly degrading is too extreme, and really just bothersome.Part of the game right now, is choosing when you go foraging/collecting/hunting. You cant do everything every single day. If you have food essentially spoiling over night, then it turns into stress instead of fun. Have food spoil, and that will end hoarding to an extent. But having it decrease in value by increments over time makes keeping any kind of reserve next to pointless.

[Dragnar]

If it come,s out

I would probably make many rabbit traps / chest

And just store the living rabbits in chests for the winter ( don't worry ill add some grass )

This should be changed to then XD

[Wilson P. Higgsbury]

If it come,s out

I would probably make many rabbit traps / chest

And just store the living rabbits in chests for the winter ( don't worry ill add some grass )

This should be changed to then XD

Rabbit cages for all your anti loneliness needs. Just add grass!

[Wasserstern]

I like how spoiling food works in games like Project Zomboid. So I guess I have some experience how this is going to feel in the game.

My opinion: Add it. It makes the game more challenging and makes the player think more about his/her strategy of collecting food.

SPOILING FOOD + WINTER

yes please

[The Pig Whisperer]

There is a difference in going after realism, and going after what "feels" right. Killing a rabbit before dark, and saving it until the following night to eat shouldn't decrease the amount of hunger or health it restores. Same for a carrot I picked yesterday. It's fine if the food spoils and is inedible after a week. But this idea of value rapidly degrading is too extreme, and really just bothersome.Part of the game right now, is choosing when you go foraging/collecting/hunting. You cant do everything every single day. If you have food essentially spoiling over night, then it turns into stress instead of fun. Have food spoil, and that will end hoarding to an extent. But having it decrease in value by increments over time makes keeping any kind of reserve next to pointless.

Well, I think that someone posted a good idea about having 4 stages (fresh, stale, rotting, rotten or whatever) in a non-linear progression (like, fresh is 0-50% of the total lifespan of the food, stale 51-90%, rotting 91-99%, rotten is worthless.) But it depends on the specific thing. For example, it makes perfect sense that a fish would be 'stale' after one day, if not refrigerated or otherwise preserved. A rabbit (or redbird/crow) would take longer, and a beefalo/pig/tallbird would take longer still. Eggplant might last as long as a morsel, a pumpkin as long as meat, and carrots or pomegranates would probably last longer than any meat, without preservation.

[Xaphedo]

Oh, man, I always miss the fun when I temporarily leave these forums.

But holy crappy damn, Mobius! You, good sir, really are the one with a plan!

Let me spend a couple of words about this idea. Then I promise I'll leave. I'll try. I think. I hope.

Here, in South Italy, where I live, I reside and (if you didn't already guessed) I may also dwell, we know what we're talking about when food spoilage is the main topic. We manage to preserve from time's usury almost everything; the only food we never managed to make it last forever are savoy cabbages. They stink so much we don't even care if they start rotting away! Once they become a sticky, greyish goop, we just trow 'em to the pigs and everybody (but the poor swines) will be fine.

Legumes

Well, to make it simple, raw legumes just don't spoilage. Ever. I heard they found some expired lentils in an Egyptian tomb, but that was it. Over that, they provide a ton of nutritive elements (the same meat does) and they even fertilize the ground they are cultivated on.

Overpowered, aren't they?

Putting EVERYTHING in evacuated jars

It is possible, very possible, to evacuate a jar containing some kind of food with just a crock pot, basically. And a lid, of course. Don't ask why we also do this to lemons' skin, do yourself a favor, just don't. Only thinking of it will make your face curl up and your tongue wrinkle.

Btw, this process makes food enter a perfect stasis, and you can literally dump it into the sea and expect it to be edible once you come back decades later.

Cheeses, pecorini, caciotte, so on and so forth

Have you ever heard of Rodez(which, I know, it's not Italian), Parmiggiano or Grana Padano? Well, these are just a really petty few of the enormous number of ways to make milk last over your own death. I know there's no milk in the game, but you never know what a beefalo may hide under his woolly belly. Just check it's a female, alright boy?

Sweets, confetti and sweet confetti

The title says it all. Don't make me waste more of your time saying things you probably already know about confetti's ability of being so hard-wearing they also make extraordinary cheap 9mm ammo. As always, don't ask.

Desiccate EVERYTHING (sorta)

From tomatoes to figs, from meat to bread, our mighty sun can desiccate anything that pretends to have water in it. Even water itself.

*rolls away*

[Spiders Everywhere]

The game with the most detailed food spoilage system I know of is Unreal World - foods spoil at different rates depending on temperature, and you can dig cellars and dry, smoke, or salt meat and fish for preservation. I don't think we need something quite that complicated here, though.

[Reshy]

If there's food spoiling you should be able to dry/salt/etc. your food so that it doesn't spoil, at the cost of additional resources.

[Fire Starter]

The only thing im scared of is that with the whole food thing we need to keep in mind we are in the wilderness and not camping in our back yard. So all the jaring and using salt and stuff shouldnt be 100% guaranteed your food won't spoil. I understand the smoking part is a realistic thing or in the winter using the snow , but we shouldnt let the preventing food from spoiling get out of hand. The whole purpose in my opinion is to manage your gathering of food to last you through the summer or winter.

[daldingo]

The whole purpose in my opinion is to manage your gathering of food to last you through the summer or winter.

Kevin has made it clear that finding food during winter will be incredibly hard. I'm not sure what is confirmed, but what is implied/assumed is that typical animals wont be available during winter (no birds, jackalopes, tallbirds, maybe even no pigs, etc.), and then you have no crops growing. So no berries, no pumpkins, no corn, nothing. Kevin has also said that NIGHT will be LONGER. Meaning you have LESS time to forage and hunt, or at least foraging and hunting become even more dangerous/difficult. This is why there should be a preservation system, or at least have certain foods that don't spoil or have very lengthy lives. Make clay or glass or w/e is involved in preservation containers rare, or difficult to find. Players would have to ration their food, and make sure they are prepared for winter. I'm not saying there will be no food available during winter, but the devs have made it clear that they are trying to make winter a new level of difficult.

And preserving food in the wilderness is not as difficult as a lot of people on this thread are making it seem. Humans, for thousands of years, have found simple ways to make food last. For example, as a casual backpacker/hiker myself, I know that keeping food in a hole about a foot deep at night can add days to how long something stays fresh/edible. Other things that help are keeping them out of the sun, or keeping them somewhere dry. Also, as it has been mentioned previously, honey is a great preservative. It's also an antiseptic. So there are all kinds of possibilities with the addition of different kinds of containers. Having meats, fruits, and veggies expire is fine, but having all food in the game just rot after a week as it loses health and hunger value is a little over the top.

Edited January 8, 2013 by daldingo

[negaman]

i have a idea- beach biomes! in them you may find jars for putting food into...like honney! (the jars shold be abaut as rare as a wild carrot) p.s. sorry for misspelling a ton of stuff:( p.p.s. sorry if this has ben sugjested befor.

[GenHavok]

Great that you are seriously considering food spoilage since it will add more difficulty and fun game play to the game. Being able to take the degraded raw meat/veggies and have it upgrade when cooked sounds great.

I would also like to add something to it. Being able to make seasonings and smoking meat/veggies giving the ability to make smoked versions which would allow for a varied means of preserving. Also eating lower edible level food should have a chance of causing a new "sickness" mechanic which would simply temporarily lower you max health,decrease your recovery amounts from healed injuries, and even lower your movement speed or slow your attack sleep.

The seasonings could be made from smoking/drying out veggies/fruit and combining them with the various stages of raw or cooked meat/veggies to make them into a slightly increased edible % one time only.

Smoking via making a smoke hut/rack could allow players to slowly preserve food into jerky and dried veggies.Would take few days to finish while having to keep the amount of wood need at a certain lvl. People might ask why have a smoker if you can just toss salt? Answer is smoking would take longer,but you can make larger quantities of the preserved item. .The Smoker would be something you build and only needs a wood/coal to begin smoking the larger quantities of meats/veggies.

Not sure if salt is going to be a finite or infinite resource,but if its finite then a smoker would be a ideal long term item to be able to have.It could be something that has a dangerous side to it,it could catch fire since it is made completely out of wood.The smoker could degrade and when it gets to a certain % it could have a certain % chance of catching fire.This would increase as the durability % of the smoker goes down. Smokers would not have great durability so their % could go down within a reasonably amount of time after a certain # of fully smoked cooking cycles.

Either way I am glad food spoilage might make its way in because many of use really believe its a needed mechanic.

[bdiz4shiz]

Love it, and honey shouldn't spoil.

ditto!!!!!!!!!!! sorry for all the '!' needed 10 characters lol