PC What are the most efficient foods in a19 in regards of nutrition

[Boidster]

Nice calculation, but imho just a theory with a subjective point system.

Of course. It's why I specifically suggested people would argue over it!

E.g. i wouldn't rate vegetables you can grow on your own easily the same as items you can just loot (and therefore is a luck based factor).

Well I didn't really do that - all of the lootable food items are rated as higher "cost" than crops (or Corn Meal, which is easily created from a crop). Maybe I misunderstand your point.

In practice according to your calculations sham chowder is "better" than a meat stew. But it is worthless if you don't have a sham can, but 5 meat.

The baked potato is very good, because it costs almost nothing, but do you want to eat 20 potatoes to gain 80 food points? What's the stacksize?

The real question is:

So imma stop you right there. The real question is from OP:

So - surely someone has done the numbers and already knows what foods will give you the most "food" points per resources spent? Will these be the cooked potatoes? Corn on Cob? Or maybe vegetable or hobo stew?

I provided (a version of) those numbers. If you have different questions you want to ask, I can certainly try to help answer them with the data I have, using whatever assumptions you want to use!

Edit to add: if you or anybody wants to suggest a different cost-weighting of the ingredients, I'm happy to re-run the numbers, though I'll just give out the top-5. I don't want to re-do the entire table every time. Maybe somebody thinks rotten flesh is super-easy to get and wants it at cost=1. No problem, can do.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

all of the lootable food items are rated as higher "cost" than crops (or Corn Meal, which is easily created from a crop).

You're right. I somehow missed that.

So imma stop you right there. The real question is from OP:

Right, but i asked what's the point of the question? How much is "one ressource"? And it's still somehow pointless. Even if baked potato turns out best, do you really want to deal with eating tons of cooked potatos?

Also the comparison between foods according to what you have/need is missing. If baked potatos where the best, so you should spend all your potatos into cooked potatos and then not be able to cook sham chowder, because you have no potatos left?

Edit to add: if you or anybody wants to suggest a different cost-weighting of the ingredients, I'm happy to re-run the numbers, though I'll just give out the top-5. I don't want to re-do the entire table every time. Maybe somebody thinks rotten flesh is super-easy to get and wants it at cost=1. No problem, can do.

I'd value glasses, murky and cooked water with (almost) zero. But you don't need to recalculate. I guess it wouldn't change much. Also i'd would value cans higher than meat. And eggs at least twice the value of meat. Once you've cleared out the surrounding bird nests, eggs are really hard to get.

 

[Boidster]

And it's still somehow pointless. Even if baked potato turns out best, do you really want to deal with eating tons of cooked potatos?

Well I guess I'd say this is why I like looking at hard data. Baked Potatoes clearly aren't best - at least not without some crazy assumptions about the "cost" of, say, water jars which would drastically increase the total cost of other items.

Baked Potatoes are, however, arguably better than Steak & Potatoes strictly on a cost-per-food basis. I don't know if that's "pointless" information; I'd argue that it can inform players to answer exactly the question you asked: do I want to carry a stack of Baked Potatoes and eat 10 at a time? Well I think that gets into your other questions about what is at hand? If I don't have a ton of meat and I'm not equipped yet to hunt it up efficiently, but I do have a sustainable potato crop going, maybe I would cook up potatoes in large batches. For food only, of course; it's not very good in terms of cost-per-health-point.

One thing I took from the data is that Veggie Stew is definitely a sweet spot for people not specializing in cooking. High value food with simple, 100% base-grown ingredients (assuming water is readily available at/near the base).

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Well I guess I'd say this is why I like looking at hard data.

Well and i care more for the practical side.

Baked Potatoes are, however, arguably better than Steak & Potatoes strictly on a cost-per-food basis. I don't know if that's "pointless" information;

Imho it is pointless information, because in a real game i'd only use this if i have ONLY potatoes, and can't cook anything else. And if i only have potatoes (or at least not enough to cook something else) there is no choice anyway.

One thing I took from the data is that Veggie Stew is definitely a sweet spot for people not specializing in cooking. High value food with simple, 100% base-grown ingredients (assuming water is readily available at/near the base).

What is specializing in cooking? You need master chef 2 if you want to cook vegetable stew. If you have that you can also cook meat stew, steak & potatoes, blueberry pie and some pumpkin receips. Unless you didn't spec one point into master chef and are happy to have found the receipe (is there even a single receipe for vegetable stew?)

So yes, if you want to have most independent food supply, veggie is the way to go. But it doesn't save any skillpoints and since it is the only way to achieve this, the question how "valuable" it is, is useless. Could have said that without any "value" calculation, because it's the only thing that only requires player growable ingredients.

 

[Kalen]

Ingredient


Cost


All crops, empty cans/jars, river water, boiled water, Corn Meal


1


Meat, bones, fat, flesh, eggs, all canned food, Sham Sandwiches, Corn Bread


2


Bottle of Acid


3

I absolutely love this approach.... I dont think I agree with the costs.   Just based on my own game, I end up with 10 times as many crops as I do canned goods, I'd put the cost of meat, bones, fat, flesh, eggs at 3.   Canned foods I'd have at 5.   See how that changes the calculations.    

Better yet, could you put in a google sheet so we could all play with the numbers?   That would be incredibly useful!

Either way, well done!

 

[Boidster]

Just based on my own game, I end up with 10 times as many crops as I do canned goods, I'd put the cost of meat, bones, fat, flesh, eggs at 3.   Canned foods I'd have at 5.   See how that changes the calculations. 

I moved Acid up to cost=5 as well, since it's the hardest "food ingredient" to find. As expected, if the costs of meat and fat are raised relative to crops, then Veggie Stew becomes even more compelling.



Raw data is attached. Can join on ingredient name to tie "costs" to each recipe.

View attachment FoodIngredients.csv
View attachment IngredientValues.csv

 

[Boidster]

What is specializing in cooking? You need master chef 2 if you want to cook vegetable stew. If you have that you can also cook meat stew, steak & potatoes, blueberry pie and some pumpkin receips. Unless you didn't spec one point into master chef and are happy to have found the receipe (is there even a single receipe for vegetable stew?)

So yes, if you want to have most independent food supply, veggie is the way to go. But it doesn't save any skillpoints and since it is the only way to achieve this, the question how "valuable" it is, is useless. Could have said that without any "value" calculation, because it's the only thing that only requires player growable ingredients.

So I get that you're not keen on analyzing the data and that's fine. Everybody plays how they want. I'll tell you how I view it and then we can just agree to disagree.

Specializing in cooking means making gameplay decisions that favor a) increasing Master Chef skill and/or b) finding/buying recipes and/or c) crafting the best/highest value recipes in the game for the sake of crafting them. A player who sets a personal goal to be able to cook any food item in the game will "specialize in cooking", for example.

With regard to Veggie Stew specifically, there are two ways to obtain the ability to craft it: pay for Master Chef 2, or find the recipe/schematic (yes, it exists). For a player who is specializing in cooking, the ability will come as a natural result of intentionally buying up Master Chef (though of course it might come earlier). I'd expect that a player who understands the data (perhaps searching Wiki first and then posting in the forums!) and wants to min/max a bit might stick with crafting Veggie Stews until they can make higher-value foods. Or until the stockpiles get so big they might as well use some of it on lower-value foods. Or maybe they craft everything because that was their goal. Who knows, they're cooking specialists they can do it all.

For a player not specializing in cooking then perhaps that player will only get it via finding/buying the recipe. For such a player - one who does not intend to spend any extra effort acquiring recipes - buying Veggie Stew would probably be a good decision since it provides a high-value, low-effort food and he/she'll never really have to worry about "cooking skill" ever again. Nor will he/she ever have to hunt for meat and fat or search for eggs. Maybe even buying MC 2 would be valuable if the player otherwise is coming up blank in finding high-value food recipes and for other reasons already has the required STR points.

You have said yourself in this very thread that just knowing a recipe is not sufficient to be able to craft it. What is at hand? What resources do you regularly seek and which would you rather not spend time on? For a non-cook player, planting some crops and getting Veggie Stew by whatever means would provide a pretty high-quality food supply with a minimum of continuing food-related activities. Once you get there, you can forget about food ever again. That is how a "non cooking specialist" would behave, in my view.

 

[alanea]

To tell truth I don't use a lot of the high calorie foods in my SP. I mean with food tied to your stamina I try to never let mine go below 85% to keep my stamina up as far as possible. So unless something awful happens I don't get much chance to use the higher foods like meat stew, sham chowder (my goto on MP though ). Early game is harder to keep it up but later if I can hoard enough can foods I am fine snacking frequently.

you can eat 25% above  your stamina ( if you trust patch notes) meaning  25-50   over 100

Are you playing A19, or still A18?

Food consumption ist tied to stamina use. If you use stamina, you burn food.

It is NOT the other way round, that your max stamina is tied to your fullness (like iirc in A18, where you still could overeat to keep stamina at max at least for a while?).

you can still overeat in a19

Some really good points made. 

Animal fat, as far as I can see, is a bit easier to come by than fresh meat, as you get it also from vultures, zombie dogs, all animals you might hunt, random corpses, etc ... 

yes its easy to get .... on other side it have close to no use .. flaming arrows are joke so  you can just throw it away and save slot  when looting imho its not worth collecting just for food thats on par with non fat ones

Edit to add: if you or anybody wants to suggest a different cost-weighting of the ingredients, I'm happy to re-run the numbers, though I'll just give out the top-5. I don't want to re-do the entire table every time. Maybe somebody thinks rotten flesh is super-easy to get and wants it at cost=1. No problem, can do.

well if you want to make it better you could use something  like this

1= can / glass jar .. 1empty  2full = its just stone / metal and very small amount   filling it with water is free as well  1 click with stack of  125   over any puddle ?  few  pieces of wood  as fuel to cook it ? too little effort to matter  not to mention we dump  thousands of cans /jars while looting

5 = all farm plot stuff = it takes some effort 2? days to grow ...  seeds .. farm plots

7 = meat = you can hunt for it ... or raid farms ... its not too hard to get  but definitely harder than punch that potato hrowing in your base

10 = can of sham =  rng loot  but far more common than others

20 = all other cans = heavy rng involved ... cant be farmed for specific piece ...  overpriced and  limited at traders .. it also takes your bag space while looting .... you  should actually subtract food value of can from final food  ... as everyone  gets can of food itself you just cook from it  effectively losing its food value compared to someone who eats it on spot and scrap can... getting all the food + bag space

40 = acid = quite low drop + valuable  resource for several recipes(learning elixir ... militaty fiber and more) .. not to mention noticeable price at traders ( not gonna lie i remember it but  around 80 dukes? )

also straight remove every food with  5  or less ... as crafting water then cornmeal  just to craft cornbread for  4 food... is just not worth it    even single crafts like baked potato or cornmeal is  far from optimal  no one want craft + eat  20-100  of those to  have breakfeast

btw  you forgot  yucca smoothie

You're right. I somehow missed that.

Right, but i asked what's the point of the question? How much is "one ressource"? And it's still somehow pointless. Even if baked potato turns out best, do you really want to deal with eating tons of cooked potatos?

Also the comparison between foods according to what you have/need is missing. If baked potatos where the best, so you should spend all your potatos into cooked potatos and then not be able to cook sham chowder, because you have no potatos left?

I'd value glasses, murky and cooked water with (almost) zero. But you don't need to recalculate. I guess it wouldn't change much. Also i'd would value cans higher than meat. And eggs at least twice the value of meat. Once you've cleared out the surrounding bird nests, eggs are really hard to get.

yeah comparing them numerically will never really work  for eggs ... they are easy to get early as  side product of looting nests  for feathers ... but not worth effort later i cant see myself  stoping motorbike to loot bird nest on way to trader lol

 

[Boidster]

btw  you forgot  yucca smoothie

Yeah the XSL selected nodes beginning with 'food', not 'drink'. Maybe I'll add it back in later. I also didn't consider food buffs, which add value to food even if not directly to food or health points.

you  should actually subtract food value of can from final food

That's a good point. Probably the cans themselves ought to be in the mix also, I mean they only cost whatever we decide the "cost" is for looting/buying them.

 

[Tehnomaag]

Boidster, thanks, that was just the kind of analysis I was looking for. I especially like the information about cost/food and cost/health, as the health recovery consideration might be also quite essential in some scenarios. The weighting looks kind of neutral enough, although it is of-course a bit dependent on the game stage and play scenario (solo, multi-crew, loot percentage, rng luck, etc).

Overall, it seems to me, the food options are reasonably well balanced. Some of the items are, obviously, only viable if one has luck getting loot-only nutrients and are as such not worthy of aiming your food production pipeline towards specifically. 

Perhaps, as a quick cheat sheet, the table could highlight, say, three to five best foods per farm plot (assuming only grown components are used) and then three best nutrition options per egg and three best nutrition option per meat/animal fat. 

Weighting wise, I'd say that it is very reasonable to put farm-grown intrigents at "1", however, I'd personally crank up the looted/hunted intrigents a little bit more putting:
water - 0 (i would not count that, either the player has forge and can make glass jars meaning he has an unlimited supply or he has not, it can be mass-produced for "free" basically)
animal fat - 2 (because there is multiple sources of that, but it is not really a mass-producible)
raw meat / rotten meat - 3 (it is not THAT rare but it is not something you can mass produce really)
eggs and all canned foods - 5 (these ARE relatively rare and are a non-renewable resource, basically)
acid - 10 (this is a relatively rare resource and there are several competing recipes outside of using it for food)

Overall very fruitful discussion  Made me realize pumpkins are a lot more valuable resource than I realized initially. 

 

[Tehnomaag]

Thanks to Boidster for sharing the data. As a result I composed my own table to see what might seem to be the best "value" given the mildly non-vanilla settings of the game I'm currently in, resulting in somewhat changed value weights for food items.

Overall it seems that Pumpkin Bread would yield the most value per farm plot used for me, although we are currently very light on pumpkins so will have to settle for second best options for a while until our pumpkin production gets going properly. The meat and fat we get seems to be best used for meat stew or steak and potato, depending on what other fruits we have at our disposal. Baked potatoes and Corn on the cob offer also excpetional value per farm plot from the simple foods, although, obviously, one has to eat a lot of these to stay in green. 

I ignored in my table the tier 4 foods that take a lot of cans of looted stuff. Great to have, if something comes along, but not feasible for mass production to keep the team fed. 

 

[Liesel Weppen]

I ignored in my table the tier 4 foods that take a lot of cans of looted stuff. Great to have, if something comes along, but not feasible for mass production to keep the team fed.

You ignore cans you can loot in almost every kitchen and buy from daily restocked vending machines and traders, but rely on eggs you can only loot from bird nests (loot respawn) and rarely buy from traders for mass production?

Eggs are the rarest of all, once you have looted the bird nests in your area. You won't get anymore until loot respawn. From midgame on i usually even have more acid than eggs...

As pointed out above, the only realy reliable food you can make is the veggie stew

 

[Tehnomaag]

You ignore cans you can loot in almost every kitchen and buy from daily restocked vending machines and traders, but rely on eggs you can only loot from bird nests (loot respawn) and rarely buy from traders for mass production?

Eggs are the rarest of all, once you have looted the bird nests in your area. You won't get anymore until loot respawn. From midgame on i usually even have more acid than eggs...

Well - I think eggs are nice to have, but as you noted, can not be relied upon in ones food planning if "mass production" is the goal. In my current game I have gotten altogehter 14 eggs over approx 75 hours of play-time in this game. Out of which 8 I bought from the trader. We are running with loot probability set to 30% and non-respawning loot.

Looking at things little more it appears that pumpkin pie is the best bang per egg, meat stew and steak and potato meals are about equally good for using up any meat you have and after that there is few options which are, roughly, equally as good like pumpkin bread / corn on cob / vegetable stew. 

 

[Kalen]

The thing I don't like about setting a higher cost of meat is that every recipe that uses meat uses 5 of them, so you're really punishing meat based foods.   Meat isn't really all that difficult to get (I've got about 800 in my current game... even after making about 100 meat stews).   So I'd be tempted to set the value of meat to 1.   

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Well - I think eggs are nice to have, but as you noted, can not be relied upon in ones food planning if "mass production" is the goal. In my current game I have gotten altogehter 14 eggs over approx 75 hours of play-time in this game. Out of which 8 I bought from the trader. We are running with loot probability set to 30% and non-respawning loot.

Ahh, i think i got you wrong. Since eggs are really rare you checked what gives the best bang per egg. Got it.

I usually use the eggs for the cheesecake for the bartering buff. But best food per egg surely is the pumpkin pie.

 

[alanea]

The thing I don't like about setting a higher cost of meat is that every recipe that uses meat uses 5 of them, so you're really punishing meat based foods.   Meat isn't really all that difficult to get (I've got about 800 in my current game... even after making about 100 meat stews).   So I'd be tempted to set the value of meat to 1.   

thats quite nice  but how long takes  800 water? single trip ro any pudle of water   + few seconds  can give you how much  7k  water? nah water cant be compared to  meat .. its several times harder  to hunt animals  than find water tower / waterworks / natural water / snow biome

 

[Kalen]

thats quite nice  but how long takes  800 water? single trip ro any pudle of water   + few seconds  can give you how much  7k  water? nah water cant be compared to  meat .. its several times harder  to hunt animals  than find water tower / waterworks / natural water / snow biome

Not sure what water has to do with it.... just pointing out that in my experience you acquire more than enough meat that it's not really a bottleneck for meat based foods.  If I run out of anything its fat.... but usually thats only early game.  

 

[Kalen]

Overall it seems that Pumpkin Bread would yield the most value per farm plot used for me, although we are currently very light on pumpkins so will have to settle for second best options for a while until our pumpkin production gets going properly. The meat and fat we get seems to be best used for meat stew or steak and potato, depending on what other fruits we have at our disposal. Baked potatoes and Corn on the cob offer also excpetional value per farm plot from the simple foods, although, obviously, one has to eat a lot of these to stay in green. 

I ignored in my table the tier 4 foods that take a lot of cans of looted stuff. Great to have, if something comes along, but not feasible for mass production to keep the team fed. 

I think thats a great way to look at it.... best use per ingredient.   

I agree you can't really mass produce tier 4 foods except for sham chowder.   I usually find plenty of sham and the chowder is a really good food.

Day 54 and this is my food chest

 

[Tehnomaag]

The thing I don't like about setting a higher cost of meat is that every recipe that uses meat uses 5 of them, so you're really punishing meat based foods.   Meat isn't really all that difficult to get (I've got about 800 in my current game... even after making about 100 meat stews).   So I'd be tempted to set the value of meat to 1.   

I actually did also a version of the table where I considered meat to be an "unlimited" resource. I does not change the situation THAT much. If you have unlimited meat meat stew / steak and potato are still the best use of meat if the goal is to maximize nutrition per resource spent. Pumpkin pie is still stellar option, IF, you have the eggs for it. Pumpkin bread is still great as well. 

However, I'll have to point out that one of the assumptions behind asking the question in the beginning of this thread is no longer valid, if one assumes "unlimited" food resources. I'd have to assume that in that scenario one is no longer concerned with nutrition value of the food eaten but is already maximizing for something else that happens to be relevant, maybe max nutrition density per stack of food, max stamina bonus, etc ... 

In your screenshot of piles upon piles of food - food is no longer an issue in that play-through, very obviously. 

I am also missing the jucca smoothie in that table, which gives about 22 food, if I remember correct. Kind of not relevant in my current game as there is no snow biome around here and the only snowballs we can get are from dismantling ice boxes, but should be, probably, included for the sake of completeness, of easy to make farmable foods. 

 

[DaChibii]

The issue with the food economy is that during the early game, what is more important to figure out is what food is most cost-effective. Where as mid-late game, the desire traits are more about inventory space, buffs, and time-to-eat (who has time to eat 40 baked potatoes). Also meat is far easier to get later in the game, when you have a reliable firearm (or xbow) or know where a good source is.

Soooo... I would be more interested to see a ranking per skill level unlock. Although 'Fish Tacos' looked the best for early game if the player is lucky and find a recipe (All a player needs is LotL 1, one corn seed, and cans of Salmon). We need a Fish & Chips/Sushi Shop/Fish Market/Fish Cannery POI.