PC Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[pottervogel]

 This entire woke conversation is stupid.

No. It is not, but necessary. It seems everywhere this topic is ignored scandals about abuse show up. Remember Blizzard. See Ramstein. Imho everyone should take it seriously to make a change. No offense, though. 

 

[theFlu]

No. It is not, but necessary.

Pulling out a single line from two months ago, where people were discussing different zeds, possibly different races (possibly, I didn't see any mentions thou) and mixing that with random cases of sexual abuse isn't going to improve the world. Not one iota. Not to mention it's essentially a political topic, which is banned on this forum.. for a good reason. (feel free to ban me for taking the bait .. )

 

[pottervogel]

Pulling out a single line from two months ago, where people were discussing different zeds, possibly different races (possibly, I didn't see any mentions thou) and mixing that with random cases of sexual abuse isn't going to improve the world. Not one iota. Not to mention it's essentially a political topic, which is banned on this forum.. for a good reason. (feel free to ban me for taking the bait .. )

Woke ain*t political? Whatever - I didn't read this two month ago but now, so i tried to explain that not everything is stupid when someone might have missed a point. I think there was an argument to improve the game quality ("help them to do better") and I agree.

 

[iamnuff]

NOT AGAIN!  This is wrong and I had hoped these false rumors were gone after more than a year

Lotl1 is perfectly enough to have a self-sustaining farm and making seeds out of plants will generally grow your farm. The only drawback is that with a string of VERY bad harvests you could be left without seeds eventually. But for that you have to also be so unlucky to never find any seeds in loot.

Only without a single point in Lotl it makes no sense to convert plants to seeds. Just put any seeds you find into your plots and grow them.

But if you have Lotl1 or more, you can just convert any plants you have into seeds and on average expect to get more out of the seed later. And mathematically it makes sense to start planting as soon as you have plants, there is nothing gained by waiting except if you plan to put more points into the perk later.

If people keep bringing this up, then maybe you need to re-examine it. 

I set up a farm in my recent game in the experimental (about 10 farm-plots) and I had plenty of seeds to plant... but few useful ones. 

Pumpkin seeds and goldenrod seeds are common loot in trash, but there's little point planting them. Corn-seeds can be gathered on-mass from bags in farm POIs, but then actual corn can also be gathered on-mass from farm POIs, so there's little need to plant them. 

Potato seeds seem fairly rare, which is a problem because that's the most important crop in the game. 

Lets say you have a 10-block farm. You somehow manage to plant every farm-plot with potatos. 

With the first perk in LoTL, you get 40 potatoes and probably 5 seeds back.

This lets you spend 25 potatos (assuming you even have the seed-crafting level to make potato seeds) to craft the other 5 and replant your full row of crops. 

This leaves you with 15 potatos to cook with. 

That's, what, three stews? (Edit: apparantly stew is 2 potatos, not 5? According to the wiki anyway. I'm not my group's cook, so I dunno what it is in A21.)

Once you have a large farm and your income-per-harvest is much higher so you can afford to turn 25 crops back into seeds to replant, it's not such a bad deal. But when you only have ten farm plots, it's kinda ass.

I think part of the issue is recipe bottleneck though.

All of the good food recipies cost either cans of food (which are basically random) or potatos. 

It genuinely feels like not enough cooking options use raw meat? Like... I hunted a couple of deer and rabbits and a bear or two and I have a chest full of meat that we're basically not using. 

Because grilled/boiled meat gives like 10 fullness. 

The only things worth making with it are Beacon and Eggs (Eggs are rare) Meat Stew (requires basically every vegetable in the game, potatoes are semi-rare) or Steak and Potatoes Meal (Potatoes)

Every good recipe that doesn't require canned goods that can only be found from looting also requires potatoes.

So all the other seeds you find in loot (and there sure are a lot of them) basically don't matter.

This issue has only been exascerbated by the change to how water works. 

Now with water being much much rarer than before, you have to prioritize high-value meals if they require water to cook. 

Meat Stew is worth making, even though it costs a jar of water. 

Cornbread is not, because it also costs a jar of water, but provides like 12 fullness in return.

I suggest adding something like a Steak Sandwich recipe. Make it use cornbread and raw meat. Make it give 30+ fullness and some other miscellaneous bonuses.

Alternatively, Steak-and-corn-on-the-cob-Meal. 

Basically, take corn-based products that suck and aren't worth making and make them part of another, higher-level recipe. So that we have recipes that we can cook good food with that don't all rely on the same vegatable. 

That way "Just plant whatever seeds you've got and you'll be fine" will actually be useful advice.

As an aside, I've maxed out LoTL and i'm not convinced that it gives 7 crops per harvest. I've had this skill-rank for a couple of days now and that doesn't sound right. 

I assumed it was 4 crops harvested per plant at maximum, not at level one. 

I'll need to wait for my buddy to come online and bring the private game up before I can test it, but...

I've been getting about 40 potatos per harvest, but then i've never had enough potato seeds to actually full the farm with them to begin with. I've always been padding out the extra slots with aloe or something. 

 

[meganoth]

If people keep bringing this up, then maybe you need to re-examine it. 

I definitely don't need to re-examine it, as a simple player.

I set up a farm in my recent game in the experimental (about 10 farm-plots) and I had plenty of seeds to plant... but few useful ones. 

Pumpkin seeds and goldenrod seeds are common loot in trash, but there's little point planting them. Corn-seeds can be gathered on-mass from bags in farm POIs, but then actual corn can also be gathered on-mass from farm POIs, so there's little need to plant them. 

Horray. If I ever need to be the farmer of our group again then 1/4 of the farm plots can be scraped. Corn is in even more recipes than potato so be thankful for work you don't have to do anymore

Potato seeds seem fairly rare, which is a problem because that's the most important crop in the game. 

Still you can get enough to start a farm, and then it is your decision at what size to stop

Lets say you have a 10-block farm. You somehow manage to plant every farm-plot with potatos. 

With the first perk in LoTL, you get 40 potatoes and probably 5 seeds back.

This lets you spend 25 potatos (assuming you even have the seed-crafting level to make potato seeds) to craft the other 5 and replant your full row of crops. 

This leaves you with 15 potatos to cook with. 

That's, what, three stews? (Edit: apparantly stew is 2 potatos, not 5? According to the wiki anyway. I'm not my group's cook, so I dunno what it is in A21.)

After finding out its only 2 potatos you could have edited your conclusion as well: "That's great, 7.5 stews!"

Once you have a large farm and your income-per-harvest is much higher so you can afford to turn 25 crops back into seeds to replant, it's not such a bad deal. But when you only have ten farm plots, it's kinda ass.

You should always afford to turn enough seeds into crops, otherwise your farm shrinks. And then the next harvest will be even smaller. Would that make long-term sense?

You harvest what you sow, so to speak. Farm with LotL 1 and you are a rather bad farmer. But still a farmer. Someone with LotL0 is a bank manager trying to farm.

I think part of the issue is recipe bottleneck though.

All of the good food recipies cost either cans of food (which are basically random) or potatos. 

It genuinely feels like not enough cooking options use raw meat? Like... I hunted a couple of deer and rabbits and a bear or two and I have a chest full of meat that we're basically not using. 

You are correct that meat is rather difficult to use. But meat is very easy to get. So it is balanced in a way, very easy to get but you have to eat lots and lots of grilled meat to fill yourself up.

Bacon and Eggs is one of the most inefficient foods in the game IMHO, because it uses 2 very expensive eggs for a rather low-level food. I may cook that in the first few days because of necessity, but each egg is much better used in blueberry pies. And blueberry pie is, if you can save up the eggs for it, a very good food without potatoes.

Because grilled/boiled meat gives like 10 fullness. 

The only things worth making with it are Beacon and Eggs (Eggs are rare) Meat Stew (requires basically every vegetable in the game, potatoes are semi-rare) or Steak and Potatoes Meal (Potatoes)

Every good recipe that doesn't require canned goods that can only be found from looting also requires potatoes.

So all the other seeds you find in loot (and there sure are a lot of them) basically don't matter.

This issue has only been exascerbated by the change to how water works. 

Now with water being much much rarer than before, you have to prioritizethe  high-value meals if they require water to cook. 

Meat Stew is worth making, even though it costs a jar of water. 

Cornbread is not, because it also costs a jar of water, but provides like 12 fullness in return.

I suggest adding something like a Steak Sandwich recipe. Make it use cornbread and raw meat. Make it give 30+ fullness and some other miscellaneous bonuses.

Alternatively, Steak-and-corn-on-the-cob-Meal. 

Basically, take corn-based products that suck and aren't worth making and make them part of another, higher-level recipe. So that we have recipes that we can cook good food with that don't all rely on the same vegatable. 

That way "Just plant whatever seeds you've got and you'll be fine" will actually be useful advice.

Seeds are totally useless except for planting and plants have the chance to be used in a recipe. So even thrown out of context that sentence is objectively true.

As an aside, I've maxed out LoTL and i'm not convinced that it gives 7 crops per harvest. I've had this skill-rank for a couple of days now and that doesn't sound right. 

I assumed it was 4 crops harvested per plant at maximum, not at level one. 

Mmh, I am not convinced either, I thought it was 6.

I don't understand that last sentence above.

I'll need to wait for my buddy to come online and bring the private game up before I can test it, but...

I've been getting about 40 potatos per harvest, but then i've never had enough potato seeds to actually full the farm with them to begin with. I've always been padding out the extra slots with aloe or something. 

Not sure what you are saying. If I have a handful of plots with some specific plant and want to enlarge that I convert everything I have to seeds. in the meantime hungry guys at my door have to eat grilled meat or pumpkin bread or dine at the trader.

 

[BFT2020]

If people keep bringing this up, then maybe you need to re-examine it. 

I set up a farm in my recent game in the experimental (about 10 farm-plots) and I had plenty of seeds to plant... but few useful ones. 

Pumpkin seeds and goldenrod seeds are common loot in trash, but there's little point planting them. Corn-seeds can be gathered on-mass from bags in farm POIs, but then actual corn can also be gathered on-mass from farm POIs, so there's little need to plant them. 

Potato seeds seem fairly rare, which is a problem because that's the most important crop in the game. 

Pumpkin seeds and blueberry seeds are indeed valuable.  Blueberries are obvious used in pies which give you 45 food.  Pumpkins are used in pies and cheesecake which gives you 50/42 food back.  And that worthless cornbread you mentioned, with meat and a can of chili, you now got a chili dog that gives you back 53 food.  All which are similar to that meat stew you ate that gives you back 50 food.  Don't get me started on Gumbo stew, Tuna Fish gravy toast, and spaghetti - none of which require potatoes and all are vastly superior to meat stew (Shepherds pie is also in this group, but requires 1 potato   -----  1 potato!!!!!!)

And yes, meat stew also gives you 20 water back, but that is basically what you would get from drinking one jar of boiled water.  Instead of that, you could eat a chili dog and drink pure mineral water and get 60 water back (costing you just 2 jars of water = 40 water).

And guess what, that chili dog cost you less ingredients in terms of crops as you only need 1 corn while the meat stew costs 2 corn and 2 potatoes.

Players seem to focus on just a few of the cooked items, not realizing that the other items can be substitutes for things like bacon & eggs and meat stew.

 

[Uncle Al]

Mmh, I am not convinced either, I thought it was 6.

You were both close, it's 6.5 at maxxed LotL.

Averages are 4 with 1 point, 4.5 with 2 (4 + 50% chance of an extra 1) and 6.5 (6 +50% chance of an extra 1) with 3.

Note that this is for crops you planted yourself. For wild harvesting, including raiding the fields of POIs, it's 2, 2.5, 3.5.

 

[iamnuff]

Still you can get enough to start a farm, and then it is your decision at what size to stop

That's not really how it works.

You can only plant as many crops as you have seeds for. Sure, you can convert all of your crop into seeds and plant them all but if you need to do that for 4-5 full crop plantings, then your doing four or five full plant-and-grow rotations with zero actual food-gain, which is kinda @%$#ty. 

After finding out its only 2 potatos you could have edited your conclusion as well: "That's great, 7.5 stews!"

7 stews from 40 harvest potatoes (because you needed to waste most of your potatos making seeds to replant your crops) is still way too low. 

You should always afford to turn enough seeds into crops, otherwise your farm shrinks. And then the next harvest will be even smaller. Would that make long-term sense?

No, my point is that if you're planting enough potatoes thne even after convertring half of your crop back into seeds to replant them, you'll still have enough to at least make a decent amount of food. 

But planting 20 potatoes (double my previous theoretical) with LOTL 1 would get you 80 crops and probably 10 seeds. 

So you'd need to make ten more, which means using up 50 potatos. 

So you're still left with a pittance. Enough to feed your group until the new crops are grown, I guess, but only a small fraction of your actual harvest. 

It's not until you're getting 6-7 plants per harvest that you actually start making a decent returns for your seeds.

Hell, at LOTL:1, you any farm-plot that doesn't give you a seed back is a net-loss of one potato. (you get 4 on harvest and it costs 5 to make a seed)

TLDR: Living Of The Land level 1 isn't really worth it. Don't even bother making farm-plots until you've completely maxed the skill out.

Fortunately there's not a lot of levels in it so it's not a huge investment, but you still need to buy quite deep into the Fortitude tree. 

Fortunately machineguns are really good, so it's a worthwhile investment anyway. 

Punching is pretty good too, but I wish we had a second melee weapon like STR has with the clubs/sledgehammers option. I have no idea what another fortitude-based melee weapon would be. Shield?

Bacon and Eggs is one of the most inefficient foods in the game IMHO, because it uses 2 very expensive eggs for a rather low-level food. I may cook that in the first few days because of necessity, but each egg is much better used in blueberry pies. And blueberry pie is, if you can save up the eggs for it, a very good food without potatoes.

It is, but blueberries are also rare, and its a higher tier recipe. 

By the time you can make it, you won't be needing/making bacon and eggs anymore. 

It's basically the best 'Early Game' food, whereas you move onto stews and various other meals as quickly as you are able, which frees up your eggs for puddings. 

Grilled meat is one of the easiest foods to make with meat being so easy to get, but it's fullness value is so low that it's pretty inefficient to carry around because you need to eat half a stack to fill yourself back up once you get hungry. 

Boiled at least also gives water, but now that water is harder to get, even that feels like a waste.

Seeds are totally useless except for planting and plants have the chance to be used in a recipe. So even thrown out of context that sentence is objectively true.

Seeds might be worthless for anything else, but farm-plots are not. Given the resource cost (and attention-cost) of building/maintaining a farm, you want to ensure that you're growing something that's actually useful to you. 

Mmh, I am not convinced either, I thought it was 6.

It seems to be six with a chance of seven, now.

Not sure what you are saying. If I have a handful of plots with some specific plant and want to enlarge that I convert everything I have to seeds. in the meantime hungry guys at my door have to eat grilled meat or pumpkin bread or dine at the trader.

My point is that growing a bunch of crops and then turning them into seeds which you plant and grow crops which you turn into seeds which you plant and grow crops which you turn into seeds leaves you planting and growing crops but getting no actual food out of it for a full in-game week.

So instead I was putting the potatoes that I harvested into the food chest and having my buddy actually make decent food out of them.

Because that's the entire reason I'd been planting crops in the first place. 

Sure, I could have built up a huge farm while eating grilled meat all the time, but we didn't want to eat bad food. That's the whole reason I built the farm to begin with.

Pumpkin seeds and blueberry seeds are indeed valuable.  Blueberries are obvious used in pies which give you 45 food.  Pumpkins are used in pies and cheesecake which gives you 50/42 food back.  And that worthless cornbread you mentioned, with meat and a can of chili, you now got a chili dog that gives you back 53 food.  All which are similar to that meat stew you ate that gives you back 50 food.  Don't get me started on Gumbo stew, Tuna Fish gravy toast, and spaghetti - none of which require potatoes and all are vastly superior to meat stew (Shepherds pie is also in this group, but requires 1 potato   -----  1 potato!!!!!!)

Pumpkin seeds are worthless because pumpkins are not the bottleneck on your pumpkin pie production. Eggs probably are. (and beer, but that's my fault for selling it all) 

As for cornbread, I was talking about in terms of food that you cook for yourself. 

There's no way to make tins of chilli, you can only find them.

I mean, with the much more common vending machines you can now probably get a decent stockpile if you want, but again, Cornbread isn't the important part of that recipe. You can slap together some cornbread whenever you happen to find a tin of chilli, but that's not a reason to cultivate corn or cook up a stockpile of cornbread in-and-of-itself. 

As a meal on it's own, cornbread is worthless, and there's nothing you can combine it with that you can grown in a farm-plot or cook at a campfire, to make anything better. 

And guess what, that chili dog cost you less ingredients in terms of crops as you only need 1 corn while the meat stew costs 2 corn and 2 potatoes.

Actually the chilli-dog cost you a tin of chilli, which provides more food and costs more dukes than anything that goes into a meat stew. 

At the very least, it's harder to procure a steady supply of. 

I guess part of the issue is that if i'm making food to take with me when I go exploring, I want a full stack of it so I won't run out. 

Having one 'fish and gravy' item doesn't help me, even if it gives a lot of food. I want a stack of ten, but I have no reliable way to get ten cans of whatever food I need to make this food with.

With a big enough farmplot and enough ranks in LoTL, I can gather the materials to cook up ten meat stews for myself, and even ten more for my buddy to carry. 

 

[meganoth]

That's not really how it works.

You can only plant as many crops as you have seeds for. Sure, you can convert all of your crop into seeds and plant them all but if you need to do that for 4-5 full crop plantings, then your doing four or five full plant-and-grow rotations with zero actual food-gain, which is kinda @%$#ty. 

7 stews from 40 harvest potatoes (because you needed to waste most of your potatos making seeds to replant your crops) is still way too low. 

No, my point is that if you're planting enough potatoes thne even after convertring half of your crop back into seeds to replant them, you'll still have enough to at least make a decent amount of food. 

It is very easy: I usually want a farm with a steady production of plants, enough to feed x players. And the math is simply that 1 farm plot gives me about 1.5 plants at Lotl1. TFP could have spared players the turnaround with seeds and randomness and just made a harvest of 1.5 plants for about the same result. But since they didn't everyone now has additional choices.

If you have x farm plots with say potatoes and x*1.5 potatoes isn't enough for you then you can either invest in more farm plots, or invest in more LotL, or draw more plants out of the system reducing your harvest in the long term like you would draw your money out of a bank reducing your interest rates. Only if you are thinking about doing the last option is it at all relevant how many plants you need to craft a seed as that is the amount you draw "out of the bank" for losing a seed.

But again, since I often want a steady production I simply convert plants to seeds "to make ends meet", and I don't care how many plants get wasted in the process, because if I want the wheel turning I have to invest that or invest more points in LotL. I expect on average to get 1.5 plants per harvest per farm plot. That is the important number.

LotL1 2 and 3 naturally have different and increasing return rates. Some players say they only accept LotL3, some players are ok with LotL2 and some players even with LotL1. There is no qualitative difference between those perk levels except that only LotL3 makes it impossible to have such a bad harvest that it could shrink your farm size.

But planting 20 potatoes (double my previous theoretical) with LOTL 1 would get you 80 crops and probably 10 seeds. 

So you'd need to make ten more, which means using up 50 potatos. 

So you're still left with a pittance. Enough to feed your group until the new crops are grown, I guess, but only a small fraction of your actual harvest. 

It's not until you're getting 6-7 plants per harvest that you actually start making a decent returns for your seeds.

Hell, at LOTL:1, you any farm-plot that doesn't give you a seed back is a net-loss of one potato. (you get 4 on harvest and it costs 5 to make a seed)

TLDR: Living Of The Land level 1 isn't really worth it. Don't even bother making farm-plots until you've completely maxed the skill out.

Fortunately there's not a lot of levels in it so it's not a huge investment, but you still need to buy quite deep into the Fortitude tree. 

Fortunately machineguns are really good, so it's a worthwhile investment anyway. 

Punching is pretty good too, but I wish we had a second melee weapon like STR has with the clubs/sledgehammers option. I have no idea what another fortitude-based melee weapon would be. Shield?

It is, but blueberries are also rare, and its a higher tier recipe. 

By the time you can make it, you won't be needing/making bacon and eggs anymore. 

It's basically the best 'Early Game' food, whereas you move onto stews and various other meals as quickly as you are able, which frees up your eggs for puddings. 

Grilled meat is one of the easiest foods to make with meat being so easy to get, but it's fullness value is so low that it's pretty inefficient to carry around because you need to eat half a stack to fill yourself back up once you get hungry. 

Boiled at least also gives water, but now that water is harder to get, even that feels like a waste.

Seeds might be worthless for anything else, but farm-plots are not. Given the resource cost (and attention-cost) of building/maintaining a farm, you want to ensure that you're growing something that's actually useful to you. 

It seems to be six with a chance of seven, now.

My point is that growing a bunch of crops and then turning them into seeds which you plant and grow crops which you turn into seeds which you plant and grow crops which you turn into seeds leaves you planting and growing crops but getting no actual food out of it for a full in-game week.

So instead I was putting the potatoes that I harvested into the food chest and having my buddy actually make decent food out of them.

Because that's the entire reason I'd been planting crops in the first place. 

Sure, I could have built up a huge farm while eating grilled meat all the time, but we didn't want to eat bad food. That's the whole reason I built the farm to begin with.

Pumpkin seeds are worthless because pumpkins are not the bottleneck on your pumpkin pie production. Eggs probably are. (and beer, but that's my fault for selling it all) 

As for cornbread, I was talking about in terms of food that you cook for yourself. 

There's no way to make tins of chilli, you can only find them.

I mean, with the much more common vending machines you can now probably get a decent stockpile if you want, but again, Cornbread isn't the important part of that recipe. You can slap together some cornbread whenever you happen to find a tin of chilli, but that's not a reason to cultivate corn or cook up a stockpile of cornbread in-and-of-itself. 

As a meal on it's own, cornbread is worthless, and there's nothing you can combine it with that you can grown in a farm-plot or cook at a campfire, to make anything better. 

Actually the chilli-dog cost you a tin of chilli, which provides more food and costs more dukes than anything that goes into a meat stew. 

At the very least, it's harder to procure a steady supply of. 

I guess part of the issue is that if i'm making food to take with me when I go exploring, I want a full stack of it so I won't run out. 

Having one 'fish and gravy' item doesn't help me, even if it gives a lot of food. I want a stack of ten, but I have no reliable way to get ten cans of whatever food I need to make this food with.

With a big enough farmplot and enough ranks in LoTL, I can gather the materials to cook up ten meat stews for myself, and even ten more for my buddy to carry. 

 

[BFT2020]

It is, but blueberries are also rare, and its a higher tier recipe. 

By the time you can make it, you won't be needing/making bacon and eggs anymore. 

It's basically the best 'Early Game' food, whereas you move onto stews and various other meals as quickly as you are able, which frees up your eggs for puddings. 

Grilled meat is one of the easiest foods to make with meat being so easy to get, but it's fullness value is so low that it's pretty inefficient to carry around because you need to eat half a stack to fill yourself back up once you get hungry. 

Boiled at least also gives water, but now that water is harder to get, even that feels like a waste.

Seeds might be worthless for anything else, but farm-plots are not. Given the resource cost (and attention-cost) of building/maintaining a farm, you want to ensure that you're growing something that's actually useful to you. 

It seems to be six with a chance of seven, now.

My point is that growing a bunch of crops and then turning them into seeds which you plant and grow crops which you turn into seeds which you plant and grow crops which you turn into seeds leaves you planting and growing crops but getting no actual food out of it for a full in-game week.

So instead I was putting the potatoes that I harvested into the food chest and having my buddy actually make decent food out of them.

Because that's the entire reason I'd been planting crops in the first place. 

Sure, I could have built up a huge farm while eating grilled meat all the time, but we didn't want to eat bad food. That's the whole reason I built the farm to begin with.

Pumpkin seeds are worthless because pumpkins are not the bottleneck on your pumpkin pie production. Eggs probably are. (and beer, but that's my fault for selling it all) 

As for cornbread, I was talking about in terms of food that you cook for yourself. 

There's no way to make tins of chilli, you can only find them.

I mean, with the much more common vending machines you can now probably get a decent stockpile if you want, but again, Cornbread isn't the important part of that recipe. You can slap together some cornbread whenever you happen to find a tin of chilli, but that's not a reason to cultivate corn or cook up a stockpile of cornbread in-and-of-itself. 

As a meal on it's own, cornbread is worthless, and there's nothing you can combine it with that you can grown in a farm-plot or cook at a campfire, to make anything better. 

Actually the chilli-dog cost you a tin of chilli, which provides more food and costs more dukes than anything that goes into a meat stew. 

At the very least, it's harder to procure a steady supply of. 

I guess part of the issue is that if i'm making food to take with me when I go exploring, I want a full stack of it so I won't run out. 

Having one 'fish and gravy' item doesn't help me, even if it gives a lot of food. I want a stack of ten, but I have no reliable way to get ten cans of whatever food I need to make this food with.

With a big enough farmplot and enough ranks in LoTL, I can gather the materials to cook up ten meat stews for myself, and even ten more for my buddy to carry. 

Some points I want to make:

Blueberries are not rare, typically I find enough seeds of those through normal looting that I can start planting and harvesting them.  Once I get these (and pumpkins), my eggs go towards pies.

Eggs are easy to get if you just keep looting nests.  People tend to stop doing that so that is why they dry up.  And beer is only required for cheesecake, the pumpkin pie doesn't require it.  Beer is also easy to make once you unlock the recipe for it and start planting hops.

You seem focused that the only way to effectively feed yourself and your buddy is only if you can make food in stacks of 10.  That is not so.  On a 60 minute day, I eat before I leave and I grab one or two food items to take with me when I go out.  I don't need to carry a stack of 10 meat stews for a day as I shouldn't be using up that much energy in the first place.

 

[Skull the Troll]

How are you controlling how much energy you use? If you're out doing things you're using food. Yeah Iron Gut helps, but so do a lot of things. Needing to build, stock, and continuously replant 7 plots to get the output of one *might* be balanced, but it's grindy and boring. 

 

[meganoth]

How are you controlling how much energy you use? If you're out doing things you're using food. Yeah Iron Gut helps, but so do a lot of things. Needing to build, stock, and continuously replant 7 plots to get the output of one *might* be balanced, but it's grindy and boring. 

Running drains stamina so in the time before I have a bicycle or minibike I sometimes just walk.

Digging drains stamina so in the first few days I keep mining to a minimum.

Drinking Red Tea before longer activities like mining saves 25% food

Even if you do much melee a first stealth shot with a bow saves a lot of stamina

Power attack uses lots of stamina, so I don't spam that for canon fodder enemies

Heavy armor drains more stamina, so I tend to use light armor, at least in the early game before bicycle and minibike

Freezing or overheating drains food (or water at least??) so I don't go into the desert without appropriate clothing.

You don't need to do all of this to save a lot of food use, every measure helps.

 

[Riamus]

Farming is really not so difficult as people make it out to be.  If you don't like low crop yields while keeping the farm filled with crops, just wait until you have a higher LotL before you start.  But as has been said, LotL1 still gives you profit even if it's not much.  I end up making so much farming even at LotL1 that after I've harvested crops half a dozen times or so, I often stop farming because I have so much food for a two person game.  You get a ton of corn in A21, so you don't need that anymore.  And unless you want to make a bunch of different food, you can do what I do any cut out pumpkins and blueberries even though they make decent food.  You can also skip the flowers usually aren't worth planting since they can be found everywhere and unless you like making coffee or beer, skip hops and coffee beans.  This keeps your variety lower and means you can get a good harvest with a smaller farm.  I usually stick to about 20-25 plots for 2 people and, as I said, I quickly have a surplus of food.  Mushrooms are easy since you don't need a plot.  I just plant them on the sides of the farm for convenience harvesting them.  Once you're cooking the top foods, you don't need many ingredients anymore because the food lasts a long time.  Yes, the top foods require canned food, but unless you aren't scavenging or are not picking up those cans of food while you're playing, you'll have a good stockpile of cans by the time you can cook them.  And when you run out of one, you start making one of the other top foods while you continue looting and getting more cans of food.

A big thing to be aware of with conserving food is to NOT put any points into the healing perk.  At least not until you have a good supply of food coming in.  It eats up your food and water very quickly.

 

[multiprefi]

I also don't mind the prospect of running out of new POIs to conquer, and eventually controlling 100% of the territory.  That would be a satisfying long-term goal to pursue, and it could encourage exploring the whole map.  There should still be some types of quests you could do in POIs you control.