I'm only at the end of Day 10 on my first a19exp game, only switched to a19 on b173.
I might have read a hint about this perk, and that may have tipped things towards trying it, beacuse I'd never taken it before, but as a19s food stands right now the one 'must have' perk imo is Animal Tracker.
I've had success hunting bunnys doing this; drink a red tea or something with increased stamina regen, normal run to be nearish, but outside their spooked zone, stealth and get closer until they spook, then sprint in for the kill. I'm undecided on which is better, wood club or knives. Clubs have more reach and aoe minor damage, but knives use less stamina so it seems like the larger number of swings you get, or that you can sprint longer using knives might make it better for rabbits. But no question the bright green icon from Animal Tracker makes a huge difference keeping track of them in the grass. Also a solid tactic is when you can herd bunnys/chickens towards a wall.
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These are my overall impressions so far of a19. Bear in mind I've been playing 7dtd for 4+ years and I'm genuinely glad so many folks are having so much fun with it. I've also played Empyrion since Alpha 6, and I have no issues with it's farming/food system. Could be that it's more involved, or could be that rng doesn't decide your progress nearly as much, not sure.
Basic impression (and I'm cringing writing this) is that a19 is fairly boring. I started a new a18.4 game just a few weeks ago, so that experiance is fresh in mind, and I didn't feel this way about those first days.
To be fair one thing about this a19 game that is different is that the trader/city the starter quest sent me to has almost all the city in the snow. So after looting the 2 houses, the School, a military post and the small church that are outside the snow, I've had to travel quite a bit to find scattered pois.
I'm also electing to ignore all quests, same as the a18.4 game.
Think the major thing is the stamina/food bit. I like to build in 7dtd. I always mine quite a bit and start a mine night 1. But I was barely making it food/drink wise the first couple days, without any mining and walking everywhere (which just sucks). The animal tracker perk helped a lot, also bought master chef, and I looted a cooking pot day 2 so was able to make 3 bacon&eggs and some teas the second night. Day 3 I cleared the school, but got infected by a wolf. Spent all of day 4 & half of day 5 looking for honey/anitbiotics.
Day 10 I started relocating to another city that's entirely in the green forest. Spent all afternoon & evening clearing some of the rubble blocks away so the zeds can't get up to the 2nd floor (partially collapsed building). Each 200hp block takes 8 swings of a lvl5 stone axe with a gravedigger mod (haven't looted any melee mods so far, bought the gd at traders). I'd normally have broken out the first 6 blocks of the double wide concrete stairs, but no way in hell will I do that when each of the 6 would take -100- hits! So I blocked them off with a few cobb blocks.
Btw, I have bought lvl1 Miner69er and lvl1 Sexrex. So using food/teas yes, can swing basically non-stop, while stamina regen buff is active, but doing a measly 25 hp damage per swing is just not fun.
Food wise rng (or not rng, just the settings) hasn't been kind. I've looted schematics for Pumpkin and Yucca seeds, twice for both. Found 1 Aloe, 1 Corn and 1 Cotton seed. Nothing seed related for sale. Bought Living off the Land lvl1 to at least get double if I can ever find any potato/corn fields.
Been searching every nest I see, and I spent almost the whole of day 4 searching for honey and looting nests. Even bought eggs from trader when he had them. Used all my eggs and started out day 10 with 8 B&E. Used 2 B&Es and some grilled meat, plus several red teas, clearing rubble.
Not saying there isn't enough food, just not enough if you want to mine.
And while I have shovelled all the cobble/cement I've seen, if the trader hadn't had 700 cobb for sale I wouldn't have been able to reinforce all the openings in the ground floor of the poi I took for my inital base. And it came with concrete walls.
Having almost all the intial city in the snow didn't help. Sure I could have gone in while the inital temp protection was active, but with lumberjacks, daytime cougars & wolfs (I think?) that sure didn't sound like a good plan.
Oh, and to prepare for horde night I chopped off the wooden blocks of the front and back porch (so I could put in bars to shoot through), only the row connected to the concrete walls, then collapsed them. Did that with a lvl2 stone axe so what, ~14 hits per block? Mind numbingly boring.
I just don't get the combo of the food and stamina and by clear design the mining, along with stretching the primitive stage out, and now talking about having auger cost nearly as much stamina as steel tools.
Not intending to be hyperbolic but it really does seem like they're intentionally killing off any serious building, and I just don't see why.