PC I see a lot of talking about food .

[meganoth]

And a lot of what we do depends on luck.  My current playthrough I am at Day 15 and I found/bought the recipes for corn seeds, potato seeds, chili dogs, fish tacos, and steak&potatoes.  Throw in the 3 mushroom spores I found and I am doing fine with food without resorting to cans.  This will probably change on my next playthrough as I looking to go to 50 % loot along with the second highest difficulty setting.

I would consider day 15 to be already in mid game or at least starting to get into it. Sure, by that day the chances are reasonably good that you have both a corn and a potato seed, and a farm with at least a dozen plots (very rough estimate). And the food problem mostly solved. At this point I don't need to waste cans anymore. I'm really talking about the first week when you don't have a bicycle or mini-bike and often have to walk to save stamina, don't want to do quests more than 500 meters away. When food is really scarce. At that time I don't save anything for later weeks.

I need the food now, a can with 15 food now is more worth to me than the resulting 60 food dish in 3 weeks.

At the moment there is very little reason to worry about that blinking red icon reminding you of your nutritional deficit.

Not sure I agree. When I clear POIs with melee, accidents happen, claws hit my soft flesh below much too soft armor sometimes and it hurts.

 

[Maharin]

Not sure I agree. When I clear POIs with melee, accidents happen, claws hit my soft flesh below much too soft armor sometimes and it hurts.

No different than learning what not to do when your leg or arm are sprained or broken.  Broken/sprained arm, don't use power attacks.  Broken/sprained leg, don't sprint or jump.  Starving to death, don't do dangerous things or be extra cautious while doing them.

My point was that from the time you start seeing that blinking red icon to the time you actually die of starvation is a LONG time.  Much longer than it should be.  Personally, I think the food bar should represent the full timeline from satiated to emaciated to dead and just change colors (or shades) as you reach different stages.

 

[BFT2020]

No different than learning what not to do when your leg or arm are sprained or broken.  Broken/sprained arm, don't use power attacks.  Broken/sprained leg, don't sprint or jump.  Starving to death, don't do dangerous things or be extra cautious while doing them.

My point was that from the time you start seeing that blinking red icon to the time you actually die of starvation is a LONG time.  Much longer than it should be.  Personally, I think the food bar should represent the full timeline from satiated to emaciated to dead and just change colors (or shades) as you reach different stages.

Being hungry does more than just die of starvation.  Your max stamina decreases which is very important if you are focusing on melee and not relying on guns.

Same thing about the other items you mentioned.  Not doing power attacks when your arm is broken sounds great in theory, but when your primary  melee weapon is a knife, the power attack is your lead attack to get max damage and stacking bleed effects on your target.  Having a broken leg is fine when you are strolling  across an open field in the middle of the day but doesn’t help if you are getting swarmed by ferals or a pack of zombie dogs.

The way you play these things might not be important or critical, but for others it is something we avoid as much as possible

 

[meganoth]

No different than learning what not to do when your leg or arm are sprained or broken.  Broken/sprained arm, don't use power attacks.  Broken/sprained leg, don't sprint or jump.  Starving to death, don't do dangerous things or be extra cautious while doing them.

You make my point as that extra caution when you have a leg or arm sprained or broken severly cuts down on your efficiency. Time is money and you lose a lot of time with a broken limb .

 

[Kyonshi]

Yes, teas as in plurarl.  Even goldenrod has benefits over boiled meat and is just not for curing dysentery. Bacon & eggs with goldenrod tea gives you 36 food, 10 max stamina, 24 water, and 15% stamina regeneration for a cost of 2 eggs, 5 meat, 1 jar of water, and 1 goldenrod plant; while boiled water only gives you 10 to food, max stamina, and water for 5 meat and 1 jar of water.  Even if I didn’t have eggs I would go grilled meat with tea as I would get the 15% stamina boost with only the addition of a plant I can easily harvest while walking about.

Sorry but i dont get why you think Golden Rod Tea has an effect on fullness drain. The discussion revolves around the issue of food cooking/looting, exhaustion, fullness/satiety.

Golden Rod Tea has no effect of fullness/food drain. Beside providing hydration and stamina regeneration (Water +24/Stamina +15%), just like most beverages, its sole medicinal purpose is to cure Dysentery. Red Tea also provides the same buffs for Water intake and stamina regen but also decreases food drain with the +15% Efficient Digestion buff. So, its obvious that Red Tea is the beverage to use for that matter, beside Pure Mineral Water, like i said earlier, but this drink is not that easily and rapidly available as Red Tea during early gamestages, most of the time.

Grilled Meat is less beneficial than Boiled Meat since the later also gives Water intake. The only advantage Grilled Meat has over is that it only requires one ingredient. Lastly, sure, Bacon & Eggs provide more Fullness and HP than Boiled Meat, its undeniable. But i mention that Boiled Meat is the best shot someone can get, in my opinion, in the context of early game, since the ingredients are easier to find and quantities are not affected by Loot %, like eggs are, and also because Boiled Meat gives back HP. Later on, i sure use Bacon & Eggs more than often in the eventuality i find lots of eggs.

 

[ElCabong]

I go to the snow biome on the first day, I find a puma and it eats me. The best way to look at it, I loose my hunger. Meat is not that easy to come by on the first few days unless you pick the hunting perk and even then it's cheesy as hell because the best way to hunt wabbits and chickens is to run up on them and whack em with your club.

 

[Masta]

i was about to make a thread but i saw this one.

i just started playing this game, and i do have a really hard time keeping up with the hunger, and some times thirst.

it is in my own server with rules mostly set on "easy"

first time i experienced this i thought my character might be infected or ill, but no, that wasnt the case.

i have to eat ridiculous amounts of food in a single day. and i'm still not fully fed.

i'm talking about numbers like... 4 canned foods, 17 mushrooms, and 15 charred meats, and a dozen cornmeals, and still super hungry!

so i just made a high ladder in my base, where i just climb and suicide.

am i doing something wrong?

 

[Kyonshi]

i was about to make a thread but i saw this one.

i just started playing this game, and i do have a really hard time keeping up with the hunger, and some times thirst.

it is in my own server with rules mostly set on "easy"

first time i experienced this i thought my character might be infected or ill, but no, that wasnt the case.

i have to eat ridiculous amounts of food in a single day. and i'm still not fully fed.

i'm talking about numbers like... 4 canned foods, 17 mushrooms, and 15 charred meats, and a dozen cornmeals, and still super hungry!

so i just made a high ladder in my base, where i just climb and suicide.

am i doing something wrong?

Just read the replies of the thread? Plenty of people gave advices. I did.

Put some points in The Huntsman, Animal Tracker and Master Chef for basic recipes. You'll have skills to spot animals, harvest extra meat from them. Cook some of it. Harvest Chrysanthemum and water, make Red Tea to slow Food drain from your character. Loot everything to find foot. Put some points in Lucky Looter to help you.

Never eat single, basic ingredients like Mushrooms or even Cornmeal. They have ridiculous fullness points, consider them wasted if you eat them. They are ingredients for better recipes if you find or unlock some of them.

 

[NukemDed]

am i doing something wrong?

no you are just on the learning curve.

buried treasure quests from the trader give good food and often a food recipe if you dont want to spend points on master chef  cant reccomend enough 1 point in living off the land. doubling plant harvest for 1 point is the best spend next to forge.  imo...

and definitely make farm plots  as soon as ypu can and have them ready for seeds you may find. 

rotten flesh and steel are my 2 scaresest must have ingredients early to mid game

sometimes i am driven to hunt zombie bears and dogs for the rotten flesh.  always try to take vultures too. and use a knife for better return.

 

[MonkCrimson]

In my opinion it takes WAY too long to die of starvation in this game

My friend , in real life you can survive 30 to 40 days without food , but without water you die in a couple of days .

 

[BFT2020]

no you are just on the learning curve.

buried treasure quests from the trader give good food and often a food recipe if you dont want to spend points on master chef

FYI this doesn’t happen all the time.  I am doing a playthrough at the second hardest difficulty abd loot abundance set at 50% and the 2 dig quests I have done so far only gave me bottled water

 

[Astronomical]

am i doing something wrong?

Be careful not to over exert yourself until you have better stats. As in a real survival situation choose carefully the daily activities you pursue. Example: Don't mine like a crazy person without points in related skills.

Eat every snowberry you come across. They add up.

Use vending machines. Sell loot to traders for coin.

Don't commit suicide by jumping off a tall ladder. (You're welcome)

 

[Jihh]

Last time there was a big discussion about food in 7dtd I made a new game just to get the actual numbers, before I answer in the thread and make some bull@%$# claims. After I played my first eight days and wanted to post my results I realized that the last post in the thread was already a months old and I didn't want to necro the thread, so my work was in vain. Thanks to this new thread I now can make my claim: Food isn't a problem at all in the early game!

But let's take a step back. Survival games (at least the survival aspects in them) are more or a less a game of resourcemanagement. You always want to trade a resource against a more valuable resource, or at least against the most valuable resource you can get for it. Once you are set up and survival isn't as endangered as it is in the beginning, you have some leeway and can for example waste resources for decorating your home.

In the beginning of the game the two most important and scarce resources are time and saturation. The activity that consumes most of those two resources is mining. At the same time mining is the most ineffecient in the beginning of the game, you barely get a noteworthy amount of mats out of it in the first days. Thus my conclusion: How much of a problem food is depends primarily on how much time you spend on mining in the first 7 days of the game. At least since A17. Therefor to not get in trouble all you have to do is either find another activity for the nights, or just don't do anything in them. The activity I do is looting houses I cleared the days before.

Before I get into the way I played and my reasoning, I will post the numbers. Just as a heads up, I had all settings on default, since that's the settings food should be balanced on.

Day 1, 7:00h:
    Saturation:        100/100
    Nutritional Value:    15
Day 2, 0:00h:
    Saturation:        91/103
    Nutritional Value:    215
Day 3, 0:00h:
    Saturation:        101/106
    Nutritional Value:    350
Day 4, 0:00h:
    Saturation:        104/109
    Nutritional Value:    571
Day 5, 0:00h:
    Saturation:        87/111
    Nutritional Value:    923
Day 6, 0:00h:
    Saturation:        83/113
    Nutritional Value:    1114
Day 7, 0:00h:
    Saturation:        115/115
    Nutritional Value:    1221
Day 8, 0:00h:
    Saturation:        101/118
    Nutritional Value:    1551

With nutritional value I refer to the amount of saturation my food would provide in its raw state. Since I play on a german client, I'm not sure how it's called in the english client. If I would cook that food, it would provide even more saturation.

I will just copy & paste my text I wrote back then (it was A19.2, if I remember correctly), because I don't feel like rewriting it. So it's possible there are points mentioned I already wrote above.

I've choosen a new RWG map with the size 4096 (I won't explore more in just 7 days of game time) and had all settings on default. As I do in any other playthrough and would recommend to anyone I used a (t2) POI (near the trader) as my starter base. I usually change town once I know most of the traders for the best position on the map, but since I only played those 7 days, I stayed in my starter base.
I didn't want to skip building completely even though I usually spend the first bloodmoon on a second POI, so I actually build my own bloodmoon base from the scratch, just about 200m away from my starter base. I used cobble stone (~2500) which I completely got from looting other POI in the first 5 days. I did not need to farm additional stone or clay, but I farmed about 3000 wood (even though I needed way less) for building purposes and arrows.
As for my talents, I put my first point into forges (in the end I only produced some forged iron for my bat, but had enough workstations to scrap nearby, so the talent point was kinda wasted) and every subsequent points into strength and pummel pete.
I haven't made a single farming tour for eggs or game, all bird nests I looted and all animals I killed were on my ways to quests or back. I bought food from the vendor and the vending machine, but only if it was less than 5 dukes per nutrinional value and thus it was less than 200 nutrinional value overall.
I didn't use any tea or coffee at all even though I had some. I also didn't count honey as food, since it has a more important usage. I also didn't count rotten flesh or sham sandwiches for their nutrinional value, since they have negative side effects. But they would be of use later on. I also didn't make any farming plots and therefor left my seeds unused. I had some idle times, so it's not like I didn't have time to waste on that.
On day 5 I made me three pockets for my pants, jacket and shirt and I wore light clothing the whole time, because I didn't put any talent points into heavy clothing.
I only did quests that were less than 1km away (aside from the one quest that send me to the next trader) and  favored burried supplies over other quests. I didn't get any burried supplies on the first two days and just 1-2 on the other days. I was able to buy a minibike on day 7 and had to walk everywhere the first six days.
Rather than spending my nights mining, I didn't loot the first four buildings I cleared on the first two days (including my starter base) and looted them in the first four nights, so I did something useful at night that doesn't wastes food for a negligible yield of stone.
The fifths and sixths night I produced my blocks and arrows (that I didn't even use, since I got a pumpgun just minutes before the bloodmoon) and did some planning and sorting.

I almost only ate when I was back in my base in the evening and I seldom had the hunger debuff, so while I didn't write down how much I ate, I can safely say that I ate less than 100 nutritional value per day on average. So the 1551 I had left at the end are enough for at least two addional weeks without changing the way I played. Since the base I've built easily survives two more bloodmoons (it took me 34 cobblestones to repair), there is no urgent need to mine.

TL;DR:
I didn't min-max my gameplay to not waste food. On the contrary, I purposely used my talent points in a way that doesn't save food, I didn't drink tea, I did build a base from scratch and I didn't make a single tour for finding food and I still had no problems with food at all. The only thing I did to preserve food was not mining in the first 7 days. I still had all the materials I needed and I still had something to do on every single night. Therefor I'll have to conclude: Food isn't a problem, wasting the most valuable resources for the most valueless activity in a game about resourcemanagement is the problem.