thoughts from a chef

blitzkrieg7498

blitzkrieg7498

Refugee
as a survival based game where food and hydration matter, i feel the cooking aspect is rather lacking in its importance and recipes/equipment. there is a wide world of foods and more importantly plants that are, simply put, not being used. im aware that mods have expanded these options, but its still something that should be a standard part of this game. being able to farm would be insurmountably move imperative to survival than "smacking some zombies, selling loot and hoping someone else has the supplies i can buy," or in a similiar vein of thought, "ill go smacking while my friend tends the farm."

also itd be really cool to start doing canned (now people would have a reason to keep cans instead of immediately scrapping them), cured (a cooler/working fridge/"root cellar" required) and pickled (another use of jars) foods as these would make more sense in the apocalypse than relying on fresh foods, which is even worse if you start taking seasons into consideration.

i also understand this is a game and everyone wants to have fun, so i dont want $hit on other peoples desire to go kill zombies, thats why were here, but i enjoy this game and i want to see it better and do well.

take this as a tentative offer to help on the creative end of cooking/farming. im very rusty with coding so im more help with "this is needed to make this dish"

 
As a chef myself, I have similar feels, but I also want to simply a few things. There are definitely some major stumbling blocks in realism and quality of life updates that could be made. Previously they let you boil a can of water, then they removed the need for a pot to boil water in jars. While that makes H2O easier, we still need a pot/jar of clean H2O/egg to boil an egg.

We should be able to do that in a can of dirty H2O. 

Because we dont have food spoilage, the need to pickle or jar stuff isnt as necessary, as much as it adds more realism. 

How about we make snowberry wine and let it turn to vinegar so we can pickle some eggs?

First though, I REALLY hope they add animal husbandry at some point. So many eggs and no baby chicks. Would love to see that be possible. I want an unlimited supply of feathers, or the ability to release a chicken as a living meat distraction for zombies.

 
The current system is functional but unsatisfying.

I dont think food costs should be able to be circumvented with perks like iron gut, iron gut should instead increase the amount of food a person can eat.

hunger and the debuffs that come with it should only occur after food reaches zero, and there should be negative hunger levels before your body starts metablozing itself and turns HP into stamina.

Id like food variety to be important to players who have overcome the early stages of food scarcity and want to thrive. This could be accomplished by allowing certain foods to have their own energy portion where each food can increase stam cap or food cap by a certain amount till that energy is used or perhaps each food provides a baseline buff with better quality dishes increasing the magnitude and duration and also having quality meals having more buffs per stack. I was thinking perhaps just increasing base attributes like corn increasing perception and pumpkin increasing strength but im certain players would expect some actual logic for that and im not in any position to be providing detailed nutritional information.

Dishes need to scale, t1 would be grilled meat, grilled corn, baked pumpkin etc, and t2 would be bacon and eggs, roast veges (pumpkin and potato etc) t3 would use 3 ingredients and t4 4 ingredients etc.

using rare ingredients need could bump the tier of food up one so a 2 ingredient meal with rare ingredients could be bumped to 3 for example.

So now with these suggestions you have reasons to cook different meals and recipes to cook them with.

The food system is tied directly to farming since there are no replenishable sources of food in the game world you need to rely on luck, and with food being an ongoing cost that you need to constantly address reliable and safe food needs to exist in order to be able to play the game. Traders sell food for dirt cheap and its generally enough to get by on, but i dont think that it should be a realistic way to survive, players should be forced into managing their own food supply while having traders and such as fallbacks. Farming needs to be profitable without investing in living off the land but also shouldnt just provide infinite free food. The current system goes from unprofitable to free infinite food with LotL, so imo it solves no issues with the farming system.

I posted my idea for that in another thread, ill summarize it here:

  • Crafting seeds cost 5 crops
  • Seeds produce 6 crops - farms are inefficient but still profitable off the bat, getting a reliable farm from only one seed will take a long time.
  • Fertilizer can be used on growing crops to turn them into fertilized crops (only at seed stage)
  • Fertilizer cost rotten meat, nitrate, bones and plant fibers
  • Fertilizer increases yield by 3
  • Living off the land now increases the yield of fertilized crops only and reduces the cost of fertilizer.
ongoing cost for fertilizer that turns inedible resources into edible resources limits farm sizes and profitablity from seed only farms. Seed only farms profitable but very slow, probably not viable for sustained food source. Living off the land makes things better but not absolutely required for a functional farm.

This would allow farms to be started sooner without relying on good luck and would mean late game farms still require resource management and dont provide free infinite food.

 
warmer said:
Because we dont have food spoilage, the need to pickle or jar stuff isnt as necessary, as much as it adds more realism. 

How about we make snowberry wine and let it turn to vinegar so we can pickle some eggs?

First though, I REALLY hope they add animal husbandry at some point. So many eggs and no baby chicks. Would love to see that be possible. I want an unlimited supply of feathers, or the ability to release a chicken as a living meat distraction for zombies.
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i 100% agree, its not so much as we need to pickle/jar to prevent from spoiling in game (at least yet...) but its something that would be more prevalent in the circumstances and brings greater verisimilitude (sorry i also dungeon master so story-crafting and immersion is a big focus), and we definitely need farm animals. think of the challenge and possible setbacks of keeping zombies from eating your livestock that you arent using as meat shields lol.

bloodmoth13 said:
Id like food variety to be important to players who have overcome the early stages of food scarcity and want to thrive.

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The food system is tied directly to farming since there are no replenishable sources of food in the game world you need to rely on luck, and with food being an ongoing cost that you need to constantly address reliable and safe food needs to exist in order to be able to play the game. Traders sell food for dirt cheap and its generally enough to get by on, but i dont think that it should be a realistic way to survive, players should be forced into managing their own food supply while having traders and such as fallbacks. Farming needs to be profitable without investing in living off the land but also shouldnt just provide infinite free food. The current system goes from unprofitable to free infinite food with LotL, so imo it solves no issues with the farming system.

I posted my idea for that in another thread, ill summarize it here:

  • Crafting seeds cost 5 crops
  • Seeds produce 6 crops - farms are inefficient but still profitable off the bat, getting a reliable farm from only one seed will take a long time.
  • Fertilizer can be used on growing crops to turn them into fertilized crops (only at seed stage)
  • Fertilizer cost rotten meat, nitrate, bones and plant fibers
  • Fertilizer increases yield by 3
  • Living off the land now increases the yield of fertilized crops only and reduces the cost of fertilizer.
Click to expand...
personally i was thinking of the early stages needing the most assistance. lets get some peppers and onions and grains so that players arent forced into bacon and eggs and chrysanthemum tea. lets craft breads and wines, some items that may take longer to make but have a good payoff. fruit tree orchards, fresh fruit would be highly sought after for sugars and hydration especially citrus fruit (nobody wants scurvy lol); some even would be POI's as former farm orchards themselves. i dont really have a complaint with meat just being "raw meat." it makes things easier for players and would be too cumbersome to differentiate that beef is not chicken nor fish., especially as the cooking/foraging system is right now.

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fertilizer is a great idea! your recipe is spot on too (itd be easy to get nitrate powder once animal husbandry is added as you can harvest poo from your cows/chickens/horses). and your recommendations for seeds are very reasonable and balanced to me. heres hoping others and TFP feel the same.

 
blitzkrieg7498 said:
i 100% agree, its not so much as we need to pickle/jar to prevent from spoiling in game (at least yet...) but its something that would be more prevalent in the circumstances and brings greater verisimilitude (sorry i also dungeon master so story-crafting and immersion is a big focus), and we definitely need farm animals. think of the challenge and possible setbacks of keeping zombies from eating your livestock that you arent using as meat shields lol.
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Ya know for roleplaying/immersion sake that makes a lot of sense because for the setting, that is what you would be doing in the second the leaves turned. I personally wish there was a season mod that shifted the biome in 1 direction temp wise. depending on year. This would make you worry about crop yields and planting season.

 
warmer said:
Ya know for roleplaying/immersion sake that makes a lot of sense because for the setting, that is what you would be doing in the second the leaves turned. I personally wish there was a season mod that shifted the biome in 1 direction temp wise. depending on year. This would make you worry about crop yields and planting season.
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Hell we have chicken soup...why not have the possibility of getting a cold and have to eat chicken soup to get better  😁

 
To make the most of the survival aspect some things need to work together.

The thing what would add the most would be a gain de-buff/ buff over time for consumables.

For example ad a stack of food/ drink items in storage and over time that stacks buff would change.

(It could even be used for chemical component crafting by distilling and such,)

Berry juice gains the alcohol buff and the others slowly gain the food poisoning buff increasing the chance of dysentery.

This de-buff could be used to make some perks and items more valuable.

The tea’s would have more value and the same for “Iron Gut”

Spoilage time, the time that it takes for the buff to increase is dependent on the item.

Starting from resources,

Farming and living of the land perk:

Once its harvested (excluding found in POI), the fresh product starts at 0.0% food poisoning till it gets to 100% chance of food poisoning a stack.

The de-buff is tied with the one seed crafting recipe gained with “living of the land”

This recipe works with the roll succeed or fail just like the lockpicking. Fail item gone and no seed.

Starting with maxed level living of the land, the roll succeed chance is -25% to succeed to craft a seed from 1 item if the de-buff is 0.0% when the de-buff gets higher the more chance you will succeed (seeds are dried/ sprouted).

When the de-buff is 100% the chance to make one seed is 100-25= 75% so 1 in 3 chance.

Level 2 = -35% and level 1 = -50%

Hunting and The huntsman perk:

It would be nice to split meat in different types of meat, venison, rabbit, chicken and have different buffs on them.

For fresh meat the same as for farmed products start with fresh at 0.0% chance of poisoning till 100%.

Include the recipe to craft rotten meat when the de-buff reaches 100%

The Huntsman perk ad the recipe to prepare meat for longer keeping like adding salt or better yet drying.

Preparing food and Master Chef:

Cooking food will reset the de-buff the amount of ingredients you need is calculated from the main ingredients current de-buff.

So as example meat stew at 100% de-buff takes 20 meat but fresh meat only uses 5 meat

(Personally I think without skill the prepared food should have a bit shorter shelve life  giving it the starting de-buff of 1%)

For master chef they will benefit the most since they already use less resources but overall fresh is easier to prepare and less wasteful recipe like pickling, canning, fermenting could also improve things for people using this perk making it stand out a bit more.

 

Using the gain de-buff/ buff over time for consumables.

Things like hot coffee/ foods could also have additional benefits same as for cold items.

Coffee machine and microwave anyone?

Storing,

By proper storage shelve life could be increased by slowing the de-buff rate.

The cheapest way would be by using the Icebox that uses snowballs as fuel.

Adding a couple of functional items like the refrigerator, electric stove, watercooler and coffeemaker to the Advanced engineering perk would make that perk more interesting as well.

 
i somewhat agree with what youre getting at flycatcher, but some, like the rates, should probably be part of the last focuses and tweaking of the cooking system.  we dont want to make the system too cumbersome, it could backfire and just be too much work for the players and detract from other fun to be had in the game

 
The examples might be a bit on the high side but most would cook them when they are around 20 to 50% depending on the time set for buff gains a food item it could be a 7days to reach 100% with optimum storage for uncooked and reset it again when  cooking.

If the system is in place things can always be tweaked.

For most people its a mater of getting resources and making what you need for a few days and flush it down with some tea in some cases instead of making a month worth of food.

Think farming would get easier for one, hunting needs to be done a bit more and cooking depending on what you make a bit more as well.

Am hoping they add more recipes to make like conserves, smoked, dried, caned e.g. 

Some more farming seeds as wel and maybe some livestock or animal/ fish traps

Do agree there needs to be a balance depending on the ease to survive and getting other things done

 
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