Some observations on the changes to food in A18

[HungryZombie]

My observation of A18's food changes.

 

I really enjoy where TFP's are going regarding food. A18 was a good step in the right directions. Some balancing and tweeks are of course needed but the overall ideas are good in my view.

 

I do find it a bit challenge to keep up on food now in A18. In previous alphas food was pretty irrelevant for me past the first few days depending on how lucky I was.

 

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that it is hard for me to find enough food. Be it from looting, crafting, vendoring or questing there is plenty of food to be had. That's not the challenge I mean.

 

I can devote my time to finding food and stay at MAX stamina easily.

 

The problem it that it leaves me less time and I'd like to do anything else. Not a complaint or a judgement. Just my observation. I am really feeling the time crunch in A18 now. It's annoying but I can totally adjust. I think this is what the game is intending to deliver. I have to to make choices on if I want to hunt food, expand my base, harvest resources or loot and explore. I think this is the true core mechanic of the game. time management.

 

Another observation. It's been said you can just do buried treasure quests you can make food irrelevant. True as I explained above but you do so at the expense of other activities. Plus I don't know if it is my luck or a game mechanic but the T2 buried treasure quests don't seem to give any food so that option is closed to me after I move past T1 quests.

 

A related observation. Looting early on I did not really get that much food. Not enough to survive if I tried just looting all day. Again this could just be my luck. I have noticed that as my gamestage as gone up I started finding more and more food. So early on for me looting was getting me enough food to survive but once the buried treasure quests stopped giving food, I started finding food while looting and switched my activities accordingly.

[Scyris]

I usually loot poi's while on trader quests, buy the good stuff off vending machines sometimes off trader too, i've never had to struggle for food past a bit into day 1, In my last game (I play dead is dead on warrior difficulty) by day 15 I had about 8 stacks of raw meat just sitting in storage I had no use for. as I had more than enough canned food to survive on. in A17 I usually lived off of bacon and eggs, but finding eggs now in a18 is like panning for gold, they are super rare now. TFP needs to unnerf the nest spawn rate, as this also severely hurts archery.

[Ghostlight]

Well, I am rolling in Feathers (10 stacks, unused on Day 15), it's mainly the Eggs they need to look at.

 

Personally I think the game has always been about time management. You really feel it when you play solo (which I don't do that often).

[Ascillian]

The flip in food (where crafted food now has the food poisoning chance and canned food is safe) bothers me. This is a zombie Apocalypse, we are looting cans in random abandoned buildings....I know canned food is pretty solid, but I also know that it can spoil (especially when exposed to the heat of the desert and irradiated zombies...?) Since we have to spend points to be able to cook stuff (or find recipes), the assumption is we kinda know what we are doing...and yet there is still more of a chance that my vegetable stew will make me sick than that can I found buried in a burnt out house surrounded by zombie dogs.

 

It might also be fun to have an "unmarked tin can" option for looted canned food....which will give some random amount of food/drink, but also might be spoiled.

 

It does feel like the food changes were meant to encourage people to go clear poi's for food instead of making their own...but then you look at how many points you need to spend to be able to (effectively) grow and make your own food, along with the amount of time it takes you to set up a farm, gather/make seeds, grow stuff, and finally cook it. That is a LOT of invested time and points.....only to have it be more risky than a rusted, dented can you picked up in a bag of trash on the side of the road.

[Synvastian]

Cooked food in unclean conditions shouldn't give a chance of getting sick? when's the last time you actually washed your hand (in game) before skinning that deer/boar/snake? canned food has a very stable existence despite what goes on around it (MRE's come to mind, some of which are still edible years later if properly secured)

 

{straight from Wiki}

Packaging requirements are strict. MREs must be able to withstand parachute drops from 380 metres (1,250 ft), and non-parachute drops of 30 metres (98 ft). The packaging is required to maintain a minimum shelf life of three and a half years at 27 °C (81 °F), nine months at 38 °C (100 °F), and short durations from −51 °C (−60 °F) to 49 °C (120 °F) must be sustainable.

 

{normal canned foods}

According to the USDA, high-acid canned goods, like tomatoes and citrus fruits, will keep for up to 1½ years. Low-acid canned goods—that's pretty much everything else, including vegetables, meat, and fish—will last for up to 5 years

 

TLDR : you don't clean your hands or tools between uses (knife for gore piles and skinning...umm yuck), raw foods always has a chance to carry parasites that may not be fully killed through cooking, and canned foods have very long lives and still retain freshness if they aren't punctured or broken open.

[HungryZombie]

Not to mention this is a fantasy game so the contamination could be something yet to be discovered and is already inherit in all the flora & fauna in the land. No way to cook it out entirely.

[Limdood]

Gameplay wise, looted food being safer makes sense. It's risk vs. reward. There's little to no risk in tending a garden, and using a nearby water source to make endless cornbread. Making that food relatively easy to produce in abundance, but carry a risk balances the up-front risk of raiding POIs for the canned goods. TFP wants food to have some level of risk associated with it. Gameplay-wise, it makes sense - canned food has the risk frontloaded: you risk the zombies to scavenge the food from POIs, while cooked food has the risk on the back end: almost no risk in obtaining the food, but you MIGHT lose it all and then some if you get sick.

 

From a lore standpoint, it's MOSTLY consistent. Sure, canned food CAN go bad, but it's also fairly sturdy and durable. Meanwhile, you're harvesting raw resources for cooked food from VERY questionable sources. Any of those animals could be diseased, either naturally or with some zombie infection. Similarly, the rotted plants all over speak to overripe food, burned regions could have poisoned the ground, and there is no guarantee that some vestige of the disease running rampant over the world hasn't affected the plantlife. So right off the bat, no matter your cooking practices, you're using questionable food...it might be diseased, turning rotten, affected by toxins...not all of it of course...maybe, say 3-7% of it (see what I did there?). That's not even mentioning the "dirty cooking practices" (from hygiene or ground campfires) that so many other people bring up, which I suppose is valid, but for a canon reason, infection, rot, or toxins seem far more likely given the setting.