Hunger in Alpha 19.5

[ungkor]

It seems like food usage is out of control in Alpha 19.5.   What do you all think?

 

Raiding a Shamwa food factory, I can't even get through the place and come out food positive.   It seems like I spend every penny I have on food at every chance I get, and yet I still end up hungry every day I play the game.  

[Roland]

Try playing 19.6...

 

j/k...I guess the question I would ask is are you eating canned food all the time? If so then, yes, you will be managing food a lot more often. If you cook actual meals then you will eat less often and be able to enjoy other aspects of the game more. I would also ask if you are cold a lot and whether you are exerting yourself a lot. Cold makes you consume food faster. Running everywhere, using power attacks a lot, and mining all use up your food faster.

[BFT2020]

Also, looting nests and killing small animals at the start to make bacon and eggs helps.  Save your cans that are used for recipes until you unlock those recipes.  Then when you unlock chili dogs and fish tacos, those cans get you more food per can than just eating the contents in the can

[12pack]

I raided a Shamway factory, and was having so much trouble finding any food anywhere!

All I kept finding were these light-weight super-absorbent towels...

I was so disappointed when I finally realized that I had raided a ShamWow! factory...

D-oh!

[Maharin]

The towels are okay to eat if you can find some hot sauce.

[theFlu]

I find the current food rates fine, just a tad more difficult than some earlier patches, but pretty much in line with them.

 

One thing I avoid specifically for food consumption is the skill Healing Factor.. it is "natural" regen, which eats away your food while you heal. Put that point into basic cooking instead and boil some of your meat... two pieces of boiled meat match a first aid bandage for health, and they regen it "at will". I eat to heal myself about as often as I eat just to feed.

 

Another significant variant is armor. Sprinting is pretty stamina intensive, and adding armor is heavy. Since you run slower, you'll need to sprint for a lot longer to cover the same distance. But it also reduces your regen rate; I'm not sure if this causes more food loss or not, but I wouldn't be surprised. (as in, normally you regen 100 sta per 1 food, your armor reduction might make that 70 sta for 1. Numbers imaginary to make the point. And yeah, armor might make it 70 sta for 0.7 food, would need to test but figuring that out feels a little too involved to test manually.)

 

For obtaining more food, invest the first point Animal Tracker.. you'll find chickens and rabbits everywhere, chickens are pretty trivial to run down, rabbits take a little getting used to (and both are hard to catch in heavy armor, the running jacket helps a lot)

[BenZ0]

Its better to cook stuff in the early game rather then trying to find it in lootable buildings. I recommend killing all animals you see around you and make out of them either cooked meat or bacon and eggs (But I would keep the eggs tbh for the blueberry pies later). 

 

Also loot normal houses with a kitchen, they have a better chance of giving you random canned food rather then the shamy buildings.

Edited September 5, 2021 by BenZ0 (see edit history)

[ungkor]

OK, so I started a new game.  I've avoided heavy armor.   I did not put any points into natural healing.  I put a point into animal tracker. 

 

I'd say that 15 charred meats per day is a little excessive.    Mining and building, I can easily burn through 100+ raw meat per day.  I do have a point in cooking, but out of 20 plus nests, I've found one egg.  I'm making red tea exclusively for drinking as well. 

 

Maybe the difference between people that feel that food is fine, and myself, is I like to mine and build big structures.  

 

There is a fine balance between grinding and having fun.  I feel like 19.5 is over the edge on the side of grinding in terms of food.  Late game is of course fine. 

[Roland]

3 minutes ago, ungkor said:

I like to mine and build big structures. 

 

3 minutes ago, ungkor said:

Late game is of course fine.

 

Sounds like you don't like the progressive nature of the game. If you want to be able to mine excessively and build big structures from the very beginning then cheat in a stack of stew for yourself so you don't have to worry about it. The beginning of the game is when you are vulnerable and weaker by design. Building a small first base and only mining what you need for that will keep you from getting so hungry so fast. And charred meat.....? Look at the stats for it. It is not a filling meal. If you can't get eggs then at least get yourself a grill and make grilled meat at the least. 

 

If late game is fine for you then either stop playing the early game as though you have a late game character or bypass the whole hunger thing with the CM so you can have fun with the game the way you like.

[theFlu]

5 hours ago, ungkor said:

Maybe the difference between people that feel that food is fine, and myself, is I like to mine and build big structures. 

Yeah, that's largely it then. I play different types of games, building or nomad/questing. Even for the building type, it's easier to start with some questing, to find animals while traveling, locate a couple vending machines and gather a bit of dukes for them. Only sitting at your building site from the get go is really challenging. One more tip would be to hunt the night spawned wolves, but that might be a challenge on it's own. They spawn a plenty, but you might want to cheese them..

 

5 hours ago, Roland said:

Look at the stats for it. It is not a filling meal. If you can't get eggs then at least get yourself a grill and make grilled meat at the least. 

Umm, getting 10 food instead of 10 food is a massive improvement..? The only difference between charred and grilled is the water loss with charred.

[Roland]

34 minutes ago, theFlu said:

6 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Umm, getting 10 food instead of 10 food is a massive improvement..? The only difference between charred and grilled is the water loss with charred.

lol…Indidnt look at the stats either. But at least I never said it was a massive improvement. I said “at the  least”. Not losing that water does make a bit of difference. Not massive, I know. 😀

[theFlu]

Indeed One could argue losing that water gives you an excuse to drink more Red Tea and starve a little less. But, of course, nothing's stopping one from drinking the extra tea with the grilled rabbit.

[katarynna]

If you want to focus so much on mining and building, prioritize getting level 2 of living off the land under fortitude.

 

Day 1 or 2, walk the streets of your town, looting mailboxes, cars, and birds' nests, while harvesting all the gore piles on the road. If you see a nitrate node, mine the surface boulder. 

 

As soon as you get lotl 2, craft farm plots with the mats you gathered. Now all you have to do is focus on enough corn, potatoes, and mushrooms to make a seed of each. Keep making seeds til you have 5=10 plots of each, then you have infinite food when you perk into cooking enough to get veggie stew recipe.

 

Once you have food settled, THEN you focus on mining/building/combat perks. If this takes you too long, add a modlet that gives you more skill points per level.

 

 

[Ramethzer0]

I'd also examine your game settings.  Are you running 30 minute/120 minute days?  That will skew your numbers.  Do you have the difficulty tuned up?  Harder fighting increases food and water usage (even IF you're shooting!).   Travel around much on foot or by vehicle?   That has a factor in the equasion as well.

[ungkor]

"I'd also examine your game settings."

 

All default. 

 

Thank you all for you suggestions.  It took a bit of game play adjustment, but I think the food situation is...well... tolerable.   I understand wanting to add challenge to the game.  For me, "grinding" in order to do something interesting (build, explore, kill, etc) is less fun.  And that is what the aggressive food requirements of alpha 19 entail.  But I still love the game. 

 

Side note:  mushrooms, where are they?  I've been in two different cave systems and zero mushrooms.  Maybe they appear at later game stages? 

[White-Gandalf]

Well: I'm in with the thread starter regarding the value of meat. It is somewhat out of proportion.

 

Using meat as the main source of food in vanilla leads to having to eat multiple bears (not boars, you know?) per day.

 

While in a fantasy setting and even more in a game, proportions are subject to balancing, this mostly doesn't bother anyone. Thus trees grow faster than in real life by a factor of 100'000 and nobody becomes upset about that. As long as it goes in favor of simplification.

 

Meat is downplayed for that balancing by a factor of about 1'000. As that does not directly go in favor of the gamer, the gamer is eventually slightly upset about it.

 

Where i have an objection is the aspect that one egg is equal to 7 portions of raw meat in the recipe of Bacon and Eggs, for example. That amounts to the meat being nearly invisible razor thin slices of ham. Being one cell layer thick or so in that range.

 

What i did since alpha 17 was to define a modification where i bring all recipes in a somewhat intuitive relation to each other, where calories are not created out of thin air or pure water, but respect the incorporated ingredients and their cooking state (raw being less nutritious than heated) and have the cooking perk strictly correspond to the value of the buffs. That way it feels perfectly balanced and intuitive in gameplay. You still need a bear or two boars per day, but at least not a whole horde of them to survive.

Edited September 17, 2021 by White-Gandalf
typo correction (see edit history)

[ZenTex]

I started playing again, last time I played was... 18.4?

 

I too am having major issues.

Not knowing about the insane food issue, I plopped down a quick shelter as my base of operations. The nearest small town wasn't very far, but still a good run.

It didn't take long before I got hungry, just from running to town and back.

 

Now I'm based just outside of town, but things haven't improved much. Pretty much all I do is raid kitchens all day (canned food is very scarce it seems) and go hunting just to not starve and even then I had to spend all I had on food at the trader.. Rabbits are a bit of a hit and miss exercise as they're so damn fast and don't sit still long enough to draw my primitive bow and actually hit before they run off again, so I'd say they're energy neutral.

 

Not knowing anything about the current version, I didn't know about the food issues, and did put a point in regeneration (it really consumes food for health?). Did put a point in master chef and the animal tracking ability, that's the only thing keeping me from starving. Farming is not an option yet with no seed recipes and no seed found as of yet.

 

While I always though this game was a bit too easy, it seems horribly hard now due to the lack of farming at my level, absence of big game and lack of knowledge of the current version's food issues. and that's with over a 1000 hours in previous versions. I'm on day 6, have @%$# gear due to raiding kitchens only, and spending my dukes on food  blood moon is coming soon and I'm underfed and woefully unprepared for even the tiniest horde.

[White-Gandalf]

I forgot: In addition to the underrating of meat, there is a bug in the animal definition (reported a long time ago) defining boars and deers at 1% of all game - letting chickens and rabbits make up 98%. The only visible animals in abundance are wolfs. Especially dire wolfs at night.

[Roland]

9 hours ago, White-Gandalf said:

Using meat as the main source of food in vanilla leads to having to eat multiple bears (not boars, you know?) per day.

 

I know you're exaggerating but you also MUST be choosing to play on the optional setting of 120 minute days if this is the case for you. You can't expect the game to stretch out your calorie consumption to match your desire to stretch out your time to be able to get 100% extra accomplished each day. Default settings are pretty balanced. I think 40 minute days are the best fit for the calorie consumption rate and the amount you must eat per day which is part of why it is my own preferred time scale setting. 

 

120 minute days really is an extreme setting and so you are going to run into issues such as having to consume double the amount of food that the default version requires within that time frame of "a day". Hunger follows real time and not game time so if you want to not have to eat so much per day, reduce your time scale.

Edited September 17, 2021 by Roland (see edit history)

[JCrook1028]

4 hours ago, ZenTex said:

I started playing again, last time I played was... 18.4?

 

I too am having major issues.

Not knowing about the insane food issue, I plopped down a quick shelter as my base of operations. The nearest small town wasn't very far, but still a good run.

It didn't take long before I got hungry, just from running to town and back.

 

Now I'm based just outside of town, but things haven't improved much. Pretty much all I do is raid kitchens all day (canned food is very scarce it seems) and go hunting just to not starve and even then I had to spend all I had on food at the trader.. Rabbits are a bit of a hit and miss exercise as they're so damn fast and don't sit still long enough to draw my primitive bow and actually hit before they run off again, so I'd say they're energy neutral.

 

Not knowing anything about the current version, I didn't know about the food issues, and did put a point in regeneration (it really consumes food for health?). Did put a point in master chef and the animal tracking ability, that's the only thing keeping me from starving. Farming is not an option yet with no seed recipes and no seed found as of yet.

 

While I always though this game was a bit too easy, it seems horribly hard now due to the lack of farming at my level, absence of big game and lack of knowledge of the current version's food issues. and that's with over a 1000 hours in previous versions. I'm on day 6, have @%$# gear due to raiding kitchens only, and spending my dukes on food  blood moon is coming soon and I'm underfed and woefully unprepared for even the tiniest horde.

Sounds like it's working as intended then. Brace yourself, they've already said food is getting harder in A20.

[meganoth]

Another hint:  Do some dig quests. You waste calories with the digging, but you get materials, money and food cans that will be enough to cover the loss and more AND usually a seed or seed recipe (if I'm not misremembering). There is really no alternative to starting a farm and starting it early with whatever seeds you find

 

And one egg in 20 nests IS bad luck.

 

Edited September 17, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Maharin]

I always play no loot respawn so when I loot a nest I destroy it.  That way I always know whether I've looted a nest before or not.  But yeah, with that option I loot a LOT of nests and don't really think about how many nests didn't have eggs, only how many eggs I have after doing a run somewhere and looting as I go.  Bacon and eggs is a very useful recipe early on and worth the effort of hunting for eggs.

[grimreefer24601]

Wish we could farm chickens.

[canadianbluebeer]

Don't forget to look for Bob's Boars. 

Lots of meat, fat, bones, cobblestone and cement.

 

You can even take out Grace with a primitive bow if you're careful (and have a LOT of arrows)

 

Hint: don't fall into her pit.

 

Personally, I go into mining early AND cookery.  Lvl 2 cook so I can use the cans of chili/salmon for better foods,

and not need eggs so much.

 

[MechanicalLens]

On 9/3/2021 at 10:27 PM, Roland said:

Try playing 19.6...

 

j/k...I guess the question I would ask is are you eating canned food all the time? If so then, yes, you will be managing food a lot more often. If you cook actual meals then you will eat less often and be able to enjoy other aspects of the game more. I would also ask if you are cold a lot and whether you are exerting yourself a lot. Cold makes you consume food faster. Running everywhere, using power attacks a lot, and mining all use up your food faster.

 

As well as a large investment into the Healing Factor perk.