New mechanic: spoiled food

[Viktoriusiii]

Wait wait wait!

Hear me out before you start ranting

No I do not want to use mods. I only play base game... I dislike most mods due to balancing/theme conflicts.

So here is my idea for this game:

 

Basically, food has a spoiltimer (could be connected to your online timer so that it doesnt spoil in your inventory or chests as long as they are locked under your name (no pw only to prevent abuse) or a generally lower spoiltime on multiplayer servers.

 

So certain things like potatoes, corn, yucca, and beer can be stored for a long time even without preventing it. (7+ days online singleplayer) while other food items like eggs, meat and can only be stored 1-2 days without prevention methods.

 

And while I think it is highly unlikely they will do this, I'd like the idea of adding "salt" deposits in the desert, which can be used in a low effort chamber to prevent stuff from spoiling, but also lowering the benefit of the food.

And once you get electricity, fridges and stuff can prolong the time by up to 100 days.

This makes getting food far more of a continous thing, rather then "harvest a massive field once, hunt for one day and make 30 stews that last until the next alpha hits"

 

Fridges also produce quite a bit of heat and electricity... so the prerequesites are pretty high and there is even a price to pay (heatproduction)

 

This would make amounting wellness a much harder tast AND would make buying cans a waaaay more legit thing then now (since they are not effected by spoiltimers)

 

 

The only problem is stacking. Which brings me to something I wanted in 7d2d for quite a long time anyways.

Of course they could just implement it like in Ark where having 200 stacks meant that food could potentially last 200x longer then it should...

but I would like another method:

They once said that they dislike stacking food items... and with the car giving even more space to fill, this would be the perfect timing to introduce something like this.

If you "stack" food, the stack automatically goes to the lowest timer and spoils together (basically putting in spoiled food with fresh food spoils the fresh food pretty much instantly)

So you CAN stack it... but it is not advised. So if you harvest a field of potatoes and corn, there is no negative effect, but if you start putting those things to the stock of 2month old food, they will all suffer from it.

So everytime you go hunt or harvest, it pays off getting a lot of that and stacking it in the fridge.

This would mean that you would want more inventoryspace at home, actually giving you some trouble with foodstorage.

 

 

 

What do you think? Do not send me to starvation or other mods. I'm not asking for those. I think it would fit perfectly in the base game.

[OzHawkeye]

I would not be in favour of a system that led me, or even incentivized me, to put 1 food per slot.

 

An average timer for the stack, I could live with (it's how EGS does it for example).

[Gazz]

If at all then spoilage should reduce the stack by a %, not one item.

 

And yes, merging an item/stack into another stack should proportionally adjust the spoil timer. That math is trivial.

[OzHawkeye]

If at all then spoilage should reduce the stack by a %, not one item.

 

And yes, merging an item/stack into another stack should proportionally adjust the spoil timer. That math is trivial.

 

Ayup, and I can see good reasons for food spoilage. It can really underpin electricity (which, particularly for those who build underground bases simply isn't needed), and makes fridges very useful.

 

I just hope y'all do it in a way that is reasonably simple to overcome, and things like fridges with little or no spoilage, and spoilage timers more or less averaged for stack food seems like a good way to go (as many other games confronting this problem have).

[ZombiDweller]

There is way to increase crops growth time already. Which make the game on survival aspect more interesting. No instant corn, potatoes, etc.

And spoilage has been suggested many time, and good ideas in this one.

 

My vote goes definitely need spoilage on game. Natural incentives to go outside world, and not lurk in base/cave corners.

[Kurogo]

What would be my incentive to harvest crops for more than just the immediate meal I needed? with a system like this, I'd just leave my crops fully grown until I needed a meal since they don't spoil in the field.

[Viktoriusiii]

they would spoil on the field aswell probably even as fast as they would be when picked...

or they bring back the "trample" mechanic.

and you cannot plant new crops when you dont harvest the old...

[Kurogo]

I don't think it should be as fast as when picked. It's still on the plant and alive, afterall. If anything, it should be at the same rate as being refrigerated.

[Viktoriusiii]

You've never been working on a plantage did you?

A ripe fruite is only harvestable for about 5-20 days depending on the fruit. In the fride or even more in the deepfreezer its conserved for sometimes years

So maybe make it 2x as durable on the plant... maybe 10x... (if you are offline) and repeat the growthcycle if a crop hasn't been plucked. So it just replanted itself. So youll never have a complete field to harvest and not plucking it has downsides as well (loss of the growthcycle)

 

maybe even add a "plant died" chance when replanting itself...

[Kurogo]

We call them farms here, and although I haven't worked with all the plants 7dtd has, I do know I had blueberries for months from my bushes. The potatoes seemed like about a month...

 

But years in the refrigerator? Maybe more like a couple weeks at best. I could see a freezer keeping them for a year or so, though that might make more sense in a MP game.

[TotallyNotABot]

Food can spoil when they fix animal spawns or if they add in fishing. Until then I'd rather not have it.

[Hollowprime]

One idea is to copy the don't starve mechanics. But I also hate spoilage and even more grinding for my food so I don't know how good this might be. Surely it adds to the realism of the game but then again it's already grinding enough trying to get some spores and a hoe to fertilize the land. I would personally be okayish with this if the spoiled food was turned into old sandwich (rotten food basically as it's called in don't starve) so you can turn it into antibiotics later. Or perhaps you could use spoiled food as fertilizer.

Basically copy the don't starve mechanics of spoiled food ,but don't harm the crops. Hell ,you might even consider allowing natural crops to appear randomly once in a while or have seeds in bird nests.