Make Bone Broth from Carcasses

[Coffee]

Hi everyone, new to the forums here.

I'm a bit of a bone broth enthusiast IRL, and it struck me that it could meld well with TLD's survival and scavenging mechanic. 

Many times I've come across corpses with no meat or hide on them, but it would be neat to be able to collect the bones, cook them for two or three days (firewood supplies permitting) and come out the other end with some hot broth that can provide minor healing benefits. 

If the devs go through with the mental/emotional health mechanic, a hot cup of broth could provide some much-needed respite from the long dark outside. 

Broth doesn't tend to have many calories though, so it wouldn't be a food substitute per se. 

I haven't fully fleshed out the idea, but the potential is there 

 

[Jolan]

Calorie count could depend on how you make your broth - I think its a good idea for a "warming" food for later in the game since none of the warming foods (not counting medicines) are "natural".  It would also give you something to do with the "little" bits of rabbit.  

[Jolan]

and bone marrow has a fairly high calorie count

 

[Coffee]

Good point- it would be good if we were able to add a bit of meat, or even just organ meats and scraps to fill out the calories. 

I'd like to see it as a warming drink, too. Even if it would be too difficult to add different components to the recipe, I'd settle for just collecting bones and chucking them in a pot 

[Patrick Carlson]

On 4/7/2016 at 9:29 PM, Coffee said:

Hi everyone, new to the forums here.

I'm a bit of a bone broth enthusiast IRL, and it struck me that it could meld well with TLD's survival and scavenging mechanic. 

Many times I've come across corpses with no meat or hide on them, but it would be neat to be able to collect the bones, cook them for two or three days (firewood supplies permitting) and come out the other end with some hot broth that can provide minor healing benefits. 

If the devs go through with the mental/emotional health mechanic, a hot cup of broth could provide some much-needed respite from the long dark outside. 

Broth doesn't tend to have many calories though, so it wouldn't be a food substitute per se. 

I haven't fully fleshed out the idea, but the potential is there 

 

Interesting idea. Do you see this as a "last resort" type of food item in the game or something more substantial? I know simple broth is a popular drink/fluid replacement for high-altitude mountaineers. Easy to digest and warming. 

[SteveP]

3 minutes ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Interesting idea. Do you see this as a "last resort" type of food item in the game or something more substantial? I know simple broth is a popular drink/fluid replacement for high-altitude mountaineers. Easy to digest and warming. 

Primitive people often relied upon scavenging bones from predator kills in order to get much needed food. Predators may not bother with the bones however hyenas make use of lion and leopard kills in this fashion. They have special teeth for crushing the bones. I think it's a high value food item that one would not like to go to waste. There could be a time cost associated with processing the bones and cooking them but that melds well with in-game cooking activities (multi-tasking).

There are certainly a lot of calories available in bones; would you scale those calories down in the same manner as the meat and fat calories obtained from the larger animals? A real bear would yield hundreds of pounds of meat, not just 30 kg for example. Here are some examples of the weight of animals and the expected yield of about 50% for the meat. The weight of bones is 10-15% however you might not be able to harvest all the bones instead focussing only on the leg bones with the most marrow. So let's say the ratio of bone to meat is about 5%. Marrow is highly concentrated food, 15 grams giving about 150 calories. I can't find a reasonable estimate for the amount of marrow you get from a deer or a bear. I suppose maybe you get 400-500 grams so maybe 500 calories would be a fair estimate. Perhaps less.

[Schneidox]

I won't answer for Coffee. But some blackened coho salmon with sautéed reishi mushrooms would really hit the spot. 

[Coffee]

55 minutes ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Interesting idea. Do you see this as a "last resort" type of food item in the game or something more substantial? I know simple broth is a popular drink/fluid replacement for high-altitude mountaineers. Easy to digest and warming. 

Well it depends on how well the idea melds with the rest of the game. 

As Jolan said above, you can certainly add more meat to it and give it a major caloric boost. Whether or not the game can accomodate that kind of mechanic, I don't know. 

In it's simplest form- bones, perhaps a few scraps of meat and some herbs- I would see it as more of a natural, warming drink.

Also, given the amount of time it takes to cook (2-3 days) and the amount of wood needed to keep it fuelled, it would make sense to reap some kind of reward from drinking it. A minor medicinal benefit, perhaps. Nothing so crazy as to disturb the game's immersion, but enough that it would be worth picking a few carcasses when you've the opportunity.

To continue this long-winded post, the option to collect bones could appear in the harvesting menu, alongside the hide, meat and gut. But that's completely up to the devs, obviously 

[chanster115]

+1

[Dirmagnos]

14 hours ago, Coffee said:

Also, given the amount of time it takes to cook (2-3 days) and the amount of wood needed to keep it fuelled, it would make sense to reap some kind of reward from drinking it. A minor medicinal benefit, perhaps. Nothing so crazy as to disturb the game's immersion, but enough that it would be worth picking a few carcasses when you've the opportunity.

There is no need to add anything to it, purely for the purposes of adding something. Dealing with marrow should be a choice with its own tradeoffs.

As already mentioned it is extremely high on calories, so while processing it would take a lot of time, it would also make food item with extremely high calories to weight ratio.

[Jolan]

20 hours ago, Patrick Carlson said:

Interesting idea. Do you see this as a "last resort" type of food item in the game or something more substantial? I know simple broth is a popular drink/fluid replacement for high-altitude mountaineers. Easy to digest and warming. 

marrow is something that was eaten regularly by most of our ancestors.  I'm not seeing as a last resort so much as a d'oh moment for our intrepid heros.  Like realizing that gibblets actually are food.