Cooking skill

[Salty Crackers]

The Cooking skill tree is a bit overpowered. When you reach level 5 cooking, you can store meat forever due to you never getting food poisoning, and you get a crazy 25% calorie bonus. I would suggest the following changes:

Level 2: 10% faster cook times. 

 

Level 3: 15% faster cook times, ability to harvest lamp oil, 25% less chance of food poisoning on cooked food

Being able to smash open cans is a terrible benefit. Eventually, there won't be any cans to smash open. Requiring level 3 cooking to get oil from fish is a much more worthwhile benefit. It also makes oil a scarce resource initially.

 

Level 4: 20% faster cook times, ability to harvest lamp oil, 10% calorie bonus, 50% less chance of food poisoning on cooked food

I'm putting the calorie bonus at level 4 because I think that you need to put in more effort to get such a powerful bonus.

 

Level 5: 25% faster cook time, ability to harvest lamp oil, 15% calorie bonus, 75% less chance of food poisoning on cooked food, 50% resistance to parasites

Instead of being completely immune to food poisoning and parasites, you only have a reduced probability of getting it. This means you can't eat ruined food or lots of wolf meat, making food somewhat harder to stockpile in the long term.

[Fuarian]

Agreed +1

[epower]

Agreed.  The impossibility of food poisoning on level 5 is totally OP.

I'm only 130 days into a Voyageur run and I've already got Level 5 Carcass Harvesting, Level 5 Cooking, and level 4 in everything but Rifle.  I'm saving my rounds for Bears only.  Doom on you, Ursa...

I wonder if it wouldn't be better to have levels 1-7 or even 1-10.  Currently it seems way too easy to max out the various skills.  Mastery should require considerable experience.  Full disclosure, I'm angling my style more toward long haul/ permanent survival here as opposed to a quick and dirty run thru.  e.g. Jeremiah Johnson and his mentor Bear Claw Chris Lapp.  I understand that such a play style may not be evryone's slice of venison but I do think longer term survival should be rewarded.

[Troxism]

Wouldn't be sad to see Food Poisoning Immunity go (because it makes Antibiotics ALMOST useless and it doesn't actually make much logical sense either), but 'resistance' to parasites is literally useless esp on Interloper (because the chances are low but it's so massively punishing* that it's simply not worth it without total immunity). Would have to be a much greater resistance (Like 75%), and apply to the actual duration of the illness, not the chance of getting it (so that getting it is FAR less punishing and it actually becomes viable to supplement your diet with carnivore meat at the cost of medicinal resources over time). And honestly even that would pretty much make it a useless 'option' because it would still be a huge drain on resources over time.

*For anyone who is unaware, parasites lasts 20 days on Interloper, and towards the later half of that duration, you are perma-exhausted and your max condition drops to something like 60% or even less. Considering that you spend about 80-95% of your outdoors time freezing (meaning being at a 20-30% condition deficit from your max is common even when doing simple things like collecting sticks), this basically means you take a massive risk doing ANYTHING but sitting next to a fire for the latter part of the illness. Which simply isn't worth the risk. While ofc you could avoid predator meat, this would basically either force you to intentionally starve (which I consider exploiting the game) to make food sources like rabbits actually viable, or you would be forced to do A LOT of fishing, which basically pidgeon holes you into a really passive playstyle.

As for the calorie bonus, well if you ban starvation then you need an absurd amount of food in the long term (3kg of meat a day), so it seems fine as it is for that. And if you exploit starvation, calories are basically irrelevant anyways (since you stretch your food about 5-8 times by doing so). Boggles my mind this mechanic isn't fixed/is apparently intended tbh.

As for skills leveling too fast, well tbh you can always level skills fast if you really try (and it would be extremely hard to prevent that without making them use limited resources ala Mending, not that Mending has much use/value above level 3 anyways). My 'days survived' for getting Cooking 5 is between 20 and 30 days on Interloper (obviously it varies based on starting location/luck with loot and weather), but that is because I consider it basically vital to long term Interloper play (since I hate sitting around fishing passively) and make an effort to max it ASAP. And then ofc you have stuff like Firestarting, which levels at a snails pace if you play 'normally' (I make a fire on average every 5-10 days on Interloper past the first 25 or so days survived, meaning it would take me about 800-1000 days to get to level 5 without any intentional leveling) but can be power-leveled to level 5 before day 10 if you actually want to do it (it's insanely tedious however and I don't actually recommend doing it).