vegetables

[junglegreen]

Would love to   find a few veggies, herbs,  cooking  wine   so a nice venison stew could be made.     To be serious though a few variables on the food front would be nice to have.

The odd stock cube  sachet of soup drink etc.

[hozz1235]

Dog food doesn't count?   I assume you mean canned items since fresh would be spoiled.

[reginaphalange]

Yeah in reality you'd find absolutely tons of spices, salt, bouillon, etc. in cupboards as they last forever. I've read some prepper advice that says to stock up on this so as to literally spice up your food so you/your palate doesn't get bored. 

The first thing I'd rec implementing in the game is salt for preserving meats. Herbs aren't top priority here. I've voiced my wish for this and other things, like using bones from animals to make soup, which replaces the need for bouillon cubes. But unfortunately, salt in the game would be a limited resource, which means preserving food would be limited. 

Alcohol is definitely something missing from the game, however. 

It'd be a neat in-game feature, to be able to cook various plates. But we'd need more ingredients like you say. Canned peas would be the first on my list to appear as an addon to canned peaches. 

I wonder if cattail stalks can be thrown into a pot...

[Boston123]

Salt wouldnt be a limited resource. The ocean is readily accessible in two different maps, and you have thousands of square miles of potential firewood to make salt from the boiling of seawater.

Of course, the game doesnt let you do this, but that is because TLD isnt very realistic.

[hozz1235]

56 minutes ago, Boston123 said:

Of course, the game doesnt let you do this, but that is because TLD isnt very realistic.

Come on, let's be fair - no game can do everything.

[reginaphalange]

10 hours ago, Boston123 said:

Salt wouldnt be a limited resource. The ocean is readily accessible in two different maps, and you have thousands of square miles of potential firewood to make salt from the boiling of seawater.

Forgot about the ocean! Shows how much time I've spent there in game........

[cekivi]

While a nice addition, improved cooking (i.e. the ability to cook a soup/season meat) would need to be added first. 

[private duksworth]

I would like to have the use for alcohol as maybe a makeshift disinfectant or maybe a medical resource that might warm you up but gives you a stat drunkness which has the same affect as having low condition and maybe it will stop coldness but make you a bit hungry. (your screen sways and aim is off). I would like to have more harvestable plants like some kinds of berries but you wouldn't know which were toxic and which was safe to eat. meaning we could have a botany skill set which could help us.

[Mentatt76]

You don't need ocean to get salt, there are tens of buildings we enter and leave. I wouldn't believe any single one of them wouldn't have a table salt in their table. 

I can see the cups and plates on all the tables why not table salt? 

[Ape88]

Two words: Canned Corn...

And beans, and beets, and carrots, and olives (yuck, imho but it's food) and tomatoes, and literally anything else you can find in supermarkets... Mmm pumpkin!

However I have it on good authority that certain spices do go stale... Whole peppercorns and Salt last indefinitely, but pepper that is already ground goes stale after a while and there are some that are only good for a few months even dried.

[Carbon]

 Eating is a utility in TLD. Will scarfs down food at the same rate with the same effect regardless of what it is; he doesn't even sit to eat. In fact, it's less 'eating' than 'refueling', much like one fills the lantern. There is no satisfaction in consumption within the game; only the acquisition of food and the effect of consuming it are meaningful but the act is empty. I totally understand the notion, but to implement cooking wouldn't make any sense within the context of the game unless many other complexities were added and frankly, I'd hate to see TLD turn into some kind of homemaking sim.

 I think if you have time to think about things like making stew, you're not playing on a hard enough difficulty.

[Ape88]

4 hours ago, Carbon said:

 Eating is a utility in TLD.  

I totally understand the notion, but to implement cooking wouldn't make any sense within the context of the game unless many other complexities were added and frankly, I'd hate to see TLD turn into some kind of homemaking sim.

 I think if you have time to think about things like making stew, you're not playing on a hard enough difficulty.

Short term you and Will would survive... Maybe. Long term, you'd have issues. I often play, with the survivor eating what she obtains at first, but focusing on trying to be self sufficient. Adding an element where what you eat matters, especially over time, would make long term survival more challenging regardless of the difficulty level. Not everyone plays on Interloper. In fact, Interloper wasn't even a thing until folks cried out that they were bored with Stalker difficulty because there just isn't enough to do. Adding more things, more harvestable plants, making getting them count, could make the game a challenge for longer.

You wouldn't even need too many complexities added actually. Just a few simple ones...

[Carbon]

2 hours ago, Ape88 said:

Short term you and Will would survive... Maybe. Long term, you'd have issues. I often play, with the survivor eating what she obtains at first, but focusing on trying to be self sufficient. Adding an element where what you eat matters, especially over time, would make long term survival more challenging regardless of the difficulty level. Not everyone plays on Interloper. In fact, Interloper wasn't even a thing until folks cried out that they were bored with Stalker difficulty because there just isn't enough to do. Adding more things, more harvestable plants, making getting them count, could make the game a challenge for longer.

You wouldn't even need too many complexities added actually. Just a few simple ones...

 Nobody is talking about how varying foods might be necessary (affect player condition) and my post wasn't in any way an argument for or against such a proposition.

[CaveDweller]

 

12 hours ago, Carbon said:

There is no satisfaction in consumption within the game; only the acquisition of food and the effect of consuming it are meaningful but the act is empty.

I'm not certain I agree with this. Whilst you are technically correct, in reality the game world is what we make it. I'll not harp on again about vertical vs horizontal progression (in my other posts) but suffice to say that we all have rituals (whether we recognise them or not) that add depth and meaning to our characters outside of the pure 'mechanics' of the game.

For example, every time I kill a bear that night I ignore my usual calorie-counter ways and cook up a single steak and eat it down whole. Yes it's a waste of a match, yes it's more calories than the character needs to survive the night - but for me it's a ritual i.e., the post-hunt feast. A seemingly meaningless in-game act that enriches my out-of-game experience.

I do however agree with your sentiment re., TLD not becoming a SIMS-esk game. Part of it's beauty is it's apparent simplicity. It is the complex relationship between limited elements, the game ecosystem, that gives TLD it's character. On this front I personally disliked the 'graphical enhancements' of recent updates - it makes my beloved stark watercolour landscape far too cluttered, reducing the inherent sense of isolation and loneliness.

12 hours ago, Carbon said:

 I think if you have time to think about things like making stew, you're not playing on a hard enough difficulty.

I know this was somewhat tongue-in-cheek  but the inherent 'hierarchy of game modes' present in many posts irks me. I can successfully run Interloper games into the hundreds of days - to the point where there is no longer in challenge. Yet, to be honest, I can't remember the last time I bothered. My favourite mode is Voyager as I can come home from work, relax into a run and explore, try new mechanics and experiment with new strategies without having to concern myself with ever present death. TLD is for me catharsis, each to their own.

Anyway, back to the actual topic in question. Combing foods would need to have some inherent trade-off between use of materials and perceived reward. It is doubtful that it would be added purely for flavour. As mentioned above mechanically having salt to preserve/reduce rate of decay for foods like meat would seem to make sense. The issue is that meat is already far too easy to obtain in all modes, and level 5 cooking (L5C) makes spoilage irrelevant. It's interesting that in all YouTube channels I see doing Loper runs the bow is normally #1 priority, but little is ever said of prioritising level 5 cooking. Many other posts propose mechanics for working with 'spoiled meat' re., reducing the OP nature of hunting and fishing combined with L5C. Probably the most supported ideas are:
- 'trimming' spoiled meat to get to the good meat (some meat lost)
- reducing the caloric content of meat as it decays.

Regarding the above, perhaps spoiled meat would need to be re-cooked with spices to make it once again safe to eat. Use of spice as an antibacterial agent is well established in many cultures with warm climates where meat spoils quickly. So, mechanically a 1kg 30% condition deer steak @ 800 calories (ignoring cooking bonuses)  may become an 800g 70% steak @ 550 calories. This would also give scope for the devs to scale/balance the effect by mode and cooking level, and to balance availability of meat without moving into the complexity of migration etc.

[Carbon]

37 minutes ago, CaveDweller said:

I'm not certain I agree with this. Whilst you are technically correct, in reality the game world is what we make it. I'll not harp on again about vertical vs horizontal progression (in my other posts) but suffice to say that we all have rituals (whether we recognise them or not) that add depth and meaning to our characters outside of the pure 'mechanics' of the game.

For example, every time I kill a bear that night I ignore my usual calorie-counter ways and cook up a single steak and eat it down whole. Yes it's a waste of a match, yes it's more calories than the character needs to survive the night - but for me it's a ritual i.e., the post-hunt feast. A seemingly meaningless in-game act that enriches my out-of-game experience.

 Sure, I get that, but your ritual has little to do with eating, per se. My point is that eating is a non-event: just as refueling a lantern, harvesting a carcass, opening a door; it's all just waiting on a timer, a means to an end. If they added some animations to actions (the "complexities" I referred to in my OP) - the ability to actually stir a pot, add ingredients then sit and scoop up the food - then great, I would be more on board with the idea, but this starts to enter into Sim~esque territory, and that would likely end up being a bit much for me. I do like the simple immediacy of action right now, but I'm always down with options.

 The free play of imagination is something to be desired but as it stands, with a hollow ring filling, one doesn't need to suspend disbelief as much as completely delude oneself to construe this as this 'eating'. It's like some people claiming to 'enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning' in-game; watching a wheel fill doesn't constitute drinking let alone enjoyment for me. Will is just a machine that vacuums up food and drink for fuel. Having said that, I most assuredly lose myself deeply in this game and play within my own scenario construct, but this is more of an over-arching idea and not so granular. But yes, to each their own.

46 minutes ago, CaveDweller said:

I know this was somewhat tongue-in-cheek  but the inherent 'hierarchy of game modes' present in many posts irks me. I can successfully run Interloper games into the hundreds of days - to the point where there is no longer in challenge. Yet, to be honest, I can't remember the last time I bothered. My favourite mode is Voyager as I can come home from work, relax into a run and explore, try new mechanics and experiment with new strategies without having to concern myself with ever present death. TLD is for me catharsis, each to their own.

Not somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but totally. I'm not down with the whole He-Man nonsense either mate. My statement perhaps points back to my general attitude towards 'food' in the game, that being it serves a purpose and a celebration of savory delights isn't it. I play Stalker exclusively myself and while I wouldn't say it gets tedious, it does find a rhythm within which a more realistic form of cooking could be found. Again, I'm down with options.

 Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

[stratvox]

Well, for me, what I'd kind of like to see is the creation of a new affliction: malnutrition. This would probably require a new foodstuff (I think blueberries would be a good one) that would not cure any other afflictions, but prevent malnutrition. They wouldn't require prep of any kind (unlike rosehips) and be relatively calorie-rich compared to rosehips. At the moment, I completely hoard rosehips for their ability to deal with sprains and so on, but realistically I should be eating a lot more of them because a strictly meat diet will eventually mess Will/Astrid up. Among the "natural" foods, there is meat of various kinds, fish, and cat tails, rosehips, and mushrooms.

Blueberries would be relatively easy to get in the early game, but pigging out on them in the early game could lead to malnutrition in the later game as they run out. I think forcing the player to consider a balanced diet as scavenged food runs/decays out of the game world in order to maintain good health makes a lot of sense. 

[cekivi]

11 hours ago, stratvox said:

Well, for me, what I'd kind of like to see is the creation of a new affliction: malnutrition. This would probably require a new foodstuff (I think blueberries would be a good one) that would not cure any other afflictions, but prevent malnutrition. 

While an interesting idea there's the difficulty of making new art assets, testing new mechanics, and balancing a new "critical" foodstuff to avoid malnutrition. While maladies like scurvy could certainly occur in a Long Dark environment (e.g. "rabbit starvation"), it wouldn't necessary make for fun gameplay. 

Personally, I'd use what's already in the game and introduce a consequence for long term starvation. For instance, a reduction in carry weight until you are "well fed" again. However, even this has problems. As it is, food is so abundant it is a consequence most players won't experience. Worse, if not balanced correctly, it could really break the flow of the current game (i.e. miss one meal and you're penalized for a week). 

[CaveDweller]

On 07/04/2018 at 4:06 PM, Carbon said:

I'm not down with the whole He-Man nonsense either mate

Ha! Nice way to put it  I can see what you're getting at, I guess it comes down to how much an individual is willing to suspend their disbelief in order to be 'immersed'. Putting aside story mode, when playing survival mode you're not given anything to flesh out the characters or the world, other than 'there was a geomagnetic event, your plane crashed, everyone is dead and most food has mysteriously passed its use-by date.'

Those dots are a long way apart. In order to empathise with the character you are forced to fill in the blanks with a lot of your own imagination. I've been thinking about writing a post with regard to this for some time now, will probably do so at some point  Perhaps this is why I've personally never finished story mode, I just didn't enjoy the construct that I was forced to create through survival mode being forcibly reconstructed through story mode.

To bring things full circle, in a lot of games you have strong narrative OR strong gameplay - it's rare for a game to have both. TLD is unique in this sense as the gameplay, and the player's second-by-second choices, create the narrative. So what we end up with is strong gameplay backed by a unique narrative that we find personally engaging and relatable - because we made it.

4 hours ago, cekivi said:

Personally, I'd use what's already in the game

Agree 100%. In another post I discussed briefly how in TLD the weather and wildlife fulfil the role of NPCs and in their own interactions (independent of the player) create a vibrant game-ecosystem. There are a lot of posts about food in TLD, ignoring their content we can extrapolate one simple idea - lot's of people sense that something isn't right with the food mechanic. Is it perhaps that we have enough types of food in TLD, but that 'food' hasn't been fully integrated into the ecosystem? Is this perhaps what the OP was initially trying to get to the heart of? If so then it would seem that what we need to explore is how existing foods interact with each other, the other NPCs (wildlife and weather) and the player.

[cekivi]

17 hours ago, CaveDweller said:

 There are a lot of posts about food in TLD, ignoring their content we can extrapolate one simple idea - lot's of people sense that something isn't right with the food mechanic. Is it perhaps that we have enough types of food in TLD, but that 'food' hasn't been fully integrated into the ecosystem? Is this perhaps what the OP was initially trying to get to the heart of? If so then it would seem that what we need to explore is how existing foods interact with each other, the other NPCs (wildlife and weather) and the player.

It's likely a little of both. Consuming food has always been abstracted: you fill a meter, nothing else. However, offers a lot beyond simple calories. It's something to do, it brings comfort, it's exciting (if you have spices), etc. A more interactive food experience would add to the game world by making it more interesting. The best way proposed to achieve this was "advanced cooking" which was on the dev road map ages and ages ago. As I understood it would remove the progress bar of cooking and allow you to do other things at the same time as well as cook dishes. I think this would be much more interesting as you can have recipes to increase the caloric count of food (an excellent reason to cook something) as well as under or over cooking food if you're not attentive.  

[odizzido]

On 4/7/2018 at 9:13 PM, cekivi said:

While an interesting idea there's the difficulty of making new art assets, testing new mechanics, and balancing a new "critical" foodstuff to avoid malnutrition. While maladies like scurvy could certainly occur in a Long Dark environment (e.g. "rabbit starvation"), it wouldn't necessary make for fun gameplay. 

Personally, I'd use what's already in the game and introduce a consequence for long term starvation. For instance, a reduction in carry weight until you are "well fed" again. However, even this has problems. As it is, food is so abundant it is a consequence most players won't experience. Worse, if not balanced correctly, it could really break the flow of the current game (i.e. miss one meal and you're penalized for a week). 

I think what is needed is a weight for your character. As you starve you lose weight, lose too much weight and you die(but not before losing muscle mass/max carry weight). But you're correct, food is incredibly easy to get. This would easily be solvable by having a setting lower than low for animals, say making them 20% as common as they are and reducing their respawn forcing players to move around to find enough to eat instead of eating the same rabbit spawn outside your hut indefinitely. I also think that reducing the wolf population to 10% or even lower might be good as it's simply food that comes to you. You don't even need a ranged weapon to get wolf meat, they just walk right up to your waiting hatchet.

 

 

Also I just want to mention that if you're eating an animal's liver/heart/brain etc you can get all the nutrition you need.

[Stone]

@stratvox's point is a great one - we need a little variety (plants) in our diet to enable our bodies to break down meat.

I think its great the game has already included some useful plants and thats some something theres plenty of future scope for. I'm playing the game spolier free as possible so I don't know yet if it includes wolfsbane; but what a great example wolfsbane is of the relationship and drama between man, flora and forna enshirened in culture and language.

[odizzido]

@Stone Where did you hear that we needs plants to digest meat? As someone interested in nutrition and such I am curious to know more.

[cekivi]

Welcome to the forums @Stone

@odizzido: What @Stone may be referring to are the vitamins and micronutrients we get from plants which help our bodies function (e.g. vitamin C). I am not personally aware of any tied directly to digestion though. 

[odizzido]

@cekivi

[odizzido]

I had to post that because I couldn't get out of that red @ box of doom.

Anyways scurvy can be completely prevented with 10mg and likely less of vitamin C per day, easily obtainable from organ meats.