Further Refine Cooking Mechanic


Qwyietman

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I'd like to see further refinement of the cooking mechanic. For instance, right now an item is either raw or cooked; if it has achieved the required cooking time it is cooked, anything else, even 1 minute less and its raw. More could be done with this - Items (particularly animal meats & fish) can go through stages of cooking such as raw , rare, medium-rare, medium, medium-well, well-done and burnt depending on how long it has been on the fire. In addition to this, the available calories from the item can vary with the cooking time along with the potential risk of disease; items could perhaps have their most calories at raw or  a low cooked level like rare and then gradually lower throughout the cooking process inversely with disease risk. This becomes a survival choice for the player - do I cook the meat to a medium-rare to boost calorie intake but risk incurring a increased chance of disease (lower than raw but more than well-done) due to food shortages? Or is eliminating disease risk more important to the survivor? I'm sure more can be done than I'm not thinking of but this would be a pretty cool start!

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Guest kristaok

This does make sense, I don't want things changed too much but you are right... there are different stages to Cooking Meat. So perhaps it would be a nice / more realistic touch to have Raw, Rare, Medium, Well Done, and Burnt. 

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4 hours ago, FrozenCorpse said:

Ehh... I dunno... We aren't talking beef here.. Game meats are notoriously lean and tough meats cooked for longer times than conventional stock.  I'm thinking the raw / cooked / ruined range is synonymous with inedible / edible / inedible.  Right now, cooking times seem geared towards roughly coinciding with mending, crafting and activity times so players can do things like repair, harvest, craft , read or take a cat nap, all while doing things of similar duration on a nearby stove.  Initiate changes so that process has to be strictly micro-managed to the nth degree and multi-tasking might go from being convenient / productive to ..another opportunity to mess up and be disappointed (not fun).

My 2 cents.

That's s fair point, but it still leaves the player with a decent choice: you can micro-manage your cooking in order to get the most benefit, or you can leave it on the stove while you read for an hour and accept the fact that you might be losing a handful of calories due to overcooking.

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I think the overall system of raw / cooked / burnt is fine.  However, I would like to see some sort of recipes added to the game, that confer benefits above and beyond what the ingredients alone would do.  Random example, a stew made from half a kg of venison, rose hips, and cat tails that when consumed hot and fresh gives you 600 calories, 30% thirst, the Warming Up benefit, and completely cures all Pain.  But only when consumed hot and freshly cooked, to give you a reason to fire up the stove more often.

Y'know...as opposed to having a file cabinet packed with mugs of cooked coffee ready to go...which is a little weird but c'mon we all do it.

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I'd only make one change - add the warming up buff to water if the "drink it" option is used when pulling it off the stove.  Other than that, I'm good and prefer to keep it simple rather than complicating it with cooking stages to gain or lose a few calories here and there.

ETA:  In fact, I would go so far as to say anything consumed directly from the stove/fire (using the "eat it" or "drink it" options) should give the warming up benefit.  Anything consumed from the inventory should not (that is, I would eliminate that coffee, teas, peaches, etc. stay hot for a short duration after being put into the inventory.  Items that contain calories should provide more calories if consumed directly off the stove/fire.

Edited by UpUpAway95
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  • 1 month later...
On 6/1/2019 at 12:53 AM, kristaok said:

This does make sense, I don't want things changed too much but you are right... there are different stages to Cooking Meat. So perhaps it would be a nice / more realistic touch to have Raw, Rare, Medium, Well Done, and Burnt. 

I think after putting more thought to it that Kristaok has the right idea here... more to it than raw/done/burnt, but not overwhelming. I like the idea of a few craftable recipes as well. To me, eating and staying fed is such a large and vital part of the experience, it seems like more variety can be added here to enhance the immersion.

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On ‎6‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 3:33 PM, UpUpAway95 said:

I'd only make one change - add the warming up buff to water if the "drink it" option is used when pulling it off the stove.  Other than that, I'm good and prefer to keep it simple rather than complicating it with cooking stages to gain or lose a few calories here and there.

ETA:  In fact, I would go so far as to say anything consumed directly from the stove/fire (using the "eat it" or "drink it" options) should give the warming up benefit.  Anything consumed from the inventory should not (that is, I would eliminate that coffee, teas, peaches, etc. stay hot for a short duration after being put into the inventory.  Items that contain calories should provide more calories if consumed directly off the stove/fire.

THIS! 

I find it disconcerting that a cup of hot tea or coffee warms you, and so do soup and the pork and beans ~ but nothing else. A hunk of hot meat, fresh off the fire should also warm you. Unless actual recipes are added at some point where we can make things such as stew, or jerky, there isn't much point to doing more than keeping the risk for raw meat vs. cooked/ruined meat in place. 

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I just think it's funny that my water could be a minute away from evaporating completely, but I still have 2 perfect liters left when I pick it up. Reminds me that I'm playing a game.

Edited by n4rut0f4n
for more polite wording
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I think the concept is interesting.

@FrozenCorpse has a good point that the new cooking system was overhauled to support micro-managing for clothing repairs and whatnot but I suppose with your idea, it would allow players even more micro-managing/time keeping strategy. Let's say I need to take shelter nearby because it would be an hour till nightfall and a blizzard is coming so I decide I'll cook this piece of meat for 30 minutes then move on so that I won't get caught in the middle of it.

Your idea of Raw/Well Done/Overcooked and the calories sustained depending on how cooked could carry a certain % of diesease risk per spectrum and an estimate cooking time that dictates in which one the meat will fall under. Like Meat in the Overcooked spectrum (Cooked for more than 1hr and 30 mins maybe) could have as little as 5% - 0% diesease risk but very little calorie value and Raw (from at least 1min to 20mins only) could have as much 80% - 100% but possibly have the highest calories it can sustain. The same concept with unboiled/boiled water.

And yes, like the other's have said, all cooked food should have a warming benefit. It just makes sense.

Edited by JujuBear
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  • 4 weeks later...

I would just like to see some recipes which required you to have a more balanced diet.  Add an affliction such as something similar to scurvy or whatever you want to call it.  Lets be honest, after a while all you  are eating is steaks.  If it means adding a couple more edibles or something you can cultivate indoors to put in a stew that would be great.  The cooking just needs more recipes and a reason to make them.  Realistically I would just like to see an affliction for eating nothing but meat for 300 days and adding that requires you to have other edibles or save your canned goods.  The canned goods should last longer as well.  If not edibles, then add a few more canned goods like preserves or something.  Just eating nothing but meat the whole time you play bothers me.  Protein poisoning is real.

Edited by Wade
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More collectable vegetation would help with the Protein poisoning. Pine needle tea has a good dose of vitamins C and A. Although, i think the birch bark tea has the same idea behind it. 

The cooking system doesn´t have to be complicated. Simple, 2 ingredient, recipes would be an improvement. For example we could add some rabbit, jerky or cattail stalks to the tomato soup for a boost in calories and a different flavour. When i was a kid, my aunty used to pour condenced milk over canned fruit as a quick dessert. Not sure what would go well with pork and beans, maybe edible mushrooms?

I´m a little surprised that we can´t find salt or pepper in the kitchens we ransack. A salt or pepper shaker is very small and light compaired to other condiments.

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