Preserving System

[coyote86]

Yes, you read it...

This popped up when i reached day 30 and realised that i am soon to be screwed with absolutely no food due to the fact that it decays when it sits in my inventory/drawers/chests.

Of course, that is Natural! It would've been a piece of cake if that feature wasn't there.

Additionally, you run out of cans/crackers/soda etc. and your only chance of survival is relying on fish/rabbit/wolves and deer which MEANS that you need harvest/eat their meat.

Yes, everybody knows that.

Let's get back to business.

You have this humongous area of snow, these below 0 Deg temperatures and killer windchill!

The thing that seems to bother me is the fact that you cant use snow to stash bits of your venison or fish. It would stay frozen to until you decide to cook/unfreeze it. Snow will act as a FRIDGE.

Of course, you can add some extra features like wolves stealing your precious meat or attracting a pack near the location you've stashed it, so you could make it as a useful, yet costly feature.

Anyway, awesome game you've made so far! Keep up the good work and remember, your fans are supporting you with FULL STEAM! (lol)

EDIT: The thread has become more of a "How to preserve meat" so the subject is changed (a little). Blast them ideas

[LucidFugue]

I like the idea of being able to create realistic things out of the environment - Surely you could throw some snow in a metal container to keep your raw venison for longer?

On the other hand though, these things have to serve the game in a positive way. I think the current decay system is pretty well tuned to give a balance - forcing the player to go out searching for food regularly rather than allowing you to hoard enough meat to last for a week, or having raw meat only edible for a few days.

One or more preservative strategies might upset that balance. If you could salt and dry meat, store raw meat for longer, stuff like that, it could give players the ability to hunt down large amounts of game and then not worry about food for ages, or otherwise require a retune that would make not doing that much harder - which could cut down on your ability to be more nomadic.

[Cosmoline]

I get the sense that there is a temp-sensitive system for how long the meat lasts. And assuming you are truly doing all of this without sufficient salt, the decay rate is not unrealistic for the indoor environments where it hovers between freezing and semi warm when there's a stove going. Preparing game in an emergency without the usual huge amount of salt is a recipe for spoiled stuff. Even if you freeze it solid outdoors, it's still going to be vulnerable to decay without salt.

[coyote86]

I like the idea of being able to create realistic things out of the environment - Surely you could throw some snow in a metal container to keep your raw venison for longer?

On the other hand though, these things have to serve the game in a positive way. I think the current decay system is pretty well tuned to give a balance - forcing the player to go out searching for food regularly rather than allowing you to hoard enough meat to last for a week, or having raw meat only edible for a few days.

One or more preservative strategies might upset that balance. If you could salt and dry meat, store raw meat for longer, stuff like that, it could give players the ability to hunt down large amounts of game and then not worry about food for ages, or otherwise require a retune that would make not doing that much harder - which could cut down on your ability to be more nomadic.

The idea of using salt to slow the decay rate of meat is indeed clever. Salt,however, is a rather scarce material (Not to mention during the apocalypse. Where the hell are you gonna find salt in Canada, anyway.) Still, having it to exist in the world, even in considerable amounts will count as a trait. Not having anything to mind right now but i'm sure the devs/community will figure something out that involves salt usage.

Another thing, about the meat decay rate when you are outdoors/indoors.

I started a new game last night (Died 60 days in. Wanted to find out if you can descend down the mountains at the pass between Mystery lake and the other area) and ill put that theory to the test. Will also look how wolves react to meat when it's sitting on the ground (Haven't tried that yet.)

[Cosmoline]

I would actually expect any trapper our hunter to keep a large amount of salt in cabins. It's standard to use a lot of the stuff to preserve both meat and even more essential for hides. I'm talking the big Costco bags of salt here. Hundreds of pounds.

[The_Hawk35]

If you look at the temps outside it is almost ALWAYS below 0c. At these temps what you'll most likely find is frostbite on meat left out there. And frostbite has no impact on safety of meat, just on texture and flavor.

[LTD_CooKie]

On the salting idea: what if the player could collect salt water and boil it for salt? This would require you to make a hole in the ice (use ice fishing holes), collect the water (would require a bucket, or maybe a pot of some sort), fuel to make a fire, boil it (longer cooking times, because all the water needs to evaporate), maybe even require a knife to scrape the salt out of the container if you want to make it even more difficult. Doing all this would make long term preservation of meat quite the task, and maybe more balanced.

[coyote86]

On the salting idea: what if the player could collect salt water and boil it for salt? This would require you to make a hole in the ice (use ice fishing holes), collect the water (would require a bucket, or maybe a pot of some sort), fuel to make a fire, boil it (longer cooking times, because all the water needs to evaporate), maybe even require a knife to scrape the salt out of the container if you want to make it even more difficult. Doing all this would make long term preservation of meat quite the task, and maybe more balanced.

Hmm, I'm taking a liking to this. But as for salty water... In what part EXACTLY is our area of exploration located in Canada? This is important because ponds are usually sweet water (does not contain salt in it) and so far as studied in geography, i don't recall Canada to have Salt Veins scattered...

Nevertheless, Great idea on how to attain salt!

[elloco999]

Well, Coastal Highway would be located on the coast, would it not? That's not a lake you're standing on like in Mystery Lake, but the ocean.

I like the idea of using salt to preserve meat but I wonder how much salt you would get from evaporating the water. I think you'd need to evaporate a lot of water to get a useful amount of salt. To get enough salt you'll need to evaporate a lot of water. I've done some googling on the matter and it seems that you get about 2.5 - 4 cups of salt from 4 gallons of water.

Another thing I found out about making salt from seawater is that it takes a very long time! After boiling away most of the water, you need to let the salt dry out. This can take several days up to several weeks.

Here's a good tutorial on making salt from seawater for those who are interested.

I think I would try to build myself a smoker to smoke the meat to preserve it. Seems a lot less labor intensive.

[ChillPlayer]

I think I would try to build myself a smoker to smoke the meat to preserve it. Seems a lot less labor intensive.

That's also what they mostly do in the tv series "Ultimate survival alaska" whenever they've catched a fish big enough for preserving. Building a smoker can be done in less than an hour and it preserves the meat pretty immediate, you can eat it already after smoking it. And you need nothing nature does not provide for in abundance, unlike salt, which you first have to find/destill

[elloco999]

Indeed. Plus the smoking process actually cooks the meat as well and adds taste. Granted, coating it in salt also adds taste, but it adds a little too much for my taste You can eat a smoked piece of meat straight as is, but you would need to remove most of the salt before eating a piece of meat that has been preserved with salt.

[The_Hawk35]

Making a smoker is really as easy as building a rack over the fire with green wood. And you can use pretty much any wood to create the smoke, just some add a more pleasant taste and some a less pleasant taste. However it pretty quickly cooks and preserves food.

I'd imagine you'd need an outdoor fire to make this work, and in the game this has limitations due to the wind.

That said I could see it as a possible use for some of the burned out buildings, it would shelter from the wind, but also allow the smoke to dissipate so you don't die maintaining the fire.

I'd think that this would take say 18-20 hours to add to the challenge for the game.

[elloco999]

True, and this might be something I'd do if I was on the move. But if I had settled somewhere, I'd put a little more effort into the smoker and make something like a tall box with multiple racks in it and a place on the bottom to make a smoldering fire. That way you can smoke much more meat at once and it will smoke faster as the enclosed space prevents the smoke from dissipating too fast and it will also keep more heat in.

[Hylander]

Hmm, I'm taking a liking to this. But as for salty water... In what part EXACTLY is our area of exploration located in Canada? This is important because ponds are usually sweet water (does not contain salt in it) and so far as studied in geography, i don't recall Canada to have Salt Veins scattered...

Nevertheless, Great idea on how to attain salt!

As it turns out, one of the largest salt mines in the world is in Canada:

"Sifto Salt Mine in Goderich, Ontario, which, at 1.5 miles (2.4 km) wide and 2 miles (3.2 km) long,[3] is one of the largest salt mines in the world."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_mining

[Observedfuture3]

I have read several post about preserved meat I would think that there would be smoke houses at the trappers house, homestead, and some where around the water in the costal highway area I also had an idea to make the smoke house work make the bottom like the wood stove or fireplace interaction and the top where you put the meat like the cabinet interaction

[Gallowsknight]

Food decay always frustrates me. I play with minimal "gaming" the system. If I see food I grab it. Because that's what you should do in a survival situation. A can of beans is going to last years. In fact very little of the food you find would have a short halflife. Soft drinks decaying?

I'd rather have my food stores damaged because I'm stuck in my house due to blizzards and can't hunt, than because a few weeks past

[Rooks_Nemesis]

I've only been playing this amazing game for a couple weeks now I'm a Xone user.. Any ways I quickly ran out of food storage space in the camp office ML after bagging a 35 kg bear.. My solution was to store all access meat ( after cooking ) in the closest fishing hut.. Now to my surprise the meat inside the camp office has actually degraded 7 points faster inside the office then in the fishing hut.. I'm going to test this further but I truly hope that this is not just a happy coincidence!

As for decay rates on canned goods I do agree that it should be slowed down to a crawl.. Aswell should the MRE's

Just a thought.

[AmericanSteel]

Making a smoker is really as easy as building a rack over the fire with green wood. And you can use pretty much any wood to create the smoke, just some add a more pleasant taste and some a less pleasant taste. However it pretty quickly cooks and preserves food.

I'd imagine you'd need an outdoor fire to make this work, and in the game this has limitations due to the wind.

That said I could see it as a possible use for some of the burned out buildings, it would shelter from the wind, but also allow the smoke to dissipate so you don't die maintaining the fire.

I'd think that this would take say 18-20 hours to add to the challenge for the game.

If you are going to use the rack method, then simply use the fireplace as the smoker. No need to go outside. If you wanted to build a smoking box (using just smoke and no heat), then the fireplace in the Homestead in PV is ideal. Let me drag the metal drawer out of a file cabinet to make a fire box. Use another metal drawer to make the smoker. Connect the two with a piece of dryer exhaust tubing (the dryer is in the basement). Done.

[EnergyTurtle23]

I definitely want to see some kind of meat preservation system in the future. I can see how it might throw off the balance a bit, but I think in the end it would be a favorable balance change. I have a few ideas for how this could be implemented:

- Have one hidden saltbox in each of the three zones, make it a random spawn (like the bunkers), so that finding a saltbox will be a major accomplishment for the player. He can now store up to 150 pounds of meat in the saltbox and it will decay at 5% of the normal rate (very slow decay). You cannot store anything but meat in the saltbox, and there's no guarantee that the saltbox will spawn at one of the "superior" buildings, so you may have to travel back and forth between your saltbox and your main camp. With one box in each zone, you could have up to 300 pounds of meat stored safely.

- Saltboxes would be vulnerable to bears, and if one spawns within a certain radius of the saltbox, he would be automatically attracted to it. If you are not paying attention, the bear could run off with half the contents of your box or more.

[aColonUlcer]

I really like the idea of a smoking system for meat. I'm sure that in the game, it would be for more useful in the long run since eventually you WILL run out of every day cupboard food. I'm currently on day twenty, and I have massive amounts of venison and wolf but scared that I won't be able to eat it all before it goes bad. Since I've only had the wolf for three to four days and it's already at 80%. (Once cooked, the meat was at 97%) In about four or so days, over 17% of the meats condition had disappeared. Smoking meat, which I would presume would take at least one to half a day, would help preserve the meat you wish to save in case of a rainy day. Or in the case of TLD, blizzards, and you run out of food on the day you wanted to go hunting or check your traps, or even if you go outside and there's a bear hangin out on your front yard.