Making jerky/smoked meat

[MariaWB]

One thing you'd need if you go sandbox and want to live as long as possible is a stable, long-term source of food. Wild animals, sure - down a bear and get 30kg of meat. But meat spoils.

If there was a thing to smoke meat or dry it so it's jerky, problem solved. Sure, it'll make you thirsty, but water in abundant as long as you have a fire to melt and boil it.

[Jimmy]

Hi, welcome to the forum!

This is a very common suggestion. Currently, you can increase your Cooking skill to level 5 and eat cooked meat without risk of food poisoning even if it's completely spoiled. Thus, preserving meat isn't a necessary tactic to avoid losing your hard-earned calories. To prevent food disappearing when it spoils, just make sure to drop it on the ground instead of storing it in a container.

Hope this helps!

[odizzido]

If jerky doesn't have a smell so that wolves are easier to get by then I am all for it.

[UTC-10]

As currently structured, especially when one has Cooking Level 5, there is no limitation on consumption of ruined cooked meat and fish or of ruined modern type foods.  It just takes an extra step. 

Since Survival mode was the test bed for mechanics for Story mode with the game-play of Story mode being a relatively constrained period of time, there was no need for any specific food preservation method or skill.  It was not worth the trouble.  Now if food preservation became important to episode 4 or 5, then we will see it in one form or another. 

With the advent of Lost and Found, which has the capacity to sweep up everything "outside" into a Lost and Found container, long-term players have found their previously abundant supply of ruined raw (because it could still be cooked) and cooked meat and fish to be mostly just tossed into the bit bucket.  How that impacts a given player depends on their particular situation and circumstances.  In a world of Lost and Found,  a food preservation method to help long-term players would be helpful even if the capacity to consume ruined cooked meat and fish remained a viable game mechanic. 

[ManicManiac]

@MariaWB

Welcome to the wilderness.

Most folks here have already discussed Cooking skill benefits but I'll echo one of my previous posts:

On 2/2/2020 at 2:55 AM, ManicManiac said:

Yeah, I eat with impunity once I hit level 5...  I know folks have reported still getting food poisoning from certain things, but it's never happened to me yet.  I'm fairly sure the game considers "processed foods" as "cooked."  (I say fairly sure because I'm not on the development staff and I can't look at the coding or anything like that... it's just an observation from my experiences)

In all my time playing (since cooking skill bonuses became a thing), I've never had food poisoning after reaching level 5.  I mean never, and I would regularly eat 0% condition: meat, canned goods, energy bars, MRE's... literally anything I can get my hands on (with the obvious exception of raw meat).

For folks that hate the fact that we can eat "ruined" food...  I'd say just role play it and set it next to a fire for a little bit to "reheat" our "frozen foods."

@Jimmy's right, preserving food (particularly meats) is a topic that does come up often, however considering everything that's already in place and the various ways we can use (or choose to look at) them... I just don't see curing meats as being all that necessary.  Though I do agree that it might be a nice touch... but for all intents and purposes the functions are already there (so to speak).