A Way for Protein Poisoning To Work

[Willy Pete]

For those who don't know, Protein Poisoning is when the body has too much protein and not enough nutrients (fat, vitamins, minerals) to digest it. You basically starve to death despite eating. In the wild, you can't survive on a diet of only rabbits as they have far too much protein and not enough other nutrients. For more info, here's the wikipedia page.

Now, as it currently stands, Protein Poisoning isn't implemented into TLD and you can live solely off of a diet of rabbits. I personally have no complaints about this as I always try to vary my diet in the game. However, I've seen enough posts about it over the years to put some thought into it and I think I have a TLD-esque idea to fit Protein Poisoning into the game.

It would work similarly to how Intestinal Parasites currently works, where you get a growing percentage each time you eat predator meat. Each time you ate a rabbit steak you would increase "Risk of Protein Poisoning." The risk decreases over time, meaning if you vary your diet this will never affect you.

If, however, you happen to have a craving for rabbit flesh and you increase your risk to 100% you get the effect: Protein Poisoning.

At the minimum, Protein Poisoning gives you no calorie gain when eating rabbit. This means if you don't start eating other things you'll eventually starve and start losing condition.

As an add-on, it could also increase your loss of fatigue and/or water and calories. However, it shouldn't cause condition loss on its own.

To cure Protein Poisoning, all you have to do is consume X number (maybe 20,000 or so) of calories from non-rabbit sources. It could also require one Reishi and Rosehip tea.

Overall, Protein Poisoning would be an easily-avoidable affliction that could be a serious threat if untreated. Treatment would be easy, provided you can find some other animals or food to eat. It shouldn't be in Pilgrim, but I wouldn't be against seeing it in Voyageur and above difficulties.

What do you all think?

[odium]

no thanks, unless they plan on implementing a variety of natural and renewable food sources.  the current system isnt realistic but its just how the game is built. i dont forsee this getting a huge overhaul this far into the release

[Willy Pete]

6 hours ago, odium said:

no thanks, unless they plan on implementing a variety of natural and renewable food sources.  the current system isnt realistic but its just how the game is built. i dont forsee this getting a huge overhaul this far into the release

While I also don't care one way or another whether this gets in or not, TLD already has a variety of food sources that are renewable. As the idea currently works, you could cure protein poisoning with 2 fully harvested deer.

[odium]

9 hours ago, Willy Pete said:

While I also don't care one way or another whether this gets in or not, TLD already has a variety of food sources that are renewable. As the idea currently works, you could cure protein poisoning with 2 fully harvested deer.

to my knowledge the only resource that is renewable (short of beachcombing) is game/animal protein.  as far as i know, cats, reishi, rose hips, dont respawn.  birch bark does i reckon but i hardly consider that a food source. 

edit: oh and fish of course

Edited March 1, 2020 by odium

[EjectedCasings]

I've always wondered why our character doesn't get protein poisoning as well, but, like @odium said, there just isn't the amount of plants for that to be sustainable. Reshis and Rosehips are finite, and I don't think that their properties should be used for calories. Birch bark is the only renewable source of plant calories, and even then it doesn't drop nearly often enough to make up a substantial amount of calories.

[ajb1978]

I really don't want to have to start micromanaging nutrient types.  About the closest thing to that I would support is some kind of "getting sick of eating bear every day" system, to force you to mix it up and trap rabbits, hunt deer, fish, etc.  Similar to cabin fever, if you eat the same thing too much, you get sick of it and can't eat that thing anymore until you have something else for a while.

But even that's pushing it.

[Willy Pete]

Is something getting lost in translation here? To get over protein poisoning you would just need to eat any other form of food. Be it deer, bear, wolf, fish, whatever. All it would do is prevent you from eating rabbit for a while. I'm not advocating anything other than that.

[ajb1978]

6 hours ago, Willy Pete said:

Is something getting lost in translation here? To get over protein poisoning you would just need to eat any other form of food. Be it deer, bear, wolf, fish, whatever. All it would do is prevent you from eating rabbit for a while. I'm not advocating anything other than that.

I think you must have a vastly different play style because I hardly ever farm rabbits.  Maybe very, very early on to score some pelts for a hat and mittens, and then to get a few spares for repairs.  Otherwise the calorie to weight ratio of rabbits is some of the worst in the game (only fish are worse), and even if you set up a ridiculous amount of snares, the amount of time and tool wear spent harvesting 5-10 rabbits at a time just isn't worth it.  I know I can't speak for everyone, but I think at most people use rabbits to supplement their diet and a means to craft/repair their hat and mittens, not as a staple that serves as the basis for a diet.  You're way better off leveling Fishing and getting food that way, because not only is there no processing time before you cook a fish, you get lamp oil on the side as well.  This kinda seems like a lot of effort to address a problem that doesn't exist, at least not to me.

[Guest kristaok]

I'm definitely down for this, I've always wanted to see protein poisoning implemented. So it's a yes from me!

[BareSkin]

Definitely a no for me until renewable vegetables. In late loper what will you eat except meat? Even meat becomes hard to come by after 50days.

[ManicManiac]

Protein poisoning (in simplest terms) is described as a rare form of acute malnutrition generally attributed to a near complete absence of fats from one's diet.  This kind of thing generally takes months (not days) to develop.  Besides, I would say it's reasonable to think there are enough fats in the other animals we can eat, I doubt this wouldn't really be a problem.

Besides all that... it's a game and I agree with @ajb1978, I just don't think it would fun to have to deal with this sort of micromanaging in this game.  I don't think I would enjoy a "diet simulator" anymore than I could enjoy a "depression simulator" or a "campfire simulator." 

On 11/10/2019 at 11:46 PM, ManicManiac said:

I feel there comes a point where there is only so much micromanaging that can be done before it stops being fun and starts just feeling like a slog...

 

On 12/5/2019 at 7:26 PM, ManicManiac said:

I just don't think something like this would be any fun, and cross over into the territory of being on the level micromanaging that I don't really enjoy in games that I play.

So, no thank you to protein poisoning.

Edited March 3, 2020 by ManicManiac

[odizzido]

If you eat the rabbit's organs you can get the fat you need. I would assume our character does this as eating only muscle meat would cause you to be deficient in so many things. Protein poisoning would be only one item in a long list of issues you would develop.

[Willy Pete]

On 3/1/2020 at 6:22 PM, ajb1978 said:

I think you must have a vastly different play style because I hardly ever farm rabbits. 

I don't farm them either, as I mentioned in the original post, I vary my diet.

[wilsonaka]

Hello,

Before I wrote this response, I did some research on the subject matter at hand. I'm not an expert by any means(at this game, or otherwise).

I do agree that "rabbit starvation" could  be implemented in this game. I disagree with the proposal of the way that it is contracted.

On 2/29/2020 at 5:50 AM, Willy Pete said:

It would work similarly to how Intestinal Parasites currently works, where you get a growing percentage each time you eat predator meat. Each time you ate a rabbit steak you would increase "Risk of Protein Poisoning." The risk decreases over time, meaning if you vary your diet this will never affect you.

The reason I disagree with this is because this is not very realistic to this condition.
The way it could work is if you eat too much rabbit over a period of time. This is more similar to cabin fever risk than to the risk involved per times eating.

For example: If the rabbit were consumed for, say, 7 full days (and this would have to be the only source of food that you consume), then the risk is locked at 80% per day, or uses a measure such as cabin fever does: the risk factors' incremental increase over time, then this would be substantially more realistic than just the risk alone from eating. The proposed idea would basically make rabbit meat just like a wolf or bear meat, but with less kcal/kg.

The symptoms of this condition are also much different than food poisoning, and could kill you if it persisted.
There are symptoms that I think could be implemented into the game. These are: Diarrhea, headache, and eventually savage hunger.

Diarrhea would increase the consumption of water by a factor, either progressively or locked at a percentage, requiring you to consume much more water than normal. Headache would stand as it is in-game. Hunger would factor in much as thirst does. These symptoms persist for a period of time, and can only be cured by consuming food other than rabbit over that period of time (I would propose 30-48 hours), and if your calorie count goes to 0, the timer is paused.

As with all things, there should be a balance.  You can avoid rabbit poisoning using two methods: 1: Consume food other than rabbit. 2: Instead of frying up the rabbit, there is an option to boil the rabbit(whole, gutted) instead.  The fat of the animal would just become a hot drink with caloric content. This also would give a bonus to warmth, and also possibly over time give a small boost to stamina (45 mins or so, reduces stamina use by 5% or similar balance), and then the counter for that particular boost resets.  This would also ruin the hide and the meat, or the meat could have reduced caloric content to a degree. To further complicate things: If you boil the rabbit with the guts inside, it gives you 75% chance for food poisoning.

All in all, this would make getting rabbit poisoning very rare. It also would have to be worked on actively to achieve it.  This is why I personally don't believe this would be implemented. If it were considered, it would be very low priority for development. However, I do support the idea of rabbit poisoning as a feature in the game.

I am sorry, I do not know how to undo the white background.

 

Edited May 27, 2020 by wilsonaka
aesthetic

[Dan_]

I'd say they could implement it, but only if we get a Myfitnesspal page on the diary so I could track my macros for those rabbit gainz. 💪

I'd love some sort of complete macro nutrient system, in addition to tracking calories and gaining excess fat or getting weakened from loss of muscle tissue due to starvation. But I suspect I would be in the crushing minority, it would make the game clunkier and no more fun to play just for the sake of simulation for most players. I understand the OP is suggesting something simpler and way more palatable ( see what I did there? ) gameplay-wise, but I think it's fair to question how much of the player base survives on rabbit meat alone? And crucially, would these impact the gameplay experience at all? I'd wager it wouldn't. 

[Guest jeffpeng]

Personally I don't see this as an issue, really. It is already sort-of hard to get by on rabbits alone on Interloper. I mean, yeah, Kaninchenhunger  aka Protein Poisoning is a real thing, no question. But I don't really see this solving an issue the game is currently suffering from. Games don't always benefit from having more realism put into them.

Also if we are talking late Interloper ..... going on rabbits alone won't work. You will need to supplement your diet with the occasional wolf or deer unless you want to regularly travel between several rabbit groves.