Salt Mechanic?

[Skuopbahdwoop]

Oh jeez, first time posting on this forum but here goes! 

I had wondered when I was boiling water on one of my play-throughs, about some kind of salt mechanic. Like if you could boil out water and get salt, or find it in stores/indoor bases (because I'd find it hard to believe that there wouldn't be bags of salt anywhere on the island). If you got enough salt, couldn't you use it as a meat preservative, to make its condition last longer? It's a stupid idea, I guess, since there's already jerky and if you get a high enough cooking skill condition doesn't matter as much on the meat- but I figured I'd post it here if nothing else. Maybe someone could make something better out of the idea, at least? Have a wonderful day! 

[odizzido]

You're correct that condition of the meat doesn't matter. It shouldn't even be decaying anyways so that's a good thing. Anyways salt could be used to preserve meat to make it not mould in -20 degree weather(how does that happen??), but it could also reduce the smell of the meat so it would make wolves less able to find you. It could be something to do to prepare for travel, if you have the time/resources.

[k0s0ff]

Sadly, the first mention of salt was in 2014.

Это не первое, а второе. Вернее, тема, посвященная этому. Я никогда об этом не думал. Но я часто читал здесь много ссылок на это.

One day I noticed a thought. It was about medicine. The point is that the game is not designed for long-term prospects. And we need to solve the problems that are here and now. I think food is just such a problem. I understand Why I really want to run half the island with 10 kilograms of meat and not smell. But this will lead to impunity.

In any case, the developers know exactly about this desire of the players. And as practice shows, it needs to be supported by a lot of people.

[Mroz4k]

Hi! Welcome to the forums! Hope you enjoy your stay!

I dont think this is a bad idea at all - in fact, as k0s0ff implied, the idea of a salt is quite popular, it shows up here and then! (And that is a good thing, if past experience on forums tells me something, the things that get suggested often usually eventually make it into the game!

There is soo much uses for salt past just meat preservation. And I definitely dont think it would be "irrelevant" - salted meat will last longer, at least inside, which could have its uses. Also, eating a salted meat would make one thirstier, and in a way, that has its use in itself - you can eat a piece of salted meat, get thirstier, and therefore be able to for example drink a cup of coffee. If you were on 100% thirst, you would not be able to drink it othervise.

Besides, salt could be used in cooking, to perhaps cook more difficult meals, prepare things like salted jerky (which could be a piece of meat with much lower scent value), for cooking things like stews (rich quality food that spoils fast, but could be parasite-free and most importantly, could be heated up to "warm up" on a fire, and drink hot to warm up and get the warmed bonus.

One of the ways to get salt would be from just finding it in a container somewhere, but you could also just boil water from Coastal highway fishing holes, which is basically seawater, for some sea salt.

So I am definitedly behind this idea. I frankly believe that one of  most likely changes we are going to see will be some sort of cooking-related update for sandbox, which could overhaul the current cooking mechanics and include some more variety to cooking.

[k0s0ff]

41 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

I dont think this is a bad idea at all - in fact, as k0s0ff implied, the idea of a salt is quite popular, it shows up here and then! (And that is a good thing, if past experience on forums tells me something, the things that get suggested often usually eventually make it into the game!

 

I didn't mean anything negative in my statement. I just shared what I saw on the forum. Everyone has different opinions and different desires.

I even think that salt is better than Smoking. In any case, you can do a lot of operations with salt.

This is at least a way to add new mechanics.  I'm pushing this idea.

[Skuopbahdwoop]

Thank you for the kind words! 

Yeah, I had figured salt would have been something introduced before, even if it was just in a forum. I do think it would be a neat mechanic to have salt or smoking abilities to preserve meat further, and have less of a smell- would even help conserve weapon condition, since if you just get a moose and preserve the meat then you could save a few arrows in the late game. And also, why not have stew!! It would be such a cool game mechanic to have fancier meals, where you get a thing of stew that spoils really quickly but when heated up it gives you a big hunger bonus. 

I do think that if salt was implemented though, it'd need to be balanced a lot to keep the game challenging. That it would either take a lot of salt in order to preserve meat, or "curing" it with the salt would require multiple in-game days for it to dry out, etc...just to balance out the benefits you would get from being able to create a meat with longer-lasting condition and a reduced scent gauge. Plus, I'd imagine if you got a high enough cooking skill things like salt preservation for meat wouldn't really matter, since you could just go around eating ruined meat without fear of parasites (at least, I believe, in easier difficulties). But at the very least, I agree that it would be an interesting thing to explore in future updates. 

(also sorry if things I'm talking about have already been implemented in the game- I have the PS4 version and I've only been able to get the update to 1.31, or the update right before the cooking system got overhauled to cooking pots and stuff. So my experience with the cooking mechanisms is just sitting by the fire watching the circle HUD while time is sped up.) 

[ManicManiac]

On 9/25/2019 at 12:37 AM, ManicManiac said:

It's definitely a neat idea, but one that I don't really see as being all that necessary.  I think food resources are actually pretty abundant (even in interloper).  Once we get proficient in our survival tasks food isn't all that much of a problem.

On 9/27/2019 at 11:41 PM, ManicManiac said:

In it's current form you can setup massive long term stores if you wanted to hunker down in one spot for a lengthy period of time.  Either storing raw  meat, or storing post lv5 cocked meat already has the same effect as what's described...

On 2/24/2020 at 3:16 AM, ManicManiac said:

Add salt and self-made jerky:
I think it might be a nice touch, but considering what's already in play... I really don't see a need for it.

I don't see a need to have a system for preserving food when the current setup already provides the same effect, and I don't think it's such a critical issue to warrant overhauling the systems again to add this particular facet when the current effect is the essentially present.  Again though, I can agree that it might be a nice touch... but one that I can live without.

[Avril]

BAGS OF ROAD SALT.

[Shadowin]

Hey @Skuopbahdwoop , I'm new to the forum too and glad to see your salt mechanic post.  I'm totally in support of it, and I don't mind to help keep the topic rolling. 

Personally I favor the idea of salting meat for jerky over smoking, and hearing some of the ideas in this post have made me even more of a fan of it. Particularly the stew idea.  It would be cool if you could cook a stew that either healed some of your current condition or had the ability to give you a slight condition buff for a time. That being at the expense of the stew having a very short condition length and/or it having to be eaten hot. I don't know, that may make things too easy, but I think there should be some benefit to cooking something besides just meat; even if it was just a major hunger filling meal.  Maybe a stew would require ?oz of salt, ?oz of meat, and either prepared rishi mushoorm or ?number of cat-tales..

 

On 11/18/2020 at 11:32 AM, Mroz4k said:

There is soo much uses for salt past just meat preservation. And I definitely dont think it would be "irrelevant" - salted meat will last longer, at least inside, which could have its uses. Also, eating a salted meat would make one thirstier, and in a way, that has its use in itself - you can eat a piece of salted meat, get thirstier, and therefore be able to for example drink a cup of coffee. If you were on 100% thirst, you would not be able to drink it othervise.

I totally agree there could be a lot of ways to implement salt into the game. Ways that have the to potential to enrich the game play.  Maybe salt could be used in the hide tanning process to speed up the curing, but at the chance to ruin your hide.  Or maybe just salting cooked food in general would increase it's caloric value, but as mentioned previously it would reduce your hydration.

I do understand @ManicManiac's point that it is not needed with the game play as it is.  And really, the way cooking works now adds a bit of simplicity to a game that is made to be difficult in other ways.  I would hate to upset the balance of a good thing.. That being said though, I really do like the idea of having a stew option and being able to make your own jerky. I prefer the idea of eating salted meat that has sat around a while to eating plain cooked meat of the same age.

Anyway, I hope this isn't too rambley...  I  am only hoping to provide some ideas and keep the topic going. Also, I don't mean any offense to anyone. I enjoy discussions, and I know my opinion is but one of many.

[Skuopbahdwoop]

@Shadowin welcome to the forum! Apologies, it’s been a while since I checked my inbox. Thanks for commenting! 
 

it’s a difficult balance, yeah- there are so many cool ideas from real life survival that would be nice to have, but may not necessarily serve the best purpose for the in-game context. Plus the whole making sure the game is achievable but still incredibly challenging is difficult to maintain. 
 

i had been wondering if maybe a cool idea for the salt mechanic/smoking mechanic that could balance out the insanely OP cooking bonus you get from cooking level 5. As it stands you could just make a bunch of snares, get endless rabbits, and then just spam the carcass harvesting and cooking stats until you can run around eating ruined meat with little to no penalty. It would take time, sure- but once you reach that level, what’s really making survival challenging? Conceptually, if you made the cooking 5 be less powerful but balanced it with some mechanic that allows you to preserve meat for a really long time, it would imo balance out the cost/benefit. But at the end of the day it’s all up to the developers.