Hunger is broken?

[TheKnightIsDark]

I was bored out of my mind at 300 days on Stalker but wanted to get the 500 days achievement. So I farmed 2 bears, 4 deer, and a few wolves. I cooked all the meat, and then hunkered down in a cave to eat, pass time, sleep, repeat.

After a week of doing this I decided I wanted to experience what hibernation was like. I've read people talk about this but never tried it as I've always been well-fed for the 5kg bonus.

So I let my hunger go red while maintaining other needs. Once my condition drained all the way down to about 5%... I ate 1kg meat (~1000 calories) and slept for 12 hours in a bearskin bedroll. BAM, I was back to full condition. I was then able to pass time for the next ~32 hours until my condition was red again

Bottom line. 1000 calories was able to sustain me for about 2 days including the time slept. Someone could probably stretch this longer. I remember people saying that you could last a day on 720 calories, but this is nuts...

[odizzido]

Working as intended. Health is a currency and you can spend it on whatever you wish. Food is one of those options.

[Alexa99]

I still didn't know this.

[hozz1235]

Yup, can really be handy when you're stretched for food.  I use it when on one of my "craft arrowheads" binges, where I'll go days crafting so as to conserve coal.

Edited March 4, 2021 by hozz1235

[UTC-10]

The devs seemed to not want people to get into a "my meter just went red now I better fix that right now or I will die very very quickly".  It would get in the way of playing story mode - though story mode typically should have sufficient supplies - so we get a relatively slow degradation of Condition (which determines when one dies).  

People who play only survival mode do find the slow degradation/impact of red meters to be unreasonably unrealistic but the devs obviously do not want to spend time on upsetting the game balance as they see.  After story mode concludes, we could see in further development things change.  The Long Dark II might become a very different game from The Long Dark. 

[mfuegemann]

I do think, not the slow health degradation caused by hunger is the problem. That is comparable to real life, where dehydration and hypothermia is more deadly.
The problem is the fast regeneration of our health while sleeping. 

Touching this will alter the gaming experience very hard, so I am not seeing it in the near future. I am not sure, if Interloper runs will still be possible then without the most of luck during the first days.

[RegentRelic]

Hunger is kind of meaning less outside of the early game in interloper. Since not only do you bearly need to eat especially now with birch bark tea, but you can also store meat forever.

[Old Hermit]

Still amazes me that we can eat 2kilos of meat at once, plus 660ml of water, and there's room for more, even after months or years of rationing and stomach reduction

 

2  k i l o s   o f   m e a t

[metlman72]

18 minutes ago, Old Hermit said:

Still amazes me that we can eat 2kilos of meat at once, plus 660ml of water, and there's room for more, even after months or years of rationing and stomach reduction

 

2  k i l o s   o f   m e a t

Agreed that Venison steak weighs in at 2.2 pounds American. I can eat 2 of those bad boys in a row. 

The calories are close as our real life daily is based on 2000 I believe. I think that's what our labels say on most food.

[odizzido]

The number of calories you would need per day is at least 2000 if you're not working too hard and not too cold, but that can go up quite a bit to 4000+ if it's really cold and you're working hard.

That being said, the meat in TLD is absurdly low in calories compared to RL, and the amount of meat you get off an animal is also absurdly low. I understand they want you to hunt a lot because there isn't really a lot to do otherwise but personally I would like it if they bumped up the calories and meat amounts but then lowered the number of animals.

 

Also you have to be able to eat 2+ kg of meat because our character could literally die of starvation in a single day. If they added an energy storage/fat system then you could limit your meals which could be interesting.

For example you can only eat like a kilo at a time, and it bumps your energy up, but if you've been starving for a week it won't max out your energy. To get high energy you need to not under eat. A fat system could mean you don't start dying in under a single day of not eating, it would eat away your fat stores instead.

 

Most of my ideas of how I would like TLD to be are to make things more long term. Don't kill someone super quick, get them in trouble and give them a chance to try to fix the problem if they can. Seeing death slowly getting closer instead of jumping out at you is more enjoyable for me.

[Old Hermit]

56 minutes ago, odizzido said:

I would like it if they bumped up the calories and meat amounts but then lowered the number of animals.

Totally agree. Hunting could be a journey itself (except for rabbits), and it would be more rewarding, with a bunch of meat. Also, i think the blood scent radius of the wolves should be increased a bit.

[odizzido]

Increasing scent range is a bit of a double edged sword because you can get meat delivery service if you bump up your scent rating. I've done that a few times to lure dogs in for their meat. It could make hunting much easier.

[starlin]

33 minutes ago, odizzido said:

Increasing scent range is a bit of a double edged sword because you can get meat delivery service if you bump up your scent rating. I've done that a few times to lure dogs in for their meat. It could make hunting much easier.

its always made think they could add a recipe for an every-meat burrito.  Even make it a challenge mode thing. 

[starlin]

13 hours ago, odizzido said:

The number of calories you would need per day is at least 2000 if you're not working too hard and not too cold, but that can go up quite a bit to 4000+ if it's really cold and you're working hard.

 

 

I guy I know used to tell stories about his army days in the dessert.  Hes like 5'5", and scrawny... but he had to eat at least one and a half MREs a day, because he burning so many calories loading/unloading stuff all day. 

On a side note: Metabolism plays a big part in how much calories you burn a day.  Mine started slowing down, and now I gotta keep it under 2k to not gain weight.  But in my teens, I could pack away a whole large pizza as a meal, and not even have to work out.  I miss those days.  Now if I look at salad dressing wrong, it goes straight to into a muffin top. 

[odizzido]

haha I know what you mean, when I got to about 26-27 years old I started packing on the pounds. It's slow and not easy to notice but when I started growing moobs and going down stairs got jiggly......well, that's when I was like "oh, goodness".

I don't mind gaining weight easily though, food isn't a big thing for me IRL. That's lucky I guess, I know it's a struggle for a lot of people.

[Old Hermit]

8 hours ago, odizzido said:

Increasing scent range is a bit of a double edged sword because you can get meat delivery service if you bump up your scent rating. I've done that a few times to lure dogs in for their meat. It could make hunting much easier.

I never thought that way. The point when wolves are no more a threat, but only a potential lunch.

Anyways i think that wolf meat is an "inferior" hunting meat, due the parasite risk and high thirst drain, then no problem.

[Pillock]

If you change the health regain settings in the custom mode to 'low' for sleep and 'none' for general awake-and-healthy regain, you only get about 12% of your health bar back from a 7 hour sleep (7 hours is the most you can sleep for in one go with the thirst rate on maximum).

This makes starvation -> sleep-regain tactics fairly worthless, since you only get back at night about the same amount as you lose in a day from starving. If you are also losing condition from freezing, you won't get all of it back from one night's sleep, and you'll be in deficit. If you get attacked by a bear or a wolf, it can take 4 or 5 days to get back up to full health, assuming you're not taking any damage from starving/freezing/thirst/fatigue during that time. You could also put the fatigue settings to a level where you can't sleep very often because you don't get tired quickly - but I think this makes the gameplay a feel bit weird, and generally easier, so I don't do that.

You can set wolf, bear and moose spawns to 'low', which makes them less available for food (combined with 'low' spawns for other animals, including fish, this can make food much more difficult to come by. Another thing I do is set the wolf-fear level to the maximum, along with the scent ranges - this means they can detect you from far away, and they often run off immediately, which makes them much harder to hunt for food.

[odizzido]

I play with minimum spawns with fishing disabled and maximum animal population lowers over time. There are still way too many animals, I wish we could set it lower....like 10X lower.

Also I play with sleep regen off and awake regen on low. It helps to bandaid the issues at least.

[Pillock]

Yeah, I think you get less condition regen overall if you set it the way you do. But it feels more intuitive to me to have it regain during rest; also, when I first started playing TLD, sleep-regen was all you got anyway, so that feels more natural to me.

I don't like completely disabling any single feature altogether (except for Timberwolves!) so I keep fishing switched on, along with firearms and knives/hatchets. Having no sleep-regen disables Herbal Tea, which is another reason I don't do it that way round. With awake-regen  on 'none', you still get some from Birch Bark, if you can find it. I have all the natural resources (sticks, tree limbs, OMB, mushrooms, etc.) on minimum, so birch bark is fairly rare. But yeah, there's still plenty of them - more than you tend to need!

It would be nice to have more flexibility with the Custom settings to make certain things even more extreme than you currently are allowed.