Cooking system critique

[Val123]

I would like to preface this with the fact that I love love love that the direction the dlc is taking the game to, when I found out we were going to get a more complex cooking system and safehouse customization I was absolutely elated. (I am excited about a bunch of other stuff but those two are my most wanted)

The cooking system as is has enriched my gameplay but respectfully, I do have a few gripes with it after playing for a while. Also I am primarily a pilgrim/custom mod player (we deserve rights too! XD), idk if that's important info in this case.

 

1. When cooking with a pan or a pot you can no longer see the condition of your food or sort by condition

I was, and still am, quite upset with not being able to sort by condition since I used that all the time beforehand. Not seeing the condition of the food you're about to cook is even worse. Canned goods get a "new"/"dusty"/etc modifier at least, but I would still like to see the exact condition. It gets really annoying when say, you have a bunch of potatoes (no modifiers or anything to tell how fresh they are) and say, you want to cook the one at 26% condition before it goes all moldy, but there is simply no way to tell which one that is if you're cooking with a pan or a pot. You can still see condition when cooking straight on surfaces but then you have to manually click through a whole lot of loot (I get a bunch on pilgrim) to find that poor old 26% potato. Or else you have to drop all your other potatoes and cook the 26% one on the pan or pot but that's just ridiculous. This is just one example, but hopefully you get my point.

No way to see the condition here

 

CAN see the condition but have to click a bunch + can't use a pan or pot

 

2. I would really like to be able to see a list with just the new recipes while cooking (and maybe also a separate thingy for meats, canned goods, drinks, etc)

I know this is a very tall order and this one is less of a gripe and more of a suggestion, but I would really love to see all the recipes in a separate folder thingy within the cooking menu, to see which recipes can or cannot be cooked at a glance. I know we have something like that next to the crafting menu but I would like to be able to see all the recipes for the pan or the pot (depending on what is being used) separately from all the drinks, cans, etc. Having to wade through my many food items alphabetically to fish out the recipes gets a little bit tiring + I think it would be a great quality of life improvement if we could maybe sort foods within the cooking menu by category. The cooking menu got a bit clunky before the update, but now with all the new recipes and ingridients it's even more unwieldy.

I know interloper players don't get as much loot as us pilgrims so it's not as much of a problem to them but I love hoarding stuff and having a way to simplify the cooking menu would be amazing.

 

3. I think the new recipes should be reheatable

Pretty much what it says on the tin - I think it makes total sense to reheat a stew or give a pie like 3-5 minutes on the pan to get it warm again. I admittedly don't know how that would affect the balancing of it all, but I think it's something to consider at least. I know the recipes give a nice warming buff when consumed hot, so maybe they could give a lesser buff when reheating? I know tld is not an rpg or anything, but I love my immersion, and having to eat cold stew when realistically I could very well reheat it makes me a bit sad lol

 

And finally, small suggestions:

- fries? could be a recipe that's just a touch better than baked potato since it uses oil, maybe?

- oat flour mayhaps? survivors could maybe turn the new oats we got into flour with a hammer, and it could be nice to be able to use flours interchangeably

- anything with cat tails would be very much appreciated, if only to be able to eat them in bulk

 

[xanna]

31 minutes ago, Val123 said:

1. When cooking with a pan or a pot you can no longer see the condition of your food or sort by condition

Can't sort by weight any more either, which was the most useful to me :o(

[xanna]

I'd really like a checkbox to hide recipes that are too advanced for our skill level. That would help so much.

[Sherri]

I agree about the sorting issue. And also being able to see how many servings are in a can of coffee or box of tea, because that one that only has 1 serving left is the one I want to cook & get it outta there. Lol

[PilgrimReaper]

Good suggestions there! 

And I was also thinking that something with cat tails would be nice, since it seems that the idea is to get us to use items / ingredients that we may not have used much otherwise.

[Admin]

Thank you for your helpful feedback! 

[Cattleman]

1 hour ago, Admin said:

Thank you for your helpful feedback! 

How about a few very simple recipes that are 100% renewable...

 

My idea... Salt is a natural mineral. Make rock salt naturally spawn in caves and mines similar to coal but in far less quantities, and maybe only in a couple caves or mines.

 

Use rock salt, water and ptarmigan to create broth. Then this broth can be used to create a very basic meat soup... By combining broth and meat. Doesnt need to give a big buff aside from the warming benefit when eaten hot. This would add rabbit soup, venison soup, moose soup, and potentially bear and/or wolf soup. Could even optionally add diced cattails to the meat soup to round out the recipe, but this would then make it non renewable.

 

Edit: instead of diced cattails one could add in prepared birch bark... Walla!!! 100% renewable, and possibly give a very minor buff of condition restore.

Edited July 6, 2023 by Cattleman

[xanna]

I get the impression that more, simpler, recipes are coming. There's a menu for tin-can recipes that we don't have yet. Hopefully they will make more of our harvestable ingredients

Edited July 6, 2023 by xanna

[Val123]

On 7/7/2023 at 12:25 AM, Admin said:

Thank you for your helpful feedback! 

I can see that the condition of foods within the cooking menu has been patched in, that's honestly great! That was my biggest problem with the update and I'm very glad to see it resolved.

I do, however, have a weird UI issue I noticed - within the cooking menu it lets me either scroll with the mouse wheel or by dragging the slider, but if I drag the slider some of the way and then start scrolling with the wheel (or vice versa), the menu starts freaking out and takes me all the way back to the top. That's not an issue within the regular inventory or crafting menus, seems to be exclusive to the cooking menu. I wonder if the devs noticed that and if it's something that is going to get fixed as well