Frontier Cooking Thoughts

[hozz1235]

When Frontier cooking first was announced, I was REALLY excited about it.  I still really like the concept, but, for my playstyle, it isn't really practical.  Let me try to explain:

The main reason for eating is for calories and to prevent starvation.  I could cook a piece of meat, which is easily obtained from a variety of sources wherever I happen to be or gather numerous ingredients (which may not be readily available which forces me to carry them) to cook a complex meal.  Given that choice, I'm going to opt for the quick, guaranteed meal.  Yes, the complex recipes do have some temporary "buffs", but for the time and effort needed, it really isn't worth it to me.

I think expanding on recipes to include more that combine items that were pre-existing in the game would provide a little more incentive for me.  I've read numerous posts where players get pretty creative with their combinations, and sound delicious!  Just off the cuff here, such recipes as:  Salmon with sautéed Reishi Mushrooms or shredded Ptarmigan with Pork and Beans.

I believe there needs to incentive for our survivalists to cook these recipes, otherwise we're right back to frying up a piece of bear meat on our campfire rock.

I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts and their own experiences.

[PilgrimReaper]

Hmm it's not just about the temporary buff, it's also the fact that you can get an insane amount of calories for very little carry weight.

[hozz1235]

3 minutes ago, PilgrimReaper said:

Hmm it's not just about the temporary buff, it's also the fact that you can get an insane amount of calories for very little carry weight.

Good point.

[Semple Fi]

I think this feature is also for the long game, main base style players; with the buffs added to give some appeal to the traveling survivor players.  
One of the things I think I also noticed (I’ll need to verify) is that you gain more experience points per completed frontier meal than from just frying a piece of meat.  
 

i.e. make it to level 5 cooking faster.  
and additionally, the unnumbered benefit will prove VERY useful for moving large caches from one base or location to another.  
 

@hozz1235

[Dan_]

2 hours ago, PilgrimReaper said:

Hmm it's not just about the temporary buff, it's also the fact that you can get an insane amount of calories for very little carry weight.

Yep, greatest appeal to me. A large calorie cache that is very light and can be carried in replacement to cattails. Stalker's Pie looks ridiculously good, and once they fix the calorie percentage bonus issues it is going to be even more overpowered. 1600 calories for 0.20 kg and some of the ingredients creep to you when you carry it, can't beat it. The carry weight debuff is not even bad, you just eat before sleeping. 

Edited July 19, 2023 by Dan_
Grammar

[TwoFatCatz]

@Dan_ Couldn’t agree more. I’ve said in another thread that the Stalkers pie in my opinion is the best recipe if you arnt talking buffs (I like the simple pies for the extra carry weight and no negative effects as well as the fish cakes for the exact same reason) Easy to make, great calories and you are right the meat just walks right up to you 🤣

[UTC-10]

Pretty much what I was thinking when I was going over the list of recipes for Pot and Skillet and thought why carry either?  

I would be fine, as noted in my posting, with meat and water in a pot, simmered until tender, to make a very basic stew or soup.  It might be enough to get me to carry a pot or skillet routinely.  

[hozz1235]

If you think about it, they weigh disproportionately little compared to the ingredients that go into them.  Take for example Ranger Stew.  The finished product weighs 0.35kg but just the weight of the water that goes into the broth is 0.75kg, not to mention the 1kg of meat, potato & carrots!  I know stews cook down somewhat, but not that much!

[Dan_]

Yeah, that is a very good point but I don't think for a minute that is something HL overlooked. I do feel like the weight is the main draw to cook the recipes, otherwise you're just using extra resources in the form of prep time and fire, and finite ingredients to extend calories from renewable ingredients ( meat and fish, chiefly ), which makes little sense from a survival perspective. 

We also cook kilogram steaks for 48 minutes and get a kilogram of cooked meat in return which also makes no sense physics wise, given steak loses roughly a quarter of it's weight after cooking. Yes, a lot less egregious than the stews I'll concur, but the same quantum cooking is happening there. 

Flipside should be that you lose calories from a steak when cooking, specially on the campfire rocks where you'll lose fat from your steaks, and preserve most of the original calories when eating stews, as you should do. They just went with the adapting to the status quo of TLD grilling, which is fair in my opinion. 

[conanjaguar]

On 7/20/2023 at 9:28 AM, hozz1235 said:

I know stews cook down somewhat, but not that much!

Freeze-dried stew?

[UTC-10]

I am now carrying a skillet around with me.  I found that making one liter of water (the max) in a skillet took about the same amount of time as cooking one kg of venison with no juggling recycled cans in the process.  That kind of seems more "efficient" and it meant I had more time to walk away to do something else.  

I'd still like to see basic thick soup or thin stew recipes that could take any fish or meat, some water, nominally some other ingredients (we'll just imagine we cut up and tossed in onions, and such) and give us a hot meal.  

[DaPepster]

I think Frontier Cooking is the best update to TFTFT so far!  Foods that create temporary buffs, creativity of ingredients and dishes, 9 unique recipes (I'm seriously wanting to make the Camber Flight Porridge IRL, it looks amazing~), dishes that create LOTS of calories with simple ingredients, dishes that are light weight to carry... this is a great system.  It is mostly mid- to late-game, especially for the more complex and unique recipes, but still worth pursuing and experimenting with.  This also has the potential to making the food requirement in the Whiteout challenge easier to achieve as well. 

[Admin]

Thank you for your ongoing feedback! 

[James Hickok]

I think that Hinterland should add cooking ingredients and food to the trader in the next updates. This way the system could be alive thru the entire run. On my current interloper runs i have only 1 maple syrup on William and none on Astrid (found 3 i think in the entire world but i drank it early in the game) and its impossible for me to cook some of the food. 

I mentioned it before that it would be cool if we could trade goods for cooking ingredients and food. For ex:

- Hunt x animal and bring y amount of meat/skins/guts

- Craft improvised hatchet/axe/bow etc...

- kill x number of wolves/bear

- bring him a moose skin satchel 

- gather x amount of firewood

And so on.  I think it would be cool and more things to do in the world on longer runs. 

[Merrak]

On 7/19/2023 at 10:00 AM, PilgrimReaper said:

Hmm it's not just about the temporary buff, it's also the fact that you can get an insane amount of calories for very little carry weight.

I find that the new cooking system makes me want to craft specific items, but the food bonuses themselves aren't really the incentive for me. Like Pilgrim mentioned, the calorie to weight combo is the big selling point. Now, instead of always just carrying 4 moose steaks, I can carry a bunch of pancakes, bannock, or something along that line and still be under the 4 kg carry weight of the meat.

[UTC-10]

I have been watching a youtube channel Life-Outside by presumably a Russian woodsman and have seen him thinly slice meat into a pan and put that on a stove top and have that for dinner (he had bread too and he had a pot of hot water to make what I take to be a tea or coffee drink).  

I also watched as he cleaned fish he caught, put them into a pot with water, tossed in some greens, probably onions and garlic (I am no cook) set that on the stove top (wood fired) and then sit down later for a dinner.  

That's what prompted me to think that we could have used a very basic recipe for any meat/fish and water into a pot to cook to a thin stew or thick soup.  We have no way to make a hot meal from ingredients we gather naturally.  

I also saw him have three critical failures to light wood matches before he got a fire going.  😲

[hozz1235]

11 hours ago, UTC-10 said:

I also watched as he cleaned fish he caught, put them into a pot with water, tossed in some greens, probably onions and garlic (I am no cook) set that on the stove top (wood fired) and then sit down later for a dinner.  

That's what prompted me to think that we could have used a very basic recipe for any meat/fish and water into a pot to cook to a thin stew or thick soup.  We have no way to make a hot meal from ingredients we gather naturally.  

That's what I was saying too!  I don't mind the more complex recipes, but I'd like to see some simpler ones with pre-existing ingredients.

[conanjaguar]

Like @ajb1978 said on another thread… most of the buffs/debuffs for cooked food seem rather arbitrary. Like, I get a headache from the 2.75 rose hips in a single pie, and not from the 24 rose hips I made tea with?! Methinks these buffs and debuffs should be evened out across the board.

I think that certain foods should buff certain skills, rather than needs. For example, coastal fish cakes and fish stew could give a temporary buff to fishing. Stalker’s Pie might increase your weapons skills, and so forth.

Yes, I stole that from Stardew Valley, and it seems rather cheesy. Maybe certain dishes should stick to your ribs, allowing you to eat and store more calories than you otherwise would? This could be shown by a second circle on the UI, light blue like the others of it’s kind, overlaid on top of the hunger meter, and that will begin to fill when the hunger meter is full? Perhaps to a max of 25%?

[ajb1978]

Or provide lesser stackable buffs, that last a much longer time. Like a 1kg carry buff that lasts for a full 24-hour day, and can stack up to 5 times for a total of 5kg. And as long as you eat at least one of those things in a day, you keep the full buff. Going a day without causes you to lose 1kg per day until you're back to your baseline.

[Leeanda]

I've only just tried it properly.... I'm curious why I could use a ruined potato but not ruined rabbit meat.. but overall I like it... Except the headaches...

[ManicManiac]

I've not had much opportunity to try out the new items...
but from what I've gathered about it, I really don't think I like that these new food items come with buffs and debuffs.

  

 

 

Edited August 10, 2023 by ManicManiac

[James Hickok]

14 hours ago, Leeanda said:

I've only just tried it properly.... I'm curious why I could use a ruined potato but not ruined rabbit meat.. but overall I like it... Except the headaches...

I havent cooked a single thing yet although i gathered all ingredients from the entire map (i double checked xD) and all recipes ( i got the prepper pie y-day in the last bunker i went to - Blackrock xD) and i was thinking if you can use ruined ingredients to cook? Also if you can reheat a broth or other dish. 

[Leeanda]

15 minutes ago, James Hickok said:

I havent cooked a single thing yet although i gathered all ingredients from the entire map (i double checked xD) and all recipes ( i got the prepper pie y-day in the last bunker i went to - Blackrock xD) and i was thinking if you can use ruined ingredients to cook? Also if you can reheat a broth or other dish. 

I don't know about the broth but I was given the option to put the stews I'd already made back into the skillet so at least they seem reheatable.

[PilgrimReaper]

23 minutes ago, James Hickok said:

I havent cooked a single thing yet although i gathered all ingredients from the entire map (i double checked xD) and all recipes ( i got the prepper pie y-day in the last bunker i went to - Blackrock xD) and i was thinking if you can use ruined ingredients to cook? Also if you can reheat a broth or other dish. 

Just curious, but... why wouldn't you try it?

[James Hickok]

56 minutes ago, PilgrimReaper said:

Just curious, but... why wouldn't you try it?

Im a kind of a hoarder. I like to have and look. I have decorated my main base with all of the ingredients and i like to watch them just sit there. Really nice kitchen  

I kinda do the same in real life - i buy tons of stuff and never use it, especially military/survival eq and gear. Just hide them in the closet and w8 for the apocalypse/war i think. I think i have full gear for a squad.  Its strange but i havent been like that before. 

 

Edited August 11, 2023 by James Hickok