Preserving meat instead of being able to eat ruined food

[SirJustice12]

I would really love to  see them add a way to hang meat over the  fire to dry. Maybe even a few hard to find smokers. I think it's crazy that you can eat ruined food. Also dried meat or fish would weigh less and have less odor so this would make whatever extra effort is required to make it (because there always has to be a ballance) completely worth it. I know you're supposed to  be able to  haul it on the travoi but that's no help in rough terrain. 

[Mroz4k]

Personally I would love to be able to preserve meat via smoking it, drying or salting. It would be more immersive. But, as things are, the only benefit would be to remove the scent of it. Currently we can cook raw meat to recover 50% of its condition. I believe thats why drying or smoking is not yet in the game by now, as it is quite popular suggestion.

The ability to eat ruined food is fine imho, i think its meant to be game feature to make the processed food useful after decay ruins it, othervise by longer games, the food found would be useless entirely.

But, if in the future the way condition on food is changed, to where preserving it becomes crucial, would love to see smoking or drying as the means of preservation.

[UTC-10]

Keep in mind that food (meat and fish) decay (i.e. 100 days) was not placed on the same decay time line as most everything else (i.e. 1,000 day).  The devs probably had their reasons for not making the change likely related to how meat and fish might play in the then development of story mode. 

They just have not revisited the issue instead just letting ruined food be consumed with (if not at Level 5 cooking) some risk of food poisoning.  Probably a don't fix what isn't broke thing.  It is not as if they don't have enough rotting food on their plates.  

If food preservation ever became a thing in the game I would expect that old ruined food would likely continue and that new "ruined" food might get categorized as "spoiled" and then disappear from the game.  There is too much in the way of legacy ruined food that players depend on to just make it go away in one fell swoop.  

[MrWolf]

On 6/28/2024 at 8:39 PM, SirJustice12 said:

I would really love to  see them add a way to hang meat over the  fire to dry. Maybe even a few hard to find smokers. I think it's crazy that you can eat ruined food. Also dried meat or fish would weigh less and have less odor so this would make whatever extra effort is required to make it (because there always has to be a ballance) completely worth it. I know you're supposed to  be able to  haul it on the travoi but that's no help in rough terrain. 

I agree.  An option for reducing or eliminating the scent of meat would be great.  Being able to eat any canned or cooked food after cooking 5 with no consequences takes away much of the survival aspect of the game.  Maybe it could be different per difficulty or a custom option for those who want to play with it.  But, like with many other things, it's a single player game, so people can play the game however they want.  I try to always maintain Well Fed and never eat or cook anything that's less than 10%, even after cooking 5 (except fish, I'll cook ruined fish to get the oil but I won't eat it afterward).  I think avoiding or not being able to consume ruined food causes the player to think ahead and plan more.

[Mroz4k]

I believe it works this way mostly to facilitate the use of food items that "cannot be cooked renewably" aka canned foods. 

I dont look at ruined proccessed food as something that is spoiled (despite the name may suggest it). I think it is meant to be game mechanic to sometime add risk when eating low condition food on road when you dont have sufficient cooking skill yet. But canned food would never spoil unless it was opened or the can was compromised. In fact, most of the "proccessed food" in the game would not spoil, especially in Great Bear conditions. Thats why I think you can eat the ruined food safely once skilled enough cook.

Not that long ago, we did not have food that could be heated up for warming benefit, cans were it (later we at least got renewable birch tea). If ruined can of peaches could not have been heated, we would be out of luck for the heating bonus.

But that is how I personally look at it.

As for the +50% condition boost to cooking meat/fish, id say thats to offset how quickly meat loses condition on player-hunted animals. But Id say that raw meat that reaches ruined should no longer be cookable, would make some impact on overhunting for food stockpiles.

[RobotDino11]

I think that the cooked food will never make you sick buff is kind of dumb.

If you leave a slab of venison outside in the elements, cold or not, for 100 days then cook it and eat it, you are going to get sick.

you could be Gordon Ramsey and it'll still make you sick. cooking skill doesn't really effect this at a point.

I think the all time most asked for feature is curing or preservation methods. I know I've written a couple posts asking for it.

Like that's what they do in more remote regions like Alaska; they preserve their food through the winter. of course, on GBI it's always winter, but i think you get my point.

And preserving it could have its downsides, like salt-curing would become very dry and would cause you to become dehydrated, and smoking would require a long fire in order to achieve the effect desired. 

all in all, i think that we could use some preservation in the game.