Beating the "starvation exploit"

[Wasteland Watcher]

I've noticed that condition when starving only degrades about 1% per hour. I abuse this by harvesting branches, chopping limbs, and other calorie-using actions and then at night eat enough calories to last 8 hours. I don't use the hibernate exploit, though I've read about it on Steam.

To address the exploit:

While in a starving condition all actions ought to take longer (double the time?) to accomplish (caused by apathy/depression). An affliction could be added to denote this state.

Also, it would make sense that while recovering during sleep after starving all day for condition to increase 1% per hour instead of 5%.  To clarify what I mean, if one does not get at least 1500 calories a day minimum then condition should increase much slower while asleep.
An affliction could be added (call it "malnutrition?") that occurs when someone eats less than 1500 calories a day for some fuzzy number of days in a row, and it would take some fuzzy number (3~5?) days of constant "full stomach" status to recover from. 
While starving fatigue ought in increase twice as fast as normal. No calories = no energy, right?  And while afflicted with "malnutrition" fatigue should increase twice as fast as well.

Being afflicted with malnutrition and recovering only 1% (or maybe make it 0.5%) per hour of sleep would make the "hibernation" strategy a lot riskier play style.

 

Thoughts?

[SteveP]

Maybe there should be something like % body fat to consume while starving and then % muscle mass for severe starvation. These could be medical conditions requiring rest and food to cure and just like you say, while afflicted, you would be weaker, slower and more attractive for wolves to dine upon.

[Scyzara]

Dozens of different solutions for the starvation/hibernation exploit have been suggested by various players during the last two years. Many of them have some downsides, but others don't (at least none that I'm able to recognize).

Hotzn collected many of these ideas in this thread almost one year ago. It's probably the most thorough collection of ideas regarding this topic and definitely a good read.

I'm still hoping for a hibernation/starvation fix and would gladly accept almost every solution to end this exploit, btw.

 

 

[illanthropist]

Wasn't even aware of these exploits, certainly doesn't sound like a fun way to play the game though, will say though the way your meters sink in voyageur compared to pilgrim is vastly different.  I'm barely managing to walk 100 yards chop 1 branch store that walk another 100 harvest 1kg of meat without keeping cold or tiredness off a red meter.

[Wasteland Watcher]

2 hours ago, SteveP said:

Maybe there should be something like % body fat to consume while starving and then % muscle mass for severe starvation. These could be medical conditions requiring rest and food to cure and just like you say, while afflicted, you would be weaker, slower and more attractive for wolves to dine upon.

Without trying to get overly complicated in changes (hoping my earlier suggestions weren't overly complicated themselves) I think that lowering maximum weight you can carry the longer you've been starving makes a lot of sense (muscle mass degraded from starvation). Good idea!

2 hours ago, Scyzara said:

Dozens of different solutions for the starvation/hibernation exploit have been suggested by various players during the last two years. Many of them have some downsides, but others don't (at least none that I'm able to recognize).

Hotzn collected many of these ideas in this thread almost one year ago. It's probably the most thorough collection of ideas regarding this topic and definitely a good read.

I'm still hoping for a hibernation/starvation fix and would gladly accept almost every solution to end this exploit, btw.

 

 

Thank you for that info! After reading, it seems a VERY good suggestion for leader boards is to remove starvation time from time calculated for "days alive" on leader-boards. I'd be interested in seeing how much that changes the rankings -- and I'm not one to be normally interested in those.

 

1 hour ago, illanthropist said:

Wasn't even aware of these exploits, certainly doesn't sound like a fun way to play the game though, will say though the way your meters sink in voyageur compared to pilgrim is vastly different.  I'm barely managing to walk 100 yards chop 1 branch store that walk another 100 harvest 1kg of meat without keeping cold or tiredness off a red meter.

I've never tried it and I agree -- sounds boring. I've read that the people who do it are trying to get high on leader boards