Geronimo35

Thanks, I didn't know that. But I'm playing with Interloper settings and then tweaked a bit on weather and wolf attack strength so I can some day play Interloper succesfully.

I agree. Hinterland made food deteriorate so fast that the risk of food poisoning is quite high for items below 25%. At the same time they abolish this whole idea with level 5 cooking, which means you can practically eat anything (except raw meat). It would be way more balanced to retain a certain level of food poisoning, provided that food wouldn't decay so fast. Or you introduce food items, such as dried/smoked meat that would last very long. It doesn't make sense to me either, and Hinterland should revise this. You're kinda rewarded to keep around your 0% wolf meat because at some point you will reach level 5. What I would like to see is that Hinterland splits this 700 calories intake just before sleeping and rewards it by splitting it into 500 for dinner, 200 for breakfast (and/or lunch). Yes, many tribes eat only once or twice a day, but it would be great if the meal system has different rewards and bonuses when spreading that base calorie intake of 600-800 calories to survive, into different meals. For example, your energy drain is lower when you'd have a 200-300 calorie breakfast. Or that any breakfast provides something similar as the current 'warming up bonus'. Right now, advanced players chose to starve, especially on Interloper. But if you'd reward regular food intakes with more energy and other perks, you would encourage people to explore more, which means that they potentially find more food. The well fed bonus is something I wouldn't touch either. It's good as it is.

I think Hinterland chose for food decay outside, so that you can't perpetually stack meat at one place. Well, you can, but it's very inefficient. It forces you to travel and explore. Also, I forgot to say that much of this is written with Interloper difficulty in mind, where the scarcity of matches forces you to travel. That meat wouldn't thaw inside as they're just below freezing is something I overlooked. I had the body temperature in mind with clothes on. But on the other hand, meat stored inside doesn't freeze and it rots very fast. At a certain point industrial food decays to zero, so your only option is to walk around with cattail stalks if you don't wanna be caught carrying meat. Smoked or dried meat would be a great addition to that option, it requires indeed preparation, it is meaningful and it gives players things to do in the long run. Usually, people who survive 300+ or 500+ days basically run out of things to do... Animals are indeed everywhere, but what do you do when you kill a moose and a bear in two days at the Trappers cabin? Even when you kill one moose, you have a lot of excess meat. If you can turn it into dried or smoked meat, it would be so much easier to spread it out on different locations. And yeah, I don't really know how the calorie and weight levels are of dried/smoked meat compared to fresh/cooked meat. But 50% weight reduction sounds great, another reason to prepare that food to travel. I am hoping that they have worked on things like this (especially the meat rack above the campfire!) in the season pass that they announced.

I'd like to see quite an overhaul in regarding to food: the introduction of frozen food when placed outside, which makes the game harder and requires more planning. This could be balanced out with the introduction of smoked meat and/or dried meat. And then I have some more thoughts about decay, buildable caches and so on. 1. Frozen Food Currently, certain food items are better stored outside, and this forces players to have rows of food laying somewhere in the snow. As it stands now, only meat is actually frozen, but can be eaten directly. What we could change is that every food item (cans, meat and water) becomes frozen when it is placed outside. The positive side to this is that frozen food decays slower, but would need to be thawed before consumption. This can be done in two ways: By placing it indoors, and then the thawing process would take about 5-8 hours, depending on the food item. By placing it either near a fireplace or on a cooking slot, and then the thawing process would last something like 20-30 minutes (?). These mechanics should be respected: Naturally, only food items that contain fluids such as condensed milk, canned dog food, peaches, meat, etc can be frozen. It would not have an effect on energy and chocolate bars. The decay rate should be slightly lower for frozen food compared to the decay rate of food stored outdoors, as it is now. The whole introduction of frozen food would require more planning, and perhaps on difficulty levels as Interloper, more matches. It would make the game harder.This could be balanced by the introduction of smoked/dried meat. 2. Smoked and/or Dried Meat Wouldn't it be great to introduce meatracks, which can be made with twigs, or those larger twigs which can be placed or installed above a fireplace? For example, when you harvest the skin and the gut from a rabbit, and leave the carcass intact, you could then shove it on a rack above the fireplace, which would give you an extra cooking slot. Furthermore, drying racks could be placed indoors so you can hang meat on there. Drying racks could be made out of twigs or craftable on a workbench, requiring wood and perhaps fishing lines. Of course, certain qualities in regard to smoked/dried meat should be respected: That it would take about 3 hours to smoke meat on a meat rack above a fireplace, and about 3-5 days for dried meat indoors. Of course variables to that can be introduced too. That the calorie level would be lower compared to fresh meat since the fluids are dried out (perhaps about 10-30%?) That the decay rate of smoked meat and dried meat would be far less than cooked meat, perhaps comparable to beef jerky. That it does not matter whether smoked and dried meat is stored either inside or outside, or very little. That the smell on smoked/dried meat would be greatly reduced, making them excellent food items for traveling. That the weight of smoked/dried meat should be reduced compared to fresh or cooked, perhaps to about 30% or even more. And that smoked/dried meat (as well as beef jerky) do not have to be thawed out, if the combination with frozen food would be introduced. Of course, this would make life on Interloper a lot easier, but then again, it would require more wood, more cooking time, and if frozen food is introduced then this may be a good balance to work with. 3. More buildable caches In order to avoid the whole mess outdoors where food items are scattered, we can encourage players to build caches. I know that 50 stones enable us to build a rock cache, but this feature could be expanded: We could introduce wood caches, buildable with any wood type (reclaimed, cedar, fir) or even by making crates convertable to wood lockers which can be moved and placed outside. Or just craftable on a workbench. We can introduce that the small plastic containers can be hauled into the inventory and then moved (but only when empty). The implications for the gameplay of caches would be as follows: Food items placed in caches outside should not be smelled by predators. Food items placed in caches outside can not be scattered by storms or strong winds. That storms and strong winds does scatter food items around when NOT placed in a cache outside. That predators would smell fresh and cooked meat when placed on the snow. Movable caches and store boxes can only be moved when empty, to prevent players from using store boxes to haul meat. Though IF predators could smell fresh and cooked meat, those moveable boxes are great for safe cooking. If then the game prevents players from hauling fresh or cooked meat inside movable containers, then the current scent mechanism would be left intact. That the decay rate of frozen food items placed in caches and store boxes is reduced. This adds also depth to the game because it gives players something to do continuously, other than simply exploring and surving. It adds a little hoarding mentality and urges players to plan more. Also, the waste of meat on large animals (such as bears and moose) can be avoided this way, making them a real price, especially on Interloper. 4. Some Other Thoughts Right now players on harder levels keep ruined meat (0%) in the snow, then smack it on a cooking slot and gain a 50% cooking bonus for that meat. Even 0% items such as canned food and food bars can be eaten when a player reaches level 5 in cooking. If we are to lower the decay rates for certain food items, such as frozen food, dried/smoked meat or food stored in caches, then we should prevent that players can still eat 0% food and that zero means zero! Eventually, I think we have to abandon the idea that the most efficient way is to save all calories to the end of the day to restore energy and health, and then continue the next day on an empty stomach. Right now, players know that they can survive on 600-700 calories when consumed just before bedtime, and we are kind of forced to repeat this every day. It would be great to introduce an overhaul in this regard, which should lower the calorie burning rate and make it more rewarding to spread out calorie consumption to at least two meals a day, not one... Especially the smoked/dried meat is something that I would really, really want to see... Every time I see meat roasting on a fire in a movie or something, I think: why isn't that a feature in TLD...? Ok, thank you for reading all this, I just noticed this is quite a long story. Hopefully, you may take something out of this and I'm looking forward for any responses, both from the community (players) as by Hinterland.