Best food for long journeys?

[Mustatruv]

I don't want the food to take up more than one slot in my inventory. Also it should take long before it spoils, and have a decent caloric value.

Charred bread keeps long, but it's just grain and a small amount of satiety... yet it's easy to make and I guess it can stack into 64 items. Red meat stew has a very high satiety, but only one crock pot per slot, so no. Having to rely on finding food during the journey can slow you down a bit, but it's not that bad during summer/autumn.

What are your suggestions? I've finally crafted my backpacks so I can pack all the essentials when spring ends... eager to leave everything behind and migrate to a new home, closer to the equator!

Edited April 19, 2023 by Mustatruv

[Maelstrom]

A cook pot of red meat stew holds 6 meals.  add a bowl of same and you have a 7th meal.  Eat before you depart and you have 7 high satiety meals on the run.  Plus a cook pot to refill while out and about.

[Mustatruv]

Good one. Haven't thought about refilling the cooking pot during the trip. It would only require hunting every once in a pretty long while. Thanks!

[Digitalr]

Peanuts. Or cured red meat.

[BenLi]

Depending on the trip duration.

If it is 3-4 days: any of crock with meat, cooking pot with meat, stack of peanuts, stack of cured redmeat, 3-4 meat pies, especially charred ones.

If it is longer, and via normal areas and/or during summer - cooking pot, and cook for yourself once the pot is emptied. In this case you will need to dedicate some more slots as you need to gather vegs/grain/berries/meats as you travel.

 

Me personally - I take the pot and a bowl, and make porriges+fruits/vegs+meat+fruits to keep the 4*2.5hp as high as possible with different food types.

[Yonkage]

I went on a very long journey on default map generation settings to warmer biomes (and also to gather rare minerals like limestone and halite and any metal I found). Traveled roughly 50,000 blocks over some five months in winter (nothing to do at home). My strategy was to bring a cooking pot, bowl, and two stacks of turnips. Then, hunt meat or fish to supplement the veggies to make meals with. This worked fairly well while I was still in colder biomes. Fish was far easier as meat was hard to come by; I could mostly only find rabbits around, and those are harder to hit with spears.

Thing is, once I got far south enough that it was warm (or if I'd been traveling in summer) there was more than enough forageable food around. Berries, grains, termites eventually. I tossed out the pot, bowl, and just ate half the turnips raw to open up inventory slots. Takes less time than hunting/fishing/cooking by far. So long as you keep moving so an area doesn't get over-harvested, the land will provide everything you need as there is no detriment in the game currently to eating nothing but berries or whatever.

[Thorfinn]

There is a downside -- you lose your bonus HP.

I'd have probably made a long trip with a stack each of grain and turnips, and make a pot of porridge now and again. Then again, 50k blocks isn't really all that far, though it's further in 1.18 because of all the uplifts and rough terrain. In 1.17, that was do-able in a standard 9-day month pretty easily, less if you were willing to travel at night.

But you are correct that you can easily forage your way, too. Fish made that dirt simple. I still prefer the way the hunger clock pauses if you eat a meal. You don't need nearly as much food, so only have to pause to cook something every few days.