Loaded/Unloaded Chunks? Will my base be frozen in time if I travel far enough?

[Alder]

I've been very curious about how the game handles the loading of terrain and mobs. I can see in winter that snow only falls where you've been, but I've also noticed wild crops distances away from my base, still growing eventually.

I guess more specifically what I want to know. If I journeyed far away from my base, via translocator or to visit the resonance archive. Would my home base fall into disrepair? Like would my crops grow, my food stores spoil, and my animals starve?

I'm unsure if they'll either:

A. Simply unload as I get far enough away, and when I return everything is as I left it (Best case scenario)
B. The base remains loaded for whatever reason, and everything falls into disrepair (Unlikely)
C. The game remembers when that area was unloaded (Animal unloaded on 8th of July - Food had 32 days until spoiling on 8th of July) and when I return and load the area it applies the consequences of time accordingly, thus spoiling my food and starving my animals.

Does anyone have any in-depth knowledge of how this works?

[Streetwind]

C for everything that runs off of the calendar, including crop and berry bush growth, animal pregnancies and growth, food spoilage, charcoal pits and pit kilns and cementation furnaces, torch lifetime, and so on and so forth.

A for everything that doesn't run off of the calendar, for example the firepit, quern processing, and pounder processing. ...There actually isn't a lot in this category.

Side note: animals never starve. Feeding them only serves to trigger breeding, and keeping their weight up during winter (in the case you plan to slaughter some of them in winter, because weight affects meat and fat drops). You can leave animals without food in their trough indefinitely and they will still be perfectly alive.

 

Edited July 20, 2024 by Streetwind

[Alder]

On 7/20/2024 at 3:06 PM, Streetwind said:

Side note: animals never starve. Feeding them only serves to trigger breeding, and keeping their weight up during winter (in the case you plan to slaughter some of them in winter, because weight affects meat and fat drops). You can leave animals without food in their trough indefinitely and they will still be perfectly alive.

That is incredibly useful information to know... I guess I always just assumed if their weight got too low they'd die. Thank you! I suppose all I need to concern myself with is my food spoiling then. Off to the Archives!

[Lephasme1000LeTroisième]

you look like firelord Ozay from the last airbender