What is best to make with berries?

[Thornment]

I made a berry farm, but I don't know how to use them best. I wanted to make jam, pie and wine seem to be the best options, but I'm not sure about juice.

[ifoz]

I mean really, anything is best. Whatever you wanna make!
I'd personally strongly recommend against min-maxxing this game.

If you do want an opinion about it though, I like making pies. They're very filling and look nice.

[Brady_The]

All options are pretty great.

1 hour ago, Thornment said:

but I'm not sure about juice.

Juice has a pretty good by-product, fruit mash, which can be used as animal fodder or be left to rot to be turned into compost.

Creating compost is another popular use for berries.

Edited September 8 by Brady_The

[LadyWYT]

The "best" is probably turning them into pies. Pies last quite a while, and you can carry several many slices in one stack. Plus each slice offers a solid chunk of fruit nutrition, along with reasonable grain nutrition, and does not need a bowl/other dish in order to transport/eat it.

2 hours ago, ifoz said:

I mean really, anything is best. Whatever you wanna make!
I'd personally strongly recommend against min-maxxing this game.

This is really the best recommendation though. Why go to the trouble of cooking it if you're not interested in eating it(aside from pure survival needs)? While you can min-max the game, it tends to bleed the fun out of what the game has to offer. Additionally, Vintage Story is fairly good at keeping its gameplay balanced, so while there might be an option that's technically "best" overall, it may not be the best option in all cases. And oftentimes, the "best" may only be somewhat better than its rival options.

[Thorfinn]

Personally, I don't collect any more than needed. And despite the hoarding mentality that survival games encourage, I'm slowly scaling even that back.

But assuming that's not your style, it depends on the part of the game you are in. Early on, it's hard to beat porridge or stew with berries. Later pies. Whatever you won't be able to eat before they rot, jam. I've never yet ended up dipping into the jam before I go on to a new game, so why did I bother? When the pies from the last harvest of fall are either eaten or going to rot, the crocks of stews and porridges are still going strong, and usually I don't even dip into the sealed crocks of same before the first harvest of berries come spring.

But, yeah, play around with it. I'm not going to advise avoiding min-max, but you will probably soon find you don't need to.  Even with the absolute hardest settings, satiation is a non-issue.

[EDIT]

Juice is kind of an emergency thing for me. If I've found sulfur, I'll go to RA with honey-sulfur poultices. But I tend to make some juice/wine just in case I don't find sulfur so I can make alcohol bandages. Not that I tend to need massive healing anyway, but as a permadeath player, I like to leave a lot of "just in case" options.

Edited September 8 by Thorfinn

[Alder]

My personal use of berries is using the bushes as path decor, and picking berries to eat raw as I need them.

As for preservation, I usually press them into juice and keep them in barrels in my cellar, using the fruit mash as feed for pigs. Keeping an eye on the spoiling rate of the juice, once it gets close to spoiling I seal the barrel to turn it into wine, thus increasing its shelf life further.

That being said it's not a very good source of saturation, you can only hold three servings in a jug, and unlike pies and cooked meals which will only consume enough to fill your hunger, the juice is consumed in a full serving regardless of hunger. So, I only really use it as a method of maintaining fruit nutrition throughout the winter.
I've never gotten a steady enough supply of honey to bother with jams, so I can't comment on that.

If you wanted to use them as a food source, other than just eating them raw, I'd recommend baking them into pies. The shelf life of pies can be greatly extended by semi-baking them bit by bit as they get close to spoiling. A raw pie near its expiration date can be cooked into a partially baked pie and have its spoiling date reset.

[Maelstrom]

On 9/8/2024 at 8:07 AM, LadyWYT said:

Pies last quite a while, and... does not need a bowl/other dish in order to transport/eat it.

But pies only give 2 nutrition values so you have to use 2 inventory slots to get grain plus up to 2 other nutrition values.  Plus the satiety for a single serving is much lower than a serving for a meal.  All in all, I think Tyron balanced these two meal options very well.

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

But pies only give 2 nutrition values so you have to use 2 inventory slots to get grain plus up to 2 other nutrition values.  Plus the satiety for a single serving is much lower than a serving for a meal.  All in all, I think Tyron balanced these two meal options very well.

Fair. I was thinking mainly in terms of traveling around or mining/scavenging expeditions, where you might want a food source that is both filling and carries several servings to a single stack. That being said, meat pies are more filling than fruit pies in this scenario, it just depends on what one has on hand and feels like eating.

Definitely agree on the balance aspect though, and I think the logistics of travel in Vintage Story help balance it even further. Inventory space will limit what you can take with you, and the spoilage factor makes some foods much better than others for long trips. However, packing your food optimally for travel usually means you'll suffer some nutrition loss in 2-3 categories, unless you either devote more space to food variety or forage while traveling. It's a lot easier to keep all nutrition needs met at your base, but of course, you can't really experience the game's story if you never leave the safety of home.

[Maelstrom]

17 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

packing your food optimally for travel usually means you'll suffer some nutrition loss in 2-3 categories, unless you either devote more space to food variety or forage while traveling. 

cook pot and bowl.  7 high satiety meals when you leave and you have the ability to cook more no matter where you go or how long you stay out there.

[Michael Gates]

A full stack of bread gives more satiety than most cookpot meals, saves you a slot, but loses the ability to gather&cook. So, options!

[Bumber]

Cranberries last longer than others berries, so I tend to grow those. (The bushes can't be grown on top of each other as a drawback.)

I either turn them into juice for the animal mash, or cook them with grains for porridge. Vegetables cook with meat/eggs, so those are good pairings for long term crock storage. Milk is best consumed fresh for dairy, as you can still get it in winter.