Starvation Overhaul

[Swiftthistle]

From the Discord to the Forums, so it has two spots to discuss.

"Instead of ticking damage, starvation can instead slowly weaken you over time in a much more immersive way, and it can be done rather simply with a little bit of code, a few timers, and simple stat changes. Not to mention a few failsafes.

So firstly, let's explain why starvation should be overhauled. In its current state, when you begin to starve, you take damage every several seconds; a completely negligible amount, and in previous patches you could just ignore it and heal through it with poultices (still the case in 1.21). Or, if you were fresh to the world and had no real nutrition to worry about, or simply didn't have armor, you could sui-slide (heh) right back to 50% hunger and a fresh bar of HP. In most multiplayer sessions I've noticed, people are ticking hunger down like crazy and just letting themselves sound off like a very hungry choir while they build or do their own thing; getting a shelter set up, ETC. It's both bad game design, and it's terrible for the ears.

Let's change that.

Remove the ticking damage. Instead, replace it with stacking debuffs to maximum health and movement speed. For example's sake, I'm going to explain my vision behind this and give out examples of numbers and balancing.

Just beneath the Satiety Bar, in a thinner bar the devs could add that is attached to it with 10 segments, is the player's Endurance. Each unit of Endurance is worth 100 points, and every second the player continues at 0 Satiety, they lose 1 Endurance, multiplied by their Hunger Rate (145% Hunger Rate = 1.45 Endurance Lost per Second). For every 100 missing endurance, the player gains a stack of Exhaustion, up to 9, with the 10th stack being fatal (0 Endurance). Exhaustion reduces the player's Maximum Health by 10%, and Movement Speed by 3% per stack. The player's current Endurance is denoted in the (C)haracter Menu, beneath their other notable stats, alongside their current rank of Exhaustion. While the player is below 300 satiety but not at 0, Endurance can not recover. The player must maintain above 300 Satiety to recover 1 Endurance every 2 seconds. Recovering Endurance consumes satiety, much like health, making it harder to maintain when food is scarce. Endurance can also function with both heat and cold. When the player's body temperature begins to plummet, they begin to tick down Endurance depending on several factors. We can finally remove freezing damage as a result.

Endurance recovery pauses when your body temperature is below 36.5 Celsius,

If your body temperature is between 33-35 Celsius, you lose 1 Endurance every second,

If your body temperature is below 33 Celsius, you lose 2 Endurance per second,

If you are wet or soaking wet, you lose an additional 1 or 2 Endurance per second respectively,

This is added to Endurance lost from hunger; if you are freezing and soaking wet, not to mention hungry in heavy armor, you could lose several Endurance a second.

For Heat, you can implement a similar system, where the player's body temperature increases based on movement and outside temperature, not to mention sunlight exposure in arid climates. Heat stroke is a real threat, and could quickly sap your endurance.

In harder difficulties, receiving damage could impact your endurance. This means that armor becomes grossly more important, as it could maintain your max health longer.

Now, failsafes! How do we make sure players aren't cheesing the system? Simple: You respawn with however much endurance you had when you died, -200 Endurance, rounded up to a minimum of 500 Endurance. This means that if you die to a wolf while well fed, you respawn with 800 Endurance. If you died from Starvation with 0 Endurance, you are failsafed to 500, to make the game playable but difficult. You also maintain 750 Satiety as well. While the Glowing Light clings to your body, Endurance can not deplete, either - giving you some sanctuary from the cold. This means that the player can no longer ignore food in early game, or scream 24/7 - it's silent, but it adds up, and makes the player weaker over time.

Finally, benefits. What can we add to the Endurance system to give it a little more grit? Eating meals can instantly restore a small amount of endurance when it has varied foods within. 4x Red meat stew will fill Satiety, but 2x Red Meat with Carrot and Onion will restore Satiety and +50 Endurance. Next, players can obtain up to +500 temporary endurance if they remain very well fed. Each 100 temporary endurance grants +5% Health Recovery Speed from Poultices. When your Endurance is above 1,000, you will lose Endurance whenever your Satiety falls below 750, until you reach 1,000 Endurance once again. This encourages the player to stay very well fed to obtain an EXTREMELY potent buff; not more raw numbers, but a tactile healing advantage. And having more variety in the player's meals makes it easier to maintain this buff. I'm not too-keen on this system; but keeping higher endurance should be encouraged.

Hovering over exhaustion in the (C)haracter menu could read: "Your energy deficit from physical stress. Increases as your endurance wanes. Reduces maximum health and movespeed. Death occurs at rank 10. Increases for every 100 missing points of Endurance." Endurance could simply read: "The amount of strength you have within your bones. Decreases when starving, freezing, or burning hot. Increases when well fed and comfortable. High levels increases your healing speed, while low levels increase your exhaustion."

Endurance can also tweak: Damage received, damage done, block break speed, and the like. Sleeping in beds could regenerate endurance faster naturally, but also give a bonus to endurance gained. Some actions could deplete endurance regardless of satiety; like being in frigid cold waters could quickly sap your endurance until you die. Finally, as a way to balance armor, receiving damage in armor could always inflict the same amount of Endurance damage as if you took the blow physically; this means that steel plate users can eventually die from exhaustion if they receive too much damage in a short period of time, since you can't eat your way out of an endurance deficit without spending enough satiety first. Finally, players picked up from the brink of death also revive as if they respawned but a touch more punishing; the player loses 200 Endurance with no minimum; meaning a player can't be picked up if they die too many times back to back. Endurance options can be tweaked in the world creation menu, including returning to the default system if players prefer. Endurance lost is based on hunger rate; so that is controlled universally by one slider.

If players aren't a fan of extra bars, it could be represented as another UI element of some sort. Someone suggested coloring the bar; so it made me think a little on this. My idea is that Satiety could be Blue, while Endurance could be Yellow, and when overlaid together - you get green. I included a picture of how that would look; the first picture is just a simple bar idea. If having three bars overlapping each other is *too* much, then over-endurance could just be baked into normal endurance. Also, the secondary bar could simply be an accessibility option, so players who are color blind are able to clearly see their endurance levels.

 

 

Edited September 10, 2025 by Swiftthistle
Extra picture purged.

[Entaris]

Hey man, if it stops me having to listen to this god awful noise, I'm for it.

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums!

8 hours ago, Swiftthistle said:

So firstly, let's explain why starvation should be overhauled. In its current state, when you begin to starve, you take damage every several seconds; a completely negligible amount, and in previous patches you could just ignore it and heal through it with poultices (still the case in 1.21).

Except it's not a negligible amount. The player will die within a few minutes if they fail to secure a decent meal. It might not be the most realistic thing, but it's a mechanic that pushes players to do the most basic but most important survival goal: secure a food supply. If a player can't do that, then everything else in the game is going to monumentally more difficult. I will also note that despite it being relatively easy to find and secure a good food supply, there are still plenty of players that manage to starve to death, somehow.

The only thing I would agree on here is that players shouldn't be able to mitigate starvation with bandaids.

8 hours ago, Swiftthistle said:

Or, if you were fresh to the world and had no real nutrition to worry about, or simply didn't have armor, you could sui-slide (heh) right back to 50% hunger and a fresh bar of HP.

Except 50% of hunger won't last very long, and there are other penalties to dying. The player loses 50% of their nutrition each time they die, which means a smaller health pool to work with. Likewise, death also means loss of items, though this does depend on game settings.

In any case, nutrition is still a concern at the start of the game, even if the player doesn't have a lot of points yet. It's harder to acquire nutrition at this stage of the game, but the extra hitpoint or two is a lot more important for longevity since the player doesn't yet have access to decent weapons and armor. In the event of an accident, that extra hitpoint or two could be the difference between life and death. And since the hunger bar is only filled halfway at respawn, the player will be on a much shorter leash regarding what they can do before death by starvation starts looming again(assuming they keep ignoring food supply).

8 hours ago, Swiftthistle said:

Let's change that.

Remove the ticking damage. Instead, replace it with stacking debuffs to maximum health and movement speed. For example's sake, I'm going to explain my vision behind this and give out examples of numbers and balancing.

Just beneath the Satiety Bar, in a thinner bar the devs could add that is attached to it with 10 segments, is the player's Endurance. Each unit of Endurance is worth 100 points, and every second the player continues at 0 Satiety, they lose 1 Endurance, multiplied by their Hunger Rate (145% Hunger Rate = 1.45 Endurance Lost per Second). For every 100 missing endurance, the player gains a stack of Exhaustion, up to 9, with the 10th stack being fatal (0 Endurance). Exhaustion reduces the player's Maximum Health by 10%, and Movement Speed by 3% per stack. The player's current Endurance is denoted in the (C)haracter Menu, beneath their other notable stats, alongside their current rank of Exhaustion. While the player is below 300 satiety but not at 0, Endurance can not recover. The player must maintain above 300 Satiety to recover 1 Endurance every 2 seconds. Recovering Endurance consumes satiety, much like health, making it harder to maintain when food is scarce. Endurance can also function with both heat and cold. When the player's body temperature begins to plummet, they begin to tick down Endurance depending on several factors. We can finally remove freezing damage as a result.

Endurance recovery pauses when your body temperature is below 36.5 Celsius,

If your body temperature is between 33-35 Celsius, you lose 1 Endurance every second,

If your body temperature is below 33 Celsius, you lose 2 Endurance per second,

If you are wet or soaking wet, you lose an additional 1 or 2 Endurance per second respectively,

This is added to Endurance lost from hunger; if you are freezing and soaking wet, not to mention hungry in heavy armor, you could lose several Endurance a second.

For Heat, you can implement a similar system, where the player's body temperature increases based on movement and outside temperature, not to mention sunlight exposure in arid climates. Heat stroke is a real threat, and could quickly sap your endurance.

For the sake of brevity, I'm not going to quote everything, just the major rundown. The explanation is well thought out and presented, and I think it would make a great mod, but I don't think it would be a good addition at all to the vanilla game. Chief reason being...it's way too complicated. The advantage of the vanilla hunger system is that while it has some depth regarding nutrition and whatnot, it's still very simple and easy to understand, especially for players with no prior knowledge of Vintage Story's mechanics. Eat regular meals, or you die. The "starvation timer", as it were, is lenient enough that players will have a grace period to acquire some food before they die to starvation, but the timer isn't so lenient that they can safely ignore it and wait until the last minute.

With this proposed system though...the player is going to have their hands full up front just figuring out the hunger system, let alone figuring out what they need to do to secure a food supply or otherwise make progress in the game. Vintage Story has a very steep learning curve, and it's not unusual at all for new players to struggle quite a lot when learning how to play. Beginning gameplay loops are simple, so they're quite easy to understand quickly, and it's not until later in the game after the player has made some progress that the gameplay starts getting a bit more complex. The main challenge stems from there just being so much gameplay to learn at once.

8 hours ago, Swiftthistle said:

Now, failsafes! How do we make sure players aren't cheesing the system? Simple: You respawn with however much endurance you had when you died, -200 Endurance, rounded up to a minimum of 500 Endurance. This means that if you die to a wolf while well fed, you respawn with 800 Endurance. If you died from Starvation with 0 Endurance, you are failsafed to 500, to make the game playable but difficult. You also maintain 750 Satiety as well. While the Glowing Light clings to your body, Endurance can not deplete, either - giving you some sanctuary from the cold. This means that the player can no longer ignore food in early game, or scream 24/7 - it's silent, but it adds up, and makes the player weaker over time.

This is the second major problem I see with this system; the more penalties you apply to the player for going hungry, the harder it becomes for the player to actually acquire more food. It's going to be especially punishing in the early game, and for certain high-risk adventures as well, since the deck gets stacked against the player. New players especially already have a tough time securing a food supply, and while it's not uncommon for them to starve to death a time or two, they at least get a fair shot at fixing the issue each time they respawn. If they get penalized more heavily, not only does it make it harder for them to fix their mistake, but now they're going to feel actively punished for being inexperienced.

It's not just new players though--experienced players will also likely become frustrated with such a system, because it's still very easy to die despite experience if one gets too complacent. Likewise, there are certain things the player needs to do to complete the main story, and some of those things are very risky...it's easy to die several times in a row. By applying this kind of penalty to all deaths, then completing certain content becomes exceptionally frustrating unless the player manages to avoid making any mistakes(which is quite difficult in some cases).

For a better alternative to starvation death, I'd recommend something more like this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/tasshroombodyfat

Essentially, allow the player to build a small fat reserve(provided they're staying well fed), and then burn said reserve before beginning to drain the player's health should they start to starve. I believe Tyron already included code for this concept in the game itself, but for whatever reason, the code was never actually implemented. That may or may not change at a future date.

Endurance is an entirely different concept, I will note, and this mod implements such a mechanic very well: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/26142

The player needs to be careful about when they choose to sprint, but otherwise won't be prevented from playing the game normally. Filling nutrition bars increases the player's endurance in various ways, such as providing more stamina or draining stamina more slowly when sprinting. In any case, the system is quite easy to use and understand, so new players and veterans alike can manage it well enough.

As for mitigating hunger damage with bandages...that's probably as simple as just making starvation unable to be healed while the hunger bar is empty/below a certain threshold. Starvation damage could simply "lock" part of the player's health bar until they eat a good meal, at which point it "unlocks" and the damage can be healed like normal. Other types of damage can be healed as normal. 

[Entaris]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

As for mitigating hunger damage with bandages...that's probably as simple as just making starvation unable to be healed while the hunger bar is empty/below a certain threshold. Starvation damage could simply "lock" part of the player's health bar until they eat a good meal, at which point it "unlocks" and the damage can be healed like normal. Other types of damage can be healed as normal. 

Ah, the old D&D Regeneration/Fast Healing trait bypass "does not convert or heal the damage caused by starvation, exposure or other non-hit point based damage"

Honestly, I'm not terribly impressed with the Nutrition mechanic, given the strength and number of enemies when you encounter them, you're either dead or the God of War.

Two extra HP for eating a hunk of cheese with my porridge isn't going to change that.

[LadyWYT]

14 minutes ago, Entaris said:

Honestly, I'm not terribly impressed with the Nutrition mechanic, given the strength and number of enemies when you encounter them, you're either dead or the God of War.

Two extra HP for eating a hunk of cheese with my porridge isn't going to change that.

I mean, that's fair, but I will point out that each full bar of nutrition is worth 2.5 HP; the player's base HP is 15. If the player fills all 5 nutrition bars, that's a total of 12.5 additional HP, which almost doubles the player's health. Even just filling 4 of 5 bars is 10 extra HP. So it will add up, and it's more useful at higher difficulties or for classes with smaller health pools.

Plus I've said it before and I'll say it again...a couple extra hitpoints might not seem like much, until a player winds up dead for want of a couple extra hitpoints.

[Entaris]

1 hour ago, LadyWYT said:

I mean, that's fair, but I will point out that each full bar of nutrition is worth 2.5 HP; the player's base HP is 15. If the player fills all 5 nutrition bars, that's a total of 12.5 additional HP, which almost doubles the player's health. Even just filling 4 of 5 bars is 10 extra HP. So it will add up, and it's more useful at higher difficulties or for classes with smaller health pools.

Plus I've said it before and I'll say it again...a couple extra hitpoints might not seem like much, until a player winds up dead for want of a couple extra hitpoints.

Sure, but, conversely, you could use the time you'd waste building all that farming/ranching infrastructure to just get better/any armor and immediately crank up your effective hp higher than you'd ever get ACTUAL HP through food hoodoo. And there's no point in doing both, since finding yourself in combat that prolonged at this point in the development should have also instructed  you on your limits and you won't be counting on scant slivers of hp to win the day.

[Krougal]

10 minutes ago, Entaris said:

Sure, but, conversely, you could use the time you'd waste building all that farming/ranching infrastructure to just get better/any armor and immediately crank up your effective hp higher than you'd ever get ACTUAL HP through food hoodoo. And there's no point in doing both, since finding yourself in combat that prolonged at this point in the development should have also instructed  you on your limits and you won't be counting on scant slivers of hp to win the day.

Except you need that farming infrastructure to grow flax to industrialize. You also need to eat in the meantime, so might as well get your HP.

I was in meteoric plate and sawblade locust would have shredded me if I didn't have high HP.

I do agree the droning when starving is annoying AF, but then it is good incentive to not starve.

[Swiftthistle]

1 minute ago, Krougal said:

Except you need that farming infrastructure to grow flax to industrialize. You also need to eat in the meantime, so might as well get your HP.

I was in meteoric plate and sawblade locust would have shredded me if I didn't have high HP.

I do agree the droning when starving is annoying AF, but then it is good incentive to not starve.

Funny, I was in full meteoric plate and a sawblade locust only damages me for 2 HP total.

[LadyWYT]

Just now, Krougal said:

I do agree the droning when starving is annoying AF, but then it is good incentive to not starve.

Honestly, I bet if there wasn't a sound cue there, a lot more players would probably starve to death. I think a much better option would just be replacing the standard "player hurt" sound, with a special one for starvation damage in particular. Like a stomach growl, or something else that will immediately grab the player's attention and clue them in on what's going on. 

[Krougal]

2 minutes ago, Swiftthistle said:

Funny, I was in full meteoric plate and a sawblade locust only damages me for 2 HP total.

That's like 1 hit. Lucky you. Hunter in RA tunnels is at a disadvantage, since it means I am mostly meleeing.

[Swiftthistle]

Just now, Krougal said:

That's like 1 hit. Lucky you. Hunter in RA tunnels is at a disadvantage, since it means I am mostly meleeing.

I was also playing a melee-hunter, but I've never had issues with Sawblades. I just switch to spear for those in particular, even if it takes a dozen or so hits to down. Keeping range is more important than an extra point or two of damage.

[Krougal]

11 minutes ago, Swiftthistle said:

I was also playing a melee-hunter, but I've never had issues with Sawblades. I just switch to spear for those in particular, even if it takes a dozen or so hits to down. Keeping range is more important than an extra point or two of damage.

I guess, but it took me by surprise and they move fast. I probably should carry a spear instead of a falx.

[LadyWYT]

14 minutes ago, Krougal said:

That's like 1 hit. Lucky you. Hunter in RA tunnels is at a disadvantage, since it means I am mostly meleeing.

 

12 minutes ago, Swiftthistle said:

I was also playing a melee-hunter, but I've never had issues with Sawblades. I just switch to spear for those in particular, even if it takes a dozen or so hits to down. Keeping range is more important than an extra point or two of damage.

What kind of difficulties are we talking here? I play Standard and rock iron brigandine or better when dealing with sawblades, and while they aren't terribly nasty they don't exactly tickle either. In any case, if one plays Wilderness Survival everything is a lot more dangerous due to dealing increased damage(150% as opposed to Standard's 100%). The player also has 5 fewer HP to work with on Wilderness Survival, while Exploration gives the player 5 more HP.

[Krougal]

38 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

 

What kind of difficulties are we talking here? I play Standard and rock iron brigandine or better when dealing with sawblades, and while they aren't terribly nasty they don't exactly tickle either. In any case, if one plays Wilderness Survival everything is a lot more dangerous due to dealing increased damage(150% as opposed to Standard's 100%). The player also has 5 fewer HP to work with on Wilderness Survival, while Exploration gives the player 5 more HP.

They do 16 base damage. A single hit in meteoric plate is going to be about 2 HP IIRC. Granted I may have had wounds already, and I also didn't die, but it was enough for me to be concerned. The random spawns were a hell of a lot more trouble than the boss mob was.

Anyway, the point is that more HP is never a bad thing.

Edited September 10, 2025 by Krougal

[Entaris]

1 hour ago, Krougal said:

Except you need that farming infrastructure to grow flax to industrialize.

Sure, but by your own admission that takes like one day

[Swiftthistle]

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Welcome to the forums!

Except it's not a negligible amount. The player will die within a few minutes if they fail to secure a decent meal. It might not be the most realistic thing, but it's a mechanic that pushes players to do the most basic but most important survival goal: secure a food supply. If a player can't do that, then everything else in the game is going to monumentally more difficult. I will also note that despite it being relatively easy to find and secure a good food supply, there are still plenty of players that manage to starve to death, somehow.

The only thing I would agree on here is that players shouldn't be able to mitigate starvation with bandaids.

Except 50% of hunger won't last very long, and there are other penalties to dying. The player loses 50% of their nutrition each time they die, which means a smaller health pool to work with. Likewise, death also means loss of items, though this does depend on game settings.

In any case, nutrition is still a concern at the start of the game, even if the player doesn't have a lot of points yet. It's harder to acquire nutrition at this stage of the game, but the extra hitpoint or two is a lot more important for longevity since the player doesn't yet have access to decent weapons and armor. In the event of an accident, that extra hitpoint or two could be the difference between life and death. And since the hunger bar is only filled halfway at respawn, the player will be on a much shorter leash regarding what they can do before death by starvation starts looming again(assuming they keep ignoring food supply).

For the sake of brevity, I'm not going to quote everything, just the major rundown. The explanation is well thought out and presented, and I think it would make a great mod, but I don't think it would be a good addition at all to the vanilla game. Chief reason being...it's way too complicated. The advantage of the vanilla hunger system is that while it has some depth regarding nutrition and whatnot, it's still very simple and easy to understand, especially for players with no prior knowledge of Vintage Story's mechanics. Eat regular meals, or you die. The "starvation timer", as it were, is lenient enough that players will have a grace period to acquire some food before they die to starvation, but the timer isn't so lenient that they can safely ignore it and wait until the last minute.

With this proposed system though...the player is going to have their hands full up front just figuring out the hunger system, let alone figuring out what they need to do to secure a food supply or otherwise make progress in the game. Vintage Story has a very steep learning curve, and it's not unusual at all for new players to struggle quite a lot when learning how to play. Beginning gameplay loops are simple, so they're quite easy to understand quickly, and it's not until later in the game after the player has made some progress that the gameplay starts getting a bit more complex. The main challenge stems from there just being so much gameplay to learn at once.

This is the second major problem I see with this system; the more penalties you apply to the player for going hungry, the harder it becomes for the player to actually acquire more food. It's going to be especially punishing in the early game, and for certain high-risk adventures as well, since the deck gets stacked against the player. New players especially already have a tough time securing a food supply, and while it's not uncommon for them to starve to death a time or two, they at least get a fair shot at fixing the issue each time they respawn. If they get penalized more heavily, not only does it make it harder for them to fix their mistake, but now they're going to feel actively punished for being inexperienced.

It's not just new players though--experienced players will also likely become frustrated with such a system, because it's still very easy to die despite experience if one gets too complacent. Likewise, there are certain things the player needs to do to complete the main story, and some of those things are very risky...it's easy to die several times in a row. By applying this kind of penalty to all deaths, then completing certain content becomes exceptionally frustrating unless the player manages to avoid making any mistakes(which is quite difficult in some cases).

For a better alternative to starvation death, I'd recommend something more like this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/tasshroombodyfat

Essentially, allow the player to build a small fat reserve(provided they're staying well fed), and then burn said reserve before beginning to drain the player's health should they start to starve. I believe Tyron already included code for this concept in the game itself, but for whatever reason, the code was never actually implemented. That may or may not change at a future date.

Endurance is an entirely different concept, I will note, and this mod implements such a mechanic very well: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/26142

The player needs to be careful about when they choose to sprint, but otherwise won't be prevented from playing the game normally. Filling nutrition bars increases the player's endurance in various ways, such as providing more stamina or draining stamina more slowly when sprinting. In any case, the system is quite easy to use and understand, so new players and veterans alike can manage it well enough.

As for mitigating hunger damage with bandages...that's probably as simple as just making starvation unable to be healed while the hunger bar is empty/below a certain threshold. Starvation damage could simply "lock" part of the player's health bar until they eat a good meal, at which point it "unlocks" and the damage can be healed like normal. Other types of damage can be healed as normal. 

In regards to your suggestions/critiques: This is why I stated it is not a final balancing idea. Additionally, a system like this could be changed with a few options in the world creation menu, under "survival challenges". Like this giant wall of text I'm about to post. Again. I do this too often, I swear. Keep in mind that in "Exploration" mode, the Endurance system is disabled and instead restored to the current system.

Endurance System: True (Enables or Disables the new endurance system. Endurance is a mechanic that measures the welfare of your character, determined by your body temperature, satiety, and if you are in frigid waters or soaking wet. Maintaining high levels of endurance grants increased health regeneration rate, while running out of endurance becomes lethal.)

Temperature Affects Endurance: True (Determines weather the player can suffer endurance loss from freezing or frigid water.)

Actions Affects Endurance: True (Determines if some actions, like starting a fire with a fire starter, consumes endurance.)

Endurance Penalty on Death: True (Determines if the player loses endurance on death.)

Player Endurance: 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 2,500 (Default - 1,500 for Standard Worlds, 1,000 for Wilderness Survival Worlds)

Endurance Recovery Rate: 25% (0.12/s) 50% (0.25/s), 75% (0.33/s), 100% (0.5/s) 125% (0.67/s) 150% (0.75/s) 200% (1/s) 300% (2/s) (Default: 200% for Standard Worlds, 100% for Survival Worlds)

Endurance Death Penalty: 100, 200, 300, 500, 1,000, 2,500 (Default: 200 for Standard worlds, 300 for Wilderness Survival; how much Endurance is lost on Death.)

Endurance Protection: 200, 500, 1000, 1,500 (Default: 500 for Standard Worlds, 200 for Wilderness Survival; You respawn with this much endurance as a minimum)

Endurance Minimum Temperature Threshold: 31c, 33c, 35c (Default: 31c for Standard, 33c for Wilderness Survival; the point at which you begin to lose Endurance from the cold)

Endurance Maximum Threshold: 39c, 41c, 43c (Default: 41c for Standard, 39c for Wilderness Survival; the point at which you begin to lose endurance from the heat.)

Temperature Based Endurance Loss: 0.5/s, 1/s, 2/s, 3/s, 5/s (Default: 0.5/s for Standard, 1/s for Survival; how much Endurance you lose based on body temperature each second.)

Cold Shock: False (Default: False for Standard, True for Wilderness Survival. Determines if you lose endurance in frigid waters or not; applies only during winter.)

Cold Shock Rate: 1/s, 2/s, 4/s, 10/s, 20/s. (Defaults to 4/s in Wilderness Survival. How much endurance you lose per second in frigid waters on top of other factors.)

[Teh Pizza Lady]

It's not a bad game design to force the player to eat or die. What you're suggesting sounds more like a personal thing because you didn't like that other players chose to play the game in a different way than you.

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, Swiftthistle said:

In regards to your suggestions/critiques: This is why I stated it is not a final balancing idea. Additionally, a system like this could be changed with a few options in the world creation menu, under "survival challenges". Like this giant wall of text I'm about to post. Again. I do this too often, I swear. Keep in mind that in "Exploration" mode, the Endurance system is disabled and instead restored to the current system.

Except then players are left with two vastly different systems to pick from, in addition to being stripped of the option to learn to play in an easier gamemode like Standard or Exploration before they jump into something like Wilderness Survival. The way the game is currently built is that Standard is the baseline intended experience, and a few things are tweaked to make it easier or harder in the cases of Exploration and Wilderness Survival. The game will play by the same rules regardless of which one the player picks.

As for just making it a toggle with a list of additional configuration options...no, just no. I can appreciate the thought put in to fleshing out the idea, but that's thirteen additional options listed there, minimum, all which require a completely different system of gameplay than the original. I would also question how such systems interact with all the other systems in the game, given that many things in Vintage Story are often interconnected, and it's difficult to change one without changing another as a result.

12 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

It's not a bad game design to force the player to eat or die. What you're suggesting sounds more like a personal thing because you didn't like that other players chose to play the game in a different way than you.

Hence why I say this is all a great idea...for a mod. Mods allow players to choose additional challenges like this for their game, without changing the base experience for everyone else. And given how many players already seem to struggle with food supply, even with experience at higher difficulties, I don't see something like this being enjoyed by the majority of the playerbase. There was actually a mod that implemented an idea similar to this; the name was Realistic Starvation, I believe. https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/10343

The two biggest flaws I found when playing with it were as follows:

1. It trivialized hunger completely. Since the player takes several in-game weeks to starve to death, there's really no pressure to find and secure a steady supply of food.

2. There was absolutely no reason not to eat every scrap of food the moment you acquired it, since there was no limit to how much you could eat in a sitting or any drawback to overeating.