Food rots while I'm on servers - when I'm not playing.

[Kekanzek]

I really like playing public servers. 

 

However, I really struggle with food when the server is running 24/7. Even if I preserve all my food with jars, fat, a food cellar, my food can still rot if I stay off the game for half a week, which with school and all is very common. IME this discourages me since I can spend a lot of time gathering and preserving my goods but ultimately leave the server for a day or two and come back to rot.

 

AFAIK there's no way to make it so a player's stored food doesn't rot to inedible goop while they're offline. It would make supplies management easier IMO.

 

I know there's an option to make it so the server pauses operation if there's no players on it but the servers I like typically always have a few so that's not possible. 

 

Maybe this is a suggestion? If anyone knows if there's a mod that does this that'd be great. PS sorry for the repost, this was originally in the wrong subcategory.

[Echo Weaver]

13 minutes ago, Kekanzek said:

AFAIK there's no way to make it so a player's stored food doesn't rot to inedible goop while they're offline.

There's No Offline Food Spoil, which protects what's in your inventory. It needs to be installed on the server, so the server owner would have to be interested in it. In install this on my game that I play in local multiplayer.

I agree that offline food spoilage is a big hassle in multiplayer. I can see that it's trying to avoid an exploit, but it seems like there ought to be a better way to handle this. For stuff that is stored in the world, I'm not sure if there's a good solution. A commenter on the above mod suggested messing with food spoilage rates by claim in multiplayer, but I don't know how practical that is.

[LadyWYT]

19 minutes ago, Kekanzek said:

Maybe this is a suggestion? If anyone knows if there's a mod that does this that'd be great. PS sorry for the repost, this was originally in the wrong subcategory.

Like @Echo Weaver already said, the No Offline Food Spoil mod is supposed to grant some leniency for players by preventing food items in their inventory from rotting while they're offline. It won't stop other stored food from spoiling, but it will at least ensure that players don't starve when they log back in, if they haven't played in a while. There are also settings in vanilla to decrease spoilage rates. However, all of that depends heavily on how the server owner wishes to operate their server. 

 

22 minutes ago, Kekanzek said:

However, I really struggle with food when the server is running 24/7. Even if I preserve all my food with jars, fat, a food cellar, my food can still rot if I stay off the game for half a week, which with school and all is very common. IME this discourages me since I can spend a lot of time gathering and preserving my goods but ultimately leave the server for a day or two and come back to rot.

Honestly, it sounds like you might be playing on a bigger server, and one of the drawbacks to such is that time will always be passing since there's almost always someone online. As a result, players who aren't playing frequently are more likely to fall behind than the ones able to play more regularly. Obviously, real life stuff needs to come before game, and I don't think there's fault on either party here, but there may just be a mismatch of your playstyle versus what the server is built to support. You may want to consider finding a smaller server to play on, with players that have similar schedules to yours, so that time isn't passing so quickly and players aren't as likely to get left behind if they can't play for a few days.

[Echo Weaver]

8 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

As a result, players who aren't playing frequently are more likely to fall behind than the ones able to play more regularly.

I keep wanting to join multiplayer servers and then talking myself out of it for just this reason. I joined one that was well set-up for my availability, i.e. it only opened for half a day on Saturdays for everyone to play. If a server is advancing 24/7, I'm just not going to be able to keep up. (I had to leave the Saturday server because soil instability was crashing my client.)

[Kekanzek]

35 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Like @Echo Weaver already said, the No Offline Food Spoil mod is supposed to grant some leniency for players by preventing food items in their inventory from rotting while they're offline. It won't stop other stored food from spoiling, but it will at least ensure that players don't starve when they log back in, if they haven't played in a while. There are also settings in vanilla to decrease spoilage rates. However, all of that depends heavily on how the server owner wishes to operate their server. 

 

Honestly, it sounds like you might be playing on a bigger server, and one of the drawbacks to such is that time will always be passing since there's almost always someone online. As a result, players who aren't playing frequently are more likely to fall behind than the ones able to play more regularly. Obviously, real life stuff needs to come before game, and I don't think there's fault on either party here, but there may just be a mismatch of your playstyle versus what the server is built to support. You may want to consider finding a smaller server to play on, with players that have similar schedules to yours, so that time isn't passing so quickly and players aren't as likely to get left behind if they can't play for a few days.

Yeah. I play on the default vanilla server

[Echo Weaver]

Just now, Kekanzek said:

Yeah. I play on the default vanilla server

Hmm. Yeah, if it's vanilla, I don't know what can be done about it. I'd honestly engage with other players on the server to find out what THEY do.

[LadyWYT]

57 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

I'd honestly engage with other players on the server to find out what THEY do.

A really good idea that I did not think of earlier. It may be possible to team up with one or two of them regarding base building, so that there's always someone around to tend to things.

[Thorfinn]

32 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

It may be possible to team up with one or two of them regarding base building, so that there's always someone around to tend to things.

Indeed. IME, playing on large servers requires a community pantry.

[Tabulius]

3 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

I can see that it's trying to avoid an exploit, but it seems like there ought to be a better way to handle this.

A possibility might be a system that automatically tags storage units placed by a player as theirs. Then everything spoils and ages based on if they're online or not. When they're offline if another player uses it, it restarts the aging process until they log off as well. But unlike the main player using it, it doesn't restart when they log back on unless they interact with that object again.

 In theory this could kind of be gamed by players who don't own the storage logging off and on right after using it. But that's enough of a pain that i'd guess most people wouldn't bother.

[Bumber]

It might be practical to leave crops ready to harvest? Certainly it works for butcherable livestock.

Obviously this renders the entire preservation mechanic pointless. Why waste resources on pickles and cheese if it rots just the same?

Edited October 17, 2025 by Bumber

[Veronica Hohenheim]

within vanilla,maybe u can make a cellar on a mountain or/and live in a colder climate.I think there was also a ice block thingy going on,reducing the cellars spoil rate even lower but I dont remember if it was actually vanilla.A honey+ meat based diet maybe would be helpful too.Animals do not die if not fed so u can just breed them and breed them.I dont remember how efficient honey comb was in terms of saturation but if u scale it I assume it would be helpfull enough.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Veronica Hohenheim said:

reducing the cellars spoil rate even lower but I dont remember if it was actually vanilla

This is a modded feature, though in vanilla colder weather will greatly improve spoilage timers. 

[Poor_Kid]

Does this happen when the server is running and there are no people on it? My friend and I are playing on a private server and he turns the server off every time we stop playing. It must be for this reason and for the whole seasons thing. However I would have assumed that the world does not progress while there are no active connections.

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, Poor_Kid said:

However I would have assumed that the world does not progress while there are no active connections.

It depends on server settings, I think. The default, I believe, is that time does not pass while no players are online.