How could spices be implemented?

[hstone32]

Spices aren't necessary for survival, but history seems to suggest they're the next most important priority. Spices have been hugely important to every stage of human history. Many kingdoms and fortunes were built through the trading of spices.

As a player, I want to live out the bronze-age experience of seeking out and trading for rare and exotic spices, but I'm struggling to think of a gameplay mechanic that would justify their inclusion.

Other games that have spices in their cooking systems typically go the route of "spices make the food more filling," but that doesn't feel appropriate to VSs design. One idea I had was that instead of being able to add spices to any meal, spices act as necessary key ingredients for certain special meal recipes, like cinnamon for a pumpkin pie (instead of just a vegetable pie made with pumpkins) or allspice for rice and red meat curry.

what are your thouhts? What would justify spices in the game?

[Facethief]

Maybe a boost to body heat generation?

[LadyWYT]

21 minutes ago, hstone32 said:

One idea I had was that instead of being able to add spices to any meal, spices act as necessary key ingredients for certain special meal recipes, like cinnamon for a pumpkin pie (instead of just a vegetable pie made with pumpkins) or allspice for rice and red meat curry.

I do like this idea, and that probably allows certain recipes to be narrowed down(like requiring curry powder to be added to rice in order to qualify as a curry).

 

22 minutes ago, hstone32 said:

Other games that have spices in their cooking systems typically go the route of "spices make the food more filling," but that doesn't feel appropriate to VSs design.

I dunno about that. I think rather than boost the nutritional value of the food, I would instead perhaps add a saturation bonus to food cooked with spices, similar to how meals already have an inherent saturation boost. Perhaps the current base saturation could even be nerfed, or removed entirely, and require addition of spice in order to pause the hunger rate(and add a slot for spices to go in, so the player isn't sacrificing nutrition in the process).

In that way, players are encouraged to use spices and herbs when possible, in order for the food to last them longer. It could also prove to be an advantage in the early game, since instead of going straight for pottery, players could have the option of spicing their roast meat and save inventory space that otherwise would have been used for crocks, bowls, and cookpots.

28 minutes ago, hstone32 said:

what are your thouhts? What would justify spices in the game?

Of course, I would also wager that spices don't necessarily have to do anything mechanically in order to justify adding them. One of the most popular mods ever is Expanded Foods, and most of the food it adds don't really do anything outside of what base game foods already do. The main reason it's popular, in my opinion, is that many players just enjoy the sheer variety that it offers.

[Kyle Rick]

I don't know how spices really work in real life but if it does help preserve food more it's a nice bonus but not something crazy I would go for.

I do like the idea of spices making the foods give a tiny buff to your character that could last a while, maybe depending on how much kcal you ate from the food, as you can only a part of a meal if your hunger bar fills up to full to prevent eating the entire thing.

Edited November 10, 2025 by Kyle Rick

[Facethief]

Honestly, if there were different kinds of spice that do some of the different things that people have brought up here, that’d work nicely.

[Bruno Willis]

I like the idea of passive "clutter" items for kitchens, like spices, jars of oil, sauces, dried herbs, etc. They'd all stack together in the way candles bunch up, and make your kitchen look used without adding any complexity to crafting recipes. Then when you cooked, the game would automatically check if there are spices, herbs, etc. within range of your cooking fire and add a benefit.

I like this benefit:

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I dunno about that. I think rather than boost the nutritional value of the food, I would instead perhaps add a saturation bonus to food cooked with spices, similar to how meals already have an inherent saturation boost.

[Echo Weaver]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I think rather than boost the nutritional value of the food, I would instead perhaps add a saturation bonus to food cooked with spices, similar to how meals already have an inherent saturation boost. Perhaps the current base saturation could even be nerfed, or removed entirely, and require addition of spice in order to pause the hunger rate(and add a slot for spices to go in, so the player isn't sacrificing nutrition in the process).

I like this idea a lot. I'm sure folks would be irritated if the saturation bonus was removed so that herbs/spices could provide it, but that really makes for a nice progression path for cooking.

[LadyWYT]

20 minutes ago, Echo Weaver said:

I'm sure folks would be irritated if the saturation bonus was removed so that herbs/spices could provide it, but that really makes for a nice progression path for cooking.

They might be irritated at first, however, I think players would warm up to such a system relatively quickly once they figure out it allows most foodstuffs to qualify for meal saturation, and not just things stewed in a cookpot. The main concern, I think, would be pies becoming too strong, however, pies are locked behind the quern and it's not really feasible to carry a whole table and bread oven with you for cooking on the road. 

[Steel General]

I can imagine two processes for adding spice. Option one, put the food items in the crafting grid with the spices to make a spiced food item - redmeat with spices would become spiced redmeat, which you could then use in standard meal recipes in place of redmeat for a better meal. Option two, you could have a slow cold recipe of combining food items and spices - maybe some fruit juice or wine - in a cookpot and wait (and wait) until it becomes 'marinated', then use that in standard recipes.

I don't like that option two requires a cold firepit, but I don't see it as a dealbreaker. Likewise with option one requiring the crafting grid (which seems like the only way to make garlic bread).

You could make meals in which each ingredient has its own assortment of spices, much bonus.

As for what bonus... increased saturation seems like the only reasonable choice, and the easy way to do that is with increased nutrition, which is not a terrible approach. Once we have status effects maybe something else will be reasonable

Optionally, perhaps a spiced meal is one that can be eaten when the hunger bar is full, bypassing the need for hunger to add to the nutrition bars. It would be delightful if packing it in resulted in a period of intermittent damage signals without any damage.

Marinated meat might be a possible ingredient in porridges (because I want to make my garlic sriracha chicken and fried rice ).

Hah: animal fat into a cookpot with spice to make a spiceball, which can go into the cookpot with spices to add value to the spiceball, but can also just be an ingredient in a meal.

That day when you visit the agriculture trader and find peppercorn seeds

[Bruno Willis]

I've talked about this before, but I think it shows it's value here well: adding a satisfaction saturation bar.

Essentially, spices would be able to fill this bar up faster, drinking alcohol would too, and eating varied meals would fill this up very gradually. It'd give people a good reason to pursue  those hard to make meals and drinks, and to go out on a mushroom cutting expedition even when they've got their vegi garden established.  

I think you'd also want to make filling all saturation bars a bit more impactful, and there are plenty of options for that. From slightly improving run speed, mining speed, etc, through to increasing the effectiveness of healing poultices, all the way to giving the world a rosy cheerful filter.

[Vexxvididu]

I like the idea of spices helping you make special food combinations that otherwise won't work.

I've also thought a bit about how it could make sense for some foods to add nutrition to character (the ones that increase HP) disproportionate to the calories/satiety.

[Chrondeath]

On 11/10/2025 at 4:53 PM, LadyWYT said:

They might be irritated at first, however, I think players would warm up to such a system relatively quickly once they figure out it allows most foodstuffs to qualify for meal saturation, and not just things stewed in a cookpot. The main concern, I think, would be pies becoming too strong, however, pies are locked behind the quern and it's not really feasible to carry a whole table and bread oven with you for cooking on the road. 

I have never been convinced that the hunger pause is actually tied to the cookpot.  This explanation is more plausible to me (roughly: the hunger pause is proportional to the highest nutrition value in the last bite you ate, but most things you would eat before getting a cookpot aren't high enough to really notice it).  Pies certainly do pause hunger, I've watched the hunger value drop at a roughly consistent rate in the character pane and then stop dropping after eating a slice of pie, at least in the immediate term.  If the linked theory is correct, a red meat pie slice should have the same hunger pause as a 2x red meat + 2x vegetable stew, which is something I vaguely want to test sometime but I'm not sure if I could measure accurately enough.

The relevance to spices is that spices can't apply the "special cookpot effect" to other things, because there is no special cookpot effect.  Applying a multiplier to the hidden-hunger-pause-nutrition might be plausible but without making it un-hidden it would be hard to explain what benefit the spices were having, though?

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Chrondeath said:

I have never been convinced that the hunger pause is actually tied to the cookpot.  This explanation is more plausible to me (roughly: the hunger pause is proportional to the highest nutrition value in the last bite you ate, but most things you would eat before getting a cookpot aren't high enough to really notice it).  Pies certainly do pause hunger, I've watched the hunger value drop at a roughly consistent rate in the character pane and then stop dropping after eating a slice of pie, at least in the immediate term.  If the linked theory is correct, a red meat pie slice should have the same hunger pause as a 2x red meat + 2x vegetable stew, which is something I vaguely want to test sometime but I'm not sure if I could measure accurately enough.

It could be just meals in general, and not necessarily cookpot. I just tend to think "cookpot" when I think saturation, especially since pies stack more conveniently. Redmeat is the most critical ingredient, if you want the meal to be lasting a while before getting hungry again.

 

1 hour ago, Chrondeath said:

The relevance to spices is that spices can't apply the "special cookpot effect" to other things, because there is no special cookpot effect.  Applying a multiplier to the hidden-hunger-pause-nutrition might be plausible but without making it un-hidden it would be hard to explain what benefit the spices were having, though?

It's the kind of thing I'd figure that would be noted in the handbook: spices add saturation value to cooked food. I definitely would not make a special meter just for tracking it, since that runs the risk of making the interface too cluttered.

[Thorfinn]

On 11/11/2025 at 10:09 AM, Steel General said:

Option one, put the food items in the crafting grid with the spices to make a spiced food item - redmeat with spices would become spiced redmeat, which you could then use in standard meal recipes in place of redmeat for a better meal. Option two, you could have a slow cold recipe of combining food items and spices - maybe some fruit juice or wine - in a cookpot and wait (and wait) until it becomes 'marinated', then use that in standard recipes.

How about option 3, which is just a few more slots in the cookpot? Maybe even a slot or two specifically for spices?

The vision is to get rid of the crafting grid, and I'm a big believer in playability over "immersion". IRL it takes an hour to marinate stuff. So? This is not RL.

[Brady_The]

Most interesting would be a "mini-game" akin to the potion-brewing in Kingdom Come Deliverance, but I am not sure if that's something that will ever be implemented, nor if it even fits the kind of game VS is.

 

[TFT]

On 11/10/2025 at 1:15 PM, LadyWYT said:

I think rather than boost the nutritional value of the food, I would instead perhaps add a saturation bonus to food cooked with spices, similar to how meals already have an inherent saturation boost

On 11/11/2025 at 4:34 PM, Bruno Willis said:

I've talked about this before, but I think it shows it's value here well: adding a satisfaction saturation bar.

I think these two can work together.

Let's say you have a sixth "satisfaction" bar in your nutritional stats that takes the average of your other food groups plus "luxury" things like alcohol and spices, or just counts for variety in general with spices and alcohol having more impact. Some minor gameplay effect to incentivize diversifying your diet but isn't critical or punishing if you ignore it, just something to nudge you to make anything but red meat pie and hearty red meat and cabbage stew for once. And something other than a health increase like the rest. Maybe your temporal stability drains slower or gives you a flat rate increase to stability so you can live in unstable areas permanently? Maybe you lose less satiety when doing intensive activities like sprinting and forging? Maybe gaining a positive trait like accuracy, loot rate, or walk speed or something unique to that class when the meter is high enough? Maybe all of the above at different milestones or rates?

Spicing your meals could add that satiety bonus that stacks with meals and make the hunger freeze last longer. Spices could also have an effect of preserving foods a little longer as was the case historically. We already have salt, but could always add some more 'spice' to non-temperate biomes like black pepper, ginger, mustard, or cumin as another incentive to venture south. Of course you could get some from traders in small quantity. Some like turmeric and garlic could be used as an alternative in poultice recipes since they are natural antibiotics. Grow them like any other crop or could grow them in planters.

On a complete tangent, but the more I think about it the "satisfaction" idea can be taken a bit further than just food. Valheim has some things like that with the "rested" bonus from having different furnishings and comfort items. So maybe proximity to rare or expensive decorative items could increase that satisfaction meter too by a bit. Such that working on or spending time in a trophy room with your gems and butterflies or whathaveyou provides a minor but tangible gameplay benefit compounding with a varied diet. It's not necessary, but could nudge players to collecting items for the bonus only to trip and fall into enjoying and putting a lot of effort into decoration and chiseling.

[Broccoli Clock]

Being so cottagecore-pilled, the thing I would most look forward to regarding the possible introduction of spices would be all the accoutrements that would come with it. Small glass vials, decorative glass bottles, and/or a mortar and pestle (effectively a mini-quern). Lovely, just lovely.

As for how and what use the spices would have, I'm open to them being nothing more than a food ingredient (perhaps providing a minor buff to existing meals). It's the growing/harvesting, making then storing, that would give me the buzz.

 

16 hours ago, Brady_The said:

.. but I am not sure if that's something that will ever be implemented, nor if it even fits the kind of game VS is.

I don't think it does, and although I am just one person I would definitely not like to see the actions being removed from direct environmental interaction (think smithing, or turning a quern) and have that moved to a "mini-game". IMO, it's really important for the game to remain consistent, not just for the new users but for the rest of us. 

[williams_482]

8 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

On 11/12/2025 at 12:20 PM, Brady_The said:

.. but I am not sure if that's something that will ever be implemented, nor if it even fits the kind of game VS is.

I don't think it does, and although I am just one person I would definitely not like to see the actions being removed from direct environmental interaction (think smithing, or turning a quern) and have that moved to a "mini-game". IMO, it's really important for the game to remain consistent, not just for the new users but for the rest of us. 

I've never played the game in question so I'm not sure what kind of gameplay the shown "minigame" is diverging from, but everything shown in that video (read a recipe from a book, pour a base liquid into a cauldron, put it over the fire, put an herb in and boil for a bit, grind another herb and add it, pour the contents into a bottle - all by manipulating object in a room) is in line with the kinds of direct environmental interactions that you describe. I'd expect a potion brewing mechanic in Vintage Story to function similarly. 

[Broccoli Clock]

On 11/13/2025 at 6:39 PM, williams_482 said:

I've never played the game in question so I'm not sure what kind of gameplay the shown "minigame" is diverging from...

I don't mean to be harsh, but maybe you should be in that position before you comment. Otherwise you are looking at something without context and making a decision without context.

On 11/13/2025 at 6:39 PM, williams_482 said:

...is in line with the kinds of direct environmental interactions that you describe.

It's not. If you had played KCD you'd know this.

On 11/13/2025 at 6:39 PM, williams_482 said:

I'd expect a potion brewing mechanic in Vintage Story to function similarly. 

That mechanic already exists in the game; you use it to produce meals, candles, chromium leather, etc, without the need for a minigame. Why reinvent the wheel?

 

 

[Thorfinn]

5 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

I don't mean to be harsh, but maybe you should be in that position before you comment. Otherwise you are looking at something without context and making a decision without context.

Yeah, a bit harsh. I've never played that game either, and it took me a couple of reads before I realized that your accoutrements were just decorative. At that point, I just nodded. You said what I thought about it, better than I probably would have. You would have gotten a Like had I not been out of them.

When I watched the vid, I thought, "Yeah, that's too much of a clicker for my tastes. Great mod, not great base gameplay."

What I think might work out well, though, is to not tell you which spices do what. There are slots, and if you happen on the combination for sweet and sour pork, great! It carries with it some bonus of some kind. If not, you get some other more basic pork. Maybe regular old meaty stew. The secret spices are more or less realistic, so you can guess them, but not published in the handbook. If you don't enjoy that kind of trial and error, there's always the Wiki or just reading the recipe .jsons.

One reason I favor that is it would make it very easy to mod in new recipes once status effect are a thing.

Edited November 15, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Bruno Willis]

2 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

What I think might work out well, though, is to not tell you which spices do what. There are slots, and if you happen on the combination for sweet and sour pork, great! It carries with it some bonus of some kind. If not, you get some other more basic pork. Maybe regular old meaty stew. The secret spices are more or less realistic, so you can guess them, but not published in the handbook. If you don't enjoy that kind of trial and error, there's always the Wiki or just reading the recipe .jsons.

One reason I favor that is it would make it very easy to mod in new recipes once status effect are a thing.

This!

That'd make cooking more of an art than a step by step science, in a really good way. If a player memorized a few useful combos, they'd actually be a better cook, and be able to take the same ingredients as anyone else and get something more satisfying out of it. It'd encourage specialization naturally rather than through classes. 

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

What I think might work out well, though, is to not tell you which spices do what. There are slots, and if you happen on the combination for sweet and sour pork, great! It carries with it some bonus of some kind. If not, you get some other more basic pork. Maybe regular old meaty stew. The secret spices are more or less realistic, so you can guess them, but not published in the handbook. If you don't enjoy that kind of trial and error, there's always the Wiki or just reading the recipe .jsons.

One reason I favor that is it would make it very easy to mod in new recipes once status effect are a thing.

 

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

This!

That'd make cooking more of an art than a step by step science, in a really good way. If a player memorized a few useful combos, they'd actually be a better cook, and be able to take the same ingredients as anyone else and get something more satisfying out of it. It'd encourage specialization naturally rather than through classes. 

Tagging on to this, if spices have inherent hidden properties, perhaps they could have an implementation similar to Elder Scrolls alchemy ingredients. That is, once you've successfully cooked with the ingredient in question, or sampled it to determine overall flavor profile, then the item tooltip will always list the basic properties discovered. That way, the player can easily track the basic ingredient properties and figure out better recipes, which is especially useful in the event the player hasn't played in a while.

[Bruno Willis]

45 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

That way, the player can easily track the basic ingredient properties and figure out better recipes, which is especially useful in the event the player hasn't played in a while.

I'd prefer it if you had to write down your recipes in a recipe book in world. What a treasure that'd be to steal from another player.

[Thorfinn]

50 minutes ago, Bruno Willis said:

I'd prefer it if you had to write down your recipes in a recipe book in world. What a treasure that'd be to steal from another player.

That's a good take. Can you make it work without some progressive mode? I mean, if you can just look it up on the Wiki, having a cookbook isn't all that much, unless, for example, you can click on a recipe and it takes the oldest ingredients out of your nearby storage and places them in the pot. I could see three reasonable buttons -- x1, x6/max, whatever in the recipe you have the least of.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

I'd prefer it if you had to write down your recipes in a recipe book in world. What a treasure that'd be to steal from another player.

The recipes, yes, you'd have to write those down. But as to the basic properties of the spices involved, the idea is to have a "quick reference" for the player to figure out the recipes, just in case they couldn't write them down, haven't played in a while, or it otherwise slipped their mind.