Nutrition Buffs

[Lakul]

A common thing I see come up both ingame and online is how there isn't much of a penalty for dying--namely from starving to death, especially during the winter. Unless you're cranking up the respawn distance, I tend to agree. As nice as the HP boost is, I don't find myself that concerned about maximizing my nutrition, mostly since max HP is only really relevant in combat situations. I can get by just fine otherwise on nothing but grain if I wanted to.

It'd be nice if we got a benefit of some kind for fulfilling our different nutritional needs. Having your nutrition at a certain level will give your character a small buff. I'd say at 50% or higher, the buffs kick in. That way you would have some leniency as far as keeping up with your nutritional needs, especially when you sleep, but it'd still take some time to recover the buffs if you die.

 

For example (it doesn't necessarily have to be these levels):

Fruit: +5% movement speed  -- your character has the energy to run faster

Vegetable: +10% health recovery -- you'll heal faster, both over time and with healing items

Grain: +10% mining/swinging speed -- your character has the energy to work faster

Protein: +10% attack/projectile damage -- with stronger muscles you can hit harder

Dairy: +15% reduced fall damage, +10% damage taken reduction -- with fortified bones, you're able to withstand more damage

You'll still receive the HP bonus for having maxed out nutrients. Perhaps there could even be a bonus to each area if you have all nutrients above 50%, to encourage a balanced diet.

 

Meanwhile, starving will work a little differently. Once your satiety reaches 0, instead of immediately taking damage all of your nutrients will begin to rapidly deplete--after all, your body is basically eating itself alive at this point! Once your nutrients run out, THEN you'll start to take damage. 

Let me know what you guys think!

[Loosebearings]

12 hours ago, Lakul said:

Meanwhile, starving will work a little differently. Once your satiety reaches 0, instead of immediately taking damage all of your nutrients will begin to rapidly deplete--after all, your body is basically eating itself alive at this point! Once your nutrients run out, THEN you'll start to take damage. 

I really like this idea, it'd be nice to have different levels of starving rather than being perfectly fine straight to taking damage.

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, Lakul said:

Once your satiety reaches 0, instead of immediately taking damage all of your nutrients will begin to rapidly deplete--after all, your body is basically eating itself alive at this point! Once your nutrients run out, THEN you'll start to take damage. 

I know I might steal this for incorporating into a mod later...

But otherwise, I would probably keep starvation as it is, unless the devs re-enable the bodyfat mechanic that's apparently hidden the code. The starvation mechanic may not be particularly realistic, and might be annoying, but it does keep food supply important to the player throughout the game, as well as keep the player alerted to their condition so they don't starve by accident. If starvation were actually realistic, then the player either wouldn't need to worry about food at all since they can just eat a meal once every few days and be fine, or they're digging themselves a hole of stacking debuffs that will be very difficult/frustrating to recover from.

 

13 hours ago, Lakul said:

It'd be nice if we got a benefit of some kind for fulfilling our different nutritional needs. Having your nutrition at a certain level will give your character a small buff. I'd say at 50% or higher, the buffs kick in. That way you would have some leniency as far as keeping up with your nutritional needs, especially when you sleep, but it'd still take some time to recover the buffs if you die.

Overall, I think it's an idea better suited for mods, and not the vanilla game. The health boost from nutrition is more useful than you'd think, but not so useful that it's going to feel frustrating if you can't fill a bar for some reason(looking at you, dairy!).

Also keep in mind that when the player dies, nutrition is halved. The health loss isn't great, but it's generally not such a discouragement that the player won't go back to take another shot at whatever they were doing. If the player is losing active buffs though(like increased damage, and better damage resistance)? They're probably going to get frustrated if they end up dying to a boss or something, and then have to wait a while to recover the full buff before trying again.

 

[Heart_Afire]

Firstly, I should say that my whole multiplayer team loves this idea, especially the additional starvation mechanic. 

I personally also like the ideas of the buffs, especially as the ones you chose seem relevant to the parts of the game where you'd be using and gaining them For example, Fruit giving movement speed would be highly useful in the early game, when it will be your main source of satiety.

I do also like the idea of a 'multi-buff' to encourage eating a balanced diet. I cook in our server quite often, and try to make varied meals, but aside from roleplay reasons there really isn't as much reason to make differing versions of foods. That said, I've no idea what such a buff could be.

I also think what I would do is set the Buffs to be a gradient ratio rather than simply "On/Off", starting at 50% and capping at 90%...that way you are encouraged to keep them full and topped up but you don't need to be constantly checking and refilling. Just to give an example of the math(s):

If a full buff of Fruit gives 5% bonus move speed, then having fruit at 90% or above will grant such, while having it at 70% would grant a 2.5% movement buff.

[Lakul]

On 11/29/2025 at 1:07 AM, Heart_Afire said:

Firstly, I should say that my whole multiplayer team loves this idea, especially the additional starvation mechanic. 

I personally also like the ideas of the buffs, especially as the ones you chose seem relevant to the parts of the game where you'd be using and gaining them For example, Fruit giving movement speed would be highly useful in the early game, when it will be your main source of satiety.

I do also like the idea of a 'multi-buff' to encourage eating a balanced diet. I cook in our server quite often, and try to make varied meals, but aside from roleplay reasons there really isn't as much reason to make differing versions of foods. That said, I've no idea what such a buff could be.

I also think what I would do is set the Buffs to be a gradient ratio rather than simply "On/Off", starting at 50% and capping at 90%...that way you are encouraged to keep them full and topped up but you don't need to be constantly checking and refilling. Just to give an example of the math(s):

If a full buff of Fruit gives 5% bonus move speed, then having fruit at 90% or above will grant such, while having it at 70% would grant a 2.5% movement buff.

Good idea with the gradient. Especially with the other comment about players instantly losing buffs when they die. In this instance, I would have the buffs halved by 25% nutrition, full buff by 50%. This way it’s more forgiving, but would still make repeated deaths a thing to avoid. Perhaps nutrient loss upon death could change as well. I hesitate to use values higher than this as normal upkeep would be inconvenient, especially with how much nutrition you can lose while sleeping. I would want maintenance to be easy, so long as you have the food available.

As for the “Balanced diet” buff, I was thinking an overall increase to all buffs once you reach 50% in each category. Or, perhaps, 75%, so it requires more effort to attain. The buff would be something like a 20% increase of the original value (so 5% walking speed = 6%, 10% attack damage = 12%, 15% recovery rate = 18%, etc. Nothing huge, but a nice bonus on top of the health bonus from having all nutrients. With a balanced diet and maxed out nutrients, your seraph is at their healthiest.

Edited December 4, 2025 by Lakul

[Lakul]

On 11/27/2025 at 11:39 AM, Loosebearings said:

I really like this idea, it'd be nice to have different levels of starving rather than being perfectly fine straight to taking damage.

Now that I think about it, there should also be an audio/visual indicator that you are starving since you won’t be alerted by the damage like usual.

I’d say players would have 30 seconds or 1 minute of grace before nutrients start depleting. But, the moment your satiety hits 0 you'll experience two effects: an audio cue, like an occasionally grumbling stomach, and a visual cue with a slight waviness on your screen similar to being drunk—your body is eating itself alive and you are growing weak! Once the grace period is up your nutrients will deplete over time, then at 0 you will start taking damage.

Edited December 4, 2025 by Lakul

[Bruno Willis]

4 hours ago, Lakul said:

I’d say players would have 30 seconds or 1 minute of grace before nutrients start depleting. But, the moment your satiety hits 0 you'll experience two effects: an audio cue, like an occasionally grumbling stomach, and a visual cue with a slight waviness on your screen similar to being drunk—your body is eating itself alive and you are growing weak! Once the grace period is up your nutrients will deplete over time, then at 0 you will start taking damage.

I like the idea of a slowed down, some what musical grumbling stomach sound, which gets more and more obvious as time goes on.

[Bruno Willis]

This mod looks like it is getting at some of these suggestions,

https://mods.vintagestory.at/novelty

as with this one: https://mods.vintagestory.at/show/mod/10769,

I think there are plenty of people who would really like a more complex and rewarding nutrition system implemented, and I don't think it'd be that troubling for people who don't care about it either.

[Venusgate]

Nat's Survival used to do this (as part of a more integrated overhaul), and it worked well enough. As said by Bruno, Novelty, and to an extent Sleep Need do this now.

Personally, I'd like something more akin to the Taste mod, where each character has one or two foods in each category that give this sort of buff - or maybe "If Fruit is full +5% movement speed." "If fruit is full and you have consumed your favorite fruit - pink apples - in the last 24 hours, +5+5%movement speed."

[Teh Pizza Lady]

I could pull the whole "drain nutrition before health" bit into Expanded Stomach or at least into a companion mod. I'll add it to my roadmap for sure with an option to toggle it off in case another mod handles it, too.