alcohol Giving a use to alcohole

[rodo404]

Alcohol in the game is pretty useless, other than it being cool it lacks of a real use. I think it would be cool if alcohol could give temporary effect ( like potion ) to the player. For example : mead giving low regen for 10s or wine letting the player have higner harvest yeilds for berries for 10 bushes. But to keep it balanced the player will still have to deal with being drunk.

Edited January 25 by rodo404

[Facethief]

I read “alcohole” in the title and thought it was Spanish. Maybe I should calm down a little…

[Brady_The]

6 hours ago, rodo404 said:

Alcohol in the game is pretty useless

That's true. Until the developers get to an alcohol overhaul, there is this mod which aims to resolve this issue until then: https://mods.vintagestory.at/slowtox

[Vexxvididu]

[rvenson]

I’m not a fan of “magic” stat boosts from regular food, but alcohol could serve a clear mechanical purpose. Consuming alcohol could temporarily increase cold resistance, allowing the player to endure lower temperatures for longer periods (and stay drunk in the process). Maintaining this effect would require regular consumption, encouraging players to plan ahead and stockpile alcohol before winter.

Alcohol could also function as a trade commodity, giving it economic value alongside goods like crops and leather.

[marmarmar34]

1 minute ago, rvenson said:

I’m not a fan of “magic” stat boosts from regular food, but alcohol could serve a clear mechanical purpose. Consuming alcohol could temporarily increase cold resistance, allowing the player to endure lower temperatures for longer periods (and stay drunk in the process). Maintaining this effect would require regular consumption, encouraging players to plan ahead and stockpile alcohol before winter.

Alcohol could also function as a trade commodity, giving it economic value alongside goods like crops and leather.

I always see stuff regarding cold resistance and alcohol, but I'll be the outlier and say it should do the opposite! In reality, all it does is make you feel warm, but it's actually cooling your entire body! There are far too many horror stories about people going out to pee in the cold at parties, only to be found dead from hypothermia! It's no joke, and the misinformation needs to be stopped!

[rvenson]

16 minutes ago, marmarmar34 said:

I always see stuff regarding cold resistance and alcohol, but I'll be the outlier and say it should do the opposite! In reality, all it does is make you feel warm, but it's actually cooling your entire body! There are far too many horror stories about people going out to pee in the cold at parties, only to be found dead from hypothermia! It's no joke, and the misinformation needs to be stopped!

You’re completely right. I’ve seen this implemented in other games, and I hadn’t fully considered the implications. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Bumber]

I think I recall that drunk people get injured somewhat less than normal because their muscles are relaxed? It could increase your defense a bit, or reduce falling/impact damage.

[OBAMFSpike]

On 1/25/2026 at 11:01 AM, rodo404 said:

Alcohol in the game is pretty useless,

You could say that in real life too. Spot on. 

*15 years sober here*

Edited January 28 by OBAMFSpike

[LadyWYT]

On 1/27/2026 at 9:27 AM, marmarmar34 said:

I always see stuff regarding cold resistance and alcohol, but I'll be the outlier and say it should do the opposite! In reality, all it does is make you feel warm, but it's actually cooling your entire body! There are far too many horror stories about people going out to pee in the cold at parties, only to be found dead from hypothermia! It's no joke, and the misinformation needs to be stopped!

I was just about to say as much!  I think it's fine if it boosts a player's internal temperature a bit when consumed, while coming with the penalty of losing body heat more rapidly when in the cold. That's fairly close to how it works in real life, to my knowledge. The alcohol flushes heat to your extremities, so it can be good for warming back up after being out in the cold for a while, but it's not something one should be drinking if they're going to be staying out in the cold.

 

50 minutes ago, OBAMFSpike said:

You could say that in real life too. Spot on. 

*15 years sober here*

Kudos! That's no easy accomplishment right there. 

[Monkeylord]

Alcoholic drinks are pretty useless IRL. People mostly drink it to get drunk, because of social and cultural customs or just because they enjoy it. It's pretty bad for you actually, ethanol is a really terrible toxin.

However, maybe wines could be used as a ingredient in some dishes. Aqua Vitae, being purified alcohol, could be use to extract dyes from plants, as a base for tinctures or "potions" if herbalism/medicine or alchemy are ever introduced, as a dissinfectant (wich you can actually do in game with the alcohol-soaked bandages) or even as a fuel source.

[OBAMFSpike]

5 hours ago, Monkeylord said:

Alcoholic drinks are pretty useless IRL. People mostly drink it to get drunk, because of social and cultural customs or just because they enjoy it. It's pretty bad for you actually, ethanol is a really terrible toxin.

However, maybe wines could be used as a ingredient in some dishes. Aqua Vitae, being purified alcohol, could be use to extract dyes from plants, as a base for tinctures or "potions" if herbalism/medicine or alchemy are ever introduced, as a dissinfectant (wich you can actually do in game with the alcohol-soaked bandages) or even as a fuel source.

Very well said indeed. All of it. 

[LadyWYT]

6 hours ago, Monkeylord said:

Alcoholic drinks are pretty useless IRL. People mostly drink it to get drunk, because of social and cultural customs or just because they enjoy it. It's pretty bad for you actually, ethanol is a really terrible toxin.

While much of this is true, I would also say that it depends on the time and circumstances in question. Drinking alcohol was pretty standard in the past, since it was often safer than drinking water. Unless I'm mistaken, the typical alcoholic beverage had a lower alcohol content than much of what's brewed today. In addition to being safer to drink, it was also a source of calories for those out working the fields and whatnot.

[OBAMFSpike]

11 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

While much of this is true, I would also say that it depends on the time and circumstances in question. Drinking alcohol was pretty standard in the past, since it was often safer than drinking water. Unless I'm mistaken, the typical alcoholic beverage had a lower alcohol content than much of what's brewed today. In addition to being safer to drink, it was also a source of calories for those out working the fields and whatnot.

This is what is really cool about this community. Some are widely based in the truth. 

[Vexxvididu]

On 1/28/2026 at 3:10 PM, OBAMFSpike said:

You could say that in real life too. Spot on. 

*15 years sober here*

 

Alcohol is often very important as a fuel and a solvent!  I'd love to see more uses of it along those lines.... but I certainly agree that drinking it is useless.

[OBAMFSpike]

6 hours ago, Vexxvididu said:

Alcohol is often very important as a fuel and a solvent!  I'd love to see more uses of it along those lines.... but I certainly agree that drinking it is useless.

I couldn't agree more. It's a very intensive thing to make in game and then all you can do is drink it and not type properly? (edit: yes, I overlooked bandages as honey sulfur bandages seem far easier to make)

Come on. 

Now I will add this. As it IS just a game. Im developing a bit of a Parkour course with the use of gliders and a 3 liter jug of Aqua Vitae with nothing else. The winner can have the esteem of completing the course with their life. XD (edit; I might not take being a seraph seriously enough)

Edited January 31 by OBAMFSpike
because I can

[InternetDragon]

Say that to the 60+ 50L barrels of berry wine in my basement with years until they expire. It's purpose is to stretch the shelf life of berries to hold you over for winter if you are stuck in an area with only low fertility soil.

Edited February 1 by InternetDragon
forgot to include something.

[OBAMFSpike]

5 hours ago, InternetDragon said:

Say that to the 60+ 50L barrels of berry wine in my basement with years until they expire. It's purpose is to stretch the shelf life of berries to hold you over for winter if you are stuck in an area with only low fertility soil.

Bad basement wine. How dare you help survival in a badlands stretch of nothing. 

Like that?

Jokes aside. You aren't wrong. But isn't there no satiety from wine?

[LadyWYT]

6 minutes ago, OBAMFSpike said:

But isn't there no satiety from wine?

There is satiety from wine. It's just not as much as what you'd get from the fresh fruit or jam, most likely as a tradeoff for being relatively easy to produce and having a very long shelf life.

[OBAMFSpike]

Well ill be!

 

[niblhenne]

While its true that alcohol does not at all help you out in the cold (it just makes you feel warmer by widening your blood vessels, so more blood flows to your extremities which are the parts that most feel cold, but that runs counter to the purpose because it means you just lose body heat faster... whatever)

But Vintage Story is foremost a game, and replanting berry bushes or some future olive trees or what have you to make fruit juice and wine or brandy is a system you can engage with for many hours, and the reward (alcohol), which lasts a long time but at lower satiety (and even worse compared to meals.)

Recurrants are 80 satiety per berry, or 1280 satiety for 16 berries -> five litres of juice (1000 sat) -> (400 as wine) -> (40 as brandy). If you're in a situation where you're making wine to extend the shelf life of your food, then that kind of implies you already have more than enough food to live off. If you're at the stage where you can even consider brandy, you're way past the point where you have to preserve it for shelf stability due to worries of running out of food, and you'd be doing it only because you already have so much food you cant even drink your wine fast enough (and remember, wine is already almost an 80% satiety loss compared to meals made with the same fruits) and you're just trying to keep it from spoiling.

So the system ends up not really serving a purpose, I feel, because while it's something to do, you don't get any useful product out the end. The fact that alcohol in reality is pretty useless is kind of irrelevant, I think, because it shouldn't matter to a game.

I dont claim to have the answer, but I feel for how involved brandy-making is, it should have some upside. I doubt anyone's actually drinking the brandy they end up making anyway.

But, as one idea, maybe drinking at least one liter of alcohol would improve the duration of the improved satiety you get from eating a meal? 

[PineReseen]

I think you should be able to add alcohol to meals. it should add some satiety (not too good, but not bottom of the barrel either), but intoxicate you somewhat. In my opinion, alcohol should mainly serve as a way to preserve your berries and whatnot to not make them go to waste, instead of provide sizeable benefits (This is supposed to be a realistic game after all). It already sorta does that, but the way in which you get rid of it is suboptimal. Like, do I really have to drink 10 liters of wine and accidentally walk into the firepit just to get value out of my investment? Can't we get like, meat stew with a side of mushrooms and cranberry wine?

[LadyWYT]

7 hours ago, PineReseen said:

I think you should be able to add alcohol to meals. it should add some satiety (not too good, but not bottom of the barrel either), but intoxicate you somewhat

I do agree on adding alcohol to meals, but disagree that doing so should intoxicate the player. From a realistic standpoint, adding alcohol to a dish typically doesn't result in intoxication since the alcohol gets cooked out...at least, that's my understanding. It's mostly added just for the flavor, and typically in small amounts at that. From a gameplay standpoint, I also suspect the intoxication aspect is why many players don't utilize alcohol as much as they could. The drunken wobble is certainly fun for fooling around with friends, but outside of that it can be annoying, and having even one mild drink really shouldn't make someone wobble like that. If the effects were more similar to SlowTox, in that it at least took more time and alcohol for the drunk effect to appear, alcohol would probably be a more appealing preservation option.

[PineReseen]

10 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I do agree on adding alcohol to meals, but disagree that doing so should intoxicate the player. From a realistic standpoint, adding alcohol to a dish typically doesn't result in intoxication since the alcohol gets cooked out...at least, that's my understanding. It's mostly added just for the flavor, and typically in small amounts at that. From a gameplay standpoint, I also suspect the intoxication aspect is why many players don't utilize alcohol as much as they could. The drunken wobble is certainly fun for fooling around with friends, but outside of that it can be annoying, and having even one mild drink really shouldn't make someone wobble like that. If the effects were more similar to SlowTox, in that it at least took more time and alcohol for the drunk effect to appear, alcohol would probably be a more appealing preservation option.

I guess that's fine. I was thinking that if you add a lot alcohol to a meal then it should intoxicate you, but meal ratios exist so that's really not an option since you either can't make the meal or it gets split up.

As for drinking alcohol, it should definitely take more alcohol for the wobble to appear, as far as I'm aware just one drink shouldn't make you very drunk, but it should stack exponentially instead, so if you drink a bucket you're done for in the aiming department, or doing anything at all department too.

[jerjerje]

11 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

From a realistic standpoint, adding alcohol to a dish typically doesn't result in intoxication since the alcohol gets cooked out...at least, that's my understanding.

This isn't really true. Some alcohol is lost, but far from all of it. How much alcohol remains heavily depends on the cooking method. To Quote the Wikipedia Article Cooking with Alcohol:

• alcohol added to boiling liquid and removed from heat: 85% alcohol retained
• alcohol flamed: 75% alcohol retained
• no heat, stored overnight: 70% alcohol retained
• baked, 25 minutes, alcohol not stirred into mixture: 45% alcohol retained
• baked/simmered, alcohol stirred into mixture: (see table)

Time (h)	Alcohol retained[5]
0.25	40%
0.5	35%
1.0	25%
1.5	20%
2.0	10%
2.5	5.0%

So depending on the cooking method, a lot of alcohol can stay in the meal. That's very important for people who can't eat/drink alcohol at all!

But the quantity of alcohol used in meals tends to be (comparably) low. That is why most don't tend to get noticeably intoxicated by it.  So it does make sense that you wouldn't get drunk from alcoholic meals in game.

45 minutes ago, PineReseen said:

As for drinking alcohol, it should definitely take more alcohol for the wobble to appear, as far as I'm aware just one drink shouldn't make you very drunk, but it should stack exponentially instead, so if you drink a bucket you're done for in the aiming department, or doing anything at all department too.

Remember that seraphs always drink an entire liter of wine at once. From that, it does make sense to me that you would be drunk very fast.

 

As for the actual point of this forum post:

I unfortunately only have two ideas for additional uses:

1. Alcohol inhibits the growth of bacteria. So adding it to a meal, would allow that meal to last a lot longer (Source (Source is in German)

2. Alcohol (Aqua Vitae) can be used as a fuel source. This could be implemented as a new type of stove. I'm not sure if this would really be helpful, though.
Maybe sprinkling some alcohol over a fire pit could temporarily increase the heat of the fire pit and allow ingredients to get to temperature faster?

Reading through the Wikipedia article for Ethanol and Alcoholic Beverages, I couldn't think of any other real life use cases that could be implemented.