Crock'O'Shit

[cubicmetre]

When I made my cellar I crafted 36 crocks to help with food preservation but cannot get them to work properly. I originally wanted to store pies in them until I found out you could not put pie slices in crocks, so the crocks have just sat there doing nothing as I've been crafting pies for food. I decided to cure a bunch of red meat then found out you cannot craft pies with cured meats. This forced me to go back to crafting stews. The fact that bowls can stack if they contain the same liquid led me to believe I could craft 24 bowls, 4 cooking pots and then store 24 meat stew servings neatly in 3x8 stacks of bowls. But of course bowls won't stack for stews even though they do stack for literally any other liquid, so now i have 24 bowls of stew that will rot in 10 days. Oh but maybe this means I get to finally use my crocks, except for some reason it is impossible to transfer stew from a bowl to a crock. 

A similar thing happened already when I believed I could save durability on my hammer by feeding over 3000 units of iron chunks into a pulverizer and refining the resulting pulverized iron in a bloomery, just to find that the bloomery doesn't accept pulverized iron.

Why does this game have so many of these interactions which should be possible but just aren't?

[LadyWYT]

Welcome to the forums!

19 minutes ago, cubicmetre said:

Why does this game have so many of these interactions which should be possible but just aren't?

Well, for starters...pies are not foods that are stored in crocks in general. Crocks are for soups and stews, and while crocks can be filled from two different sources, the ingredients of the soup/stew will need to be in the exact same order for the meal to fill the crock. Most likely that's due to code limitations, and may or may not be further refined in the future.

As for dumping bowls of food into crocks...to my knowledge this isn't currently a feature, though I could be wrong. Though I'm guessing the idea is that if the player went to the effort of filling the bowl(which is a deliberate action), then it can be safely assumed they're intending to eat the meal within.

Cured meats and pickled vegetables...no idea. Probably the devs just haven't gotten around to balancing that area and writing the code to support it. As it stands now, salt curing is a great way to preserve food for a really long time, but meals require fresh ingredients in order to get their benefit.

24 minutes ago, cubicmetre said:

When I made my cellar I crafted 36 crocks to help with food preservation but cannot get them to work properly.

Ultimately, you're on the right track when it comes to preserving food. A properly built cellar will extend the shelf life of food items by quite a lot. Putting soups and stews into crocks can help extend the shelf life a little more, but you'll want to seal the crock with beeswax or fat in order to greatly extend it.

[Xplosionist]

There are reasons for a lot of the things in the game, but sometimes it's just "because it's only a game not real life."

For the food and bowl stacking, I don't know that I understand the exact situation, but it might be like something I still find confusing, although I basically understand. Some things that _can_ stack don't stack automatically because of differences in attributes.  Food, for example, will sometimes stack automatically, but if the age of the food isn't the same, it won't.  But, you can force it to stack by dropping them on top of each other, and they will adopt a "worst case" (or maybe average? I haven't tested thoroughly, I feel like I've seen each) where they all get the same attribute, thus losing the better attributes/age that one of the stacks had.

Is that maybe the case with your bowls?  I don't know if I've stacked bowls, but I would immagine, like you, that the _exact same_ meat stew, bowls could stack.  If it's a different stew recipe then they can't stack, because they're not the same item.  If it's a state of some smaller attribute, like age, then I'd guess you can manually stack them as I found with food described above.

As to putting from bowl back into crock, sure, in the case of the exact same thing being moved I agree.  Add that to suggestions, they might take it.  It's a reasonable suggestion.

A lot of these things where things that make sense don't work, are likely just best as suggestions.  If enough people want them and think they're valuable, they may well be added.

...just my thoughts...

 

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, Xplosionist said:

Is that maybe the case with your bowls?  I don't know if I've stacked bowls, but I would immagine, like you, that the _exact same_ meat stew, bowls could stack.  If it's a different stew recipe then they can't stack, because they're not the same item.  If it's a state of some smaller attribute, like age, then I'd guess you can manually stack them as I found with food described above.

I know bowls will stack when empty, but I don't think they stack when filled with something that counts as a meal item. I'm not entirely sure why, other than it has something to do with how meals are coded to work in the game. Each "meal" is basically its own thing, and if they stacked then it would be difficult to account for partial servings.

[Slam]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I know bowls will stack when empty, but I don't think they stack when filled with something that counts as a meal item. I'm not entirely sure why, other than it has something to do with how meals are coded to work in the game. Each "meal" is basically its own thing, and if they stacked then it would be difficult to account for partial servings.

I thought of it as “semi realistic” but also balanced, dishes are design to be stack on top of each other when empty, but you don’t stack plates on plate of food because theres no space, you put in a container (such a crock, or pot) and grab what you need onto a dish and leave the rest. The meals are also sloppy, they’re not just on big piece, like cook meat, bread, or slices of pie (how does the saraph able to make filling that don’t spill that isn’t pumpkin, no idea).

there’s also balancing, meals are much better then regular food since they pause hunger, which depending on what your doing, can easily be hundreds of free saturation before your saturation barbs tart decreases, but to compensate, you can only hold 4-6 meals per inventory slot + 1 meal and slot for the bowl. Non-meal food doesn’t have this but can stack, so you can eat more food but each food doesn’t get you as far.

as for liquid in containers, they do stack, which I feel is more for convince, but I mean if you wanted to you can carry serval buckets of milk, honey, or juice that only 1-2 slots.

summery meals take more inventory, and are less efficient for saturation per slot, but saves food, more ideal for trips you know exactly how long it gonna to take, and can reasonably go back home for refill (working at base, supply runs), while stacked food take up less space and are more efficient saturation per slot, but cost more food, more ideal for unknown length of time (exploring, caving)

[Byrnorthil]

10 hours ago, Xplosionist said:

For the food and bowl stacking, I don't know that I understand the exact situation, but it might be like something I still find confusing, although I basically understand. Some things that _can_ stack don't stack automatically because of differences in attributes.  Food, for example, will sometimes stack automatically, but if the age of the food isn't the same, it won't.  But, you can force it to stack by dropping them on top of each other, and they will adopt a "worst case" (or maybe average? I haven't tested thoroughly, I feel like I've seen each) where they all get the same attribute, thus losing the better attributes/age that one of the stacks had.

When differently spoiled items stack the game takes the average (this is also what Don't Starve does), which isn't realistic at all but as far as I can see it's a necessary compromise to make stacking work.

I do however think that the way the game currently implements the logic of deciding whether or not it will stack is unhelpful and unintuitive and I've posted a change request here if you'd like to give it some publicity.

[cubicmetre]

It just feels like a lot of these frustrating things, like the same item in different states being treated differently by the games crafting and storage systems, are just examples of poor planning. Like surely a developer would first focus on implementing the system to move liquids, meals, whatever between containers then build off that system so that you don't get situations like mine where you can transfer meals from a pot to a crock, then from a crock to a bowl, but not from a bowl to a crock. For the system to work properly it should allow whatever substance to be transfered to/from whatever container, then you can work on adding the different substances, their recipes, etc.

The "its just a game" argument kind of falls apart when you are talking about an entire stack of cured meat that took over 20 in game days to produce, being completely wasted when I transfered the meals to bowls instead of to crocks. Now I have no way of preserving the meals so all that work is essentially wasted. This completely breaks the immersion and prevents me from enjoying the game.

[Broccoli Clock]

5 hours ago, cubicmetre said:

It just feels like a lot of these frustrating things, like the same item in different states being treated differently by the games crafting and storage systems, are just examples of poor planning.

I would take issue with that. While I totally understand the frustration, some of it coming from your lack of prior knowledge - to be expected, not everyone is an expert and is no slight on you - but there is a fundamental reason that a bowl containing a meal of [meat]+[meat]+[carrot]+[onion] is different from a meal of [meat]+[meat]+[onion]+[carrot]. While the ingredients themselves are technically the same, the stacking mechanism shouldn't think that. This is extended beyond just food, take chiselled blocks for example, unless it is an exact copy not just the voxels but the extra textures and even the orientation of those extra texture blocks, they will not stack either.

Just because you don't know why that is, doesn't make it "examples of poor planning". Which is the reason I'm replying. You may not like the way it works, but there is a reason why, and it's very intentionally planned that way.

 

[Demoncyborg]

the intended mechanic is for you to use crocks to store food long term, not bowls. Bowls are open air, and spoil fast, crocks can hold 4 servings and be sealed with fat or wax. Filled crocks, even with the exact same meal, won't stack on each other, and neither will empty ones.

Liquids already work in bowls like you want, but yes, not with meals. the only way to be rid of it, is to eat it, or toss it in the water and waste it. Bowls are the end of your cooking prep, the final state- a tool for eating! You can transfer many meals between crocks and cooking pots intuitively before then.

I won't lie that it's a good suggestion to be able to empty the bowls back into the crock or cooking pot, but I personally see why it hasn't been added so far, since it's just the tool for eating the food, not storing or making it like crocks and cookpots are.

i'd really recommend checking the handbook before doing big crafts or pushes that feel intuitive and getting frustrated when you waste the materials or time, it should illuminate the intended mechanics currently in place for most things in the game.

 

[Vexxvididu]

5 hours ago, Demoncyborg said:

the intended mechanic is for you to use crocks to store food long term, not bowls. Bowls are open air, and spoil fast, crocks can hold 4 servings and be sealed with fat or wax. Filled crocks, even with the exact same meal, won't stack on each other, and neither will empty ones.

Liquids already work in bowls like you want, but yes, not with meals. the only way to be rid of it, is to eat it, or toss it in the water and waste it. Bowls are the end of your cooking prep, the final state- a tool for eating! You can transfer many meals between crocks and cooking pots intuitively before then.

I won't lie that it's a good suggestion to be able to empty the bowls back into the crock or cooking pot, but I personally see why it hasn't been added so far, since it's just the tool for eating the food, not storing or making it like crocks and cookpots are.

i'd really recommend checking the handbook before doing big crafts or pushes that feel intuitive and getting frustrated when you waste the materials or time, it should illuminate the intended mechanics currently in place for most things in the game.

 

 

To build on this, I think it's a great common recommendation to test out stuff in a separate creative game before you invest tons of time and resources into doing it in survival. This game makes it easy to make bad assumptions about how the mechanics work.