Variations for Mushroom Nutrition.

[Bruno Willis]

I enjoy the subtle difference between some types of berries (cranberries last longer, but have lower nutritional value for example), and I'd love to see that for mushrooms too.

King bolete look so big and tasty, but I'm pretty sure they're the same as the woody shelf mushrooms when it comes to both nutrition and how long they can be stored. I'd love to see fleshy mushrooms like bolete, field mushrooms, red-wind caps, etc. have a quite short storage potential, but lots of nutrition, and woodier, more easily dried mushrooms, tinderhoof, reishi, could have longer storage potential, and lower nutrition. Then you'd be able to offer special mushrooms, like shitake, which might have the extended lifespan of the tinderhoof, but a normal amount of nutrition, and King bolete, which might have just a whopping amount of nutrition for a mushroom, and a normal storage potential. 

It'd also be interesting if some mushrooms gave 1/2 and 1/2 vegetable and protein nutrition, as the thing which makes them special. 

This isn't an important suggestion, but I think something like this would add a lot to the experience of harvesting and cooking with mushrooms. 

[MKMoose]

Given that mushroom farming has been chilling on the roadmap for a while, I'd imagine that some more attention may be given to mushrooms once obtaining them can be less about "find them randomly in the wild" and more about "target a specific species of mushroom and grow it deliberately". I'm quite interested in what they might do for mushroom farming, since it can in some cases be the epitome of "tricky to set up, but easy to maintain".

 

3 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I'd love to see fleshy mushrooms like bolete, field mushrooms, red-wind caps, etc. have a quite short storage potential, but lots of nutrition, and woodier, more easily dried mushrooms, tinderhoof, reishi, could have longer storage potential, and lower nutrition. Then you'd be able to offer special mushrooms, like shitake, which might have the extended lifespan of the tinderhoof, but a normal amount of nutrition, and King bolete, which might have just a whopping amount of nutrition for a mushroom, and a normal storage potential. 

Very good idea, and I would just note that it would be best not to go too overboard with satiety variation, because having a predictable baseline "mushrooms give 80" is very convenient and simplifies a lot. The properties of a single mushroom can also be balanced by their availability, both in the wild and in farming.

 

3 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

It'd also be interesting if some mushrooms gave 1/2 and 1/2 vegetable and protein nutrition, as the thing which makes them special. 

I'd personally rather see just a few protein-only species, not mixed nutrition, because if mix here, then why not mix everywhere? Unless maybe as part of a larger nutrition rework, which could separate nutrition categories into something like energy type (e.g. protein, fat, sugar) and culinary category or micronutrient group (the current categories except protein). Not that it's necessarily a bad idea to mix things, but I think keeping the groups separate is an important component which contributes to VS nutrition being quite uniquely effective at encouraging varied diets while remaining simple and intuitive.

That said, I do think that it could be beneficial in the long term to have some way of differentiating foods within a single category to make mushrooms more distinct from vegetables, for example:

• adjusting the satiety to nutrition ratio for some items (or just removing it entirely, like for bamboo shoots) - bulk foods like grains could have relatively low nutrition but high satiety, whereas nutrient-rich items like most fruit and vegetables could have higher nutrition but lower satiety,
• some manner of micronutrients, as a single extra nutrition bar, obtained from some specific foods from various primary categories, could allow to directly add a special use to some foods which otherwise can be overshadowed by different options - meat could have more micronutrients than other sources of protein, mushrooms could have little to no regular nutrients, but more micronutrients than other foods (not perfectly realistic, but serves as a fine gameplay incentive),
• alternatively, a larger rework with something like fat and sugar (nutrition-like bars, applying appropriate minor buffs, consumed at variable rate depending on some factors, forming a distinct trio with protein) could help with adding much more meaningful distinctions to foods, as well as help introduce differences between food requirements in different climates.

 

3 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I think something like this would add a lot to the experience of harvesting and cooking with mushrooms.

As much as I can agree with this and like the suggestion, I can't help but feel like there's a lot of other changes which would help this even more (if at more dev time), including:

• partially or fully hiding the information on how much health poisonous mushrooms reduce,
• allowing to cook the poison out where realistic,
• concentrating some mushroom foraging spots to smaller but denser areas to encourage the player to return to them,
• and implementing more proper seasonal growth.

Then, some or most mushrooms would be less a free early-game food source whenever moving through a forest, and more a reward for a diligent gatherer who learns about which mushrooms are edible, seeks out viable growing locations, records valuable mushroom spots, and returns to them when they are in season - a pretty unique design direction compared to sources of food like farming or animal husbandry, which could be more focused on regular upkeep and don't have much space to add knowledge-based progression.

[LadyWYT]

13 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

partially or fully hiding the information on how much health poisonous mushrooms reduce

I would actually like to see at least some damage reworked once status effects arrive, since that kind of system opens up more interesting options than "player did bad thing, takes damage as result". Some, like death caps and funeral bells, should obviously kill or seriously hurt the player, but others could simply be rather unpleasant and give the player the runs for a few days or something(drains nutrition faster but not satiety?)

 

3 hours ago, Bruno Willis said:

I enjoy the subtle difference between some types of berries (cranberries last longer, but have lower nutritional value for example), and I'd love to see that for mushrooms too.

I'm pretty sure they're working on this a bit, given that some mushrooms now send the player on trips when eaten.