How do i keep all nutrition bars full all year?

[Hunbird1]

How much food of each type should I store to make sure I can keep all nutrition bars full all year?

Also what is the best forms to keep them in,I was thinking of keeping grains and vegetables in storage vessels in my cellar, make milk in to cheese,

 and just kill one of my animals (likely pigs) or collect eggs when I need protein. Not sure about fruit maybe wine?

How many animal an how much food for them do I need for meat and cheese, and how much if i keep chickens for eggs and feathers.

Speaking about cheese will cheese-making use up pickled vegetables or can I reuse them. 

[Professor Dragon]

Hi there,

Not trying to be flippant, but I suggest you just play the game more.    

The actual answer depends on what Class you've chosen, and how much health you've assigned, you'll notice these things:

• In your first year, fruit nutrition bars will be easy to fill up, as when berries come in, they're scattered about the world.
• Before that, if you're the hunting type, then protein will fill quickly.
• Grain will take a little longer, but once you have your first farm up, then grain will never be an issue ever again. It keeps for ages and is a good food.
• Dairy is almost a vanity stat. Although you can buy cheese from a Trader, in practice, it is probably a multi-year set-up of raising animals to get a steady source. And they're honestly a lot of trouble when you're starting out.
• Growing fruit trees is another multi-year endeavor (or finding them in the game). But you only need a few to be set for life.

You'll also notice that you like some activities a lot more than others. Maybe you're a born hunter, or gear trader, or grain farmer. That will influence your nutrition.

Any of the things you've mentioned will be a good start for food. I always start with a quick farm, preferably in a greenhouse, but that's just me.

Finally, full nutrition bars aren't really required in this game. Having enough food not to starve IS required, but anything beyond that is just a bonus - unless you're expecting a lot of combat, and then having better armour and weapons is actually your bottleneck, not food.

>  How much food of each type should I store to make sure I can keep all nutrition bars full all year?
A: Until you get farms going, you can always do with more food of any type.
Once you have farms going, you'll have too much of that type.
But a Storage Vessel full of any food will do to start.

> Also what is the best forms to keep them in,I was thinking of keeping grains and vegetables in storage vessels in my cellar, make milk in to cheese,
Yes, that's fine.

>  and just kill one of my animals (likely pigs) or collect eggs when I need protein.
Either is fine. Or hunting.  Chickens are a pain to raise initially. Then they're a pain to harvest for meals. You really do chickens (a) for the farm vibes or (b) to trade their feathers.

> Not sure about fruit maybe wine?
Find a few fruit trees or raise your own. Plant from berry crops. Wine is something to do for fun, not because you need to.

> How many animal an how much food for them do I need for meat and cheese, and how much if i keep chickens for eggs and feathers.
You need a "small herd" to get enough for breeding up the generations and to cull the extras.

> Speaking about cheese will cheese-making use up pickled vegetables or can I reuse them.  
No, the cheese making process consumes them - but it's not a lot. You'll typically have pickled vegetables coming out of your ears, compared to the amount of cheese you have.

Professor Dragon.

 

 

 

[Demoncyborg]

highly recommend apples for winter fruit saturation. if you don't have honey for making jam, they tend to keep for a long time just on their own in a good cellar.

[Maelstrom]

For this comment I will ignore dairy and assuming the default temperate climate.

The first year is difficult to max out your nutrition but not impossible.  First you'll start with foraging and hunting. 

1. Veggies and berries are easy to come by as they'll be everywhere throughout the summer.
2. Same with animals if you want to get your protein up.  But for long term protein production you'll want to capture some animals to breed so don't over hunt where your home will be.

Homesteading
1. Get a farm up as soon as possible. Even if all you have is a dozen seeds.  It takes 2 months for crops to grow in medium fertility soil.  If you get crops planted before June 1 you should be able to get 2 crops per plot before it gets too cold.
2.  Get an apiary up as soon as possible.  Bees produce honey which the game considers a fruit.  And honey in a barrel doesn't rot.

The last thing to maintaining nutrition is stockpiling food.  Apart from honey raw veggies and grains will last for quite a long time with grains lasting insanely long.  Meat and berries don't last so long but fruit from a fruit tree lasts longer than berries.  As you know, winter is tough if you haven't prepared for it. 

The last key to long term maintenance of nutrition
1. Cooking meals in a cook pot and storing them in crocks will extend the life of the cooked meals.
2. Seal the crock with beeswax and that meal will last a year or more.
3. Don't die.  Seriously.  Dying nukes your nutrition.  Die multiple times and you'll be spending half a month or more getting back to max.

If you're in a warm climate the protein can be easier to increase since soy and termites are easily gathered.

[Demoncyborg]

i'll add on my tips for cheese and dairy, it's my main thing to hunt for when i start a world since having my nutrition bars up is one of my favorite things.

when you're established with a farm, hopefully one that overproduces flax for animal feed, and once you've found a source of salt- it can be from traders, or directly from halite, then you're ready to make milk. you also need to be in at least copper tier, since you'll need planks for making buckets and barrels

make a small pen to start with, with 3-4 high fences, and a solid roof with at least a little gap between the fences and ceiling. and if you can a non-grass floor. this protects your goats from bears and lightning to start with

if you hang yourself on a ladder about 2-3 blocks off the ground, outside of the fences, and look inside through the top, you should be able to safely reach and attempt to milk animals that say "Can be milked but may become aggressive" without getting hurt. if you use a small pen, when they run around stressed it should be easier to use the bucket on them with less room to run around. use a stack of a few buckets so it's harder to accidentally sip the milk, it's annoying to have less than 10L at a time.

Once they gen up, everything becomes a lot easier, but it's entirely possible to get milk from low gen goats as well, just takes a lot more work, and this pen setup has been the easiest for genning animals up that i've had :3

you need 5 buckets of milk, x2 pickled veg and x20 salt for every barrel you process into cheese, which will give you x2 wheels of cheese per barrel. you can wax cheese before it's ripened to make it last longer, but it still lasts for years without once it matures.

as far as actually keeping your dairy up once you have milk and cheese producing, cheese pies and scrambled eggs are the only meals in vanilla VS that accept cheese slices, and are also the best foods for keeping your dairy up. drinking milk isn't good, and cottage cheese is terrible compared to the benefits of aging it into cheddar.

 

as far as how much food a single Seraph needs each winter- your play style influences how hungry you get, so it's hard to quantify without getting a feel for it each year yourself.

happy hunting, foraging, farming and cooking!

[Maelstrom]

3 hours ago, Demoncyborg said:

make a small pen to start with, with 3-4 high fences, 

Not necessary.   No animal can climb over a single tall fence.  Not even the seraph can walk over a fence.  Just place a block next to a fence and try to walk over the top of it.  Even placing a slab on top of the fence will still insufficient to allow walking passage over a fence.

[Demoncyborg]

8 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

Not necessary.   No animal can climb over a single tall fence.  Not even the seraph can walk over a fence.  Just place a block next to a fence and try to walk over the top of it.  Even placing a slab on top of the fence will still insufficient to allow walking passage over a fence.

well, if anything it keeps them safe from stray bowtorn/drifter rocks, especially if you're near them during a storm.

[Stevej018]

9 hours ago, Maelstrom said:

 No animal can climb over a single tall fence.  

They fixed the bear climbing?  I remember you had to make three block tall walls the fences didnt work?

 

[Maelstrom]

To my knowledge bears cannot climb over fences, but they can reach through them.   Even the piggus and goats are butting me through the fence.

 

[Professor Dragon]

42 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

To my knowledge bears cannot climb over fences, but they can reach through them.   Even the piggus and goats are butting me through the fence.

 

@Maelstrom is right.  Bears can climb blocks but not fences. Some of them also rarely can jump - but typically only towards a player. I've yet to experience that myself, but then I'm usually trying to stay away from them.

Double-height fences stop the head-butting. I always do this near animals and paths . . . the little buggers darlings always get ya.

Double-height exterior perimeter fencing should be a standard anyway, just to avoid annoying Bowtorns sniping you as you honestly work the land.

The "belt and braces" animal enclosure will have:

• Double-height exterior fence.
• "Air-lock" entry gates to lessen escapes.
• An interior fence to contain the animals.
• Non-spawnable blocks for the animal enclosure and/or a permanent light source covering the whole enclosure to the distance of the perimeter fence.
• Light "Transparent" roof. Optional, but removes all chance of incursions, escapees and gives nice protection from rain and hail. 
• Bonus points if the enclosure meets "house" room conditions, as then you can work without wind.
• Seperated male and female animals.
• Seperated Generations of female animals.
• Lightning rods covering to the perimeter fence.
• A secure back-up breeding pair.
• Safe feeding mechanism, such as large troughs partway under fences or ladders and walkways above.
• Safer harvesting methods. Depends on your risk level, but you can treat them like a drifter spawner and half-slab a killing/milking chamber, or at least separate pens to isolate out members. (Remember kids - the sheep and goats have it in for you.)
• Storage Vessel/s to contain food for feeding. Buckets for milking etc.
• A nearby farm to produce fodder.

Or just leave them in a few large separated fields and run around like a madman - that's an option for the brave few

Professor Dragon.

EDIT

• Optional: 5 deep pit traps beyond perimeter fence without ladders inside.

 

Edited Saturday at 03:49 AM by Professor Dragon

[Maelstrom]

1 hour ago, Professor Dragon said:

• Safe feeding mechanism, such as large troughs partway under fences or ladders and walkways above.

As soon as I'm in the late copper age I just use a chute to feed a trough from a chest.   Fill the chest occasionally when I want to breed up another generation. 

[Poxxs]

On 7/22/2026 at 2:00 PM, Hunbird1 said:

How much food of each type should I store to make sure I can keep all nutrition bars full all year?

That really depends on class and the length of the month. I have not played vanilla in a long time, but 36 crocks of meals will last me the whole winter, and I still have plenty left over. I also play with 30 day months on my server. Now take that with a grain of salt because the server is always running, but when I am seriously playing during the winter, if I have a full cabinet of crocks, I never run out of food. 
 

On 7/22/2026 at 2:00 PM, Hunbird1 said:

Also what is the best forms to keep them in,I was thinking of keeping grains and vegetables in storage vessels in my cellar, make milk in to cheese,

 and just kill one of my animals (likely pigs) or collect eggs when I need protein. Not sure about fruit maybe wine?

Veggies and grain you can keep in storage vessels, no problem. Make sure your cellar is getting the best bonuses possible. If your veggies are getting ready to spoil, you can always char them, and it will reset the fresh timer. Yeah, you can't cook with charred veggies, but you can still eat them for vegetable saturation. If you have the ability, waxed cheese is a great way to store dairy saturation long term. Otherwise, with spare grain, you can just keep your animals fed and breeding through the winter so you can drink fresh milk. Vanilla I think you can still dehydrate fruit, and it will last a long while. If you have the ability to gather apples or pears, they last much longer. You can also dehydrate those. Wine is also a possible choice if you want to store fruit saturation long term. 
 

On 7/22/2026 at 2:00 PM, Hunbird1 said:

How many animal an how much food for them do I need for meat and cheese, and how much if i keep chickens for eggs and feathers.

This depends on how many animals you have and also how long your months are. If you are going to be continuously feeding them through the winter and you have a lot of animals, you will probably need a few storage vessels full of grain. You can also use the smashed fruit from the fruit press as a stopgap animal feed to save a little grain, but it rots fast. If I had to put a safe number, I would say 2 or 3 stacks of grain per goat for the winter. Can probably get away with the same amount for chickens also. 

 

On 7/22/2026 at 2:00 PM, Hunbird1 said:

Speaking about cheese will cheese-making use up pickled vegetables or can I reuse them. 

It uses them up. 

[Professor Dragon]

On 7/25/2026 at 2:36 PM, Maelstrom said:

As soon as I'm in the late copper age I just use a chute to feed a trough from a chest.   Fill the chest occasionally when I want to breed up another generation. 

 . . . You can do THAT?

Good reminder. This is one of those things that I knew and then completely forgot.

[Demoncyborg]

On 7/25/2026 at 5:36 AM, Maelstrom said:

As soon as I'm in the late copper age I just use a chute to feed a trough from a chest.   Fill the chest occasionally when I want to breed up another generation. 

that's smart!! i usually just toss it on the floor when i cant be asked lol

[Maelstrom]

Benefit of the chute fed trough is that you don't have to check if the females have eaten enough.  Provided you put an excess of food *cough*flax*cough* in the chest or crate.  Additionally, food in a trough does NOT spoil.