Offhand Hunger Debuff Tweaks

[pippo_]

I think the hunger debuff you get when holding something in your offhand should only apply when you are holding something in both hands or only when holding a shield, rather than just anything in your left hand. I feel like that would be more intuitive and be more realistic, like why do I burn 20% more calories holding a torch or lantern in one hand vs the other (assuming the other hand is empty)? My thought is that this was introduced to give a penalty for having a shield in your offhand at all times, but if that's the case, why not give just shields a hunger penalty when held instead of any item in the offhand? Additionally, having the hunger debuff in text on the description of shields would make it more clear what is going on, as I played for dozens of hours not knowing that this hunger rate debuff existed. As such for almost a year on my first world my hunger rate was at 120% almost all the time, because I didn't know about the debuff.

[MKMoose]

There's recently been a related discussion in another thread as well, largely echoing your sentiments.

 

Personally, I think that this penalty should just be thrown out the window, and instead a benefit for using some specific tools and other items with two hands (i.e. with an empty off-hand) should be implemented. And possibly some items could only be used with two hands. Buffing two-handed items instead of penalizing using items in the off-hand has a whole number of advantages, as I see it:

• It actually benefits what the player is currently doing which keeps its scope within the short-term gameplay loop together with switching items into and out of the off-hand.
• It encourages keeping the off-hand empty for specific, targeted actions instead of at all times whenever possible.
• It gives the player arguably much more interesting agency - instead of only putting anything in the off-hand when necessary and treating an empty off-hand as the default, it actually would make an empty off-hand into a choice that the player makes when focusing on specific activities.
• It's only active when the player is actually using a relevant item, whereas the current debuff is applied regardless of whether the player is using the item in the off-hand, and its severity is not correlated with the benefit or use of that item and the player's current activity. You could be sprinting with a shield mid-combat, chiseling intricate decorations, or sitting around and cooking food with an item in the off-hand just because you forgot to take it out - all of them apply the same nagging penalty.

Some items like the shield or a lantern could retain a debuff, because the player can benefit from them in sudden situations or passively. Even in this case, though, simply adding an opportunity cost through more items that can be used in the off-hand (e.g. knife or other weapons, bag or basket, walking stick) could also be sufficient to make the player think twice about which item they want to use, making the penalty completely unnecessary and even detrimental to gameplay variety.

 

Only tangentially related, I just had a thought that it could be really cool to make the bow only usable in the off-hand, with an arrow in the main hand. Would be much more sensible and immersive than using the bow in the main hand with the off-hand free to do whatever it pleases.

Edited 12 hours ago by MKMoose