food storage Using Crates for food storage in a Cellar

[DapperLucario]

Wondering if this is a worth while thing because I'm playing with a mid sized group and I really like farming in games so my fields are a bit ambitious admittedly but I have an exorbitant amount of grains. Granted we have a stack mods (P1nks) and the Chonky Vessels but I am running out of room even then. The capacity of the crates is fantastic but they only display one preservation value (x0.26) where the Vessels display for each food group and I have some values way lower than that of the crates. Grains last a long time as is but it's what I have the most of right now so it's my main focus. The only thing I don't like about the crates is not being able to open them to an inventory but it's an understandable trade-off given how much they can hold (even if it's just one type of item). So my only worry is that I put a few hundred of something in one and then a few in-game weeks later, come to retrieve some of that item and it's all rotted because funny math and I can't check the rates of individual stacks while it's in the crate.

I couldn't find any cellar discussion that included crates so I am doing some testing with small amounts and will try to remember to give an update on my findings for anyone else that might be curious about this.

[Rainbow Fresh]

There is two values at play here - the temperature and the rate modifiers. Clay storage vessels, as the only vanilla game storage medium, have better modifiers for grains and vegetables as the intended long-term use of these, even in the steel age, is storing food. The rest is determined by temperature. A cellar will always, with success depending on cellar effectiveness x outside temperature, always aim for a temperature of "MIN(5°C, outside temp)". Which in the optimal non-winter case is 0.26x times normal rot speed. That is why you see that value on the crate; it's not a storage vessel, it does not have individual multipliers on top for grains and vegetables, everything rots inside at the exact same rate solely determined by temperature. Not being able to see the remaining rot timer is also an issue with crates; as far as I am aware they internally track normal inventory slots akin to the amount of total capacity they have so with a full oak crate of grain you'd have about 20 individual stacks of grain each with their own spoil timer. Though considering a crate can only hold a single type of item, you'd just lose grain to rot rather than gain rot (unless the crate just drops the generated rot onto the ground.)

Edited 4 hours ago by Rainbow Fresh

[Professor Dragon]

@Rainbow Fresh has the technicalities right.

I'll just add my own experiences, as I was in a similar position with huge amounts of grain.

The crates within a cellar DID cheaply do the trick, for a while.

Ultimately though, the fundamental problem was that I had too much grain to use. I think that the "input vs output" is as important here as "How long will it keep?"

So, sure, use Crates to get over a temporary storage hump, but longer term think about getting the annual input/output balance right.

• Set up animal farms
  (This will end up just giving you a different type of volume output issue)
• Set up bakeries near Traders who buy bread
• Set up rot farms to make compost to make  . . . more crops
• Accept the losses as the cost of having nice big grain farms

Also, Artisan Trader Storage Vessels are very pretty, and just having a few walls of those and ditching the crates is probably a nice medium term goal.

Professor Dragon.