More Meal Variety/Meal Making

[PickledPirhana]

I love how in depth this game is but i found one thing lacking. The food making. I thought of some new things that could add some new ways to cook your foods. 

Some examples could be, Making a pizza oven from clay or stone and bake pizza. Bakeable cakes to bake in the stone oven or some other method. Bigger pots made of metals for bigger stews, some pans to maybe stir fry ingredients with animal fat or oil from olives. After all people do this on fire IRL. Maybe some more variation to meats too, like pigs for example. Pork butt, Ham, etc... all providing different Sat values. Hell maybe even sandwiches?

I'm really just spit balling, all being unnecessary maybe, but a expansion to cooking would be amazing to add for the simple domestic lives some live in this beautiful game. 

[SnapJelly]

52 minutes ago, PickledPirhana said:

more variation to meats too, like pigs for example. Pork butt, Ham

I think this will just be a nightmare for inventory space management with not all that much payoff, what would having a variety of meat cuts add other than taking up more slots?
 

 

54 minutes ago, PickledPirhana said:

Making a pizza oven from clay or stone and bake pizza

Why would you need a specific pizza oven when you can already make an oven? I do agree that other things should be cookable in the oven though but why make an entire new thing just to make 1 food item?

 

55 minutes ago, PickledPirhana said:

Bakeable cakes to bake in the stone oven or some other method.

You can make pies

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, PickledPirhana said:

I'm really just spit balling, all being unnecessary maybe, but a expansion to cooking would be amazing to add for the simple domestic lives some live in this beautiful game. 

Expanded Foods is as close as it gets right now.

I will note that more crop/foodstuffs is a frequently requested feature, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot more variety gets added later. But "later" is also the key; right now there's a decent variety of options available for what the game actually is(still early in development), and adding more variety on top of that perhaps isn't the most important priority considering there are still gameplay systems missing and only two of eight story chapters added.

[Kulze]

Yes, more variety is definitely good, always for it as it increases the immersion level.
That'll just take time though, plainly spoken... expanding on the core systems rather then variety is more important for VS anyway, the more systems there are the more options to implement interacting functionality happens automatically.
 

31 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

think this will just be a nightmare for inventory space management with not all that much payoff

Can be counteracted by the basic butchering being the simple 'meat' you get currently.
Any expanded methods should include proper butchery processes, hence the variety comes from there, the upside to counter the complexity being more meat provided from a single animal ultimately.

A proper butchering process would allow a lot. Blood, organs, fat,meat cuts, bones. All of that can be used for a variety of things. Proper recipes remade from real-life, sausage-making, more rendered fat production, the proper bones for broth-making, grilling, smoking, the options are huge simply.

That in itself provides already upsides. If it's combined with the 'basic' processing then it doesn't cause inventory issues as it's a complexity increase above that for more rewards and immersion.

[SnapJelly]

6 minutes ago, Kulze said:

Can be counteracted by the basic butchering being the simple 'meat' you get currently.

sure but what would the point of that be then? it would just be another mouseclick to get the exact same result you have now

 

7 minutes ago, Kulze said:

the upside to counter the complexity being more meat provided from a single animal ultimately.

This would be the exact same as just increasing the drop rate, minus having to do 1 extra click to butcher it into ''simple'' meat

 

8 minutes ago, Kulze said:

Blood, organs, fat,meat cuts, bones. All of that can be used for a variety of things.

yeah but what's the point? What do you wanna do with blood and organs other than make sausage? which cured meats already kinda fill that spot tbh, it would just be one extra item that serves the same purpose as another item that already exists.

 

9 minutes ago, Kulze said:

more rendered fat production

I agree fat drop rates should be higher but again this isn't related to meat cuts, it's a different item in game

 

10 minutes ago, Kulze said:

the proper bones for broth-making, grilling, smoking, the options are huge simply

broth would be interesting, but those other forms of cooking are again not affected at all by meat type

[Kulze]

1) If you read further it's answered.
2) that's what you do for balance. The harder to achieve the bigger the reward. That's a basic in video games to uphold the effort/reward basis accordingly to other mechanics. More effort is more reward.
3) Blood: Sauce thickener, coagulation agent similar to eggs, sausages, pies, black pudding, dinuguan, czernina, blood curd.
Not gonna start with organs since you can write multiple cookbooks with the possibilities to use the respective ones in different variety.
4) It is, depending on how you butcher you get either a mess or ruin a lot, which is roughly what the current situation is with 'wild butchering' we do. Or you can do it in the same form as any other mechanics is piece by piece expected to go, with a minigame basically to dismantle the carcass, hence taking up time and effort but providing you with a more rewarding outcome. Same as cooking in general. Or are you never using a pot but instead just put the meat into the campfire? That's the exact same concept of complicating a mechanic to provide a higher amount of rewards.
5) Sure, make a sausage with only lean meat and tell me how that goes. Or try to grill a brisket and tell me how that works out. Or try a knuckle cut to smoke.
Every single cooking type is affected by meat type. As is every other ingredient in the world. Though it's no surprise to think otherwise since basically nobody can cook anymore nowadays. I'm a layman in terms of cooking but despite only dabbling in the actual techniques people which know me always ask if I'll make anything specific again. That's literally all it takes nowadays.

The topic is far more in-depth then you are imagining. And the gamification options which feel rewarding are as well.

The argumentation line of 'why would more complexity even provide any meaning?' is moot in itself since you can directly compare VS to Minecraft and get your answer from that. Is building in Minecraft as rewarding as in VS? No, because it's simple. The effort needed and the complexity of it with chiseling, item type combinations and framing with beams gives the system a significant depth. So a single house which is well designed in VS gives players a similar feeling of achievement then a small town built in Minecraft. This is a psychological basis for our brain where the amount of needed effort to achieve something increases our feeling of fulfillment unless it goes too far, then it falls off and works the other way around.

[SnapJelly]

8 minutes ago, Kulze said:

Is building in Minecraft as rewarding as in VS? No, because it's simple

This is a very simplistic way of looking at gamedesign, complexity without purpose itn't engaging if it just adds clutter and needs to be managed very carefully

 

9 minutes ago, Kulze said:

5) Sure, make a sausage with only lean meat and tell me how that goes. Or try to grill a brisket and tell me how that works out. Or try a knuckle cut to smoke.

Sure but you're also not worried about not having to add water to your porrage? Or yeast to your bread dough and let it rise first, or the fact that dough made from only rye wouldn't hold together, or that wine has to ferment for many months irl before it's drinkable... There's loads of things like that in game that get simplified for a better gaming experience, else it would just be clutter that stands in the way of meaningfull gameplay.

 

12 minutes ago, Kulze said:

3) Blood: Sauce thickener, coagulation agent similar to eggs, sausages, pies, black pudding, dinuguan, czernina, blood curd.

All of those could be added in game and would serve 0 function that red meat doesn't already fulfill

 

14 minutes ago, Kulze said:

The harder to achieve the bigger the reward.

that's exactly my point, there is no reward... the reward is more work for an item that does the same as redmeat

[Kulze]

1) The extra materials + immersion is a purpose.
2) Yes, porridge without water annoys me. Flatbread or Damper doesn't, which is basically what we make, we make hard-baked bread. Not tasty but nutritious anyway. And fermentation is obviously abbreviated for gamification, so what's the issue there? You're starting to conflate topics together. You take reality as well as possible and then abbreviate it accordingly downwards to allow comfortable implementation into a game. Which part exactly would a butcher-method with different parts as a result and a increase in recipes to use those cuts in specifically fail at here? Since we inherently a higher rate of immersion through variety while also the option to increase total results compared to field-butcher I don't see the failure point in your argumentation line.
3) With that line of logic we wouldn't need anything besides a single type of goat, a chicken and a pig. Albeit the pig itself is also not needed since red meat is also provided by goats, the function is fulfilled.
It doesn't uphold the argumentation line itself. Do the different types of goat, sheep, chicken, bears not provide anything to the game?
4) Same fallacy. By that logic further along we only need 1 veggy option, 1 meat option, 1 milk option, 1 fruit option and 1 grain option overall. It is the same fallacy which reduces mechanical complexity. A RPG for example only needs a resource for health and a resource for using skills (if not cooldown based). There is no need for Attributes, attributes are a further expression of adjusting the concept of taking and dealing damage in combat. This complexity provides the exact same outcomes as only having the core 2 stats of health and mana available, hence by your argumentation line no game should've attributes since there is nothing added.

[Devkrin]

I disagree with OP and join the opinion of clutter and that it adds unmeaningful gameplay.

It is settled than.
Claim rejected.

[Rainbow Fresh]

14 hours ago, SnapJelly said:

All of those could be added in game and would serve 0 function that red meat doesn't already fulfill

So what is the difference to having a million different block types + extra tedious and extra expensive chiseling mechanic and beams when just having dirt as a single block fulfils the exact same purpose in building? You can make a cube out of dirt which the game recognizes as a room. As such you can make a functional house that gives you all the benefits the game is willing to offer for house building without needing to clutter the game with a million more different blocks, some of which are extra tedious to obtain for no further gain. In fact, dirt as soil-type block also counts as cellar. Everything in one, the perfect block, the only thing you need. Why add more blocks? And more importantly, why do people still go out of their way to specifically obtain some of the most obnoxious to gather materials just to build fancy houses?

The same can be said for meat. Or the whole food system, as suggested in the OP. I am growing tired of the lack of variety in the game's food department and have already commented on plenty a similar topic here that is suggesting how to spice up the food system of the game, and in my personal opinion the solution always boils down to more variety. I always bring up Project Zomboid as a game reference because the in-depth cooking system would fit in levels of realistic complexity right into Vintage Story and was one of my favorite mechanics of the whole game.

So yes, why not add different items and different ways to use these items to make different foods? Who cares if the the "special cut whole-roasted meat slap with salt" and the "rib-eye steak with spices and butter" give the exact same amount of nutrition than adding 2 or 3 "readmeat" into a "cooking pot" to make a "meal"? In fact, because they do the same none is better than the rest and it is solely up to you to engage with it - or not. The Butchering mod already does part of the previously mentioned additions by giving you meat, fat, hide, blood, offals and - depending on animal size - up to two out of four different types of bones/sinew. Don't need any of that fancy schmancy stuff because blood and offals are solely used to turn meat into more potent meat? Happy with just cooking readmeat? Don't harvest the blood by not putting a bucket under the bleeding hung-up corpse. Don't need chicken bones as they only craft one very specific thing? Throw them away. Don't need strong bones as they, too, only craft one very specific thing? Throw them away. Offals? Onto the compost, or throw them away. Or, you know. Since this is currently based on an existing mod and the actual imlementation - if the devs would every consider it, which they don't, official statement of being "against gore"; make the process of obtaining those resources opt-in. Need only the hide and fat? Only skin the animal. Always want some more meat? Butcher the animal. Maybe make different types/cuts of meat available by choice of tool used to butcher. Need bones? Collect them. That way you have the same amount of inventory management problems as with vanilla, where it is your choice to take these items off of the right-clicked corpse; or not. And at this point we haven't even added cooking variety.

As Kulze already said, up to a certain degree more complexity and more required effort to achieve a goal makes the goal more rewarding to achieve. And the cooking system of the game is so unrewarding and so simplistic, there is a long long way to go before overshooting the mark. Aforementioned butchering mod already turns "holding right click on a dead animal" into "Making sure you have a free backpack slot or bring a butchering bag to even pick up the corpse because ripping it apart on the ground vanilla style yields almost nothing useful. Haul it home. Hang it up on a previously crafted hook. Skin it. Wait for it to bleed out. Move it to the previously crafted butchering table. Chop it up. Break the bones. Put all your items away. Planning on making sausages or blood bait for fishing? Better have placed a bucket." Every so slightly more complex and inherently tedious, but a more rewarding experience. Both in the emotional sense as it feels much cooler hauling a big-ass ancient cow (from another mod) back home as loot and turn it into something useful in an immersive, engaging multi-step process with each step yielding a specific part of the rewards allowing to potentially skip some steps you don't need, and from a functional point because going through butchering yield much more per hunt than just wildly slicing the corpse with a knife on the forest floor.

Edited August 10 by Rainbow Fresh

[SnapJelly]

6 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I always bring up Project Zomboid as a game reference because the in-depth cooking system would fit in levels of realistic complexity right into Vintage Story and was one of my favorite mechanics of the whole game.

I don't think project zomboid is a good comparison, PZ get's away with a massive variety of items because their inventory system isn't based on slots but on weight so clutter isn't an issue

[Rainbow Fresh]

1 minute ago, SnapJelly said:

I don't think project zomboid is a good comparison, PZ get's away with a massive variety of items because their inventory system isn't based on slots but on weight so clutter isn't an issue

It's less the quantity of items and more the depth of interaction. Instead of putting 4 items in equal quantities into the UI of the "cooking pot" inside the UI of the "campfire", putting fuel in, lighting it and waiting or doing something else, you have multiple individual steps of preparation.

Take a pot, go to sink, fill with water, go to stove, put on stove, put in noodles, turn on. Watch carefully to not overcook/burn. Take off stove when ready. Put noodles into bowl. Add tomato sauce. Add salt. Add other condiments or ingredients as seen fit. Have a dish. Eat while hot for maximum bonus. Let it cool or reheat after it has been in the freezer once, less bonuses.

That is a much nicer system to cooking that I think would fit, in terms of pseudo-realistic complexity, right into VS. What makes it fun and engaging is the wide variety of options to detail the dish with a wide variety of condiments, spices and mixable ingredients. Even though at the end it all just (on a top level) influences two number "calories" and "mood", it makes for fun times preparing different dishes, adding variety, experimenting. Especially since some recipes aren't quite "Look at ratio in handbook" and more "Figure out the steps you can do".

[SnapJelly]

Just now, Rainbow Fresh said:

That is a much nicer system to cooking that I think would fit

oke but now you're talking about re-doing the entire cooking system of the game, which is not only a different point it is also completely out of the scope of the original post.

You'd suggest they would revamp the whole cooking system in game so that it it more like the cooking system from a completely different game that is coded differently and plays completely differently because that one is slightly more engaging to you? That's not reasonable

[Rainbow Fresh]

2 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

oke but now you're talking about re-doing the entire cooking system of the game, which is not only a different point it is also completely out of the scope of the original post.

You'd suggest they would revamp the whole cooking system in game so that it it more like the cooking system from a completely different game that is coded differently and plays completely differently because that one is slightly more engaging to you? That's not reasonable

Read the title again then. The opening topic is about adding more variety in meals and the *making thereof*. The current cooking system in VS would barely allow for more variety without adding "pointless clutter", as you previously complained about so rigorously, and any form of additional variety in meal preparation would require the whole system to change anyway, because the only form of meal preparation that lies outside of "put 2-4 items of equal stack count 1-6 in slots of cooking pot" is turning item A into item B with tool X to have a different item to put into the cooking pot slots. Major changes to the whole food and preparation system would be needed in any case whereas the system were to be expanded and the devs have stated on multiple occasions that getting rid of UI crafting is one of the ultimate goals they have. So any proper cooking system that works solely in-world would be close to the system Project Zomboid already has, which is why I am bringing it up time and time again as reference example of how such a system could look like in action because I personally think it would be a much more enjoyable experience to have a system like that over the system we currently have. There is no unreasonableness going on here,

[SnapJelly]

2 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

the devs have stated on multiple occasions that getting rid of UI crafting is one of the ultimate goals they have. So any proper cooking system that works solely in-world would be close to the system Project Zomboid already has

that's a strange comparison... project zomboids system is 100% UI
you literally rightclick on a cooking utensil and then left click on a recipe from a list and it automatically grabs all the ingredients it needs from all nearby containers, you don't even have to check if you have the right ingredients to make it cuz all the foods you don't have the ingredients for are greyed out in the menu. This might be a personal thing but I don't find that more engaging at all, yes there's more niche meal options in PZ but you select all of them from a list and your character makes the meal by themself

[Rainbow Fresh]

17 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

that's a strange comparison... project zomboids system is 100% UI
you literally rightclick on a cooking utensil and then left click on a recipe from a list and it automatically grabs all the ingredients it needs from all nearby containers, you don't even have to check if you have the right ingredients to make it cuz all the foods you don't have the ingredients for are greyed out in the menu. This might be a personal thing but I don't find that more engaging at all, yes there's more niche meal options in PZ but you select all of them from a list and your character makes the meal by themself

See, and that's what references are for. All those UI interactions could be in-world interactions. They couldn't be in PZ, because it's - correct - different game that played differently. It's a mostly UI-driven 2.5D thrid-person shooter. You are not really playing the character and you do not have the option to interact with the world. You tell the character what to do via UI interactions. Vintage Story has the options, as a primarily first-person voxel based game, to make every single step of that process an actual in-world interaction. Add water to pot? rightclick water source/container (already exists) with pot in hand to fill (like you could already with a bowl). Add noodles? Rightclick on the placed pot with the noodles in hand. Cook properly? Oven mechanic of 3-stage cooking progress without UI bar. Take noodles from pot into bowl? Literally how food currently works. Add sauce? Would work all the same, except that bowls needed to be completely re-coded to allow for manipulating a dish after it was done cooking in the pot. The general approach of PZ is good. It is the foundation of a very modular system that can allow as many or few steps to get from "raw ingredient" to "nutritious meal" as you want. Variety built-in. Complexity on-par of many other features of the game already. But applied to Vintage Story, not PZ's UI.

[SnapJelly]

37 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

See, and that's what references are for. All those UI interactions could be in-world interactions. They couldn't be in PZ, because it's - correct - different game that played differently. It's a mostly UI-driven 2.5D thrid-person shooter. You are not really playing the character and you do not have the option to interact with the world. You tell the character what to do via UI interactions. Vintage Story has the options, as a primarily first-person voxel based game, to make every single step of that process an actual in-world interaction. Add water to pot? rightclick water source/container (already exists) with pot in hand to fill (like you could already with a bowl). Add noodles? Rightclick on the placed pot with the noodles in hand. Cook properly? Oven mechanic of 3-stage cooking progress without UI bar. Take noodles from pot into bowl? Literally how food currently works. Add sauce? Would work all the same, except that bowls needed to be completely re-coded to allow for manipulating a dish after it was done cooking in the pot. The general approach of PZ is good. It is the foundation of a very modular system that can allow as many or few steps to get from "raw ingredient" to "nutritious meal" as you want. Variety built-in. Complexity on-par of many other features of the game already. But applied to Vintage Story, not PZ's UI.

yeah all of that is fine but it has once again nothing to do with the op's suggestion or my criticism of it, the op suggested a larger amount of food items and different stations to cook them with, I argued having a larger variety of (in this case meat) items would add mostly clutter to how the inventory system works and wouldn't have much payoff.

Your suggestion of a revamp of the cooking system is fine but it's not related at all to the post or my reaction to the post

Edited August 10 by SnapJelly
Spelling errors

[Rainbow Fresh]

21 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

yeah all of that is fine but it has once again nothing to do with the op's suggestion or my criticism of it, the op suggested a larger amount of food items and different stations to cook them with, I argued having a larger variety of (in this case meat) items would add mostly clutter to how the inventory system works and wouldn't have much payoff.

Your suggestion of a revamp of the cooking system is fine but it's not related at all to the post or my reaction to the post

As I have pointed out before, the OP post is titled "Meal variety" and "Meal preparation" both. The opening post brings forth both suggestions for new meals (pizza, cake) aswell as new mechanics for food preparation (pizza oven [which I agree is superfluous] and frying pan). I have also both pointed out how a rework akin to this would solve all the issues brought up here (as well as in multiple other threads about the same topic) and how a rework like this would be necessary to get much more out of the currently very limited system that is also officially to be deprecated in the future in favor of in-world interaction. That sounds pretty on-topic to me.

What I have, however, not mentioned at any point is that a cooking system like PZ's has anything to do with your criticism on the OP's selection of suggestions, nor the criticisms everyone else here had with yours.

Edited August 10 by Rainbow Fresh

[LadyWYT]

On 8/9/2026 at 10:44 AM, SnapJelly said:

All of those could be added in game and would serve 0 function that red meat doesn't already fulfill

This isn't really the best argument, since by the same logic the different food types in the game serve 0 function other than variety. We don't really need redmeat, bushmeat, poultry, and fish when we could just have a generic meat item that fills the same protein need, right? The berries could just be generic berry bushes, and fruit trees could be further simplified into generic apple trees, with a generic "tropical fruit" for the tropics where apples don't grow so well. The logic could be taken even further by simplifying clay into "fire clay" and "not fire clay", with exactly one pottery color for each. Same goes for hardwood versus regular wood types.

The thing is, some variety is needed in order to make the game more enjoyable and keep things fresh over multiple playthroughs. It's not really a problem if the player wants to eat nothing but turnips and redmeat all the time, however, I think it's also safe to say that most players get a little tired of seeing the same thing over and over and over again. Mods like Expanded Foods and Wildcraft are both wildly popular for a reason, despite the fact that both add lots of "useless" items according to the above logic. 

4 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

It's less the quantity of items and more the depth of interaction. Instead of putting 4 items in equal quantities into the UI of the "cooking pot" inside the UI of the "campfire", putting fuel in, lighting it and waiting or doing something else, you have multiple individual steps of preparation.

Take a pot, go to sink, fill with water, go to stove, put on stove, put in noodles, turn on. Watch carefully to not overcook/burn. Take off stove when ready. Put noodles into bowl. Add tomato sauce. Add salt. Add other condiments or ingredients as seen fit. Have a dish. Eat while hot for maximum bonus. Let it cool or reheat after it has been in the freezer once, less bonuses.

This is pretty much how Expanded Foods works. It doesn't really overhaul the vanilla cooking system, as much as it does just add a few different possible steps to the process, depending on what the player wants to make. The player can cook all the vanilla recipes the same way, and get the same results. However, the player could also choose to do things like cook soup with bone broth instead of water, lending more nutrition(and I think a bit of healing) to the soup. Instead of plain bread, the player can choose to mix in fruit for a more filling variant, make a softer dough for muffins(which can be more filling and heal the player depending on the ingredients), or even make stiffer dough to bake into hardtack in order to have a food that lasts a very long time.

In regards to meat specifically, the player can turn meat and fat into sausage, which can then be dried to last a while. Raw meat can be aged, which enables it to heal the player when cooked and eaten. Meat can also be tenderized, which I think improved saturation, or cut into bite-sized chunks for a tasty snack or use in making pemmican.

Incidentally, I think the devs have mentioned reworking the game's temperature system at some point in the future. I think that mainly applies to smelting and forging, however, I wouldn't be surprised if the concept carried over to cooking and perhaps herbalism as well. Instead of just throwing everything in a cookpot or spitting the meat and lighting the fire, it may be necessary to manage the cooking time and temperature in order to craft certain foods and medicines/other concoctions properly. I wouldn't expect it to be too complicated, of course, but it would probably mean that using coal or coke to cook might result in burnt food, or failing to cook food thoroughly could make the player sick.

Edited August 10 by LadyWYT
Grammar

[Rainbow Fresh]

13 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

In regards to meat specifically, the player can turn meat and fat into sausage, which can then be dried to last a while. Raw meat can be aged, which enables it to heal the player when cooked and eaten. Meat can also be tenderized, which I think improved saturation, or cut into bite-sized chunks for a tasty snack or use in making pemmican.

Aww, I was already eyeing Expanded Foods and up to this point it sounded great, but these features would just clash with mods I already have.

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Aww, I was already eyeing Expanded Foods and up to this point it sounded great, but these features would just clash with mods I already have.

Depending on what mods you have, there may already be compatibility between them, especially since Expanded Foods is so popular. Either way, I definitely recommend trying Expanded Foods at some point.