"Final" tier of food that never goes bad

[CyberCat05]

Food Preservation is basically the main thing you upgrade the more you progress in the Agricultural side of the game, so I definitely think there should be a final stage, a sort of magnum opus tier of foods that takes a lot of effort with the reward of never having to worry about spoilage, as long as the food is stored properly in a cellar and a fitting container. Not only would it be useful for Multiplayer Servers, but it would also be incredibly satisfying to walk into a cellar stocked to the brim of Food of every type that you will never have to worry about going bad, knowing how much work you put into it. Of course Salt is the majn preservative and you're gonna need a lot of it to get everything.

- For Grain: Hardtack Crackers. Mixing one liter of Honey with 7 flour of any kind and 1 salt will give you 8 Shaggy Cracker Dough. Since this Dough is so dry you can't knead it by hand, and you have to use a Helve Hammer to process it into proper Cracker Dough. You have to cook this dough on a low temperature for a long time, as it burns easily. Hardtack Crackers never spoil as long as they are stored in closed Crates in a Cellar.

-For Meat: Salami. Sealing Scraped Hide in a barrel full of Salt for 3 days will give you Dry Hide, which can be crafted into Sausage Casing. Crafting a Sausage casing with 7 pieces of a given type of meat, 1 lump of fat and 1 salt will give you a raw sausage, which you can seal in a salt barrel again to get Cured Sausage. If you hang it out to dry in a cold enough environment (doesn't matter if cold or not) for 20 days you will get Salami. You can also smoke Salami (assuming a smoking mechanic gets added eventually). Smoked Salami will never spoil as long as it is kept on hanging racks in a Cellar.

- For Dairy: Parmesan Cheese. If you seal a raw cheese wheel in brine you will get a Brined Cheese Wheel, which you can either Wax and let ripen for Gouda, or further process into Dry Cheese Wheel by sealing in a salt barrel, then letting the Dry Cheese Wheel ripen for 6 entire months in order to get Parmesan Cheese. Parmesan will never spoil as long as it is stored on shelves in a cellar.

-For Fruit and Vegetables: Canned/Jarred Jam and Pickles, respectively. I'm assuming these are gonna be added anyway once Glassmaking is added since it is weird you can make Jam and Pickles but can't store them in Jars. For full preservation you would have to properly can the jars in a boiler, and they would never spoil as long as they are stored on scroll racks in a Cellar.

 

All of these could be eaten as they are for decent Saturation (maybe even as much as their unprocessed cooked counterparts as reward for all that work), but they would all also be useable as ingrediemts for Stews and Pot Pies, including Hardtack, though the resulting meal would still spoil normally.

Edited August 14 by CyberCat05

[CyberCat05]

Explaining some of the creative liberties I took:

-Hardtack is traditionally not sweetened, but I added Honey to the crafting recipe for a few reasons: It helps make the final product more complicated to obtain, in-universe it would make the Hardtack actually palatable if you decide to eat it raw, which historically wasn't that favorable and sailors would usually crush it up and boil it instead (hence it being usable in cooking). It also helps insinuate just how dry the dough is, since Honey is only ~16% water.

-Scraped Hide for Sausage Casing is the biggest liberty I took. Historically Intestinal Lining was used for that purpose, but I think adding an Intestine drop to every Sheep you kill is a slippery slope towards animals dropping every one of their organs. Hide and Intestinal Lining are both mainly made of Collagen, but Hide is usually too thick to bite through. I think that can be overlooked for the sake of gameplay, it's possible that the player is somehow shaving the hide into extremely thin sheets. I dug into the subject a bit and poultry neck skin is actually sometimes used as casing for a sausage called Helzel in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine. Kind of far from what we're working with since we're not using Poultry skin in the game, but I feel like it's close enough.

[Rainbow Fresh]

I understand the potential value in Multiplayer and the slight feeling of accomplishment; but other than that I really don't see why we'd need a way to make infinite food - for one because truly infinite food isn't really realistic (yes, let's get the "realism vs gameplay" debate out of the way first), two because there is nothing to be gained from that bit of extra shelf life compared to the already existing options for long term storage, three because adding unnecessarily complicated steps as means to balance achieving something not needed in the first place sounds too off-putting that it could likely not see all that much use.

For more detailed clarification, ignoring the "realism" debate entirely: Food can already be stored pretty efficiently. Have a good cellar (easy and early to obtain), put in a clay vessel, fill it with grain - boom, easy 3-4 years shelf life. Even non-grains can reach a year-ish easily. Sealed crock pots with proper dishes can reach the same and I haven't even tested if it stacks putting a sealed crock into a clay vessel. The highest tier of meat preservation might, in comparison, still feel kinda lacking but meat is also the year-round most reliably obtainable resource should you need it. When I started out, I rather quickly installed the "Long Term Food" mod specifically to add such things as non-perishables and even longer shelf life options of preservation. Turns out, three years in, I could be arsed exactly once to make non-perishing Vintage meat just to have made it and never touched any other of the food processes. In fact, I am sitting on so much food I don't even know how to eat it all with each passively ripening harvest of my reasonably sized field essentially feeding me for the entire year. Specifically the "incredibly tedious to obtain" process of the long term options makes them so uninteresting and even if you'd want to sit down for a couple hours preparing 10 years worth of non-perishables to never worry about food ever again, if you didn't die of boredom by then the annoying part of food is still the fact the options are so same-y and you just need to constantly eat; which wouldn't change. If you want even longer storage, utilizing ice to actually freeze e.g. meat could fit much better than arbitrarily "in-universe difficult" recipes to take food that lasts 4 year to last forever. If we want to actually improve food, as has being brought up in plenty other discussions before, improving the food preparation system itself would be the better bet.

You mentioned the use for Multiplayer. While yes, there will always be issues with Multiplayer not being able to play 24/7 and as such having to take breaks in which time passes and food spoils can become an issue. But assuming you don't play lone wolf you'll have friends to occasionally replenish the supplies they themselves eat long before they spoil. If you do play Lone Wolf... I guess considering how often big servers have longer month, if you cannot play for all of 3-4 in-game years coming back to a basement full of wax food is likely the least of your concerns. At that point the problem likely is that everyone else finished the game and stopped playing.

And finally you mentioned the trophy value of having a big bunker full of forever-food. While sure, especially with arbitrarily tedious recipes that is true. But there are plenty other things in the game already to use as trophies. No need to turn something as basic as your daily necessity for nutrients into one aswell.

Edited August 14 by Rainbow Fresh

[CyberCat05]

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I understand the potential value in Multiplayer and the slight feeling of accomplishment; but other than that I really don't see why we'd need a way to make infinite food - for one because truly infinite food isn't really realistic (yes, let's get the "realism vs gameplay" debate out of the way first), two because there is nothing to be gained from that bit of extra shelf life compared to the already existing options for long term storage, three because adding unnecessarily complicated steps as means to balance achieving something not needed in the first place sounds too off-putting that it could likely not see all that much use.

For more detailed clarification, ignoring the "realism" debate entirely: Food can already be stored pretty efficiently. Have a good cellar (easy and early to obtain), put in a clay vessel, fill it with grain - boom, easy 3-4 years shelf life. Even non-grains can reach a year-ish easily. Sealed crock pots with proper dishes can reach the same and I haven't even tested if it stacks putting a sealed crock into a clay vessel. The highest tier of meat preservation might, in comparison, still feel kinda lacking but meat is also the year-round most reliably obtainable resource should you need it. When I started out, I rather quickly installed the "Long Term Food" mod specifically to add such things as non-perishables and even longer shelf life options of preservation. Turns out, three years in, I could be arsed exactly once to make non-perishing Vintage meat just to have made it and never touched any other of the food processes. In fact, I am sitting on so much food I don't even know how to eat it all with each passively ripening harvest of my reasonably sized field essentially feeding me for the entire year. Specifically the "incredibly tedious to obtain" process of the long term options makes them so uninteresting and even if you'd want to sit down for a couple hours preparing 10 years worth of non-perishables to never worry about food ever again, if you didn't die of boredom by then the annoying part of food is still the fact the options are so same-y and you just need to constantly eat; which wouldn't change. If you want even longer storage, utilizing ice to actually freeze e.g. meat could fit much better than arbitrarily "in-universe difficult" recipes to take food that lasts 4 year to last forever. If we want to actually improve food, as has being brought up in plenty other discussions before, improving the food preparation system itself would be the better bet.

You mentioned the use for Multiplayer. While yes, there will always be issues with Multiplayer not being able to play 24/7 and as such having to take breaks in which time passes and food spoils can become an issue. But assuming you don't play lone wolf you'll have friends to occasionally replenish the supplies they themselves eat long before they spoil. If you do play Lone Wolf... I guess considering how often big servers have longer month, if you cannot play for all of 3-4 in-game years coming back to a basement full of wax food is likely the least of your concerns. At that point the problem likely is that everyone else finished the game and stopped playing.

And finally you mentioned the trophy value of having a big bunker full of forever-food. While sure, especially with arbitrarily tedious recipes that is true. But there are plenty other things in the game already to use as trophies. No need to turn something as basic as your daily necessity for nutrients into one aswell.

Appreciate the feedback, I guess it would work better as a mod than a necessity in the base game.

I still think that, since so much of the base game's advancement in the food sector is focused on finding new ways to process food in order to better preserve it, non-perishables are kind of the logical final step.

As for realism, out of all the options I presented, Salami is the only one that realistically can't be stored for anywhere near that long. Hardtack very famously lasts pretty much forever if it's properly stored (hence its widespread use in rations), and properly canned and stored jams and pickles can last for decades. Parmesan is just a bit of a stretch since it's not a widespread practice to keep it for that long but since it has antimicrobial properties and extremely low moisture, it's very feasible to store it for that long if you wanted to.

An alternative to Salami would be Pemmican which can famously easily be stored for decades but it just felt too easy to make, it's just dried meat powder and tallow.

Edited August 14 by CyberCat05

[LadyWYT]

2 hours ago, CyberCat05 said:

it is weird you can make Jam and Pickles but can't store them in Jars.

What? Both of these can easily be put in crocks and then sealed, which makes them last a decade or more. I don't think glass jars actually add anything here other than fancier visuals.

Other, I share many of @Rainbow Fresh's sentiments. "Infinite" food kinda defeats one of the core gameplay loops--needing to manage food supply. Honey already is a "forever fresh" food, which is true to real life, and distilled alcohol never goes bad either. Other foods like jams, pickles, and salted meat will keep for a few years, and jams and pickles can be sealed into crocks to last even longer. Grain and flour both last for a few years when stored properly in a cellar, and can be easily baked into fresh food. And realistically, while some foodstuffs do keep for a long time in reality, realistically you don't want to just keep them in storage for years and years either. Food gets stale, molds, gets infested by weevils and things, so while it may still technically be edible it's not necessarily something you'd want to eat, especially when you could have prepared fresher food.

Regarding multiplayer, it's a known weakness of larger servers that food spoils faster since time is constantly passing. However, there's already an option to turn down the food spoilage rate in the vanilla, as well as mods that add other storage options or prevent a player's food from spoiling while they're offline. More food variety would certainly be nice, but I don't think the multiplayer argument works very well since it's a problem specific to certain kinds of servers, and likely better handled by just including the option for foodstuffs in a player's claim/inventory to not spoil while they're offline. That way players can still enjoy the range of food options VS has to offer, without feeling forced into a small handful of options due to the kind of server they play on.

[SnapJelly]

I am going to have to say I don't think this is a good idea, while the idea of an ''end game'' food seems like a logical progression gameplay wise, in a game like vintage story where buidling up your food production and storage in such a way you can sustain yourself and be healthy is a core part of the gameplay loop adding something like a food product that never spoils would completely break that.

The argument could be made ofcourse that is it an ''end game'' product for that reason but it will inevidebly cause the endgame to be determined by way of this food being mass produced to a point where no other foodstuffs are needed, taking away the need to interact with a lot of the actual game.

As a sidenote I will also say there is a bit of a jump in logic here, vintage story has a fairly complex storage and spoilage system compared to other games and the foods you mentioned like hardtack and parmesian cheese DO go bad if not stored right, so I don't think it's fair to add them as a never spoiling food. In practice in gameplay there's already many foods that either never spoil or take years to spoil if stored correctly so they would serve the function of something like hardtack

Charred bread in a storage vessel in a cellar can last over a year! as well as the grain or flower by itself
Wine and jam can last years
Onions can last over a year
Cheddar lasts over a year
Salted meats last may years

Some of these are hard to get, some of them are easy to get. But none of them (other than maybe cheese) are true ''end game'' foods, preparing and storing these foods so you have them for later IS the gameplay

[SnapJelly]

And I didn't even mention all the things that actually never spoil in game

Honey
Fat
Walnut seed
Cattail root

These actually NEVER go bad in the current game, you can stack up on them if you like, all but cattail is a renewable resource

[Rainbow Fresh]

11 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

And I didn't even mention all the things that actually never spoil in game

Honey
Fat
Walnut seed
Cattail root

These actually NEVER go bad in the current game, you can stack up on them if you like, all but cattail is a renewable resource

Correct. However.

Honey isn't the ideal food source I would go to in Vanilla especially because long term mass bee farming is a pain.

Fat is a byproduct you only obtain from harvesting fresh animals - at which point you get fresh meat which is, also, the far better food source. On top of fat being needed/useful for other applications, so is honey (or rather the byproduct of wax).

I am not even sure you can eat Walnut seeds, pretty sure I saw a mod that enables this.

Cattail root is, as you correctly pointed out, finite. Of all the infinite food sources you listed, this one is the only one I'd personally consider an actual food source and even then only as emergency rations in the early game.

 

None of these fulfil the role you proposed of *effective* infinite food. Something that can actually sustain you. While however simultaneously highlighting the problem with your "progression" argument and further amplifying what I already said about tedium. Even if we added an "infinite" end-game alternative for each nutrition category... Why would one bother? Why bother going through in-game weeks of preparation and ripening and whatnot for some salami or cheese or tack when you can just stuff your face with honey... or eat normal food that much more readily and simpler available?

[SnapJelly]

44 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I am not even sure you can eat Walnut seeds

you can, but they only provide 40 protein, the tradeoff I guess for them never spoiling

[Slam]

Despite every one saying it serves no point, or not a good idea, counter argument, I like salami, I feel like what being proposed feels like alcohol, not really worth it aside for aqua Verta, but I still make it because it’s silly, it give a reason to build more stuff, like a brewery, or a bar.

[Kulze]

5 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

truly infinite food isn't really realistic

It absolutely is.

There's 3 aspects to make food last indefinitely:
- Moisture
- Oxygen
- Microorganisms

Moisture causes mocriorganisms to thrive. No moisture means no life, simple as that already, but it can be easily reintroduced, hence it's the hardest to manage.
Oxygen causes oxidation, and the fastest acting microorganisms work on a oxygen basis on top of that. Some work without but those are vastly slower acting.
Microorganisms is what it all ultimately turns around because you can never get rid of those without managing the other 2 aspects. The more active something is the faster it goes bad.

So, actual indefinitely lasting foods:
- Honey
- Rice
- Salt
- Vinegar

Those never go bad when properly stored.
The same goes for the vast majority of grains and legumes. They can be kept for 50+ years without issue with proper storage.

The easiest method is double-floor pots with iron powder + salt at the bottom for binding oxygen and moisture, extending shelf-life 10 times compared to normal ones for applicable things that actually don't rely on having leftover moisture content (grains, bread, those things, keeping at least nutritional value of some sort, like bread for adding to stews and rehydrating this way. Not tasty but sustenance simply).

 

5 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Specifically the "incredibly tedious to obtain" process of the long term options makes them so uninteresting

This only upholds because people currently work at the '1 base' option primarily. Which is something that needs to be handled anyway along the way. Outposts need to become a thing that exists and which are viable to make.

Infinite shelflife is viable when travel distances become vast. If you need multiple days to travel to destinations without any option for storage then your expedition range is inherently limited by that. And currently we don't have anything to find outside of such a distance yet.

With the expansion of the story sites and the sheer distance they're often away it becomes more of a reason. Especially so when those story sites in the future offer unique mechanics - which would be highly enjoyed from my side if they're far apart and offer different things only available there - so either a translocator network which is conveniently functioning to reach is one option... or... what is the more reliable option: Roadwork.

And for roadwork not only the ability to make roads a tiny bit easier and with optimally more variety (concrete roads would be fun, or generally anything beyond the basic paths we make now simply, giving higher boosts) as well as travel options. The elk is a good start... vehicles with storage will become a necessity over time definitely.

In MP we already see this being a thing, with groups spreading out over long distances and sometimes starting to make road networks because of the large distances. Mostly because food is limited at the start in the same area and it makes survival highly difficult to manage. Not enough animals, not enough natural resources, not enough farming happening yet.

This is simply a place which needs more optimization to allow the variety of playstyles to function well with added content along the way.

Especially the 24/7 servers and not being able to go online for a while is a major issue. If I need to go work for a month outside the country and come back... nothing ruins the motivation more then logging in and all your food being gone, completely. Every week is 2 years. Which means after 8-9 years basically everything is gone.
How to get food then? Who knows!
That alone is a major reason as to why indefinitely lasting food is a important thing to have, solely for that situation it should exist. It can be tedious and convoluted to make without a worthwhile return... but it existing to simply come back and not starve is plainly spoken a mandatory aspect.

The decade is not enough for MP purposes of long-term playing. It functions for the vast majority, but not for multi-year vanilla servers with a irregularly returning playerbase for example.

[Torimon]

I don't think I would want food that never spoils in game.

BUT I would like to be able to soak my meat and fruit and veg in borax or resin to make inedible decorative food for decorating buildings like butchers.

[SnapJelly]

1 hour ago, Slam said:

I feel like what being proposed feels like alcohol, not really worth it aside for aqua Verta

Hard disagree, wine is the best way to preserve fruit in bulk for winter

[SnapJelly]

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

Those never go bad when properly stored

''when properly stored'' is the key here I think, assuming you can get a perfect bacteria and microbe free enviroment 100% devoid of any moisture in a medieval type setting like vintage story makes it unrealistic even if scientifically possible

[Kulze]

47 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

''when properly stored'' is the key here I think, assuming you can get a perfect bacteria and microbe free enviroment 100% devoid of any moisture in a medieval type setting like vintage story makes it unrealistic even if scientifically possible

First off, it's a misconception that medieval times had awful food storage. Some of it was significantly better then what we have nowadays, the fridge is not a universally great tool. Larders and pantries have fallen out of favor but offer qualitative long-term storage often better then a fridge does.

Secondly, we already got a non-perishable product in VS, the 'Vintage Beef'. All we need to solve the MP issue for long-term offline times is a way to produce that, even if it's annoying, tedious and not rewarding at all. The reward here is the ability to bypass the Real-Life timeframe and avoiding the need to be forced to log on repeatedly even when not in the mood of gaming... just to ensure your character won't just starve or has to cull tons of livestock when coming back from a extended break.

So I'll stay with the need to introduce a producable non-perishable form of food in a reliable and endless manner.
First off... cooking salt water to gather salt would be a choice. Yes, not realistic because it contains in reality toxins without significant extra work (and often does after still, known issue with seasalt which can be bought) but we can simply ignore that.
So my suggestion here would be to make that out of specifically bushmeat to provide a use-case beyond the early-game for it and keep it tedious.
Bushmeat which is salted. Then smoked. Then hung in a small room from the ceiling on metal hooks. Single strips, long hanging time after the smoking process, so quite tedious. Storable in 16 stacks, cannot be used for meals, stays indefinitely. If we wanna be fancy then besides a vanilla smoking options we could have specifically oak cause shavings to be produced when handled, and only those shavings are viable burning material for smoking.

This is solely a suggestion for how to achieve it.

But the 'should it be done?' is plainly spoken without question unless long-term running servers like Minecraft has quite a surprising number isn't something that's wanted... because nothing kills engagement more then coming back and being immedietely stressed to not starve rather then being able to at least mostly pick up where you left off.

[SnapJelly]

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

First off, it's a misconception that medieval times had awful food storage

I didn't say that, I just said it was not microbe free, thus it will eventually spoil.
We have endless documentation of foods made specifically to last only for the storage barrel to be opened and for the people to find nothing but cockroaches inside, the food having long been eaten.

 

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

we already got a non-perishable product in VS, the 'Vintage Beef'

I tried looking for this but couldn't find anything about it save for some youtuber, could you link me to anything referencing this so I can learn about it?

Edited August 14 by SnapJelly
spelling errors

[LadyWYT]

36 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

I tried looking for this but couldn't find anything about it save for some youtuber, could you link me to anything referencing this so I can learn about it?

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Cooking/en-gb

It's listed in the first table. Can only be obtained rarely from ruins, and provides 280 points of protein in addition to healing the player 2 hp. Never spoils. It's a reference to Vintage Beef, the Youtuber.

2 hours ago, Kulze said:

All we need to solve the MP issue for long-term offline times is a way to produce that, even if it's annoying, tedious and not rewarding at all. The reward here is the ability to bypass the Real-Life timeframe and avoiding the need to be forced to log on repeatedly even when not in the mood of gaming... just to ensure your character won't just starve or has to cull tons of livestock when coming back from a extended break.

I don't think this actually solves the problem with offline food spoilage, as much as it creates the different problem of players complaining about feeling punished for playing on busy servers due to their only food option being one that's incredibly tedious to produce. It's also going to be a decision that annoys players outside of large multiplayer servers, because they'll likely want to use the new food options, but feel like it's just not worth that kind of effort.

As I tried to say before, a much simpler solution would be to just let servers have the option to disable food spoilage for player inventories and claims while they're offline. That way, players don't need to worry about cutting an adventure short due to threat of starvation, and don't need to worry about the preserved food in their cellar rotting because they went on vacation or something. To help prevent the claim mechanic from being abused, the offline rule would only apply if all players tied to that claim are offline; if one of the claim owners is online, then spoilage rates will continue ticking as normal, since there's at least one player around that's responsible for the claim. That should give big servers the tools they need to deal with the problem, without making the game more tedious for everyone else who decidedly doesn't have that problem.

In addition to the solution I listed above, more food preservation options could also be added to the game for variety, though they certainly shouldn't be "forever foods" as suggested in the OP. Meat could be smoked or dried, or turned into pemmican. Some fruits and vegetables could also be dried for later use. A couple more varieties of cheese would be nice to have, just to have something different than cheddar and blue cheese. Nuts would be a very good long-term food when left in the shell, and the shelling requirement could make cooking a little more involved without being too tedious. Candy would be another interesting option as well--not very good in terms of saturation(ie, you'll get hungry sooner rather than later), but a sweet little treat to share with friends or eat while on the road. Hardtack is an obvious addition as well, though for balancing purposes I would argue that it shouldn't be lasting more than year, maybe two, outside of a sealed storage container.

I would also perhaps add the ability for the player to use beeswax or rendered fat to seal storage vessels, extending the shelf life of certain preserved foods even more. It should take a lot more sealant for a storage vessel than for a crock, partly because the storage vessel is a much bigger container, but also to help discourage the player from just throwing everything into a storage vessel and ignoring crocks. While beeswax and fat might be easy to come by, needing to use a decent portion to reseal the vessel after opening is going to add up rather quickly.

 

2 hours ago, Kulze said:

So I'll stay with the need to introduce a producable non-perishable form of food in a reliable and endless manner...
So my suggestion here would be to make that out of specifically bushmeat to provide a use-case beyond the early-game for it and keep it tedious.

Except bushmeat isn't supposed to be a staple food. That's why it has a lower nutrition value in addition to being unable to be used in meals. It's tough, it's chewy, it's not particularly appetizing, and it tends to come from predators, which tend to have higher risks of toxins and parasites. And of course, when relying on hunting for sustenance, the player is meant to be a bit particular about what they hunt, rather than just slaughtering the local bear/wolf population or relying on foxes and raccoons because they're very easy to find and kill.

[SnapJelly]

20 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

It's listed in the first table. Can only be obtained rarely from ruins, and provides 280 points of protein in addition to healing the player 2 hp. Never spoils. It's a reference to Vintage Beef, the Youtuber.

oh wow I can't believe I never encountered that before!

[Kulze]

5 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

it creates the different problem of players complaining about feeling punished for playing on busy servers due to their only food option being one that's incredibly tedious to produce

It's not about the only option being that, that argument makes no sense.
Busy or not, it solely solves the issue about 'I come back after a break and all my stuff's rot'.
That's all. Nothing else changes after all, so why would it introduce some odd different problem?

The solution for removing spoilage of inventory food during offline-times is viable, but that's a very band-aid and kinda shoddy workaround. It's neither intuitive (how would you know without testing it directly? Would you get a handbook information for this aspect existing?) nor is it a in-game mechanic which avoids the pitfall of the current systems in that regard.
A method to create a permanently lasting food option - of whatever kind, doesn't matter at all - is a more elegant solution. And to hinder the usage as a normal food item the creation got to be either tedious and not worth it... or the sustenance very small when it's easy to create, hence being a detriment for normal gameplay instead of as a emergency ration only.

And yes, more food preservation options are always nice. But not having a single (and that's all that's needed) option which is awful but endless available still leads to the exact same issue I described. If someone's away a month it's 8-9 years in-game... what about 2 months? 6? Coming back after a year? 90 year lasting food? That's really unrealistic after all. So the gamification in that regard is the only available solution with in-game methods. Or alternatively the implementation of a freezer-system of some kind which halts decay entirely. But that's scalable and hence abusable.
 

12 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Except bushmeat isn't supposed to be a staple food.

Which is specifically the reason I took it for this actually.

Bushmeat is not available outside of actively killing wildlife. It is a non-scalable method, hence you need a decent amount of work to get the respective amount and you'll always have a low amount at any time available to work with.

Also bushmeat is already gamified, it is meant as a low-quality source of nutrition since defending against wildlife shouldn't reward the player with large amounts of resources. That's why it's such awful nutrition.
Bear-meat counts as a delicacy by the way, so there it already doesn't make sense.
Wolf meat though is actually what you describe, absolutely so!

And yes, you're right about it being a higher risk of parasites and toxins. For parasites the same issue we have with wolves and bears also go for many other animals, specifically pigs... which are red meat producers in high amounts.
The nutrition value is also senseless to argue about as bears are not 'gamey, stringy and chewy' but instead count as a delicacy, the absolute opposite hence.

It is plain and simply gamified for the reason that something attacking the player isn't supposed to provide it with rewards for survival. The 'meal coming to your door' situation.
This actually frees up this specific resource for the dual-purpose, which is the reason I used it as the example.
Since in my suggestion it's tied to a tedious long-term multi-step process to make the jerky ultimately the reasoning for 'food doesn't come to your doorstep' isn't upholding. You'll likely use up more calories trying to go through the process of hunting, returning, salt-rubbing, gathering materials for the smoking and then hanging the result to cure it then you'll get returned. This upholds that it doesn't provide you with significant sustenance but allows a functionality simply to be added which currently is not in the system.

Also as a secondary outcome this is a sub-par travel ration option as it doesn't go bad. Crocks work for most situations, extra long expeditions can need more then a crock though and are currently reliant on either outposting (which nearly nobody does as it's a excessive amount of effort without any actual reward) or lucky tanslocator connections.
Specifically with slowly but surely expanding issue of story locations being very far away at default setting (which is good) this becomes a detriment as time passes and the distances accordingly expand and allows a potential counterplay for it before it becomes a problem, without the need for a travel-system being more fleshed out being a necessity as soon.

[LadyWYT]

59 minutes ago, Kulze said:

But not having a single (and that's all that's needed) option which is awful but endless available still leads to the exact same issue I described.

That's my point though. If the single option that "solves" the problem is an awful option, that players would never want to use outside of the very specific instance of a large, active server...why exactly would they want to engage with it if it's not fun?

 

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

It is plain and simply gamified for the reason that something attacking the player isn't supposed to provide it with rewards for survival. The 'meal coming to your door' situation.
This actually frees up this specific resource for the dual-purpose, which is the reason I used it as the example.
Since in my suggestion it's tied to a tedious long-term multi-step process to make the jerky ultimately the reasoning for 'food doesn't come to your doorstep' isn't upholding. You'll likely use up more calories trying to go through the process of hunting, returning, salt-rubbing, gathering materials for the smoking and then hanging the result to cure it then you'll get returned. This upholds that it doesn't provide you with significant sustenance but allows a functionality simply to be added which currently is not in the system.

Also as a secondary outcome this is a sub-par travel ration option as it doesn't go bad.

Except the point of preserving food for long-term storage is that it's for survival, rather that be surviving the winter, travel rations, or emergency supplies cached at an outpost in the middle of nowhere. Therefore it's something that should be as nutritious as possible. Players will also likely question why they can use bushmeat for this purpose but not redmeat, fish, or poultry.

I'll also note that systems that clearly don't offer a good output compared to the required input very often tend to get ignored and otherwise complained about by players. If the player is having to spend 200 calories or more for every 100 they manage to preserve...they're probably not going to look at that as a very good return on investment. Especially not when rendered fat and honeycomb reward 200 and 300 calories respectively with no expiration date, and can be obtained with much less effort.

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

If someone's away a month it's 8-9 years in-game... what about 2 months? 6? Coming back after a year?

I realize life happens, but with all due respect, if someone is going to be away that long, especially on an active server, they really need to coordinate with friends/admins in that case. Vintage Story is balanced heavily around singleplayer and small servers; big servers are still possible, but players aren't really going to be playing multiple servers at once or taking long breaks on whim like they do with other games.

And of course, if we're referring to TOPS in this case, TOPS is a testing server, and not really meant as a long-term server to play on regularly, at least to my knowledge.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

Of course the solution here is maybe don't go joining massive multiplayer servers if you're a sporadic gamer who only gets on you feel like it. Because asking the entire game to change to cater to your whims is going to land your suggestion right in the "This should be a mod" bucket.

Because ideally multiplayer gaming should be a community effort. Everyone hunts, everyone contributes and if you have to log off for a while, just empty your food bowl, store it away and come back when you're ready. There will be fresher food waiting for you. Just make sure you contribute, too. That's how entire survivor camps are supposed to operate or they will fail -- you can't expect to make it on your own -- or did you skip that episode of Man vs Wild?

[Rainbow Fresh]

12 hours ago, Kulze said:

because nothing kills engagement more then coming back and being immedietely stressed to not starve rather then being able to at least mostly pick up where you left off.

Aside from all the other points already brought up about the nature of busy multiplayer servers and stuff, I still gotta ask:

Nothing kills engagement more than coming back and being immediately stressed to not starve rather than being able to at least mostly pick up where you left off.

But do you really think it would be a better experience having to forcefully invest most of your time playing in a slow, tedious, otherwise useless process of crafting forever food in bulk because you know you will now have to take a break?

You want this to be aimed at the "occasional player" that may vanish from the face of earth for a week and then comes back on a server running 24/7 so that a year or two pass in that time. Do you really think it would be any more engaging or any less motivation killing if that player knows "Well, I HAVE to spend my last few hours of available time now to prepare this stuff so I can come back and not worry"? I don't think so. It's just moving (and disguising) as to when the frustration happens - from after returning because you have no food (you keep livestock specifically for this reason, so butcher it) to before you leave because you have to do something deliberately annoying in preparation for your eventual, if ever, return.

[Kulze]

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

that players would never want to use outside of the very specific instance of a large, active server

Yeah, and that's the only reason anyway.
Other use-case would be as mentioned the permanent travel rations for excessive effort.
But that's it.

It doesn't need to exist for 'more'. First off, vanity is a thing, otherwise we wouldn't have a need for shingles, or planters, or decorative elements at all. Same with food variety, reductionistic we can remove a lot without issue... but vanity is always a thing. And in this case it's vanity plus a specific function.

 

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Therefore it's something that should be as nutritious as possible.

Emergency rations rarely are 'nutritious' though? They 'get you through' those times, they neither taste well (hardtack is a prime example) nor are they rich in micronutrients of any form. They just provide energy to exist for a while longer until that dry spell is handled.
But if you mean 'nutritious' in the form of 'energy dense' then yeah, sure, that's true... but jerky is also not 'energy dense'. It's more of a snack in reality. It's not a 'fun' meal when you got only that and hardtack for example, but it manages to make you survive and not starve.

That's all it's supposed to be. It just has to exist to avoid the starvation issue and the culling issue for MP. Otherwise there is no reasonable argumentation for indefinitely lasting food... but that aspect has to be taken into consideration and not simply ignored either. That's what the middle-ground of 'we don't invalidate existing systems' together with 'we solve a fringe-issue' comes together as after all.
The form of it? Doesn't matter, but those are the things it has to uphold. Any extra is a bonus anyway and nice. But the functionality has first to be presented before we can think about any flavor-based stuff.

As for 'players would complain'... that's always nonsensical as a argument. Never upholds. Players complain about everything, all the time. They do about quenching/tempering, they do about clay-shaping, they do about enemies, they do complain about everything and anything at all times. There's only a point to find which arguments are viable and upholding inside the expected framework... and to ignore all others. Like my food-buff system... to be ignored a while ago since a vastly simpler and more functional idea was presented, but the premise of pushing for variety itself was reasonable. We gotta differentiate accordingly.
 

9 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

or taking long breaks on whim like they do with other games.

Yes, because they can't without significant detriments.
That's the point  

And the question then is: Why would it be wanted to keep that being the case instead of allowing a workaround? Does it provide anything positive to enforce a time-critical aspect to long-term servers? Or is it solely a detriment without upside?
I would say it's the second, I haven't yet heard a argument which points against that premise after all.
 

9 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

don't go joining massive multiplayer servers if you're a sporadic gamer

Well, lemme reframe it then:
Imagine I open a permanent server today. For all my friends.
I tell my friends 'let's make a nice world, join in whenever you want'. With everyone having their own space and interacting together simply on the side.
I intent to have this server running for at least 5 years... maybe 10 or more. Just a permanent hangout place hence.

Now, some might become 'daily regularls', which is fine, but that never works out long-term, this pace is just not sustainable permanently.
Another option might be to have the 'weekly regulars'. You know, like olden times at a pub when people came together on Saturday/Sunday to chat and play cards for a few hours, but always the same, always the same action, with the action being just the foundation to provide a reason and allow participation for socializing even without a distinct topic to talk about being available. Poker groups, Pen and Paper, you name it... it's the classic system.
But only opening up once a week and instead closing it enforces to be available 'at that exact moment' and deprives the option to use it otherwise. A simple switch in job-times and you cannot enjoy it anymore, no meeting up, no playing at all. And someone wanting to play more then that one day is also out of luck. Permanent servers allow circumventing that for a reason to increase the range of options simply.

Now we got a issue though... imagine having 5 people total for that server which come together, a nice small group. 2 play every day. 1 plays at least twice, the other 2 are sporadically existent, they come maybe once a week, sometimes less depending on how much time they got.
And for those.... it sucks, absolutely so.

This is not the case in Minecraft for example. If you leave Minecraft and come back after 3 weeks of real-time then everything is still absolutely the same. You continue where you left off.
In Vintage Story the story (hah) is a bit different though. If you come back then every stock of food you got is gone. That forces the player to always work on food production first after coming back.
There is no lazy 'Oh, I got an hour left today, nobody is here but I can just enjoy the game itself alone for a bit' situation hence. They are either mandated to ask for supplies from the more regular players... or they have to focus on acquisition of food during that hour leaving them no option to do anything majorly different.
No 'I want to do a hour of chisel-work' or 'let's explore this ruin I found last time' situations... there are no supplies to do that, they would starve.

That is a significant detriment.
This is why those types of servers generally don't exist in VS. It's plain and simple because it doesn't support it.

Other games like 'Ark: Survival Evolved' or 'Wurm Unlimited' also struggle with that. With Ark being a prime example of necessary near-daily grinds to uphold things or you loose motivation as you loose a lot of 'progress' simply. And with Wurm being a lot more lenient since the time passing is 'only' 4 times of real-time, hence you don't run into those same issues as much since it's based on very long-term gameplay timeframes.

VS is not designed in that regard. The design solely allows goal-driven community action or general single-player gameplay. It does not support permanent casual gameplay functionality in the form of MP, only supports very very regular investment.
Hence no 'I don't want to play for a while since I'll be making a tour with friends for the next 2 months' possible without being punished for it extensively... or a 'I've gotten sick and won't know when I'll return' situation either. Or a simple 'I got this game I wanna focus on and play through' before returning without being punished.
Currently VS enforces you to play it as a main-game... and only a main-game. No side-game, no casual playtimes... not nothing possible because of it.

And that's the point which is senseless to uphold, there is only downsides and no upsides in that regard which causes the engagement for long-term playing in this direction to simply not exist. Not because people aren't interested but because the system isn't built to allow doing it in the first place.
 

2 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

But do you really think it would be a better experience having to forcefully invest most of your time playing in a slow, tedious, otherwise useless process of crafting forever food in bulk because you know you will now have to take a break?

I mean... it's absolutely not optimal, that's true.
But is it 'better'? Yes.

Why do I think so? Because before leaving there is a option to bypass it at least. Which is already better then having no agency over it at all.
If the responsibility is resting in the player's hands then it's already better then when there is no counter-play existing at all.

So yes, still not a optimal solution... but nonetheless a better one.
I'm sure someone can optimize it further along the thought process to actually gradually manage a proper implementation instead of just ignoring it since perfectionism has to be achieved the moment it's touched. It suffices with a half-assed solution first before a proper one exists. Half-assed is better ne no-assed  

Edited August 15 by Kulze

[CyberCat05]

15 hours ago, Kulze said:

First off, it's a misconception that medieval times had awful food storage. Some of it was significantly better then what we have nowadays, the fridge is not a universally great tool. Larders and pantries have fallen out of favor but offer qualitative long-term storage often better then a fridge does.

Secondly, we already got a non-perishable product in VS, the 'Vintage Beef'. All we need to solve the MP issue for long-term offline times is a way to produce that, even if it's annoying, tedious and not rewarding at all. The reward here is the ability to bypass the Real-Life timeframe and avoiding the need to be forced to log on repeatedly even when not in the mood of gaming... just to ensure your character won't just starve or has to cull tons of livestock when coming back from a extended break.

So I'll stay with the need to introduce a producable non-perishable form of food in a reliable and endless manner.
First off... cooking salt water to gather salt would be a choice. Yes, not realistic because it contains in reality toxins without significant extra work (and often does after still, known issue with seasalt which can be bought) but we can simply ignore that.
So my suggestion here would be to make that out of specifically bushmeat to provide a use-case beyond the early-game for it and keep it tedious.
Bushmeat which is salted. Then smoked. Then hung in a small room from the ceiling on metal hooks. Single strips, long hanging time after the smoking process, so quite tedious. Storable in 16 stacks, cannot be used for meals, stays indefinitely. If we wanna be fancy then besides a vanilla smoking options we could have specifically oak cause shavings to be produced when handled, and only those shavings are viable burning material for smoking.

This is solely a suggestion for how to achieve it.

But the 'should it be done?' is plainly spoken without question unless long-term running servers like Minecraft has quite a surprising number isn't something that's wanted... because nothing kills engagement more then coming back and being immedietely stressed to not starve rather then being able to at least mostly pick up where you left off.

About boiling Saltwater for Salt being unrealistic due to toxicity, isn't the main reason that it's that toxic IRL because of human pollution, which wouldn't really be a problem in a Medieval setting?

[Rainbow Fresh]

There is way too many individual points to potentially quote here so I am not gonna.

Tl;dr, as you have specifically stated multiple times throughout and as Teh Pizza Lady already poked back at; if truly the only singular usecase for such a whole ordeal would be "that one player on an active server that doesn't have friends to keep a stockpile in their absence, doesn't have other people to ask for help, doesn't have livestock to solve the immediate food crisis in the span of all of 5 minutes, and doesn'T play regularily or just has to take a sudden long break." - then yes, this does not sound like a "The base game needs a whole new tier of food that is deliberately ass just to accomodate for the single odd-out player on a specific server" problem. This is either a "install a mod if you want this" (Long Term Foods exists already, so do many other forms of Pemmican-adding mods) or a "The server staff should deal with it" kinda deal.

As was mentioned before, if sudden circumstances come up you can always kindly ask the server staff if they can help. It's their server, they should generally have an interest to make people have fun. You say Minecraft is not an issue because food doesn't spoil - which is true - yet as a server administrator for a "just friends" server I had plenty of situations where I intervened with cheats and commands just so people don't get frustrated about being too unskilled even for TOBG, or because unfavorable circumstances resulted in major downers. That is not a "Minecraft should add XYZ to account for that" problem, that is a "It's my server, I want my players to have fun, they are not in XYZ situation, I fix specifically XYZ situation" deal.

And, quite frankly, for most major public always-on servers; if you go play Singleplayer on a Multiplayer server you are kinda responsible for your own shortcomings. If you don't have or want to invest the time to play on such, the game should not make room specifically for you doing something you are not intended to. Different issue from sudden onforeseen circumstances happening (spontaneous sickness, vacation, whatever) but the main "You have no other people despite playing in Multiplayer to solve the issue by playing when you don't".

As for your friends-only chill weekend hangout server you let run 24/7. They do not really exist (according to your argumentation - I wouldn't know, I don't play public Multiplayer); but that isn't necessarily an "it's not possible" problem. It is possible, as I have explained above and will further explain below, so it's more a situation of people see no need to make it happen. The availability of plenty forever-food is not the deciding factor; I personally wouldn't consider Vintage Story my "Pub with friends on a weekend" alternative. There are way better options for such. But even if you do want such a thing, an always-on server where you and your friends and cozily, relaxed play and hang out on whenever.

Turn on the "stop time when nobody is on" setting.

Crank global spoil rate down to a minimum so that basically nothing ever spoils. If someone is still gone for long enough to have EVERYTHING spoil; tough luck buddy, should have played the game in the last 5 years.

Turn off seasons or modify growth times to be Minecraft-instant.

What, that sounds like a bad game experience because you remove all challenge? Well, you wanted a "cozy, relaxed pub evening" VR chat hangout lobby in Vintage Story. The game isn't this. The game isn't supposed to be this. You can still make it happen, with what the game has, right now.

 

So no, plenty of forever-food should be a mod for those really interested in it. It serves no greater purpose to everyone but the oddball on a public always-on server.