"Final" tier of food that never goes bad

[Kulze]

43 minutes ago, CyberCat05 said:

isn't the main reason that it's that toxic IRL because of human pollution

To a degree, yes, but not only.
We introduce microplastics definitely as well as chemicals, and that's not removable either in any sensible way for some parts.
But without that the ocean still has a much higher concentration of biological activity and toxins which are in the water as a baseline. Some of them are very hard to remove without modern technology. Also it's full of impurities compared to fresh-water salt extraction or best-case rock-salt which is very pure but not freely available if we go from a survival standpoint.
Simple water evaporization after filtering is the best way to acquire small amounts of salt in amounts which suffice for personal usage.

 

34 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

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

That counteracts it to a degree. But it is a reduction of the issue, not a solution to it.

Also the argument of 'this is a single case' is not upholding.

Everyone besides a single player stops playing for a while.
You log in when nobody is online at that moment and hence you would need to steal resources from others, which is a major 'nono' overall in behaviour.
Many people don't do livestock at all but only farming, which is more then sufficient after all, hence having no livestock stocks in the first place as that takes vastly more effort and investment initially then the convoluted process even I mentioned.

Global spoil-rate reduction is also not sensible as general food stocks during active playtime are already abundant, it's solely about offline-time.

Generally 'reducing' the game in functionality is not a solution, it's a reduction of investment to solve something which can be counteracted with proper design. Proper design is always superior to excemption.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

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.

The point of emergency rations is to get one through hard times, yes. That also means that one has had time to prepare such, so they can make sure that the rations are both nutritious and prepared properly to keep for a long time. Likewise, when preparing rations like this, one isn't meant to survive exclusively on a single food item, in most cases. A food like pemmican is both energy dense and quite nutritious. A food like hardtack might provide energy, but not much in the way of nutrients. The entire point of preparing supplies like this in advance isn't just to keep yourself alive with the bare minimum...it's to make sure you have preserved foodstuffs to keep you both alive and relatively healthy during times when fresh foodstuffs might be a little hard to come by. And while these foods can be eaten as-is, they're not necessarily meant to be either; jerky and pemmican can be made into soups and stews. Hardtack can be used for the same purposes, as well as broken down to make into cakes, I believe. These things can also be supplemented with wild foodstuffs hunted and foraged from the nearby area, or other stored foodstuffs that keep quite well, like jams, nuts, etc.

A pure desperate survival situation though means you don't have time or resources to prepare supplies like that, or else you ran out of supplies on the road and are having trouble finding more. In this case, yes, you're not going to really care where the calories come from, or what nutrition the food carries, since the first priority is staying alive. But this is also a very extreme example.

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

As for 'players would complain'... that's always nonsensical as a argument. Never upholds. Players complain about everything, all the time.

Right, but here's the thing: if it's just a handful of players complaining, that's to be expected and generally safe to ignore, because it's not possible to please everyone all the time. When more than a few players are complaining though, and players in general are going out of their way to avoid interacting with the mechanic, that tends to mean there's a problem with the mechanic and that it should be looked at.

The solution can't be worse than the problem it's meant to fix. If a given solution produces just as many, if not more, complaints than the original problem, then nothing's actually been fixed. All that's happened is the source of the complaints has changed.

And of course, implementing solutions that many players aren't happy with is a good way to erode the goodwill of your playerbase over time.

Edit: If we're also going to insist player complaints don't matter, then there's no need to address the issue with offline food spoilage on large servers.

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

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.

Well yes, because Minecraft is a very different game than Vintage Story. I don't think it's at all fair to expect the same kind of experience from Vintage Story and then call the game "broken" when it doesn't happen.

Plus in this specific example, you mention five people total, playing together as a group. That's not a big server at all, and if they're playing together as a group, that suggests they're playing cooperatively rather than each going their separate ways and treating the server like singleplayer with a multiplayer chat function. In which case, they should have some sort of prior understanding that the ones who play most often are responsible for making sure there's enough food stored for everyone, so that no one is logging in and starving. 

42 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

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.

Or I mean, just install a mod like these ones, if it's a big concern:

https://mods.vintagestory.at/noofflinecontainerfoodspoil

https://mods.vintagestory.at/offlinefoodnospoil

But yeah, there are options. And as you mentioned initially, it's not a problem with the game or the servers, as much as it is an issue with certain player types. Life happens and you need to step away for an extended period sometimes, but most players will be quite sympathetic in these cases as well so it shouldn't be hard to get a friend or admin to watch your stuff or help you get back into the game when you return. If you just need to take a break for a while due to burnout or whatever, most people will be pretty understanding about that too, provided you give them some advance notice so plans can be made. But otherwise Vintage Story is similar to a tabletop game: the story will go on, and players who frequently skip sessions without notice will find themselves falling behind the rest, if not getting removed from the campaign entirely.

Edited August 15 by LadyWYT

[Teh Pizza Lady]

21 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The point of emergency rations is to get one through hard times, yes. That also means that one has had time to prepare such, so they can make sure that the rations are both nutritious and prepared properly to keep for a long time. Likewise, when preparing rations like this, one isn't meant to survive exclusively on a single food item, in most cases. A food like pemmican is both energy dense and quite nutritious. A food like hardtack might provide energy, but not much in the way of nutrients. The entire point of preparing supplies like this in advance isn't just to keep yourself alive with the bare minimum...it's to make sure you have preserved foodstuffs to keep you both alive and relatively healthy during times when fresh foodstuffs might be a little hard to come by.

Colonel Logan had four requirements for the D ration bar, dictating that it had to:

1. Weigh 4 ounces (113 grams)
2. Be high in food energy value
3. Be able to withstand high temperatures
4. Taste "a little better than a boiled potato" (to keep soldiers from eating their emergency rations in non-emergency situations)

Its ingredients were chocolate,^[2] sugar, oatmeal, cacao fat, skim milk powder, and artificial flavoring, fortified with vitamin B1 to prevent beriberi.

Copied from Wikipedia -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_chocolate_(United_States)  Access date: 15-Aug-2026

[CyberCat05]

I don't see why it's a bad idea just because most people wouldn't use it. If we went by that logic the whole Alcohol system should be removed since it takes more effort than it's worth. Optional Content is great, and the game should have the option.

The "just install mods" argument will never not be silly to me but especially in this case, where it's a feature where a big part of its inclusion would be intended to solve a problem that is most prominent on large servers, where you can't rely on everyone having the same mods installed.

Edited August 15 by CyberCat05

[SnapJelly]

1 hour ago, CyberCat05 said:

About boiling Saltwater for Salt being unrealistic due to toxicity

this is also just not true, people have been boiling sea water to harvest the salt for hundreds of years

Also sea salt still to this day mostly gets harvested simply by letting pools fill up and letting the water evaporate, they are called ''bay salt ponds'' it's not toxic, you likely eat it at every restaurant

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 minute ago, CyberCat05 said:

servers, where you can't rely on everyone having the same mods installed

False.

Joining a server that has mods installed will force you to download and install said mods before you are allowed to join.

[SnapJelly]

2 minutes ago, CyberCat05 said:

by that logic the whole Alcohol system should be removed since it takes more effort than it's worth

Hard dissagree, alcohol is the single best way to preserve fruit in bulk for the long term, I don't go a single playthrough without mass producing wine

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 minute ago, SnapJelly said:

Hard dissagree, alcohol is the single best way to preserve fruit in bulk for the long term, I don't go a single playthrough without mass producing wine

I just enjoy getting drunk off my rocker before a temporal storm.

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, CyberCat05 said:

I don't see why it's a bad idea just because most people wouldn't use it.

Shouldn't it be something most players want to use though? Especially since more food variety is a common request, along with more food preservation options like smoking and drying. 

 

2 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

Hard dissagree, alcohol is the single best way to preserve fruit in bulk for the long term, I don't go a single playthrough without mass producing wine

Not to mention that distilled alcohols like brandy never spoil, and can be further distilled into aqua vitae, which is quite useful for healing.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

1 minute ago, LadyWYT said:

quite useful for healing.

And also makes you drunk instantly right before a temporal storm.

[Rainbow Fresh]

36 minutes ago, Kulze said:

hence having no livestock stocks in the first place as that takes vastly more effort and investment initially then the convoluted process even I mentioned.

Oh, so a convoluted process that takes hours of time to produce a stack of 200 satiety each jerky would be fine. But the convoluted process of trapping an animal and filling a trough every now and then with your near endless, rotting-if-offline stockpiles of grain and vegetables to make them multiply all by themselves is not? And before any arguments about the time it takes for animals to mature, breed, gestate and repeat is incredibly high - any againg process would also be high. Play on an always-online 30 day month server and your againg process takes easily several IRL days aswell.

39 minutes ago, Kulze said:

Global spoil-rate reduction is also not sensible as general food stocks during active playtime are already abundant, it's solely about offline-time.

So what difference does it make? You are solely trying to solve all your food stockpiles, no matter if your last 10 bread or a max size cellar full of clay vessels full of grain stacks being gone in the one instance where you are offline for a longer while and come back. That is the only complaint and only situation to solve. Global spoil rate does it without changing anything about the normal procedure. The normal Singleplayer or frequently online player will have near infinite food under normal settings, so infinite food under your settings makes no difference.

42 minutes ago, Kulze said:

Also the argument of 'this is a single case' is not upholding.

It is. A Singleplayer player does not have this issue. A "friends schedule fixed gaming sessions" like in the good old days player does not have this issue. A player on a public always-on server that plays with friends who are probably online atleast once in the time it takes for everything to rot before you yourself come back does not have this issue. A lone player on a big, popular always-on server with a bustling economy does not have this issue. Hell, even the Auction House feature could be used to sell food constantly so people can buy it even when nobody is online.

The truly only person that runs into this deliberately causes this situation by forgoing all other common playstyles. It is a single case. And even such nieches as your aformentioned cozy VRChat hangout in Vintage Story could bypass this issue entirely by setting the game up in the specific way that accomodates for this. It only happens when bringing the wrong prerequisites into the wrong environment. Alas, not the game's core's fault.

47 minutes ago, Kulze said:

Generally 'reducing' the game in functionality is not a solution

Then add functionality by installing a mod. There are plenty. As LadyWYT said above, general expansions to the food system, including more preservation methods like smoking are a much wanted feature. It would help spice up general gameplay for everyone while also potentially opening up to more long-term preservation options. None of which scream "has no spoil timer" though. Vintage Beef existing is funny easter egg and hence not intended for mass obtaining. Hard tack could be very easy to make but just be attrociously bad food with like 25 satiety per portion or whatever.

You have specifically suggested viable options of forever-food at the cost of making them deliberately attrciously bad to obtain to artificially balance it in a way that only the very specific, singular, nieche-case player would ever want to entertain the idea while actively encouraging everyone else to ignore it even exists. This is not a good feature scope.

[LadyWYT]

55 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Hard tack could be very easy to make but just be attrociously bad food with like 25 satiety per portion or whatever.

I mean, that's basically how Expanded Foods handled the hardtack concept. It's a worse version of bread, but keeps for a very long time. Also comes with humorous flavor text.

 

56 minutes ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Play on an always-online 30 day month server and your againg process takes easily several IRL days aswell.

Doing some rough math here, but a year on a 30 day month server equates to about 12 IRL days. At normal spoilage rates, long-term foods take a couple of years to spoil, so I think it's safe to assume that on average, the player has 24 IRL days to log in a couple times to check things, or otherwise make arrangements with friends/admins. Decreasing the global spoilage rate will, as you noted, only increase the grace period the player in question has. The only player type I really see having a problem here is one that insists on playing a solo game on a large active public server, without making the time commitment for such or otherwise coordinating with friends/admins for the times they're away. And that's not a problem with the server or even the game itself; that's a problem with the individual player not picking a server/game mode that is appropriate for their preferred playstyle.

I also suspect that a lot of the "all my food spoiled!" complaints are from the TOPS server, which as I noted before, is a special case because it's a server meant primarily for testing, and not intended for long term play. 

[Kulze]

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

one isn't meant to survive exclusively on a single food item, in most cases.

Yes, they were usually made in different variants depending on what was available.
Like pemmican, the 'plain' version which was the longest lasting one or the one with the addition of dried fruits or nuts, hence lasting less long as oils caused it to become rancid more easily. Those were obviously consumed first, but the second still existed as a backup... and that one tastes like crap even when you try to make a stew out of it, no matter how well you like to 'garnish' it with extra materials. It's god a very bad taste but keeps you alive.

Rations in nigh every army were also not really 'nice' in any regard. They kept people alive and going, but besides the stress of being on frontlines even backline troops were prone to getting health issues.

They make you survive, not thrive.
 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

The solution can't be worse than the problem it's meant to fix.

Ah yes... because so many people complain also about the existence of soup despite nobody using it, or porridge scrambled eggs, which I've seen being cooked once only.
Yes... it will surely introduce severe issues that are entirely immersion- and game-breaking so the masses will flock to the forums to complain about it.

Come on now... there's only 'so far' one can take a stance before it becomes senseless, you've gone over the scale with that, I recommend re-reading and especially re-thinking what exactly you proclaimed would happen in detail again. It makes zero sense. That's not a sensible way to base an argument on top of.
 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

because Minecraft is a very different game than Vintage Story.

Last time I saw it's the exact same genre with the exact same methodology of gameplay but simply a different weight put on survival versus creativity.
Minecraft is the casual VS. Or VS is the hardcore Minecraft. That's it mechanically. They are grounded on the exact same methdological basis of gameplay.

So no... they absolutely aren't. What works for one works for the other primarily, with the exceptions when we go into details.
The basis that 'forever servers' are existing in larger scales there because the mechanics support that without detriment is simply a factual statement. The question is solely if VS wants to partake in this portion of clearly existing players which would use this when available or if it foregoes it in favor for investing into other aspects... primarily those which would clash directly with the inclusion of that group as otherwise it's still a sensible thing to point out, solely a metric of priority and not of a 'yes/no' argumentation line.
 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Or I mean, just install a mod like these ones, if it's a big concern:

Also a workaround, not a solution.
This doesn't keep the the food you create save, is also non-intuitive and is depending on game-stage very limited in scale.

 

3 hours ago, SnapJelly said:

this is also just not true, people have been boiling sea water to harvest the salt for hundreds of years

It is actually. Look up what seasalt has in terms of risk-factors.
It is very well known that one of the biggest causes of death were dysentery in the middle-ages because of a lack of knowledge for hygiene.
Seasalt has a significantly hightened amount of bacterial activity of e. coli, salmonella and vibrio. As for the dysentery specifically that then comes from intenstinal inflammation which causes severe dehydration following death.

With the technology of the middle ages the chances for contamination were relatively high, primarily coming from it not being highly purified salt but instead having bits of decomposing organic matter in it as well, which even led to issues like dinoflagellates causing neurotixical poisoning. Those algae are microscopically small, hence people didn't even know they existed. Just that some people had 'sudden symptoms' which usually were treated with basically hopes and prayers as back then medicine was very... special.
 

3 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Shouldn't it be something most players want to use though?

Closing gaps in functionality is inherently not something 'most players want'. It's what a few have issues with.
This is a known shortcoming of many development cycles by the way leading to significantly less engagement then otherwise possible. If the focus is only on large-scale mechanics without taking care of fringe issues which only affect 'a few' people in total then you acrue over time a line of multiple 'a few' instances which culmulate into a significant reduction of interaction with the product.

That's why you never solely focus on huge systems alone but also ensure that existing systems get solidified, and if it only affects 10 people out of 10000 it is already a win. With the same argumentation line companies often avoid fixing more rare bugs which then over time leads to a overall perception of 'this game is very buggy' as hundreds of those exist... getting the specific one is rare, but getting 'one of them' on the other hand is not suddenly anymore.
 

3 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Oh, so a convoluted process that takes hours of time to produce a stack of 200 satiety each jerky would be fine.

Yes, because with the way I described it it would be available early on already, namely copper-age. It is a method which can be done at night for desalination of water as example, allowing more options to pass this timeframe then currently available (which is a good thing) while the acquisition of bushmeat is something that happens anyway, hence the option to make those into long-lasting food for those longer absences would be a reasonable outcome.

In comparison the often multi-hour long stage of trying to wrangle animals which for the love of it don't want to get their arse shoved into a pen instead of doing whatever else while also needing a complete growing cycle of grain or access to fruit/berries (which are year 2 things only currently) as well as multiple barrels and a fruitpress with enough material to even use it to function is absolutely a major difference.

What I'm talking about has to be accessible very early and in reasonable amounts to counteract the offline times but without interfering in the normal food storage systems. This makes livestock management often a less reliable option.
 

3 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

So what difference does it make?

That real-life time is not supposed to interfere during offline times with your in-game situation as much as possible.
Hence being punished for not being online for reason 'whatever'. The reason behind it is of no significance and a dozen+ exist why this could happen.
 

3 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

It is.

I think you don't quite understand what you write there. It is not a singular situation after all, this is not a debatable thing.
What you mean is 'it's not sufficiently prevalent in your eyes' though, which is fine. But that's perception bias.

It is specifically about MP, hence counting SP is nonsensical by default.
Fixed groups also have this issue, namely if someone has for some reason no option (or is not in the mood simply) to appear on this usually regular timeframe. Yes, others will be online, but then you still run into the issue that those people need to be in range at the moment as well as have stocks to give out simply, or alternatively making a community-based safety storage for food for those situations. That's a extra step others have to take for you, which is not improving the situation, it's a bona-fide workaround for a shortcoming.
The argument that 'in this specific situation it works' is also senseless. Issues arise when it's not said specific situation. We got a thousand ways of playing, it is a sandbox game. It is fine to have a framework to work inside... but it's not to say 'you have to play the way I want!' which it basically boils down to in this case.
 

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I also suspect that a lot of the "all my food spoiled!" complaints are from the TOPS server, which as I noted before, is a special case because it's a server meant primarily for testing, and not intended for long term play. 

Likely, as the TOPS is also aligning well with activity in online-activity after all. Private servers don't align as well.
The question is how many 'dark numbers' exist there rather. I think they're higher then expected as most people don't complain, they just don't engage anymore.

[Rainbow Fresh]

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

I think you don't quite understand what you write there.

I understand very well what I am writing here. I also very well understand what you are writing here, which makes it all the more ironically hilarious to see you so self-confidently speak of "matter of fact" things with a side helping of "belittling people telling you where you are wrong". And having to repeat myself trying to bring this point across to you as you put the phonograph on loop is getting tiring.

There are multiple people here that are trying to express how your claims are lackluster at best in the grand scheme of things, offering solutions that already exist, and even put part and core notion of your very specific inquiry into a grander scope we could all be happy with; a general expansion or rework of the food and food preparation systems allowing for more variety and options. None of those seem to hit your ears. On the other hand there was so far you looping the same 2 arguments over and over and that one other person who chimed in for a single post saying "I think more variety is always better"; something that may apply to your suggestion but would also, once again, be covered by the alternatives mentioned.

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

That real-life time is not supposed to interfere during offline times with your in-game situation as much as possible.

So considering you just shut down animal husbandry as an existing version of what you suggested... In your eyes, you want IRL time to not affect game time if you don't play, at all, like in Minecraft. So animals don't grow up if you are not online, forcing you to spend several weeks online on a 30 days month server for a single generation of animals to pass. Fun. You want fruit trees that take an entire in-game year-ish to grow into their first harvest to only tick when you are actively logged in. One reason more for people to completely ignore that feature. Ideally seasons don't progress if you're not there so that there is a sphere of green grass and 30°C around you in everyone else's middle of winter snow.

All to argue that it is the only right choice in the whole wide world to add a Vintage Beef mass recipe that costs 1h to make so you can log off for a month and pretend time didn't pass when you log back in?

You argued with LadyWYT about how Minecraft and VS are the same except for where one is casual, the other hardcore. Minecraft has no perception of time outside of "loaded chunk ticks". Vintage Story emulates world-wide time progression. Which comes with side effects like food spoiling when you don't look. Where's your Minecraft wheat farm is always full, always fresh, a stack of breads ready for the making thereof. This principle does not apply. This principle was never intended to apply by the very core design of how VS operates vs. TOBG.

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

Yes, because with the way I described it it would be available early on already, namely copper-age.

So is animal husbandry. The trough needs just boards - which need a saw, which needs copper. That's it. Farming for animal food is already doable beforehand. Traps unnecessary in many situations as you can just shoo nearby animals in or they get lured from across the continent by a filled trough anyway. No "early-game" time gained.

[Kulze]

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

a general expansion or rework of the food and food preparation systems allowing for more variety and options. None of those seem to hit your ears.

First of all, they do.
Just not for the specific problem mentioned as it's no solution for it, plain and simple.

Overall always all for expansion of systems unless it's made needlessly complex without functionality behind it.

And a thousand people can proclaim the same thing, doesn't make it right. This is a well known fallacy called 'appeal to popularity' or 'argentum ad populum' in the original latin terminology. Popularity does not equal truth.
 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

So considering you just shut down animal husbandry as an existing version of what you suggested.

I didn't, I'm saying it is too extensive in time-investment of active playtime (instead of as a side-thing) to be a viable solution. It can become viable, but for that we need to get the ability to in some way reliably move animals, which is the missing part there. Then it would be a viable alternative and solve it right away.
 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

So is animal husbandry.

Wrangling the animals so they don't run away is the major issue, which is because it's not a finished mechanic clearly. Much like the ability to move small livestock like chickens we don't yet have the option to move large livestock.
Given there is a entity limit on how many animals are around at any time in the simulated space the chance for the need to move them rather sizeable distances (and not allowing them to flee) is a big point that's regularly been mentioned. And yes, there exists a myriad of solutions as mods. And no, I'm not talking about mod-solutions here, I'm specifically talking about core functionality upholding it, hence vanilla, which we know is vastly unfinished after all.

I'm simply stating 'this is a open point which needs to be addressed' and my solution was 'unperishable food' as it's already pre-existing and doesn't need a large amount of work to make functional... while the code for wrangling medium-sized animals is non-existent currently and there wasn't a sensible way without issues found to solve this right away. Which means I'll obviously voice an alternative as that's a known quantity already which is something that as much as I know is intended for the future anyway, just not known in which way exactly. (I mean the livestock wrangling in some way, not the non-perishable food existing.)

Edited August 15 by Kulze

[Rainbow Fresh]

1 hour ago, Kulze said:

And a thousand people can proclaim the same thing, doesn't make it right. This is a well known fallacy called 'appeal to popularity' or 'argentum ad populum' in the original latin terminology. Popularity does not equal truth.

Neither does repeating the same thing over and over. The truth is that we are talking about a video game. The decision making for such videogame does neither lie with you nor me. Whatever Anego's Studio wants or not. A videogame, however, is defined by it's players. No players, no money. No money, no upkeep. No upkeep, abandoned project. So when it comes to upkeep, the paying players need to be happy. Since VS is a pay-once type of game with no DLCs yet, happy enough to recommend it to a friend is the goal. How many people would benefit from the time and effort spent on such an obscure mechanic solely brought to life because one dude in the forums is preaching about the "matter of fact only truth" that the game must have this necessary addition to accomodate the oddball playing the game wrong on purpose, bold letters and all to really drive that fact home? Versus all the other things the "not truthful popularity" would accomodate?

2 hours ago, Kulze said:

I didn't, I'm saying it is too extensive in time-investment of active playtime (instead of as a side-thing) to be a viable solution. It can become viable, but for that we need to get the ability to in some way reliably move animals, which is the missing part there. Then it would be a viable alternative and solve it right away.
 

What active play time. You find whatever domesticable animal is around - and in temperate climate starts as most popular servers would have - there will be around plenty. Then you shoo it in the direction of your pen. Dirt stairs over the fence from the outside, pre-filled trough inside; they basically capture themselves. The rest is occasionally right-clicking 8 times to fill the trough until the females are pregnant. You are literally done for several in-game months. None of this is any more demanding than crafting X thing or mixing Y think in a barrel and sealing it for a couple months.

2 hours ago, Kulze said:

Given there is a entity limit on how many animals are around at any time in the simulated space the chance for the need to move them rather sizeable distances (and not allowing them to flee) is a big point that's regularly been mentioned

Mentioned where? You're telling me there is a physical hardcap on entities in a given world region? No babies can spawn from breeding past 10 pigs? We are still talking about the introverted player that deliberately moves 100.000 blocks away from everyone else on the server and still thinks they can come back after 6 IRL months of not playing as if nothing happened, just how many animals do you think a single player needs to tip them over the starvation hurdle? Not to mention any kind of fair and balanced forever food source would, by your plans, be so bad you'd need a literaly basement full to make it through winter on that alone, so neither your forever food nor animal husbandry is supposed to last you the entire winter. We are still talking about an emergency backup that can last inifinity just to keep you going on your hunt for food. If it is the middle of winter when you return - well, you were gone for 6 months what is waiting another couple days? If it is not winter; you need a day's worth of food to sustain you on your way to the nearest berry bushes. Or since 1.22, fish for a day or two. The demand for food you need on return to kickstart you from literally 0 is minimal outside of winter because food is so abundant especially when you play so far away from all other players that nobody else could possibly exhaust the area but you, and anything that could be a viable alternative to last winter on is, as you criticized turning down global spoil rates, making the food imbalance even worse.

2 hours ago, Kulze said:

And no, I'm not talking about mod-solutions here, I'm specifically talking about core functionality upholding it, hence vanilla, which we know is vastly unfinished after all.

Animal husbandry IS the existing, funtioning, equally labor intensive alternative to forever food - meals on wheels, the food dispenser. And as we have already brought up plenty of times, the odd Joe that wants to play Singleplayer on a world he doesn't own is not the target audience player. So everything beyond this point is personal flavor. And personal flavor is not Anego's business - they added difficulty options for that (of which there could be some more, but alas). Personal flavor is a modding and administration business.

If only you weren't so insitent on being the messiah for "the truth of game development" proclaiming that god himself has said Vintage Story needs forever foods, and plenty of those, because YOU specifically want to be able to join any Multiplayer game at any point in time and just not care about the game's core challenge - food - we could all already be moving along. Variety is always good, clutter or not aside, and the whole food system could use a major buff. We could probably all agree on that. Plenty of people have said so before. Your "matter of fact" end-all guide to videogame design says it's "the truth" too. Such a system could include more ways to tackle food storage aswell. A freezer to extend the shelf life of things over the current ~5 year peak, if anyone ever needs that much shelf life. Things that make sense AND are inviting to be used.

Wanting forever food - something that will always create an immediate visceral reaction because it, by nature, counters the game's core survival mechanic which is being lamented and as such modded in TOBG aplenty - with a deliberately discouraging process of obtaining specifically only to account for players that choose to ignore all other options already presented to them - is not a good thesis.

[Kulze]

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

The decision making for such videogame does neither lie with you nor me.

I'm argumenting with you and not with Anego though. That's the core difference.
Also deflection is not a viable argumentation method.

On top your try of locking in your argumentation partner on finalized terms like 'must' don't help along your point. Trying to harden the stance of your argumentation opposition is also not a viable argumentation method. We're not having a debate, we're having an argument.

This is especially the case since you don't seem to understand the point I want to make, which can be through bad explanations from my side (very likely) or simply taking in the information in a way which diverges from what is supposed to be said (also very likely). Whichever it is, reset your stance for a moment. I'll write the specific thing I'm talking about out again in shortform.

The one things I say is an issue is 'When I log in I don't have food available right that moment to continue exactly where I left off, without diversion'.
Nothing more, nothing less. Reasonings are unimportant here for the moment, that's the sole premise to uphold.
Why? Because this causes mental fatigue when it happens, wanting to jump in and having done everything 'right' formerly to then have 'nothing' and needing to re-do those steps of process is exhausting simply and to be avoided. Also nothing more and nothing less.
Hence a readily available food-source has to exist in the moment of login, with no extra work. No fishing, no butchering, no nothing. Pre-prepared omnom to shove down the throat and... for example finish the chisel-work planned to do ever since logging off the last time without being interrupted before exactly that is done.
 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

What active play time.

The time needed to gather the resources for fences, then to make the fences, then to actually manage to fence in the animal. Then to expand the fencing and hope the animal is walking in the right direction sooner or later so you can repeat the process.
If your planned pen area is 100 blocks away from the capture point then you got to move the animal 100 blocks, which is a substantial time investment. It can take hours in some cases. Especially so if individual animals for a breeding pair run off and distance themselves far from each other.

Which is why it needs a lot of active playing time. And this is something that's regularly happening unless you got a very experienced player which knows how to abuse the AI properly, which is not the goal but a mechanical limitation.
 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Mentioned where? You're telling me there is a physical hardcap on entities in a given world region?

Yes, for spawn there is.
If your wolves kill all sheep and the system only chooses racoons and rabbits to spawn in which then stay in the world because the - for example - run into corners outside of predator range then you won't get any more sheep unless you cull the population.

This is a rather common point that was mentioned and it affects livestock wrangling substantially based on when you do it. If you start very early it's no issue, but if you stay for a longer while in a area it becomes significantly harder as none are available and the area around you is populated with bears and wolves instead.
 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

by your plans, be so bad you'd need a literaly basement full to make it through winter on that alone,

I don't know where you got that argument from but it's a factually wrong statement. Nowhere have I mentioned that the satiety itself needs to be so miniscule it would inflate storages sizes to this hyperbolic size argument.
I specifically stated that the process is to be either caloric, or time intensive. And to specificy, a heavy leaning towards caloric so it is not a viable expansion of food stocks but a diversion to a less profitable type of food. And also to allow it happening early on to divert better options to this weaker option for the respective functionality. It is specifically stated with 'only MP' in mind and not a viable product to make in every world, much like someone focusing on farming and livestock never doing alcohol in VS. Or someone only focusing on farming neither. A system which only becomes a thing to do when a need arises, like alcohol... where the need to preserve vast amounts of fruit from a orchard build does necessitate the process. With a single tree you won't make alcohol either after all because it makes no sense.
As long as the 'sense' is there it causes no issues. And a mild rework of vintage beef to reduce the healing to a smaller amount (0,5 for example) while also decreasing the satiety (100 instead of 200) would suffice entirely to uphold a proper gameplay premise if an actual function is wanted. In such a case the beef makes a emergency ration but also would function as a method to speed up health regeneration during travel times, hence having a reason to be achieved even in SP if the 'only MP' aspect is the problem here.

I've solely stated that the active hunting for it would incur a caloric deficit likely (since bushmeat is prone to either need you to run a lot or be hurt in the process depending on source). If that's not sufficient then depending on the steps taken to achieve the result it can happen at any place along the production line. Be it desalinating water and scraping off salt being highly caloric intense for some reason... or the smoking with wood shavings needing manually blowing into it as it's a crappy system which leads to caloric loss. Simply something counteracting the result.
 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Or since 1.22, fish for a day or two.

Doesn't counteract the 'return and catch-up' phase. Which I specifically state is the issue.
The demand to uphold is 'If I return after 'x' time (which is open) and hence my resources spoiled I don't need to re-invest immediate time to catch-up but can instead continue where I left off the last time before having to divert after a while to food-acquisition'. It doesn't matter if it's 5 minutes or 1 hour of gameplay, it's the aspect that this is mentally exhausting to even exist for people coming in the situation. This reduces re-engagement. It's that simple, hence I'm talking about this very very narrow and specific point and not any other bits and pieces left and right of it.

Not a single comment yet from your side followed this premise, which I made specifically and repeatedly clear. So obviously I'll repeatedly say 'no' to those.
The closest was livestock, but as said, a method to achieve a emergency ration without timelimit would be a more sensible solution simply. But that one at least upholds the premise.
 

1 hour ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

A freezer to extend the shelf life of things over the current ~5 year peak, if anyone ever needs that much shelf life. Things that make sense AND are inviting to be used.

Yes, this is a reasonable point. And as said, variety and improvements to systems are all nearly always fine and dandy. On board with that.
But this and that are two different topics still. Apples and oranges.

And yes, forever food has a visceral reaction. But for some it actually makes sense. Rice... grain... those don't go bad. They only do when respective moisture is introduced, which even in actual medieval times meant a livetime of 5+ years quite often.
VS is still a game though, and games are there to allow tackling things at your own pace and willingness without anything forcing you to. This is the primary downfall of all systems which need permanent upkeep of some sorts based on real-time, no matter how short or long. It's called 'player agency' and is a big big thing for a reason. Anything reducing player agency is to be avoided like the plague, and concessions are made to ensure player agency upholds. Because player agency is absolute king, always was, always will be. Work-simulators only function as enjoyment because they are done at your own pace and wants, not because it is demanded, then they loose their function.
Same here simply.

[SnapJelly]

29 minutes ago, Kulze said:

but as said, a method to achieve a emergency ration without timelimit would be a more sensible solution simply

you're saying all that but ignoring the foods that already fill exactly this purpose: walnuts, fat and honey all do not spoil at all in their fully edible state, if you're REAALY that concerned with having forever lasting foods for emergencies then stock up on those

[LadyWYT]

3 minutes ago, SnapJelly said:

you're saying all that but ignoring the foods that already fill exactly this purpose: walnuts, fat and honey all do not spoil at all in their fully edible state, if you're REAALY that concerned with having forever lasting foods for emergencies then stock up on those

Not to mention the auction house. A lot of players like farming. It's also very easy to rack up a surplus of food. Many players would probably be happy to sell or share their extra food. Rusty gears aren't particularly hard to come by, since they can be acquired from caving, selling goods to NPCs/other players, and fighting monsters(especially in temporal storms). Agricultural traders regularly sell food, some of it for quite cheap, and the village also has NPCs that sell food for a reasonable price.

In addition to all that, hunting is usually an option, and the new fishing mechanic is a decent source of food as well, provided there is water nearby and one is patient. If the player settled in a warmer climate, it should also be perfectly viable to just...plant a few farms before logging off. As long as it doesn't drop below freezing and the crops are otherwise heat tolerant, they should mature and just sit there until the player is ready to harvest them.

[LadyWYT]

On 8/14/2026 at 4:29 PM, Kulze said:

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.

Circling back around to this: if this is supposed to be the only solution, it needs a much more thorough explanation. Saying "it just works okay" doesn't really do anything to address the arguments made against it. A few things to consider:

How much satiety does this forever food have per each item of food?

What ingredients are required to make it?

How long does it take to make?

Why can't other meats beside bushmeat be used?

Why does it only stack to 16 when most other food items stack higher?

Why is oak wood the only viable wood type? Especially when not every environment has access to it.

Keeping in mind the stats and requirements of competing food items. Honey is 300 points of fruit nutrition per item, and while it doesn't stack very high as honeycomb, honeycomb requires little effort to obtain and each skep will produce three pieces of honeycomb. Raw meat of any kind can already be salted and keeps fresh for a few years; salting meat requires 20 days worth of sealing in a barrel. Salted meat also stacks to 64. Pickles stack to 64 as well, and take 14 days of brining in a barrel to create. Rendered fat keeps forever and provides 200 points of protein nutrition, and is as simple as cooking raw fat in a cookpot. Cheese can easily keep fresh for a decade when waxed, and jams can keep fresh for several years as well when sealed in crocks. Distilled alcohols like brandy and whiskey are time-consuming to make since it requires 10 L of basic liquor to get 1 L of distilled, but they do provide some nutrition and never spoil no matter how they're stored.

Edited August 16 by LadyWYT
Grammar

[River Oak]

Quote

So is animal husbandry. The trough needs just boards - which need a saw, which needs copper. That's it.

I'm pretty sure you don't even need troughs, you can just throw the food on the ground and they'll eat it and get preggers.

[Rainbow Fresh]

9 hours ago, Kulze said:

Whichever it is, reset your stance for a moment.

Ok, sure. I'll reset my stance for a moment. Let's treat this as if you bring this up for the first time. We can go over it from top to bottom once more but if your only line of retaliation is still just putting the same thing on loop while calling everyone else "unable to get your point, unable to hold an argument and using wrong tactics" I'll consider this argumentation done as it will not be getting anywhere if one party only does the "Mirror" kindergarden deflect. Many sensible counter-arguments have been raised but you public annouce choosing to ignore them all - either because they are "missing the point" when all you want is a very, very, very specific feature for a very, very, very specific usecase, or ignore them under the pretense of "only I know true game design" when they are addressing the fact that such very, very, very specific claims are stupid.

9 hours ago, Kulze said:

When I log in I don't have food available right that moment to continue exactly where I left off, without diversion

That is a nice simplification but I feel like we need to add *some* more context if this should be the standalone claim we are working off here. So let's add the context that you want to solve this by adding more forever food, which is discouragingly hard (as per your later response, "hard" as in "Not worth it" to produce outside of this very precise scenario) to obtain as to not skew vanilla balance. The one and only usecase brought forth to support why this feature is "necessary" is that there exist players out there somewhere, playing on always-on Multiplayer servers where they have to or want to take a break for a notable while of several IRL weeks, then return. This is the point where your claim of "Return as if nothing happened, continue right where you left off without interruption" applies.

Now that the basis has been set: ...we're still at the point where all previously made counter-claims hold true.

First off: The attitude (not yours, the one of the claim). Go ahead. Do anything in life that requires some investment of time, skills to acquire and knowledge to earn. Then drop it for extended periods of time. Then come back. If you want a real-world example, coding. I am a software developer depending on the project wildly switching between languages. Work with language X for extended periods of time only then return to language Y because you finished something and got time to work on side-quest again; and I can assure you are not going to come "Right back to where you left off as if nothing happened". That is an illogical claim in any context where time passed - and on an always-on Multiplayer server, time will pass. If you don't want time to pass without you, don't play Multiplayer. That's the equivalent of being part of a hangout group with friends, then going on a long vacation and demanding your friends not hangout without you, at all, in the entire time. It's not how it works. For this particular, food-based situation however as mentioned plenty of times before, the average player will have several safety nets. Friends who keep the base going in your absence. A bustling server economy with other players that can help out. Server staff that can, given proper circumstances, chime in. And we aren't delving into the chapter of "There already are alternatives that achieve what you claim" yet. If none of these apply, none at all: You must be a lone-wolf player that for whatever reason joins an always-on server just to play his own Singleplayer adventure on there. Still actively ignoring the existing solutions. That is quite frankly that singular person's fault and their problem alone to fix. You don't bring a Yu-Gi-Oh card deck to a Pokemon Tournament and expect everyone to accomodate. Yes, unforeseen circumstances happen. There are, as you correctly said, a dozen ways to find yourself unexpectly absent from the game for a while. But it's in the name: Unexpected. Do you think a normal player would voluntarily go through the extra-extra slog to make emergency backup food in mass expecting the unexpected? I don't think anyone of us plays in a way that prepares for "breaking your leg tomorrow and ending up in hospital for a month". We play to have fun, and incredibly tedious preparation of emergency backup forever food is not fun. So really the only person this would apply to plays the game wrong, still claims to get what they want, and knows in advance they are going to drop the game for a while. I don't disagree that good game design shouldn't just look at the big, popular demands but also fill the gaps inbetweem with minor things not for everyone - but at this point we are talking about catering a whole core change requiring careful balancing and as such extensive testing to find the right numbers for 1 in 10.000 players. That's simply unfeasible as a foundation for your claim.

Chapter two: The alternatives. As everyone has already pointed out a-plenty: Walnuts, Honey and Fat are already non-perishable food sources. They already come with significant investment higher than the estimated return if you deliberately just farm that as your primary food source. While simultaneously being obtainable in a somewhat passive way to slowly stock up your emergency buffer. Animal Husbandry exists. One bigger initial investment of capturing 2 or more breedable animals in a pen, then occasionally feeding them, to create a growing army of on-demand meat dispensers. Yes, a not reliably reusable source as it takes notable time to recover from using your meals on wheels but if you truly intend only play once every month and still claim to have the right to pretend like time didn't pass and your food didn't spoil in-between, then you are not playing the game anymore and should really, really, not play on a server. And as you mentioned further down below, capturing animals is really not that hard. you gave the example of herding an animal from 100 blocks away - that's a matter of 60 seconds. There does not need to be much learning of "abusing the AI", even a first-time player will quickly realize the animal's behavior is "run 180° away from you" even if that means drowning themselves in a lake or killing themselves off a cliff. After your initial set of rations that top you over the immediate lack of ANY sustenance, there are many options available but in your specific claim scenario out entitled lone-wolf wants to not think about food, at all, ever. Just log back in real quick, do something and leave again. In that case your emergency rations are rusty gears and your non-perishable food supply is the nearest aggricultural trader that sells you food. Or, since you are on a server with ideally other human players, the Auction House where *they* sell food. Don't even have to walk to a trader. Alternatives exist, many of which fall exactly into your criteria. And they weren't just added for that 1 in 10.000 dude.

Chapter three: The greater picture. As I already re-itereated at the end of my last post, the problem does not lie with your claim. It lies with a combination of your claim asking for a questional goal under the sole reasoning of a bogus requirement. Forever food (as in truly non-perishable) is a questional goal. Yes, honey, fat and walnuts are precedents for it but even among those atleast walnuts and fat are just non-perishable due to game-ification. Real walnuts and real fat will still go bad eventually, even if only other hard to control mechanics like pests get to them. In reality nothing exists that you can lock in a box, come back to 10 years later, and eat like it's been there for only a day. Additionally to balance the nature of forever food, you add to the goal the inefficient hardships of obtaining such items that makes them only really appealing to that 1 in 10.000 player who knows ahead of time they will be gone for a while and *wants* to put the effort in *now* to prepare so they can continue without said effort in X amount of time from now. This questional goal set is solely being backed by the bogus claim that it is a necessity to accomodate the most entitled player that thinks they can leave for a while and come back without *any* form of interruption for them. It's why your argument fails to convince most people here. An alterntive claim has been mentioned: General expansion of the food system and preservation options. Something *everyone* benefits from in some way or another that *also* happens to cover a big, reasonable chunk of your goal. If you can preserve thinks prepared, sealed in a crock and shoved into a freezer to last 10+ in-game years, that is for all intents and purposes forever food without slapping the lable on it that this food *never ever* goes bad. And at some point thinking you can be gone for that long without any interruption just become so outlandish; at that point the game might have had a major update and the server you aim to return to has been wiped to move on. "Forever" is not necessary. "A really long time" absolutely suffices. A feature claim that affects the majority of players will, especially in early development cycles like Vintage Story is still in, always outweigh the individual tidbits for the darkest corner of oddball players. So while the game is still lacking alot in many other more prominent regions, claiming we need something for that 1 in 10.000 player specifically is not gonna reach alot of support.

 

Now that this shoul have covered most everything else in your reply I am not going to quote every other paragraph individually. I will only react to a few out-of-scope details.

9 hours ago, Kulze said:

Yes, for spawn there is.
If your wolves kill all sheep and the system only chooses racoons and rabbits to spawn in which then stay in the world because the - for example - run into corners outside of predator range then you won't get any more sheep unless you cull the population.

Speaking from experience in my Singleplayer world, I have yet to see the local (I consider 500 blocks radius "local" because it just is so easy to maintain) population shift. Having an entire area overrun by just one type of animal because everything else got eaten and respawned by lesser choices would require you to only think about animals 10+ years in.

Furthermore, that there is a global spawn cap is to be expected. This does not matter when forcefully "spawning in" new animals through breeding. Every Minecraft server player knows the bane of that one guy breeding 1000 cows lagging the server like hell. So no, there is no limit once you obtained atleast 1 male and 1 female animal of your choice. And if it's just for backup food (considering vanilla VS does not have any more real uses for animals beyond the meat and maybe, MAYBE, the luxury of cheese - which, also, is a very well preserving choice of backup food), any breedable animal works.

Edited August 16 by Rainbow Fresh

[MKMoose]

On 8/14/2026 at 1:59 PM, CyberCat05 said:

[...] I think adding an Intestine drop to every Sheep you kill is a slippery slope towards animals dropping every one of their organs.

I feel like just having a single "internal organs" item of sorts would be sufficient and arguably more interesting from a gameplay perspective, as it could have multiple purposes for which different organs are used realistically. No slippery slope as far as I'm concerned.

Personally, I would make it only obtainable when processing an animal on a dedicated table or whatnot, while requiring animals killed in the wild to be field dressed (thereby discarding the organs) to keep the corpse from spoiling if the player can't bring them back in time.

 

On 8/15/2026 at 3:07 AM, 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.

What I find amusing now that fishing is in the game, is that it's entirely possible if you find a good fishing location to convert bushmeat into fillets at a ~1:2 ratio or better, which translates to a ~7.5+ satiety multiplier. I'd been living near-exlusively off of that until the first spring of my recent survival world.

 

3 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

Chapter two: The alternatives.

Even disregarding already-existing options for indefinite food security which easily include honey, fat, alcohol, animal husbandry and traders, it seems to me that there is a second elephant in the room here. Grains in a storage container in a cellar last, if I can trust the wiki for the exact value and assuming a 0.13 rate multiplier, ~550 real-life hours on a 24/7 server on standard settings. Most servers run only while someone is active and often deliberately slow down spoilage rates because it's important even for regular gaps between play sessions, so that real-life spoil time equivalent is easily extended to multiple months if not over a year depending on the specific world configuration and on how active the server is. There is a bunch of other foods which are also effective, of which the most notable I think are soybeans and peanuts, jam in sealed crocks, waxed cheese, as well as cured meat which all last about twice as long as grains if I recall correctly. Would need to double-check to be sure, though the wiki at least seems like it agrees.

Assume spoilage rate configured to 50% and server running 6 h/day (which is arguably quite a lot, still), and you already have 6 real-life months until your grains spoil, and longer for some other foods. 

 

12 hours ago, Kulze said:

If your wolves kill all sheep and the system only chooses racoons and rabbits to spawn in which then stay in the world because the - for example - run into corners outside of predator range then you won't get any more sheep unless you cull the population.

There are caps for specific categories or species of entities, but I'm not personally aware of any global spawn cap, so I'd be interested if you can show where it's implemented or point to some experimental evidence.

Either way, I haven't personally noticed any meaningful population shifts on my island world which is a ~200x150 area with conditions to spawn wolves, bears and several species of prey animals. Even if it's theoretically a possibility to have no animals of a given species spawn due to some caps, it seems exceedingly unlikely in most contexts given that different species spawn in different conditions.

Edited August 16 by MKMoose

[SnapJelly]

8 hours ago, River Oak said:

you can just throw the food on the ground and they'll eat it

wait, YOU CAN?! 

I had no idea!

[CyberCat05]

On 8/15/2026 at 5:34 AM, LadyWYT said:

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?

Because it's good to have that option even if just to fill a niche gap.

Again, the entire alcohol system is pretty much pointless besides Aqua Vitae which is pretty obscure and most people won't be using as it's simpler to just use a few cheaper healing items than one alcohol-soaked bandage. But for the few players who do want to maximize their playstyle, it's nice for that option to exist to fill that gap, even if it takes up an entire mechanic that is pretty much pointless otherwise.