Does flooring type affect cellar spoilage rates?

[allstreets]

I built a cellar today that had the spoilage rates double when I replaced the initial claystone block floor with ebony slabs. They lowered somewhat when I replaced the slabs with granite cobblestone blocks, but are still above what they were with the initial claystone. Is this meant to happen?

Edited September 26, 2021 by allstreets
changed title for clarity

[Butterbot]

Basements are a challenge for me too. I am pretty sure slabs are not ok (slabs seem to be a problem frequently). I did have a natural stone (like the stone that naturally occurred) floor in a basement and when I replaced together floor with cobblestone it was noticably better, preservation-wise. I'm currently struggling with a sub-basement cellar that I can get spoilage rates as low as I'd like, despite the fact that the roof is 2 layers of stone, all the walls are matching whole stone blocks, and there are multiple doors blocking any natural light source. The game can be confusing.

[Silent Shadow]

Stone and earth are supposed to give better results than wood, but the main thing to account for is temperature. Stone and earth are better insulators than wood and so give a better bonus. The game seems to track temperature beyond just ambient climate temperature, but I am not sure if it is on a block by block basis or not.

Keep in mind that cellars are only a benefit if the ambient temperature outside is 8 degrees or more. 

[Streetwind]

@Silent Shadow No, wood does not give a bonus - it doesn't work for the cellar effect at all. It must be soil or stone, nothing else.

See here where I wrote a bit about my experience with building them.

And while temperature does play a role in food spoiling (it uses the location's average yearly temperature, from the climate data), it certainly isn't the primary deciding factor. A well-built cellar in the blazing desert heat keeps food better than a storage vessel standing around inside your kitchen in the arctic.

[Silent Shadow]

That is not what I found. Wood does indeed provide a bonus. Below is a comparison of an outside pot, and two 3x3x3 blocks with a pot inside, one wood and one dirt, at 15 C :

• Outside pot - (V)egetable: 0.41, (G)rain: 0.28x, (O)ther: 0.55x
• Dirt enclosed pot - V: 0.19x, G: 0.13x, O: 0.26x
• Wood enclosed pot - V: 0.2x, G 0.13x, O: 0.26x

The shelf life of grain and meat placed in the pots mostly reflects the above numbers in its lifespan (keep in mind your "days per month setting" will alter the "years" a food lasts for):

• Outside pot: Grain - 3 years, Meat - 2.7d
• Dirt enclosed pot: Grain - 6.5 years, Meat - 5.8d
• Wood enclosed pot: Grain - 6.4 years, Meat - 5.7d

Once at ~8 C, the difference was negligible between dirt and wood enclosed pots.

• Dirt: Grain - 6.5 years, Meat: 5.8 days
• Wood: Grain - 6.4 years, Meat: 5.7 days

No real change in difference between the two pots' reduction stats after some time/seasons. 

• Dirt: Grain - 4.7 years, Meat: 1.1 days
• Wood: Grain - 4.7 years, Meat: 1.2 days

Once we look at higher temperatures (37 C in this case), the advantage of dirt/stone cellars becomes apparent:

• Outside: Grain - 74.8 days, Meat - 10.8 hours, V: 1.8x, G: 1.2x, O: 2.4x
• Dirt: Grain - 4.9 years, Meat: 5.2 days; V: 0.19x, G: 0.13x, O: 0.26x
• Wood: Grain - 1.6 years, Meat: 1.8 days; V: 1.47x, G: 0.38x, O :0.76x

Looking at the data, it is pretty clear that blocks other than stone, dirt, and ceramics will give a bonus to food shelf lives. Stone/dirt/ceramics give almost an equal bonus at 15 C (a very common temperate temperature), but foods sheltered within "cellars" will not suffer additional spoilage due to higher ambient temperatures.

Basically, stone/dirt/ceramic walls are only better than wood in hot climates, and wood does give a bonus to food preservation. That said, dirt is pretty much everywhere so you may as well build a cellar with it.

On 9/26/2021 at 2:09 AM, allstreets said:

I built a cellar today that had the spoilage rates double when I replaced the initial claystone block floor with ebony slabs.

You probably broke the game's recognition of the room, as having the pot in a room (cellar or not) about halves the spoilage rate. As for the slightly lower spoilage rate you got after putting in cobblestone blocks, the amount of sunlight reaching the cellar may have changed (either by you rearranging the entrance or a change in the sun's path slightly altering the path of sunlight to the cellar.) Try removing all doors and trapdoors and filling them in with solid stone/dirt/ceramic blocks.

Edited September 30, 2021 by Silent Shadow
Removing stupid emoji's

[Nii P.]

> "...blocks other than stone, dirt, and ceramics will give a bonus to food shelf lives."

> "...wood does give a bonus to food preservation"

 

Quite confusing. Isn't the "shelf live" a result of it's "preservation"?

[Silent Shadow]

Sort of. In this case we aren't really preserving the food itself (pickling, salting, cooking, drying, etc.), we are just storing it somewhere that prolongs the time until it spoils (shelf life). Taking the food out of the room will subject it to a faster spoiling rate. I was not taking care to differentiate the two above though.