Kulze

As a overview for different fishing mechanics. In general all of them demand a bit or more player attention, patience and/or skill in some form or another. One of the most known ones likely is 'Stardew Valley' and 'Palworld', that style does the following: - You throw out the line - You wait a moment for a fish to 'bite'. - A small cylinder appears with a fish depiction and a bar inside, your task is to keep the fish symbol over the bar - With a click you raise the bar, without it falls down gradually. The fish moves more or less erratically depending on difficulty. Minecraft: - You throw the line - You wait for 'bubbles' to appear after a few seconds (which can feel like ages) - Those bubbles come closer, and when they reach your bobber the bobber gets pulled underwater. At this moment you click to successfully catch whatever you reel in. Project Zomboid: - You search for 'bubbles' (active zones) and throw out your line there - You now get a half-rounded bar depicting 'line tension'. Left is loose, right is under force. - When a fish bites - depicted by movement of the bobber - a minigame starts where you have to reel the fish in without getting into 'yellow' or 'red' line tension, or it is damage or even snaps, loosing the fish and the line. Rust/Abiotic Factor/Twilight Princess: - Throw out the line - When you get a bite the bobber moves in a direction. - You have to counter the direction in which the bobber moves by inputing the direction. - When the fish calms down you can reel it it, if you reel during tension too long your line snaps instead. My personal take is that a good starting point would be the simplistic Minecraft direction here, though the strain-mechanic of Project Zomboid is a good expansion for that ultimately, leading to a small minigame which costs a bit of time but is not too significant while also giving the process a more active component overall. The bubbles would provide a more lenient timeframe to take action compared to now, or something similar happening, like the bobber taking some mild dips first before ultimately be submerged fully from a bite. And the minigame would then counter te reduction in difficulty from that through a more active element which is based on a player-skill basis.

Fair, a minigame is definitely good. I like the Project Zomboid one the best plainly spoken. Simple and needs you to use materials repeatedly if you're not good at it, but is lenient. Also... which type of fighting? Should it be boxing? Wrestling? Western style shoot-off? I'm open for ideas!

Well, mod-wise we already have drying wood and peat, and trying them out... they're not really intrusive, so I would say it would be a fine addition, as long as the recipes allow to take into consideration that you can use the dried versions for the same crafts as the non-dried ones, otherwise it can become quite a bit of tedium. Or if the drying takes respectively long, which I'm leaning towards. As for timeframes... since this is solely a improvement of pre-existing materials which already get us through the time well... it can take long, there's no issue with it. Some very very long-term mechanics are actually something which VS would do well with. So, I would argue that it all can take substantially longer. Initial drying which can happen outside taking 6 months to make higher quality firewood, which simply burns longer. Outside you're forced to 'top cover' it with something, not a solid block but it would be nice to use for example branches from the berry bushes we destroy for that, so no new items have to be introduced... but leaving the potential to introduce boughs from trees for it along the way if so wanted. Another 1 year when stored as firewood then to make it into hot- and decently long-burning firewood. That has to be done under actual solid-block coverage, but outside a 'closed room' to allow ventilation to dry it out naturally. And I'm against a stop of drying time in cold climate, if we take it as a substantially long time then that shouldn't need to be taken into account. But ultimately such a mechanic can go many routes ultimately in how it's implemented. That one shouldn't cause too many issues plainly spoken but provide a good chunk of immersion and reasons to build more realistic. So I would say it's a 'pro' overall. And as a bonus I wanna say I like to season my wood oriental style. Some Garam Masala is definitely more enjoyable then the salt and pepper approach!

Well, given that the rust world is 'leaking' into the player-world it would make sense for it to be available to a degree. Or not if that's what caused the rot in the first place, we got no clue for that as players, that's only in the devs minds available. So could be a complete bust... or a viable option. But it was primarily for the acquisition of temporal gears for end-game as a thought anyway. And yes, the Rift Ward is underperforming, actually... all Jonas devices are. They're showcased as 'revolutionary' and everyone would want one... but then they're just... sad plainly spoken. The 2,5% chance to let a rift through ruins the functionality, and the lack of ability to acquire new gears since you remove the only source of potential gears is the other. Plainly spoken it should be a perfect solution in the current situation and there needs to be a source available... or either the timeframe or radius needs to be expanded, and quite substantially. I would say 90 days in the current situation which makes it feasable to leave and acquire a new gear along the way as using it is for homesteading without being bothered. Or the size being 150 or 200 blocks radius rather then 50. Or as you mentioned... temporal storm protection, which would make acquisition and usage of them actually reasonable... and to even have temporal storms activated as most just turn it off since it becomes nothing else then a tedium over time sadly. Nice base idea... not properly fleshed out yet. The other being the night vision goggles, which come at a significant downside of having no helmet hence, which is a danger, for the upside of being able to carry a shield and have vision. Sure, it is substantially better to see far at night outside as well... but by the time you got that you don't care about bears anymore, which are the most dangerous thing you could walk into at that time. They miiight be decent in caves with the shield, which is highly dependant on personal skill to use it properly, because if you get hit you'll loose a significant amount of health comparably. Their use-rate of temporal gears actually is fine, but they should be either able to be worn with a helmet... or be a repairable defensive equipment at at least bronze level to make up for the downside. Hence being an actual upgrade. Yes, which would be the mechanical stage in this example, which is a powered sluice. Could be that the sieve removes coarse material and you can only use the reduced one in sluices... or foregoing the whole sieve aspect entirely and it just has a different loot table entirely. All the proposals are basically that: - Keep mechanics longer-term viable - Provide sources for materials which are hard to acquire but wouldn't cause major gameplay issues. - Provide a source for new formerly not acquireable materials for other mechanics building upon it. The question is only for the mix&match there anyway. Some nice directions overall here.

For the more complex systems aspect... you bring up some good points there @MKMoose . Especially in the terms that it'll easily cause one to skip parts of the progression by sidestepping it with the panning. Though I would argue manually doing that should always be the case, even with a mechanical method, having to still interact actively which counteracts it. Which brings us to the tedious portion then, which is a risk, you're right. So, let me adjust an idea I think could work out by working with the reductionist method. The materials which are the most tedious to acquire currently in the game are gold and silver, which panning inherently seems like an option to counteract, but it is also a sought-after material, so I'll work related to the premise of reducing 'large' results in favor of providing a more precise outcome. My idea there would be the following: For it I think the sieve can still play a significant role. In panning we commonly get a classification of material, The 'material' we use is made up of 3 parts. 'Coarse material', 'Classified Material or Paydirt' and 'concentrates'. I think a process of this kind could work hence: - We use a sieve to make a 'standing sieve' - With the 'standing sieve' we extract the 'coarse material' to create 'paydirt', the 'coarse material' vanishes for us, immersion-wise it means we forego all stones, clay, gears and so on in favor of a higher yield for others + introduction of new materials potentially. - The 'paydirt' is collected as a form of 'sludge' in a bucket underneath the sieve, at a much lower quantity. Now we can work with that further along the line. Either directly panning for increased results of silver/gold/copper and so on, maybe small gems as well, would be a prime way to introduce access to gems, based on initial material. And we can also introduce mechanical screening/sieving processes there. We use this 'Paydirt' in a machine that can be expanded with progression to extract materials from it, primarily foregoing the former loot tables in favor of more precise ones. This can be tied to story progression as well. The one thing I'm specifically thinking about is to gather 'prima materia' from it, which then allows us to infuse rusty gears making them into temporal ones, which is the biggest bottleneck for end-game machinery after all, and it could be the core source for this. Also introducing maybe a bit more focus on the alchemical lore background of the game. Basically re-introducing what Falx did in smaller degrees, using the leftover remnants in the world to get into the more fantastical 'science' of the world. This way we can reduce the loot pool and it can be designed to avoid the premature access of materials without it becoming tedious. Using large amounts of gathered materials to create small specialized outcomes and those also unlocking further technological progressions or allowing upkeep of things you cannot properly upkeep currently, like the Rift Ward.

It's not the action that's 'fun', it's the dopamine release attached to a mechanic which provides a random outcome. This is the same psychological function as gambling of any kind provides, just in a non-detrimental way as there are no stakes applied to it which cause negative outcomes to the user. And this simply doesn't uphold, and I'll explain in more detail. But I understand the notion. There is always a effort/reward aspect. Otherwise we wouldn't get mechanics like livestock management since that would remove the 'going out to gather' portion. Any such mechanic which allows you to not explore but instead settle is directly countering the need for exploration, but it's also the goal to achieve, which demands proper balancing 'simply' (it's the hardest part). Vintage story ultimately starts out as a harsh wilderness survival game and allows the player to progress into a comfortable homesteading environment over time. The need to go out and seek a forest vanishes as you start making your own tree farms. The need to seek food vanishes as you build up farms, livestock and orchards. The need to find light sources (well... torch holders and bony soil for candles) in easily accessible ruins vanishes as you start to do beekeeping and metalworking. The game actively makes it so you reduce the need for exploration further and further after the acquisition of the respective materials and finding the biomes which provide you those materials. You won't run out of limestone after finding it, or bauxite, or olivine... and even iron after 2-3 nodes since they're commonly quite huge. Exploration is ultimately for the storyline, for the initial acquisition of resources until you have enough for a long time as well as for the acquisition of more unique decorative elements and items generally from ruins. To keep exploration existing long-term there needs to come something which further demands it along the way. As for panning directly... the core reason why people do it are for 3 different materials, and potentially 5 if expanded upon. - The common one... copper. - Avoiding the need to mine hundreds or even thousands of quartz blocks for silver and gold (fulfilling the initial 3) - Potentially expanding into the acquisition of gears and temporal gears, which are rare drops after all. This allows to play into the upkeep of stationary Jonas tools like the Rift Ward... which is simply a tool basically nobody ever uses as upkeep is unsustainable. Copper becomes a non-topic, you acquire it in absolutely massive amounts, so panning becomes ignorable for that. It never becomes ignorable for gold and silver, even at the current pace it partially keeps up with the pace of acquisition otherwise, but it's - as has been mentioned - extremely boring ultimately as you only stand there and hope for those things to drop. Gears and temporal gears are directly reliant on combat. And since a Rift Ward denies combat you cannot provide the upkeep without countering directly what the task of the Rift Ward is. And here specifically is the biggest potential for expanding on the panning process existing, besides the action itself being made more enjoyable and hence used more prevalently. If the sieve can be used to speed up the panning process for example we can already counteract the need for gold/silver acquisition, which is the most known realistic implementation of why panning would be used, to acquire hardly available rare materials after all. And if we go further ahead with it then a progression into it would allow the homesteading aspect to flourish further, allowing people to do a repeated mechanic - the panning - to acquire gears and temporal gears in a amount which keeps up with the usage of those from a Rift Ward for example, achieving that the danger of the rust world is counteracted to a degree, as the Rift Ward promises after all and fails at entirely in the current implementation. Further along the expansion of the loot table can lead us to the acquisition of more rare materials. This allows the expansion in more pronounced and complex systems building onto current end-game demands on one hand... or simply the acquisition of very rare materials like cinnabar, lapis lazuli or gemstones that actually further on allows the introduction of mechanics related to this (gemcutting is a well asked-for topic here). As for another prime reasoning there is the option to expand into the topic of 'early currency' usage, hence electrum as coinage, which could be a very solid and decent choice for 'town specific' trades as we've already been introduced to society still existing from the storyline. Either for special high-value trades as an option without reliance on gears... or simply a completely different loot-pool of further introductions as the game progresses in content. So there is a lot of potential available, the question is only which to take, and if none... why panning itself should stay a chore system to counteract bad spawns instead of becoming a enjoyable thing which actually allows rewards for effort and time invested (you need to gather the materials and stand there doing it after all)

Yes, that's a good copper-level stage solution, agreed. Yes exactly, that's the general notion. This is why it's not utilized despite providing potential resources one can use. Overall after the extra posts I think a 3-step panning system would be a relatively nice one overall. - First we start of with normal panning, the usual way it's currently done. - The second stage would be copper-age, with the sieve. It being a option to expand on the usage of the sieve generally because in a SP world it's useless, so why not give it a use-case? My idea here is to further craft it into a 'sieve stand'. Take a sieve, add 4 planks (legs) and hence make it a 1x2 block. Then have flowing water coming from above in the following setup (top to bottom): Water --> Sand/Gravel --> Sieve --> Pan. This then does nothing besides increasing the work-speed of the pan by 2x or 3x. Still manual, no change in the loot-table. - The third stage is the suggestion I have with a mechanical panning setup out of bronze. Expanding the loot table actively, also manual but based on mechanical power. It's fast, it allows more material to be processed at the same time and gives increased rewards. This way it would provide a progression-based mechanic into it, speed it up (which is the current core issue but necessary early-game) and allows it to have a fitting place without creating overabundance. Also this would be a prime reason to actually settle close to a gravel-desert of any kind. Those biomes offer no resources, don't look enticing and are generally avoided by players if they can do so. In this situation it would allow a use-case and settlement there for the resource opportunity.

To be fair... this is a bit deeper reaching then simply the mod portal given said person is a hire now. Maybe might be good to revise that decision plainly spoken.

Panning is significantly underused, that I have to agree with. The classic panning should stay as it is, a early-game method to get copper going and some more rare goodies along the way. But I'm also for a mechanical improvement for late-game to not let this quite fun - but unrewarding ultimately - mechanic be left behind. Thus a method to use mechanical power and non-rapid streams of water to pan for materials with a expanded loot-table would be quite enjoyable. Not only does it increase the usecases for gravel and sand (primarily gravel) which you plainly spoken will nigh never use in the sheer amount you get it but also act as a sideways expansion in general which mandates a progression. Still needing manual oversight, this is important to not make it a automated resource production method, but having to put in and take out materials at the spot while dealing for example with material not moving properly or having to push it back up when something goes wrong... hence ultimately leading to a similarly immersive mechanic as forging, clayshaping, knapping and so on are. Currently the common way it goes for panning is that it's entirely ignored after the initial usage outside of early-game candles from bone-soil. But beyond that? It's made redundant entirely as it provides nothing in a reasonable manner which has functionality and isn't dozens of times less efficient then any other method. Mechanical panning hence can especially lead to the acquisition of gold for brighter lanterns, also it would be a prime positioning to put it in place after the acquisition of bronze. This setup specifically could be made out of bronze as a water resistant alloy, which then leads to Tier 2.5, hence black bronze more naturally, which also is the time when brewing becomes naturally a reasonable investment, allowing to not only rummage through hundreds of quartz blocks but also to acquire them in this separate way, optimally with a similar time-investment which is a reduced amount for the term of processing (which would be the mining) but instead a larger investment in terms of bronze to achieve the intial setup. Furthermore while we currently have gotten a use-case for electrum in the future content going along I could very well imagine that more advanced trading functionality with society could be a thing, hence electrum being a currency as would be historically accurate for a earlier currency-based society. Since society in lore degraded because of the constant danger still existing it would make for a very good addition in that regard which would keep mechanical panning a ongoing process that has a reward which isn't easily ending.

Yeah, would be nice, but unlikely to see. And pixel-drawn things already exist, you can make some really good stuff with baseline chiseling, sadly those things get a bit large usually.

First we gotta have yeast, the bread we got in VS is basically hardtack. Same as the pie crust being a hard crust, not the modern softer ones. But yeah, I'm always for expanding food options. Would also like roasts instead of primarily stews, a baking pan with meat, fat and veggies inside turning into a nice roast would be great. Or sausages, those would be great to make too. Stir fries with a skillet, all fun things which would be fantastic to have.

Well, the lore is primarily set into the middle ages, albeit 'middle ages +' to be specific. Falx did invent a boatload of things through his gazing into the eldritch realm of the rust dimension. We know of steam power from the Archive already, so coal-powered mechanical power is definitely something which would fit. Same as an expansion of overall usage of mechanical power. Automation of bellows for one, more detailed options to handle metal. He plainly spoken provided the power for the industrialization to happen and lore-wise we see this to be the case. So the setting is late middle-ages mixed with industrialization basically, and outside of 'eldritch' systems it shouldn't progress beyond that significantly, and if so then only through means acquired later on in the storyline which isn't implemented yet. Before we think about steel engines and the likes... a simple cart would be nice to have first of all But the expansion into more mechanical contraptions is absolutely something I would enjoy to see, with automated versions like the rift ward which doesn't use up gears very fast but would allow longer-lasting measures. Overall 'Jonas machinery' would be a very loved concept to introduce, providing a natural improvement compared to the current water wheels and windmills in terms of automation, allowing a electricity-like (but not being electricity itself) concept which opens up for a large amount of potential use-cases. But we're rather far away from that still.

That's literally what the job of an API is, to provide a general access point from which you then derive everything So you get the input specifically for the player and what happens beyond that is not the player's thing anyway, it's a QoL aspect. But takes a bit to coding properly to make it happen. It's not unfeasable though or especially 'special'. Just a baseline API, literally, a 'Application Programming Inteface'.

Yeah, this is the major point of contention after all. It entirely depends on how it's implemented here. For example, if the process of drying/smoking/whatever is used causes already a tradeoff to 'pay in nutrition to gain preservation time' and this preserved time is then not kept to have the food further 'decay' it's more then viable. For example: If we use berries then we have a 80 satiety food material. Which we then dry and loose 50%, hence it turns down to 40 satiety. This immediate hit is already a hefty one. And if it then goes beyond the 'best before' it drops further down, towards 20 satiety for example with 50% degradation... or in a 75% degradation towards 10 satiety. And plainly spoken? A full 1500 satiety bar filled with 75 or 150 pieces of food? That's a massive undertaking for storage and actual tedium to eat it because you'll stand there and watch the eating animation for a very long while... or move about without running and instead watching the eating animation. Sure it 'can' be done. And sure, it also will be done... but plainly spoken? If someone managed to stock up enough stores to last them for a winter this way then food definitely wasn't any form of problem since a long while anymore. The system by that point has lost nearly all functionality anyway, but even if we want to upkeep the functionality then we could still introduce a caveat into it. Such products would be fairly awful to eat anyway. Imagine trying to sustain yourself on dried leaves, dried fruit, dried berries... nothing fresh, nothing has the right texture anymore. Everything universally tastes as 'powder'. And any soup, stew or the like is basically either something similar to gruel or you get a tea. So one solution for that is that it incurs a further satiety malus if eaten as a form of 'primary' food. Everything besides the non-perishables provides always full satiety, but non-perishables besides all of their downsides can only make up let's say... 50% of the food taken in at any time (tracked in the background for the last 15000 satiety for example or whatever) has to be of the 'perishable' variety, and everythign beyond incurs a further reduction. So those 20 or 10 satiety can turn even worse... down another 80% for example, which makes it absolutely nonsensical to sustain yourself off of it... but not theoretically impossible. In practicality though? Absolutely so. We're now talking about 2-4 satiety in our example, and if someone manages to get through a winter with that... then they earned it, plain and simple

It's more about the ability to choose the type of preparation. Foregoing immediate calories available but not lasting until used up if prepared too much in favor of less calories but later on. This is what usually in such a system non-perishables become, which we see with distilled alcohol being the case after all, albeit the ratio there is plainly spoken a bit too high while the fruits themselves last too long. But that's another topic again. Also it's not increasing the grind, nothing from the existing baseline changes. It solely adds another route on top of the existing ones. This is not problematic with upholding the status quo. As for late game and the management still being important? Nah... not really. You need to significantly ignore anything going on for extremely extended timeframes which are just unrealistic to run into any problems. Which means ignoring livestock entirely, not farming, not doing any bee-related stuff, no orchards either. That... just doesn't happen plainly spoken. It goes substantially against the starting premise where the game pushes onto you to be prepared heavily or suffer the consequences. Running out of veggies or fruit? Possibly. Running out of grain? That's basically a non-existent situation. To then also not have rendered fat, honey or alcohol available at all is extremely unlikely already. Sure, can happen... but that's just the same as entirely ignoring the hunger bar in itself and then starving as you just don't eat the available food. And I agree, you cannot spend an hour of collecting a mountain of steaks and shove em in a box. But you can spend an hour being attacked by angry bees gathering combs, or an hour of harvesting fruit and making it into massive amounts of wine, or an hour of harvesting grain and having food stocks for a longer timeframe then that grain even lasts inside food stores. But I will also agree that games like Minecraft don't have that thought process at all, which foregoes a lot of immersion simply for existing. This still allows the option for doing unrewarding long-term stuff (which in SP wouldn't be done outside of travel rations at best functionally or otherwise RP reason) which plainly spokens 'punishes you' to treat your food this way... or to prepare the usual way. And from some ideas of mods like the jerky of 'Primitive Survival' and how people are adverse to them because of the miniscule nutrition they give it's also clear that high caloric food feels more convenient then large stacks of low caloric food which you have to eat one by one with the eating animation. Another point I'll have to actively speak against is the premise that such a option would forego the active food management. Since storage times currently are very long already (mroe then a year of multiple years) in such a case it is about not preparing enough... which a non-perishable production line which punishes the lack of spoilage by reduction of caloric density would only make worse after all... so you're more prone to actually mismanage it rather then managing it as at least needed. The reality is that people usually do at least a single harvest a year and have massive stockpiles with miniscule effort needed. Also as one more thing to take into consideration, such food would be excempt from the hunger pause. Not only has it relatively low calories compared to other foods... but the hunger pause is something which people who know how to use it is actually a massive thing. Eating a red meat stew at half or a bit less hunger bar does cause multiple minutes of no way to loose calories at all (30 second per 100 calories if the hunger bar hits the maximum). This is often done for woodcutting, as woodcutting incurs a 25 satiety per block cost which hence... is simply '0' instead. Which wouldn't be possible and which does significantly reduce how long your rations last. This all pushes any form of suggested non-perishable idea already very firmly into the position of 'emergency ration' as it's just not worth it to use otherwise. And emergency rations are used when you either screw up... there is mechanically a limitation which simply can't be countered (MP) or for travel as a backup to know 'I need to get back now' rather then thinking about pushing on.

I like that idea quite a lot, which would apply to anything which makes no sense to simply 'spoil'. Though to be fair... things do spoil, besides a few specific ones. Probably something which is an idea for the future to expand the overall system with, which I think could be somewhat in the following direction: - 'Non optimal' stored food has a spoilage timer, which is the usual, and what primarily happens. Here we could expand onto things like rendered fat (getting rancid over time) or honey (not pure enough and it also molds). - 'Optimal' stored food then looses that spoilage timer, but gets a timed decay which is reducing the provided satiety over time. This is dependant on the type of item how it's stored and how hard/easy it is to make happen. Honey for example would be very easy, into a cleaned pot and closed so it doesn't get anything on top which can cause mold to form ultimately. And with others like meat or cheese it simply never happens to work completely, but the extension for time is huge. This allows a more granular progression for food storage, but it's not anything important to happen, would be interesting though. The question is if that would become too complex to manage or still 'fine' overall. Yep, that's plainly spoken it. Spoiling time is important, and it makes the starting stage very interesting. But as we progress it passes as a functional system. This is actually a common thing to happen. Usually done with freezers to simulate a upkeep system of some sort in return for non-perishable food. And as soon as that is achieved it becomes either a one-time managed thing which just runs... or a tedious upkeep adding nothing to the gameplay. So in VS where the spoiling time can be significantly increased instead it's a good middle-route for the both extremes of no-spoilage at all or spoilage but with a way to circumvent it completely leading into abundance at that moment. The downside is what you say, you swiftly get to a position where food storage is just so good that you have no need to actually put much effort into things, but if you make it less then the starting stage becomes a slog instead easily, which is a vastly worse and dangerous state to have. Addition since the post came at the exact same time as I posted: @LadyWYT Well, first off... the fishing was re-introduced by splitting the premise, different premise, different inclusions/exclusions possible. So obviously that's a thing? But besides that: All which is described just changes the timeline in terms of reaching abundance. If a player struggles the first 20 hours for food, starts to build up stocks in the next 10-20 hours and afterwards lives completely in abundance forever.... if the 'food struggle' stage is increased intentionally in favor of convenience to 30-40 hours before we get the ability to build up stocks.... what's the problem here? It just needs to suffice to be 'fine' through winter-time. And for late-game it really doesn't matter for anything, could be... non-perishable galore... doesn't matter since abundance is reached since ages. Could be new effects specifically for late-game enabled recipes giving buffs... just a bonus, hence incentive, doesn't matter either. If you never got to worry about starving then the whole perishing of food itself turns from functional mechanic automatically into tedium anyway, it looses the function. The function of a perish system is to either enforce proper storage methods - which we then got - or to keep available food scarce enough to necessitate regular action to acquire new one... hence a gameplay cycle. And with the current methods? Making a vast field every 4 years is not a 'cycle', it's just a 'Ah... yeah... need to spend 30 minutes seeding and harvesting this year again' and be done with it. The perishing entirely fails at such large timeframes anyway to have any function applied to it. So while I get what you mean with it... late-game it simply doesn't apply anymore... so 'eh' plainly spoken, there is no need to uphold a premise which doesn't exist, if abundance is existing and you basically only need ~1% of your play-time - if even - to manage this aspect then it is similar to just being non-existent. It fails to uphold the function. At this time variety and immersion itself becomes more important then the functionality, so solving fringe issues is a better result then to try and uphold something which already is countered entirely by that time. Early-game though as long as it upholds that the struggle is simply expanded in timeframe but instead adds a alternative use-case... I don't see an issue with anything leading into the late-game then.

Well, the wiki states it at least and I've also experienced weight-loss in livestock if not feeding it for a while. So likely true unless the numbers are messed up, or there's bugs with the system I imagine. Could be. https://wiki.vintagestory.at/Animal_husbandry#Creature_Weight under 'Creature Weight' it's described. Oh, good to know! Kinda odd for pigs though since it's the other way around usually. But interesting that this is included, very nice overall. Yeah, all your arguments are absolutely fine, though specifically for the 'permanency' based server type this is usually not the case, outside of a few rare people. Sure, the amount of times where time stands still because nobody is on is also larger, I agree with you there, 100%, but also the timeframe until any individual comes online again is vastly larger. Weeks... months... and as long as a single person is online time still does pass, which leads to that. Also absolutely agreed that after a specific timeframe this does drop significantly in chance to even happen as it's more likely for someone to stay away permanently or come back at any sort of semi-regular basis... but making an actual cutoff point there? That's really hard as the timeframes are just... very long. Yes, and this is more then fine. This is actually quite good, I agree with you there as well! But the interesting part about this system is that it does allow something which in those others isn't possible either, and is 'partially' implemented, if intentional or not, it exists at least. And that's that it doesn't negate the option for non-perishables, but it demands them to have a significant downside in some form. -Livestock which isn't managed looses return when slaughtering. -Bees do attack you when you harvest their goods. -Vintage Beef is more of a joke item and only available in minimal quantities from ruins. These are all good options, but they're not the only available ones. Other options include: - A reduction in nutrition by making it last longer or indefinitely, which is a situational argument and a balancing act. - A significant aspect of oversight like with livestock but with direct oversight, similar to steelmaking which mandates to not let the fire go out. Non-automatable methods like quickly burning down wood chips/cuttings is what I suggested, but that's only one of many. Desalination from direct heat (instead of passive through evaporization) could cause the pottery to break for example if left 'dry' for too long with heat. Such stuff... which is a respective downside of engagement which could otherwise be used. But those are all feasable methods and solely demand a respective amount of downsides of some form. There is definitely design-space available for it. Yeah, I think this is the major point of contention, isn't it? Conflating together the 'easy' one which is more meant for late-game setups... and the 'at least something available' for early-game setups. If we split that up then it would rather be something in this regard: - For early-game it would be simpler methods which are 'easy' to make. The primary task of that is a 'I don't immediately starve but get a small amount of leeway'. Fishing is good for that already, though being proactive would also be a choice. Hence those come at the cost of nutrition. Your 200 calories become 50 for example, and that's with the scarcity in the beginning a distinct choice to be made, one which falls apart as soon as easily available resources become abundant... like livestock is set up, honey production or the first harvest happens. Then this switches around and they can become serious issues if not implemented properly. So my suggestion is at 'non-abundant' resources. Bushmeat, which cannot come from livestock, hence needing active action making it even worse nutritionally then it is. Mushrooms also are a prime candidate for this as they are more prevalent but limited by not only finding them but also the time for them to regrow naturally and travel distance as you remove them. - For late-game we already have utter abundance. So I don't see any issue there anyway. This is where distilled alcohol already has the place after all... but I don't see problems with 'high technology' setups which need a lot of work to get going to produce extremely long-lasting or even non-perishable products from it at that point. Food has become post-scarcity anyway. Storage space and availability are huge and the primary thing done at that point is simply done for RP reasons or convenience, food looses the 'scarcity' function entirely after the first harvests and especially so if combined with livestock when it is available and proliferated. Bees too... alcohol available from orchards as well. The time has gone where food would ever be an issue, the biggest issue now is finding actual ways to have a reason to even do a bit 'more' then already available. So at that stage? I really don't see an issue about any implementation only becoming available when a reasonable player has been since a while in that stage already. After all... what hurdle is to overcome at that point? So it shifts from functionality to variety for the sake of variety... and any form of differing functionality simply does expand the available types of gameplay which are enabled... unless the food systems are overhauled for those stages to enforce some form of scarcity in different forms... or needs to have actual variety existing beyond the 'one time setup' aspect for cheese, fruits, grain, protein and veggies. Since I - by my fault - talked with them as one topic this has become heated. But if we split the topics I think it makes more sense to see the reasonings individually behind them... and which portions are applicable to each. So early game would be a form of 'reductionist' outcome while end-game is 'whatever' anyway, and as @SnapJelly said even up to a stage where it is not majorly different from a form of creative mode. Because that was any survival experience unless enforced to stay inside a stringent limitation universally becomes... it turns from active survival into homesteading.

Eh, the major issue is likely that I'm conflating things together as well here, and that's entirely on me. Early-game methods and late-game methods primarily. But as for access and realistic methods... we could go with dehydration of mushrooms, optimally powdered and dried out for early-game long-term storage which incurs a loss of nutrition simply. Also as mentioned options with bushmeat as that's a sadly ignored type of food after the initial progression passes, and only to counteract the loss - if even - from fighting the animals which provide bushmeat in the first place for many people. But I personally think while you're right with it being not solvable to the degree I would enjoy it to be solvable (gotta stay realistic here) at least improvements are possible for the situation overall, which would be a good think at large. Yes, and that's a very very fair argument. The game indeed started out as the 'uncompromising survival experience' you mention, but as you progress you kinda progress beyond this point. It takes a long while... but we do get there. While many players do it related to overcoming the AI limitations rather early on to kill bears in larger amounts, as well as wolves... as you progress you can even just stand on the spot with steel armor and fight a bear in frontal combat without moving and win. This is something which goes a bit against the premise of the wilderness survival limitations, so yes, I agree with you that it turns into a 'immersive homesteading sandbox' over time. The question here is now which is the actual focus. Not the worded one... but the one which is done design-wise. Because I'm not entirely sure. The scope definitely has gotten beyond the pure survival experience and more towards sandbox. Now the question is... trying to uphold the survival experience at any stage? Which would need a bit more ongoing management of livestock, or handling of larger areas of farming to increase the workload so you can't outpace scarcity fully... or rather lean into the homesteading aspect? I personally am on the fence there, but I'm leaning towards the homesteading aspect after overcoming the challenges. And with the changes for berries in year 1 a reliable easy food-source was a short while ago removed to reinforce the early-game survival aspect substantially... so I think the part about scarcity management itself with the ability to change some things to a more permanent storage methods with a net-loss of nutrition as well as time-investment would likely not implement major problems but rather expand the scope without brushing against any common limits for causing issues related to design direction. But that's only my stance there, and plainly spoken I haven't thought overly in-depth about that topic yet, VS is a extremely solid game in terms of overall design, so I'm not worried at all for it to uphold into the future. The only existing thing here is you wrangling words around randomly to fit into your personal narrative, that's plainly spoken all it is. The game is built specifically around a SP experience, the issues related to real-world offline time in MP are not a inherent aspect which is even wanted to exist. Not a single game wants them to exist but there's sadly not many viable solutions to that yet found. The major ones are non-perishable things to overcome it, which often leads to abundance if badly implemented and counteracting the systems which are built on things bein perishable. Another is default adjustment of how time passes, for example 'Wurm Online' does that, which has a 1 to 4 real-world passage of time, which makes the game experience extremely slow-paced though and runs into issues with people having to be online at specific times or failing to do things they want to do. Everything has a upside and a downside, the question is only how to expand as far as possible on upsides and how to reduce the downsides to as little as possible. Oh yeah, that's very fair! Didn't even think about it since I'm primarily using pigs and rarely sheep. Thanks for that info! And yeah, that info has definitely gone under along the way.

Yes, because at default setting 14 years are 1209,6 hours or 50,4 days. And it actually doesn't matter 'how much' since it goes against the concept of 'permanency' anyway, which is a major portion of the 'forever server' concept itself and necessary to understand. Without that there is plainly spoken no discussion possible in the first place as that's the most fundamental aspect existing. Servers which when you take a break for a year and come back... your don't have to start from 'scratch' as methods are available to ensure you don't need to do so without utterly breaking the stability by forcing hundreds of animals in small pens at all times dumping the FPS down. The game does a fantastic job in upholding the majority. The claim system, no damage done to your structures from exterior influences, no age-based degradation which is tied to real-time. The perishing time is the outlier, and don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic system, but as anything you do when you change the concept of a system which in this case is in most games 'permanency' of some form... like in MC, like in 'Necesse' or even farming games like Stardew Valley where things don't rot... you automatically introduce issues inadvertendly in areas which formerly had none. And this simply is one of those places. Permanency as a concept is a very important one for any form of extreme long-term content. People use these things then because no matter when they come back... they can be sure it still exists, and if it's solely for the memories of it. And while this has been quite a bit 'mangled' over time in the digital space... it is absolutely still a thing. Not without reason there's Minecraft servers still existing which have been created in alpha, my personal one with currently a total of 2 players coming by every week or so being one of those, and I intend to uphold this for the next decades. Same with some olden games from before the millenium even, which still are running, primarily because they don't need any resources to keep running at all nearly. Ultima Online servers, 'Crossfire MMO' or nowadays 'Delantria' which was a 1992 project still being used and many more. You don't see this form of 'permanency' in Vintage Story despite the sizeable game-world and the ability to update and clean unused areas out via world regen commands. The ability to ensure your builds aren't messed with the land claim option. It is a prime candidate for this form of setup. So question yourself about the 'why' again. Why doesn't those exist? What stops people from doing it? And that's exactly because the 'permanency' premise isn't upheld in every aspect. Food is currently the outlier, and actual permanent sources are either extremely space inefficient or simply non-existent. I think we got 4 sources of non-perishable food currently. - Rendered fat - Honey - Distilled alcohol - Vintage Beef Even bamboo is not a perfect one, but it works at least the earliest. But to achieve a reliable permanency based server setup that makes people actually want to come back there needs to be an option available to ensure that return is without struggles and which upholds inside the established way the game wants to set itself up. And that's the major issue, because such a thing is not easily achieved. And for that 2 specific points are not fulfilled yet, but could be. Which are extremely early game options which manage to push you over 'getting into it again' at least. This is why I'm speaking about bushmeat there as it's unused but you'll simply get it in ok-ish amounts over time automatically... and it's usually a throwaway material plainly spoken, which is a bit of a shame. And a reliably and more abundant end-game option. Because at end-game you're already set up with livestock, honey, farming... and you're so much in abundance that a non-perishable food source which isn't a massive hassle is no issue as it doesn't interfere with any ongoing mechanics. Which is the discussion I'm trying to have, but seemingly won't get. Because I have the basic decency of etiquette to actually not ignore people? I know that's gotten a bit into favor... but it's not a positive trait to have and should be kept for extreme outliers in terms of communication.

Passive animals have a 0% to 100% satiation rate which the respective stages of weight come from. They loose 0,1% satiation per in-game hour, or 2,4% per day when no food is available for them. They absolutely go to 'starving' but never die simply. Their drops are horrendous though and they don't breed unless re-fed properly to weight. And 'feeding them up' kinda would be hard when 'all perishable food rotted' is the case. I didn't know it also has something to do with gender. I took the number from pigs, which are the highest yield species available for the player in terms of livestock. Do sows provide more then boars? Default settings. No woodcutting/mining/digging in masses, a bit of running and a bit of jumping, no off-hand, not blackguard, no damage taken. Otherwise the numbers are significantly worse by quite a lot. I took it for a especially low amount, you'll usually use up more calories in 2 hours of gameplay. And I think the 25 is solely for woodcutting, lemme check for a moment what the digging/mining are, I assumed there and didn't think, that's my fault. Checked, digging and mining does incur no malus. Only woodcutting does. But that still goes against the premise of the MP situation. If you come back and your first action is that you have to deal with food after having done so before leaving (because it perished) then it's exactly the friction existing which is to be avoided for such cases in 'some' way. Which is up for discussion. Activity to rebound is not the solution, since that is what causes the friction. It is still a loss of player agency despite prepwork being done beforehand. And not too rare either. Yes, there's a myriad of ways to solve it, but all need immediate action of some form as well as time. The less of that exists in that moment the better. Which is why my push in that regard is so strong. So no matter what you say... fishing is ignored as it obviously goes against the premise. If you're on a soccer field you cannot play outside the soccer field. Same thing here. Stay within the field of the example, other stuff will be ignored no matter what. Simple as that. If someone provides 'hey, this is the issue' and you provide a solution which does not solve the exact mentioned issue then you can't state 'but it was relevant for the issue!'. That's simply not how things work, and I really don't understand how that is such a hard concept to get. So since I just wrote that I'll reach a bit 'forward' to the mention of bees. Which yes, might be available, but we're talking about the premise of 'no other players available' and 'no taking stuff without active permission', which is a rather common thing to have for forever servers with very long-term players to not infringe on the fun of others unless actively collaborating for something. Yeah, which is fair, and if it becomes a enhanced system in the future then great! Maybe it'll be fixed spots only... like the pre-existing translocator network, just a separate one. Maybe it'll lead to freely buildable ones (which I prefer plainly spoken, but it's not a guarantee). Until then though I'll treat it as not a thing coming up as we didn't hear anything about it being a thing to my knowledge. But that could be wrong too. And I know mods to solve it exists, I'm only talking vanilla still. Core game, non-modified, absolute baseline. Yes, that's a very fair argument. I don't flip-flop willy-nilly around, and misreading a single word is a bit easier then misreading a disclaimer put as the first sentence when addressing you as well as once again as the last sentence of the whole explanation. You know... misreading 'each' once and failing to read a whole message which is framed by two sentences specifically stating 'this is not even the actual topic but a side-tangent, not the topic though' which @LadyWYT nonetheless gave a great argument towards which makes a lot of sense is quiiiite on another level here I hope you agree. Not to speak of the whole premise being about 100% non-perishable food... and last time I looked wine perishes. Which hence means I raised the number in your favor even and you're giving me shit for it now. So sure, lets go with the 200 liters... which is now rotten and worthless. Or once again in your favor since you didn't actually do it (as you haven't mentioned it) it would now be distilled and is actually 20 liters. 1/10th of it. 12 minutes of play-time. Wow! Great! Good job! And yes, I'm getting agitated here, but it is not because of the topic itself, it is because here's you and Lady which both jump outside the topic discussed and try to conflate it into it, spinning and twisting the baseline I asked for, and which I asked for with a reason, and with the specific limitations as well for a reason. And both of you try to twist it around with me giving extras outside those limitations. Like livestock, which needs to butcher them and cook the meals, as they're not prepared and ready to consume, hence once more avoiding the 'jumping right back into it without diversions'. And still... since it's a low time investment compared to everything else I accepted it without complaint. But seemingly I should've also stayed absolutely solid there, since it also doesn't apply. And Lady came and said 'but no, you can't just ignore fishing!' despite I don't even know how often I repeated the premise and expect people to work with that unless there's a reason why said premise would need to be changed... which there was none. Not to speak that it is by the way already handled since the solution was multiple posts ago 'Bamboo fixes it' plain and simple. With the others not. And nonetheless the same repeated regurgitated arguments with the same answers come back over and over and over again, with the example becoming more and more precise and also quite lenient. Because I could also state 'Yeah, let's have a full play-session for MP as backup, that would be the reasonable amount' that would be 8 hours for a full 'play day' as many do it. And instead culled it down to '2 hours' which is the average play-time of a more casual player only instead of someone which comes back from a long break after having gone to work away from home for a month or 2 and then being unable to hop back into the server which is finally supposed to be relaxation time to instead be confronted with having to rush work-like to catch up on food which was in absolute abundance accessible before the break but now all universally rot without fail. And something like that breaks the spirit of continuing, which is a well known thing, which is not a massive outlier, which every single person having owned any form of 'forever' type server can likely tell you 5-10 stories about for people having to take substantial breaks, with the server sometimes being extremely busy, and sometimes dead for a whole week, no matter if it's MC, Project Zomboid, some copied old MMO of some sorts, VS or whatever. So yes, I do get agitated when I get a level of argumentation which is below sub-par while the actual content inside the messages is actually well written. This is a massive disparity, and such a thing pisses me off because it means my words are intentionally ignored in favor of nonsense like 'winning an argument' or 'not having said anything false'. Because what else is it?

2 hours, as mentioned. For the premise of it. You write it in a ambigious way which could mean '50 liter total' or '50 liter each'. So I took it as '50 liter'. Which by the way in non-perishable is 5 liter. Or if we go with your 200 liters is actually 20 liters. Still doesn't change the need to have 200 liter non-perishable for the premise. I mean... come on... how often do I have to repeat the specific premise I'm going for for people to actually stay in the constraints of it since I've used it for a very specific existing situation which is based around the idea of the existence of 'forever servers' which simply aren't made in VS while they are absolutely made in MC... question the why that is the case and then work within it. If I just write anything randomly and never align with the topic then sure... I can also do a lot of comments which mean nothing. Specifically since you seem to absolutely looove to ignore arguments brought furth beforehand and just flop willy-nilly around between positions. Here you agree with it potentially being an issue. So fine, great! Same page! And then you flop 180 and disagree. Which one is it? Are you bipolar? I mean... I don't know what to make of it, it's kinda hard to have a proper argument when one side waffles about randomly. It is impossible to make an argument about anything if that happens. A permanent ice biome to build nordic-focused things in. We're talking about transport, not storage. Reading is a nice skill to have.

I think the situation still calls for a bit of math here. First off, upon return livestock will be at the 'starving' stage. This reduces yield to a maximum of 7 red meat and a minimum of 0. Average outcome is 3 red meat. In a pot 4 red meat turn into a portion of 1680 calories, hence 420 calories per piece of meat. At average without any extensive movement the player will use up 3456 calories per hour. That includes neither mining, shoveling, woodcutting, running or jumping. Just 'baseline actions' of walking. Breaking a block costs 25 satiety. Running more then doubles the rate of calories used, but nobody walks around everywhere. Hence we can say a returning player needs ~ 6000-10000 calories per hour (could be more, unlikely to be less then 6k though). Let's average it at 8000 per hour. This means we need 8000 / 420 = 19,something red meat. Or we can say 20 for simplicity. We can say a short session of 'finishing up whatever' would take 2 hours of gameplay, hence 40 red meat. So the breakdown: - Livestock, pigs (as they're the highest yield for meat, others need substantially more.): 14 pigs need to be slaughtered for meat. Probably 13 with fat as they won't give any likely, or only 1. - Honeycomb/Honey: If we have them (I mentioned the issues with it at times) we need 54 honeycomb to get us over that timeframe. - Alcohol is 80 calories per liter. We need hence 200 liter of it for the timed ones. And '2000' liter for the non-timed ones (1 to 10 ratio of distilling it down). - Fishing is still a outright 'no' as it entirely breaks the premise and is not usable hence for what is to be achieved, as baseline. No matter how 'easy' it is, so I'll ignore the mention of it simply. Not going to engage with that, staying within the framework of the premise is core to reach answers, otherwise we don't need one, do we? If 'continuing where we left off' as the core premise isn't upheld it makes no sense, we could just walk out and search food every time... which is the friction to avoid which is unique to MP sessions as otherwise it's pure player agency to stockpile properly. @LadyWYT Livestock with 13 breedings... potentially doable, but quiiite hard and not repeatable I would say, as you've culled the stuff then already. Honey might be doable, as it's a regenerating resource, unlikely though to have that much by the time it becomes needed in such a situation, but it's close. Alcohol is a big no-chance. Simple as that. 200 liters non-perishable alcohol comes from 6200 fruits/berries. Just no. @SnapJelly Your 50 liter will get give you 4000 calories, which is 30 minutes of gameplay action. This is nothing. Bees: Yes, same as with Lady, potentially doable, but not reliable. But you can bypass spoiling time by having someone log off with loads of nice food and only come online when the stockpiles start to dwindle to then have fresh food stockpiles. This is just bypassing with tedium intended game mechanics, which in MP is iffy. This goes for both the claim-based storage and the inventory-only one, but the second is at least smaller in possible scale. Was just a nice side-effect, not the core premise. The core premise still is: MP / Player comes back after long inactivity time / all perishable food rotted / nobody else online / nobody else available / still year 1 or no simply too little play-time to setup significant stockpiles anyway / friction of coming back and instantly having to do food management rather then whatever is planned to be done is to be near 100% avoided. Maximum 5 minute effort I would say as limitation. Which is solely a issue for MP, never for SP. So non-perishable with bamboo has turned out to be a wonky but doable solution. Bees potentially. Livestock... eh... unlikely. Fishing is hence entirely unviable. But for travel? This is actually a rather important aspect for outposting. Which becomes gradually more important with story locations being further and further away, but also simply for long-term gameplay in the type of 'forever worlds' where projects start to be apart significant distances needing multiple days of travel and then a full shebang of managing food before doing anything you actually want to do. This can be counteracted with livestock (in very large quantities) and bees though at least. But as @LadyWYT mentioned at baseline the poles are an issue, specifically the northern one. Resources are scarce there, specifically food. So you need to transport food over. At 50k default setting it means you're out for multiple days, which limits the timeframe in which you can actually do something there. If you load up on non-perishables and stockpile them in place it allows for long working sessions where you dwindle those down without regular multi-day interruptions of traveling. So having a option which allows to simply not perish and can be produced in large quantities is important in that regard if you intent to not come back for potentially years... or tens of years, but don't want to have to re-do your stockpiles every single time over there, which takes ages at first. This then is a major issue with current existing options like honeycomb which can only be stacked to 8, hence you need honey itself in a bucket, which makes it doable at 10 liters per barrel. Though to achieve that you need 50 honeycombs per barrel, which then yields 3000 calories, which is roughly 30 minutes of action. So to do a 4 hour building/chiseling session for example you would need to to carry 8 buckets over which have used 400 honeycombs. That's... acceptable rates for sizeable projects. Probably gonne need a lot more but doable. But who wants to deal with 133 broken skeps and hence beeswarms in vanilla to do that? So fishing is what is usually done in the arctic currently, which takes ages to set up the system initially and you have to keep it going with repurposing the filets, hence to forego that something non-perishable is huge for that. This is especially the case for MP and offline times in the arctic which demands the setup again every single time. Livestock is not available anyway. Bees aren't either. Only bushmeat and fishes are. And fishes takes as mentioned absolute ages to set up again and circle, perishing relatively quickly after. This is actually a prime reason for allowing bushmeat to be processes with some tedious methods, solely for not having to worry about that there. But that's another topic entirely and wasn't planned with my argument. But it's a interesting topic.

Yes, and from the ones mentioned I'll break it down again: Livestock: Won't proliferate enough to allow the needed culling year 1 as you can't proliferate them well without at least a single harvest supporting the proliferation. Bees: Sometimes available... sometimes as easy to find as randomly finding the story locations without searching for them. Alcohol: Based on having significant stockpiles, which is not year 1, once again. Fishing: Is an active thing to do instead of something else. It is not a quick 'cut the animal down', it is a long-drawn action which will need a good while to allow supporting yourself for a while longer. This goes actively against the premise of 'return and continue where you left off without major interruption' and hence is a problem to even be mentioned as a start, because that was the premise to go by. So once more... bamboo has been the only viable solution, which is fine, it is viable, it is messy... but it is at least viable still. Formerly it was berries and alcohol from those as the bushes provided enough year 1, not anymore. Which is fine, it is a downside for this type of player playing in MP... but it is based on player agency rather then absolute inability. So acceptable. Not optimal... but acceptable at least. This is probably the best solution, better then bamboo by far. So yes, this I would agree with. Optimally with the chunk not being able to be accessed in the first place during offline times. Though it is also highly abusable. People bringing over their easily rotting stocks before a player goes offline to then have said player go online again when the stocks otherwise dwindle, hence having the non-rotted stocks and masses of them available at once. Which leads to: Being actually the better option, less options to abuse it. 22 crocks is the maximum, which is a lot but unlikely to be used this way. But it feels messy, I don't know what exactly is my issue with it so I won't go into details, but usually my 'hunches' turn out to have a viable reasoning until I can form it coherently into words. It has likely to do that it's a workaround based on the online/offline stage rather then an 'achieved' thing to actively solve a problem plainly spoken. But for the time being it seems like the most reliable one.

Which I clearly don't, hence you're taking it in wrong plainly spoken. And I don't see how after all the things mentioned specifically against that and adjusted each time it came up before it become simply nonsensical. Neither is combat in Year 1 against specifically hostile animals 'easy' (unless you counter their AI in some way, more then enough ways, but unintended so ignored). Nor does it give 'large amounts' and hence would be in that regard easy. Neither is reliable firing material 'easy' to uphold when you need to - for example - burn a pot filled with water down to achieve a single portion of salt, which would take a decent while (as that's freely adjustable how long this specific mechanic would take) and also takes materials... which have then during the day to be gathered again instead of doing something else. And neither would be the smoking 'easy' as a) I specifically asked about a potential multiblock structure setup like charcoal to achieve it, with respective time investment nor b) would acquisition of the material I mentioned be 'easy', since I specifically mentioned 'shavings' from only 'oak' as the example. Also neither would be the acquisition of enough copper to make hooks be 'easy' in the earlier time of the game to allow hanging up the prepared food so it doesn't go bad but instead is dried into the wanted result. So while all the materials named are abundantly available in theory that doesn't mean you'll always have endless amounts of them in praxis. Why? Because neither will you endlessly fight against wolves/bears, especially not as a more casual player, nor will you be able to specifically manage oak to make thing out of and nor will you be able to just set up 20 fireplaces to constantly have them burn down water into salt and especially you'll not have a boatload of charcoal to work a endless amount of copper you'll likely not have yet into hooks which would likely be needed for something else at that time still. So while the resources are abundant the time is not. So I really really don't know why you would say 'it is easily acquirable'. It is a dedication but reliably doable in the first year. Which the bamboo method though already does take over, so it's not high priority to 'plug a oversight mechanically' anyway, and likely neither the amount of people having this issue putting it in any high priority area since the workaround exists and is reliable. But obviously I'll talk about available resource types for year 1 which then have to be changed into something else via respective effort and time to provide the outcome... since otherwise it would not quite make sense to ask for a 'Year 1' method, right? I mean... should be logical when thinking for a second about it... so I really don't know why 'make a large livestock setup' or 'make a large bee setup' or 'just make alcohol' for a Year 1 situation being repeatedly mentioned. That's plain and simple delusional to ask that of any player which isn't highly skilled and has done that multiple times already. But for some reason it comes repeatedly back.

So, some things have come up and I couldn't write back, but I'll cut down on post-size substantially. First off, the argument of 'there already are other indefinitely lasting food sources' is true! I agree! I didn't think about them. But in that case... what is the issue to introduce another one of the preposition would be that it's bad to have them? Wouldn't it then rather be good to remove the indefinite aspect of those as it would co-align with the existing gameplay? Or are they 'fine' for some other reason? The second is that both of those rely on either luck (I don't know how many games I had where bees were as easy to find as being hit by lightning in reality... twice... and others were they just existed everywhere seemingly.) or absolutely ridiculous amounts of hunting (1-2 pieces of fat per animal without livestock is not reliable, as well as the need to use it early on for crocking + lamps reducing the availability) This is why I'm nudging for 'something' - doesn't matter what - which is based on mechanics that can be done at night since many players stand around a good chunk of it in the first year or just sleeping it off but still demands a high amount of effort play-wise to actively do this long-term storage. There's a reason why nobody uses fat or honey as travel rations for example... since the respective mechanics mandate a decent amount of effort up-front for the one-time setup the resulting rewards are small for those materials specifically. Farming and animal husbandry simply takes a lot of time instead with repurposing food with a negative effect to generate meat (livestock) or having to wait a long time in-game for farming. And since bees work automatically you get relatively little out of them per hive and got to wait for the very long growth-time of reed. Exactly! That's all that needs to be said. Niche-filling mechanics are not only viable mechanics but even important ones. As long as they don't negatively affect the gameplay otherwise. The argument of 'people will complain' is nonsensical, plain and simple. Not even worth to get into big time. How so? Alcohol needs intensive times to be set up. What does it help to fill this exact issue earlier on? By the time you make alcohol you'll likely have overpopulation of livestock already which can be culled without any worries... you log in during harvest times of some fruits which also reduces the chance for it to happen in the first place, and you're likely in year 2-3 at that stage. What about year 1 in terms of playtime? I would agree with you usually, because yes, that's how it was formerly. You did that to manage it early on. But now berry bushes need propagation, and they won't be ready in year 1. So that option is Year 2 at earliest again. Otherwise we wouldn't see this issue anyway. But the solution of using bamboo is good! Needs a bit of travel which can be iffy... but that one actually is reliable. Yes, that works. A 'all biome' food is still something I would like to see in a similar regard, but at least it removes the actual problem reliably in a relative early-game situation.