Food as a new character

[Annoyance]

What should I be doing when it comes to food as a new character?
As I go about my quest for LPs and a cool settlement as a newbie, I find I must almost always sate my character's hunger. However; when food is consumed, it grants FEPs and such, which is both good and bad. I have no small supply of dead chickens in my cabinets, but I don't wish to feast upon them all lest I get extremely high dexterity and (I assume here) it becomes harder to raise the other stats.

What foods should I be eating as a newbie?
Should I try to balance my stats out?
Should I care if one of my stats raises far more than the others?


Also, does clay 'respawn' ? I'm having issues obtaining clay around my landmass.
I am working on trying to get a cauldron for bone meal as well as ovens for bread, but lack of clay is making it rather difficult.

[MagicManICT]

Sounds like you have already solved your food problem as it regards to going hungry. What you are in want of is variety. My best suggestion early on is to get fishing and eating ants.

Once you get some exploration and are able to start finding wild windsown weeds, you can get a small farm going. This will boost your variety even more.

For now in the early game, don't worry too much about one stat going very far. It's easily correctable. It's when your hard to raise stats such as Psy start getting out of whack with your very easy to raise stats like Str and Con that it becomes an issue. Just as an example, I'm talking something like still sitting at 20 Psy and have 150 or 200 Str.

Clay, along with other nodes, slowly regenerate over time. (I believe it's one point per in-game day, or about every eight hours.) If you're not finding clay in quantity in one spot, just keep searching. You'll find enough for your needs quickly enough. Try digging about every 50 tiles (half a mini-map) or so.

[Annoyance]

Thank you

[Chakravanti]

and fish.

[defiler86]

I have to agree... fish is a good source for new characters. All you need to start is Foraging, Fishing, and Hunting (total LP: 185), and the chance to find a rabbit. Find a good fishing spot on a shore, and start gathering. Collecting fishes is a good source of LP and the chance of Fishy Eyeballs is a pretty decent curio to study. When you have enough food, simply store it at your camp and pay more attention to other things (like hunting or crafting).

[Onionfighter]

As a new character, the most useful stats are perception and intelligence. Both of these can be gotten from fish. One good way to go fishing is to stand in a swamp for a bit to collect a bunch of leeches (just standing around doesn't cost hunger, and if you remove them fast enough you won't lose hp), then use the leeches as bait.