Help Understanding Hunger

[JimmyHH]

Hi all, a new player here so apologies if this has been asked a million times.

From the week or so I've been playing I've come to realise that this is mostly a game about managing timers and rate limits. Specifically, I've read through the beginners guide to the game, spent awhile playing with a few throwaway characters and feel I've got the basic mechanics down to begin attempting a run in earnest.

What I wanted help with is understanding the best way to maximise FEP gain from foods with respect to hunger levels.

From what I can tell, food itself isn't hard to come by. I have a hoard of foodstuffs which I realise I'll never probably consume since it's too low quality or too hunger filling. Mostly it comes down to getting the best amount of FEP for the hunger cost.

The hunger system being what it is, it seems there's currently no way to speed up hunger reduction aside from rare localised resources. Thus, it's assumed if you want to maintain your hunger bonus, you can consume a maximum amount of food per day equal to the amount your hunger bar will reduce in 24 hours.

So if I want to maintain 300% FEP gain from food, I can only consume 12 hunger satiation points of food every 24 hours.

If I want to instead maintain 200% FEP gain, I can consume 24 hunger satiation points of food every 24 hours.

If I'm happy to put up with just 100% FEP gain, I can afford to consume 72 hunger satiation points of food every 24 hours.

If instead I settle for 90% FEP gain, I can afford to consume 144 hunger satiation points of food every 24 hours.

Given that a majority of foodstuffs have a 1:1 or better ratio of FEP to hunger satiation, what's the best hunger value to maintain? I simply don't have enough experience to predict the effects of variety bonuses or food satiation values on the results, but if I assume that with higher hunger per day you can afford to eat a wider variety of food to balance these out, it would seem that 90% wins by a big margin.

300%: 36 FEP/24 hours base
200%: 48 FEP/24 hours base
100%: 72 FEP/24 hours base
90%: 129.6 FEP/24 hours base

What am I missing? Has anyone crunched the numbers more than my rudimentary napkin math here?

[Onep]

Well, the best way to feast is to have a table full of high quality symbels, have a high charisma character at said table, light the bonfire with high charisma and hopefully have another good table and decent charisma for the character feasting. With all this you can easily reduce the hunger from foods by at least ~80% and increase FEPs by about ~10-20%.
I never leave 300% bonus. Unless you're destroying cupboards of food regularly, using a proper bonfire should negate most your feasting gains. And just a little salt should easily put you back in 300%.

[JimmyHH]

But you can still benefit from all of those bonuses with a 90% FEP gain rate and also consume a larger amount of food per day, can't you? The ratio of FEP/hour of recharge time for your hunger to reset to the point it was before you started your feast is static and can't be changed. Assuming you have a heap of food, isn't it better to get more FEPs total per day? Or is it harder to gain large amounts of food at later stages of the game?

[Fratari]

It gets easier to maintain a large store of food as you progress. Once you have a good farm going and can hunt, you'll have plenty of good food to eat.

As for hunger, doing quests can reduce hunger as a reward and encourage exploration, during which you can forage more food, seeds, and curios.

Edit: Yes you can still benefit from the feast bonuses at 90% per day, however, this will cost you more than triple the food per stat increase. It's usually not worth staying overstuffed unless you have some serious infrastructure and people feeding you.

[MagicManICT]

The good news is the overstuffed ticks down fairly quickly. The satiation of different foods will be a bigger hinderance over time because there are so many ways to eliminate how filling food is or wipe out the hunger bar.