Cooking & Eating Overhaul

[Zentetsuken]

This idea was talked about briefly on the stream last night, but I thought I would flesh out my version of it here.

This major overhaul would ultimately aim to add a solid tiering system to all foods and sort of force a progression of food types we eat and make along the way.

First off, I think that all foraged items should be given the truffle treatment. I don't see why a berry when harvested just counts as 1 berry, why not have all mushrooms and berries and nuts harvested as like a handful that rolls a random number. Does anybody pick 1 blueberry and pop in it their mouth and expect to feel satiated? We should be eating handfuls of these when we forage. It makes sense that 1 gooseberry gives 0.1 prc fep, but maybe it should also give 0.1% hunger in this case, and when we pick one maybe we grab a handful of 10, so gooseberry effectively becomes 1 perc fep for 1% hunger when you eat a nice handful. Maybe this will make a lot of foragables potentially more feasible.


Second off, I think the cooking skill could use a bit of an overhaul too, along with the way we eat. We have so many foods aimed at beginners, from the pitbaked goods, to everything in the wildgrub category and more. These are often overlooked or just outright ignored in favour of rushing fish and autumn steak combos.

The idea is to make it so that when you are a new hearthling you can ONLY craft these sorts of beginner foods, and as you cook more and raise your cooking stat you can effectively have epiphanies that unlock new recipe tiers. Our tastes and skills should slowly refine themselves. It stands to reason that you should not all of a sudden understand that a steak would pair nicely with onions and beets if you have never eaten a steak and have simply been shown one, or cooked one only a few times before.

It should also stand to reason that a hearthlings tastebuds and cravings should level up as well. Perhaps when a hearthling eats a food that is of a higher tier than what his taste level is at, he simply does not appreciate the subtleties of such a high tier meal, his tastes are not refined and acquired enough, therefore he would ultimately gain less fep from this meal.

Perhaps this could work in reverse too, a hearthling who has leveled up to the highest tier of culinary desire will only TRULY appreciate foods within the highest tier of cooking skills, and those old lower skills meals will give diminishing or simply lower returns. Why would a hearthling who has mastered the art of making the finest cheeses, the most perfectly spiced steak combos with the highest tier meats and decadent truffles be interested in eating those shitty low tier meals that the peasants eat?!

This progression could make a LOT more foods useful if the tiers last for a fair amount of time. The progression can be gated by time, age, cooking skill, how much we eat, or anything. It could also slow down the idea of people being able to shit out combat alts in a couple days, or ANY alts for that matter. You wouldn't be able to spawn a new hearthling and sit him down at a table and feed him something that a developed village has been working on for 6 months because it would be a waste based on the reduced fep.

All foods could be put in to these new tiered categories and some new big meal type foods could be added for final tier stuff, like meat/cheese/bread combos and cornucopia sized meals.

[KwonChiMin]

The idea to put some refined food behind stat reqs and probably even credo req is worth considering.

But that idea about "fine taste" and diminishing simple food for more advanced cook is weird.

[pppp]

The part where new characters can not cook food suitable for older characters is bad.
Berries having a number like truffles might be ok, but it would require some thought at the implementation because: can I craft a pie from one berry, can I craft a pie from 5 single berries as opposed to one berry with 5 charges ?
Turning them into substance would be natural choice.

[Zentetsuken]

The idea to put some refined food behind stat reqs and probably even credo req is worth considering.

But that idea about "fine taste" and diminishing simple food for more advanced cook is weird.

Putting the refined foods behind credo would just make another credo on the "must have" list which I think devs are trying to stray away from. I think some kind of solid gate would be better. Perhaps having cooking food have its own totally separate sort of experience bar even.

The fine taste and diminishing simple food is just a potential way to combat the idea of there always being those couple best foods in the game. If there was a couple best foods per stat per tier and you were very much obligated to eat within your tier then all of a sudden many ingredients would be worth trading for or foraging for, potentially getting people out more and putting value on a whole bunch of potential ingredients and foods that are otherwise ignored now.

The part where new characters can not cook food suitable for older characters is bad.
Berries having a number like truffles might be ok, but it would require some thought at the implementation because: can I craft a pie from one berry, can I craft a pie from 5 single berries as opposed to one berry with 5 charges ?
Turning them into substance would be natural choice.

Why is the new character being able to cook anything they want good though? A new character cannot farm or mine whatever they want, or butcher any animal they want, or forage any curio they want, so why would we be able to toss 50 points in to cooking on an alt, toss some clothes on him and have them all of a sudden be a cooking expert?

Also, maybe I didn't make it clear enough but ofcourse it would make sense for all recipes that include these berries and nuts and mushrooms to then require a certain number of berries and nuts. I would assume that in order to make a pie you would need 5 berries now, and this could mean either 1 berry with 5 charges or 5 individually qualitied berries or whatever.

[pppp]

The part where new characters can not cook food suitable for older characters is bad.

Why is the new character being able to cook anything they want good though? A new character cannot farm or mine whatever they want, or butcher any animal they want, or forage any curio they want, so why would we be able to toss 50 points in to cooking on an alt, toss some clothes on him and have them all of a sudden be a cooking expert?

There is a problem of newbs not being able to offer much of valuable stuff to older players. Taking away ability to cook will make it worse, though this world's changes to hunger & satiations already made it worse.
You can instead try to offer new players different role in the system, e.g. letting them gather valuable ingredients that are hard to bot or farm.

.. you were very much obligated to eat within your tier ..

Sounds like extra effort to keep all tiers of foods for all alts and new members.

[kitsune121x]

I definitely like the berry idea it definitely makes food variety easier I hope they add it where you can store them in barrels like slime then I can trade barrels of blueberries

[Zentetsuken]

There is a problem of newbs not being able to offer much of valuable stuff to older players. Taking away ability to cook will make it worse, though this world's changes to hunger & satiations already made it worse.
You can instead try to offer new players different role in the system, e.g. letting them gather valuable ingredients that are hard to bot or farm.

I think this change could have the opposite effect. Noobs wouldn't be able to craft the end result of high tier cooking items, this is for sure, but the tiers could all very purposefully include recipes that contain foraged goods like mushrooms, berries or things like fox and snails, etc. This was part of my thinking, to have so many different "Best foods per stat per tier" that all the wide variety of ingredients contained within them will become valuable.

Sounds like extra effort to keep all tiers of foods for all alts and new members.

Now this could be true, however maybe it should be a bit more effort to horde all the appropriate food types? I remember I cleaned out one of my great halls this world of all my hunted meat because I realize I didn't even use it. I had like 20 or more cupboards of meat that was simply useless to me, all different types from all different animals. The only meat I actually ever used was pork and very occasionally seal. So I think that this extra effort might not be such a bad thing.

[pppp]

I think this change could have the opposite effect. Noobs wouldn't be able to craft the end result of high tier cooking items, this is for sure, but the tiers could all very purposefully include recipes that contain foraged goods like mushrooms, berries or things like fox and snails, etc. This was part of my thinking, to have so many different "Best foods per stat per tier" that all the wide variety of ingredients contained within them will become valuable.

Newbs will be screwed and developed players will continue to feed their alts with high tier food. Business as usual.
The mantra is: if <x> benefits new players, bots and alts will most likely benefit too. If <x> hurts new players, older players will find a workaround for their alts.

Now this could be true, however maybe it should be a bit more effort to horde all the appropriate food types? I remember I cleaned out one of my great halls this world of all my hunted meat because I realize I didn't even use it. I had like 20 or more cupboards of meat that was simply useless to me, all different types from all different animals. The only meat I actually ever used was pork and very occasionally seal. So I think that this extra effort might not be such a bad thing.

Open cookbook, sort foods by F/H, now think if you would use foods with F/H in the range of 3-4 if you could use ones with 20+ F/H, some of which are not that difficult to come by. Pork is badly out of balance. Nothing will change unless pork and a couple other meats are nerfed. It is also annoying that only dish that matters is autumn steak and a few cheeses. Best non-autumn steak food (strawberries in cream) is less than half as effective as best autumn steak.

[Zentetsuken]

Newbs will be screwed and developed players will continue to feed their alts with high tier food. Business as usual.
The mantra is: if <x> benefits new players, bots and alts will most likely benefit too. If <x> hurts new players, older players will find a workaround for their alts.

Noobs will not be screwed, they will suddenly have dozens of new items to forage and trade with. Veterans will be busy building their industries, I am sure they will gladly take mass amounts of mushrooms in trades if an autumn steak combo requiring boalettes becomes a high tier str fep food, right? Also I am tired af of this bot mantra because as somebody who lives in one of the biggest and most active villages in the entire world, I don't think anybody is botting 90% of the shit that claim. Why would I waste time running a bot on a forager to pick fucking berries and worrying about agros and shit when I can just happily give a noob something for a massive haul of this sort of stuff? Alting is a thing sure, but all massive villages with good industry have their own markets for a reason, they have tons of spare resources and are always looking for help to get remedial shit.

Open cookbook, sort foods by F/H, now think if you would use foods with F/H in the range of 3-4 if you could use ones with 20+ F/H, some of which are not that difficult to come by. Pork is badly out of balance. Nothing will change unless pork and a couple other meats are nerfed. It is also annoying that only dish that matters is autumn steak and a few cheeses. Best non-autumn steak food (strawberries in cream) is less than half as effective as best autumn steak.

I understand that my proposal would have to come with atleast some rework of feps, maybe some nerfs and maybe some buffs, but the idea of being able to sort things in to tiers seems a lot easier than randomly shifting around numbers based on forum feedback. Imagine how easy it would be for future feedback and discussion if people could judge foods relative to the tier they are in, rather than all the current variables. Some shifts would be easy, some would need major adjustment, but ultimately a lot of the ridiculously OP food would be specific to the highest tier of eating and cooking. Also, there is no reason why we should have literally like 100 recipes simply going unused. Minor tweaks to feps could easily fit them nicely in to a tier and be specialized for 1 individual fep.

This is why I called it an overhaul, it's not going to be something implemented mid-world, that's for sure. But the tier idea could make use of the ridiculous amount of food content implemented in the last 3 years that is currently just entirely useless. I think they tried to do this a bit for w11 with some adjustments and satiation tweaking but missed the mark, so this post aims to be a more intensive way to sort out the mess.

[pppp]

Noobs will not be screwed, they will suddenly have dozens of new items to forage and trade with. Veterans will be busy building their industries, I am sure they will gladly take mass amounts of mushrooms in trades if an autumn steak combo requiring boalettes becomes a high tier str fep food, right?

Where these new items would come from ? Newbs already have a ton of stuff to forage, except no one wants to buy most of it, aside few specific items. Buying bloated bolete could be a thing even now, but it just does not happen. Same applies to cave lanterns. If a big faction knows a good spot they would rather keep an alt there and login it every 16 minutes than let random people harvest it.
What can be done is gating tiered foods not at the point of production but at the point of using, meaning lower chars just can not handle high tier foods. Same thing that happened to using pepper with introduction of bum burn. But I am afraid it would be perceived as more shit in game.

I understand that my proposal would have to come with atleast some rework of feps, maybe some nerfs and maybe some buffs, but the idea of being able to sort things in to tiers seems a lot easier than randomly shifting around numbers based on forum feedback. Imagine how easy it would be for future feedback and discussion if people could judge foods relative to the tier they are in, rather than all the current variables. Some shifts would be easy, some would need major adjustment, but ultimately a lot of the ridiculously OP food would be specific to the highest tier of eating and cooking. Also, there is no reason why we should have literally like 100 recipes simply going unused. Minor tweaks to feps could easily fit them nicely in to a tier and be specialized for 1 individual fep.

This is why I called it an overhaul, it's not going to be something implemented mid-world, that's for sure. But the tier idea could make use of the ridiculous amount of food content implemented in the last 3 years that is currently just entirely useless. I think they tried to do this a bit for w11 with some adjustments and satiation tweaking but missed the mark, so this post aims to be a more intensive way to sort out the mess.

I once asked devs to define what is earlygame/midgame/endgame so we could benchmark stuff against that definition. I did not anything close to what I wanted. So good luck with trying to get your tiers right, since properly setting up your tiers would also require some groundwork definitions.

And no, it is not "some buffs, some nerfs". Foods need to be fully verified against supposed tiers of ingredients and recipe, (meaning <my> tiers, just an early/mid/later game tag). This has to be done devs-side unless devs decide to share food calculation details or community musters enough manpower to fully fill the cookbook. I am not optimistic that any of three will happen.