An interesting idea... but I have some questions, just to make sure I understand you correctly. Let's try an example!
Let's say I log in with my noob self and chow down on a relatively small meal. This fills my "stomach" bar with various amounts of attributes. For the sake of specific examples, my theoretical stomach bar now looks like:
10% STR+1 + 10% AGI+1 + 10% WIL+1 + 40% CHA+1 + 30% EMPTY
By the time I'm done, my Hearthling is sitting at "Content." After 4 hours, I automatically Digest. The roll of the dice gives me +1 STR, and then my stomach empties 10% of each attribute type and becomes:
9% STR+1 + 9% AGI+1 + 9% WILL+1 + 36% CHA+1 + 37% EMPTY
But these 4 hours also dropped me from "Content" to "hungry." So:
3.6 hours later, I haven't eaten anything new and this time the dice land on "Empty." My stomach drains 20% of everything and becomes (approximately):
7% STR+1 + 7% AGI+1 + 7% WILL+1 + 29% CHA+1 + 50% EMPTY
And so it continues until I have no food attributes left in my stomach.
I am also assuming that the stomach caps at 100%, rather than just... overloading it with however much food it takes to get to Famished?
If I scale this understanding up to late-game, then:
- I don't have to make as much food because eating anything after 100% stomach is useless
- but, if I want the maximum benefit of that food (I don't personally, I'm just theorycrafting), I have to play this balancing game between keeping a full stomach (to avoid "wasting" a digestion event) and low hunger% (to get more digestion events)
- It takes a lot less food to fill a stomach, but higher quality food will leave me needing to fill that stomach more often
Does this actually lead to less time in the kitchen? How does this affect feasting? The symbel? Level scaling on attributes?
Constant attribute growth isn't my playstyle so what I'm looking at won't affect me, I'm just trying to understand other takes on the game. And I enjoy theorycrafting about it.