Salt

[Reynolds]

Small item for a bigger purpose. Food should rot. A big cupboard full of meat shouldn't be as practical as it is now. That is, unless you have salt.

Salt would delay rotting and give more hunger with one appliance, at the price of 1 FEP. With a second appliance, another FEP is taken, but food doesn't rot, and it fills you to full hunger. Salt is mined near or in water with a pickaxe, or you can carry the whole rock if it is small enough. Salt comes off in chunks, which take up 1 slot. If you have a container in your inventory, you can grind the salt rocks on a quern. Then the salt is usable.

Barrels should also have another use, packing meat. You can fit a backpack full of meat in a barrel, which you then seal, and rotting stops until it is opened. The barrel is filled with a % meter. Salted meats take up less room, to encourage salting and storing. Thoughts and expansions on this? It's totally imbalanced, but hey.

[Asmodeus]

If food stored in cupboards i going to decay, it will suck.

Salt comes from where? We would need to be able to mine it and gather it from oceans (although this would render the water quality -100, you just can't go around drinking saltwater) Not everyone can get access to salt or trade for it, meaning other methods of food stroage need to be explored. Sausages would then need to include salt, or require smoking. Vegetables also rot, do these need to be 'sundried' in the herbalists table?

[Nemu]

but all the water is fresh not salt water

[Chakravanti]

Yeah salt should be mined up from mines. In significantly more abundant quantities than metal and metal mines. One tile should provide one rock which should salt 20 or so meats.

[loftar]

If food stored in cupboards i going to decay, it will suck.

Food will definitely decay, stored in cupboards or not. What sucks is the current situation where food lasts forever. Of course, it needs to be coupled with a rebalancing of hunger values and FEPs, but that's another issue.

Salting and smoking food (or at least meat -- salting apple pie might not be the best idea, I would imagine) is most definitely on the to-do list. The only thing really lacking to make it work is for me to figure out a good way to make food items decay without wasting too much performance. Other things which would be nice to have make an appearance would be certain kinds of food storage that makes food perish slower (like keeping them in a cellar).

But well, yes, indeed. The source of salt is one of the greatest hurdles for its implementation. It would be fun to be able to send people to the salt mines, of course. :)

[niltrias]

If food stored in cupboards i going to decay, it will suck.

Food will definitely decay, stored in cupboards or not. What sucks is the current situation where food lasts forever. Of course, it needs to be coupled with a rebalancing of hunger values and FEPs, but that's another issue.

Salting and smoking food (or at least meat -- salting apple pie might not be the best idea, I would imagine) is most definitely on the to-do list. The only thing really lacking to make it work is for me to figure out a good way to make food items decay without wasting too much performance. Other things which would be nice to have make an appearance would be certain kinds of food storage that makes food perish slower (like keeping them in a cellar).

But well, yes, indeed. The source of salt is one of the greatest hurdles for its implementation. It would be fun to be able to send people to the salt mines, of course.

Any chance of pickling? We already have the vinegar...

[jorb]

The one problem I see with smoked, pickled, sun-dried and salted foods are how the fuck they should be represented graphically. It also leads in to a discussion on condiments, which I would like to do, but then we're talking about some sort of combinatorial system for food, and I'm not quite sure what that would mean.

[Chakravanti]

It means redo the crafting system before redoing FEPs/Food/Consumtion/etc.

[Asmodeus]

And sugar for candying foods.

[Chakravanti]

They said they planned on doing sugar (despite that refined sugar from beets didn't show up until the 19th century).