How do I optimize food usage for better stat growth?

[olenna]

Hi all, I’m trying to better understand how to manage food efficiently in the early stages, because it feels like I’m wasting potential stat gains by eating whatever is available instead of planning properly; I’ve heard about FEP balancing and hunger mechanics but I’m not sure how to practically apply them when resources are limited, so I’m wondering if there’s a simple approach to choosing or combining foods that helps guide stat growth more intentionally without slowing down overall progression, and any tips or examples would really help.

[vatas]

With default client you will have to do constant math if you want to optimize.

With Kami client, you get a calculation for to estimated total FEPs.

With Hurricane client, you get an accurate calculation of total FEPs AND a percentage of your FEP bar that will be filled.

Due to variety bonus, eating a piece of food that's projected to fill you only to something like 70% can be enough. Especially in the early game, the variety bonus seems to have diminishing returns at higher stats AND if you try to eat 10 different berries to halve your bar, something that was possible in Legacy.

The game itself doesn't offer any feedback on whether or not you just filled your FEP bar 101% or 1000% (when eating a single piece of food and "leveling up" from it.)

[sMartins]

If you have a new bionic brain implanted, you won’t have any more of these problems.

We are facing total alienation...


Devs do something ... Focus on the "beauty" of the game

[FiveG]

When starting out I would eat whatever I can get my hands on that raises any of the stats that I use early (STR, AGI, INT, CON, PER). I somewhat try to balance it so that I raise them all to about 20-30 but all my main focus would be on getting a claim and putting up a palisade. The reason for trying to balance stats is that the total FEPs needed to reach stat up depends on your highest stat. Eating a variety of food reduces the total needed by some amount and is generally a good idea early to fill the bar mostly with high FEP food and then 'top up' with berries or other low FEP food.
Once I got my claim and pali I fill a cupboard or two with fishes of any kind and check wiki for which stats they raise roasted/spitroasted/dried. Then i rotate the foods for different stats so that nothing that I use stays too low.
At this stage I also introduce WIl and DEX food as I dont really care about CHA and PSY. Also make sure that you are eating at a table whenever possible and make any symbel items you can. Hope this helps, it works for me as a hermit.

[vatas]

Few scattershot tips/pointers:

1. Overshotting your other attributes with INT and PER is fine, because former allows you to study more/heavier curiosities while the latter unlocks foraging resources. These should make catch-up relatively easy.

2. Trying to minmax every single bite of food will make you lose your sanity IRL and/or leads to simply not eating or eating very little. (Efficiency trap could be a term to describe this.)

3. Once you unlock more advanced recipes, it's easy to find yourself in a spot where almost everything is massive overkill.

4. The way Hunger ("Appetite" would be far more descriptive BTW) bar regenerates, means that you're in a bit of "use it or lose it" -scenario if your bar is completely empty.

5. Satiations start quickly mattering, but you can spam cheap foods with relatively little concern. Devs deliberately incentivize eating at lower satiety levels by making them also reduces hunger bar impact and regenerate faster the lower they are.

[magnet]

2. Trying to minmax every single bite of food will make you lose your sanity IRL and/or leads to simply not eating or eating very little. (Efficiency trap could be a term to describe this.)

This is a big one. Played with a guy one world who refused to eat anything because "everything we can make right now is trash, im not wasting my hunger bar on that"

[lordgrunt]

the main thing with new food system now is not to make foods that would fill your bar too much. you suffer from too much hunger fill this way. for example you *can* make autumn steaks that will show it's gonna fill your fep bar by 300% or something silly like that amount. but some of those steaks can really do a number on your hunger, i made one recently that added 60 points to my hunger (one steak!), so yeah, not worth it.
for anything thats below 100% of your fep bar, i'd recommend to pay close attention to fep/hunger stat, not stat total or w/e. the already mentioned hurricane client does good job showing that.