Best way to store food

If there’s no calorie malus from eating them raw, that’s wrong -there’s supposed to be one.

I’ve never encountered this. But I always were extra cautious around mine fields (or even just dirt mounds), so I don’t know if that was/is a thing or not…

Eating what raw? I don’t seem to be able to find the post that you replied to…?

Oh sorry, I meant to reply to post #17

Ah, yes, now I see.

Well, I’m not sure about the wheat… As for the cattail rhizomes though, they offer 250 (k)calories each according to the item description. After processing two of them into one starch, the starch has 500 (k)calories, so there’s no calories gain.
So, this would confirm @Trigon’s statement…

2 rhizomes -> starch results in 500 calorie starch.
Starch -> flour results in 15 portions of flour with 34 calories each
flour -> flatbread consumes 11 flour, and results in 2 portions of flatbread with… 248 calories each.

The malus is only retracted after the RAW item is cooked.

Ah, alright.
But that’s a lot of time-consuming steps…

2 rhizomes -> 1 starch takes 40 minutes at best (500 kcal or 250 kcal per rhizome).
1 starch -> 15 flour takes 2.51 minutes at best (510 kcal or 255 kcal per rhizome).
11 flour -> 2 flatbread takes 8.05 minutes at best (496 kcal or 45.1 kcal per flour or 338.2 kcal per rhizome)

So, at the absolute best, you’ve invested 50 minutes and 34 seconds (and 28 battery charges or 20 charges and a fire, but since solar is a thing, I’ll count this as basically free) for an additional 88.2 kcal gained per rhizome.

Therefore, while it’s true that you do get about 1/3 more calories out of your rhizome for processing it, Trigon’s also right that it takes more calories to craft it than you’ll gain from it (unless you have spare NPC time and/or special traits/mutations/CBMs), as crafting has a “MODERATE_EXERCISE” activity_level assigned, meaning roughly a multiplier of 4.5 calorie consumption on the (approximated) default calorie consumption of 86.8 kcals while idling for those 50 minutes.

So you’d spend a lot of time and about 390 kcal to prepare something that’s worth 338.2 kcal (at best) instead of eating it raw with no calorie cost and a worth of 250 kcal.
That’s about as wasteful to your (survivor’s) resources as it was to my time for doing this calculations :face_with_raised_eyebrow: .

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Pretty sure that’d get better with batching, and you can get Mills that grind your flour for free. But yes, still probably not a great trade.

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No. My numbers are based on level 20 cooking skill and 20x batch stack size next to a table. That’s why I’ve written “at best”.

Well, that saves 2.51 minutes… unless you can also grind rhizomes into starch at the mill, as this takes up the most time, it’s still not worth it.

Also last I checked mills can’t grind starch, unless that was fixed recently.

EDIT: Though I’m glad my napkin math held up under heavier scrutiny. Good to know I’m not crazy at least.

SECOND EDIT: Turning the rhizomes into starch is also nice for getting the plant fiber, but overall for food I still stand by raw rhizomes.

Well, I just recalculated everything. If you’re really skinny (0 stored calories), tiny (145 cm & “tiny” mutation, making you 45 cm small), of old age (the older, the better, but the max possible setting is 55 years in character generation), with no additional mutations, bionics, artifacts or changes to PLAYER_HUNGER_RATE… You’d use up around 0.6 kcal every 5 minutes or 6 kcal for the whole crafting process (not taken into calculation that it would take much longer when you’re starving), so you could profit from that… if you’d live to see the result, that is…
On the other hand… Eating to the max and getting a bmi of 468555 (2147483647 stored kcal), at full hight of 3 meters (2 meters + mutation “huge”) and at an age of 16, you’d loose 658933 kcal every 5 minutes or 6,589,330 kcal while crafting this.

And an other night wasted on stupid calculations and testing… Why do I keep doing this to myself?

Edit: Here are the values I used for the calculation (function name taken from source code):
get_bmr = 170 to 189772830
base_bmr_calc = 169.0875 to 189772829.080363629
height = 45 to 300
age = 16 to 55+ (you age “normally” as the game progresses)
bodyweight = 26.325 to 42169939.795636362
get_bmi = 13 to 468554.8866181818
get_kcal_percent = 0 to 39045.15721818182


Fun fact: If you actually manage to get to 2147483647 stored kcal, you’ll probably die of starvation, as it will overflow, turning into negatives (possible explanation: at that point you probably violently exploded and have therefore 0 fat left in your carcass body).
Second fun fact: I don’t see anything stopping you from reaching an age of 65+ at which, with almost no fat reserves and the smallest possible height, you’d never again need to eat, as you will actually gain kcal just from existing and even more from exercising. Just… don’t do anything that modifies your stored calories directly, like digging/mining or cutting wood… or you’ll starve to death.


Indeed. That’s one side effect I didn’t consider. You’d probably still be better off to spin cotton balls into thread, but it’s nice to basically have “free” plant fiber.

I’ve been saving every MRE I’ve come across in preparation for my first winter. I’ve hunted moose but most times the meat spoils before I get home and whenever I try to plan better by bringing my racks and charcoal along I don’t come across a moose :unamused:

Bring a car, and don’t butcher the moose (beyond field dressing and possibly quartering) until you get back to base. That way the meat will be smokeable for roughly 2 days, and if your base is 2 days away by car then by god you’re better off just going for smaller game.

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I always just base myself next to a river and fish. While fish may not be very high in calories it’s trivially easy and safe to sail up and down the river fishing and dehydrating the lot on the spot by just strapping a kitchen unit or somesuch to your boat.

This makes winter easy to handle, especially if you manage to get a farm set up wherever you decide to base your river adventures from. Even a small field of wheat will let you keep yourself fed with delicious fried fish.

Though my all time favorite food storage method is a herd of cattle for obvious reasons. Massive supplies of milk and meat mean you can survive off of cows alone more or less with a decent herd. Though it’s been a while since I lived the rancher’s life so more recent updates could have changed this without me knowing.

Not sure if its a good time to point out or not but if you eat raw cat tail rhizomes you have a 5-15% chance of contracting a disease doing so irl, depending on the location of the plant. This is do to how they are natures water filter. They like to suck up parasites and bacteria and whatever else that is in the water like a sponge. Plus whatever was clinging to them in the water and mud in which they sit.

Another caveat is that they are not exactly flavorful raw and most people may find them kinda funky. A very low morale debuff of -1 per unit would be fair when eaten raw. I dunno if they can be given a tag to “get use to” them. Because if you eat enough of them. I would assume most people would be ok with them after a few days of eating them. They taste better with extra virgin olive oil and a dash of salt/pepper.

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Well, they do have a “ew” taste to it right now (-12 morale per piece, to a max of -25)…:
cattail rhizome debuff

While they can possible contain toxic elements or compounds because of their filtration effect on water/ground and have microorganisms that live on the plant/rhizome, I can’t find any information that they can contain parasites or bacteria harmful to the human body (that can’t be washed away quickly).

If you provide a source, we could add this to the game (using either parasite or food poisoning mechanics)…

Hmm good to know more about what is in the game.

Your own comment seems to indicate an understood inference. Micro-organisms that live in and around the plant. Road side living suck up vehicle emmissions as do most similar plants at just about any road side.

The exact percentage is more for game mechanics than real life hard fact. As these are wild plants that are edible and not something taken into a lab for study. But rinsing something off in water isn’t much different than shaking dirt of your pants. You are likely to have something remain that you do not perceive with the naked eye.

Since we are on the topic. Check out this thread. Add to it as you like:

:blush:

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Oh for sure I would never just eat one raw in real life. Just noting that it’s far more efficient to do so in game due to the very long and laborious process of rendering them into flour taking more calories than you would get gain.

There are also many bacteria, virusus and various forms of mold and other lifeforms around us in the air, our drinking water and on our body. Yet not all of them make us sick and the amount of them we ingest that do make us sick is also important. That’s why i specifically asked for “harmful to the human body”.

Vehicle emissions are toxins (potentially) and not bacteria/parasites. While toxins can be harmful, in this concentration this would mostly cause long-term effects and not immediatly hurt you. The game has no cancer functions (yet) that I know of, so even heavy radiation has no long-term effects to speak of (well, there’re mutations, but that’s not really the same thing).

Well, there’s a lot of weird stuff that get’s studied in the labs around the world… We have historians here that have excavated an old monastery’s outhouse and counted the blackberry seeds… and concluded that they have eaten over 200,000 of them (if I remember correctly). Not sure what anyone wants to do with that info, but there you have it.

The Bundesamt für Gesundheit der Schweiz (health department of switzerland) recommends to wash wild picked strawberries (and other ground fruits / vegetable matter) to prevent the ingestion of (widespread) fox tapeworm eggs/larva.
It can and will reduce or even completely eliminate attached parasites and bacteria (unless they are inside of it, as you stated in a previous answer (“They like to suck up parasites […]”), which I can’t find information about), making it probably safe for consumption.

I will, thank you :smiley: . But as I’m not familiar with the flora of New England, I probably don’t have much to add…

Yeah, I’ll have to agree on that. I would try one washed, peeled and cooked. Otherwise it’s good to know for an extreme emergency situation that they could be eaten raw, but until then… no thanks.

Yeah this is a flaw(imo) in the calorie system. It also means lower volume foods are op af because you can consume way more total calories before getting full. Otherwise you get ‘full’ much too quickly. Two sausages with nothing else isn’t a huge meal, especially if you’re physically active. I understand this is trying simulate stomach volume but it is very confusing from a player feedback perspective. The “hungry” notifier is not actually giving you any useful information. It’s not telling you if you’re getting enough calories in a meal, and I can just open the character screen to get the only info it conveys at any time. Slightly deviating from the topic, apologies.

Wai hol up wha?

Are you saying that the formula for ‘kcal in the body’ has some variables that increment stored energy independently of diet? What forumula even is that?