Early game food source and food conservation

[Shockus_Brutus_of_De]

It’s early game, I’m still too scared of hunting squirrels because they have the Jabberwocks on their phone’s contact list and I don’t know what’s the best way to keep my food fresh. How do I feed my tum tum and still keep the cooked insides of the cow I just ran over with my Deathmobile fresh?

(Nothin’ like spamming a forum with noob questions…

… I’m sorry…)

[Mistakensir]

Short of getting a mini fridge up and running im gonna say get your cooking skill high enough to make smoked meat/sausage or find a dehydrator.
You’ll need a smoker and charcoal though.

Early game make a pointy stick and cook em eat what you can while looking for ways to preserve it.

[IcedPee]

I’ve never seen a jabberwock in-game unless it was spawned by an NPC quest, so you’re being a bit too cautious there. Also you can see jabbies before they can see you IME.

Early-game, your best food source is probably scavenged pre-cataclysm food, not hunting. Hunting your own food and thus needing to preserve the meat is best dealt with once you start to get the means of preserving it (ie unlock recipe for meat jerky and the tools and skills to make smoked meat).

Honestly though there’s so much food in vanilla item spawn this should be a non-issue.

[gcaliber]

In the early game I usually just collect food off of bodies, houses, maybe a grocery store if its near the edge of town.

I usually don’t bother storing food since meat is so easy to get. I just go get enough for 2-3 days at a time and if it does spoil I go get some more.

[jokermatt999]

Search bushes for eggs and pine trees for pinecones that can be made into pine nuts.

[Mistakensir]

Yeah gcaliber is correct its not so much food you need to worry about its drink.
First gallon jug you come across dump its contents right on the ground and fill it from a toilet.
And get a pot from a stove.

And yeah search all the bushes, you’re gonna need survival skill anyways

[Shockus_Brutus_of_De]

[quote=“IcedPee, post:3, topic:7975”]I’ve never seen a jabberwock in-game unless it was spawned by an NPC quest, so you’re being a bit too cautious there. Also you can see jabbies before they can see you IME.

Early-game, your best food source is probably scavenged pre-cataclysm food, not hunting. Hunting your own food and thus needing to preserve the meat is best dealt with once you start to get the means of preserving it (ie unlock recipe for meat jerky and the tools and skills to make smoked meat).

Honestly though there’s so much food in vanilla item spawn this should be a non-issue.[/quote]

I take junkfood intolerance, so half the food is just worthless, but I getcha. For how long does smoked meat and jerky last? Weeks? Or until the zombies become civilized?

[Maur]

Well, i just saw one Jabberwock while hunting on day two, so they do exist… i agree its rare occurence. And i managed to escape, thanks, parkour trait!

Just hunt the stuff. And how i wish i knew pointy sticks can be used to cook meat, i was hunting nonstop to stave starvation, eating raw meat trying to get survival up to two to craft stone pot (i had a cookbook, so that was taken care of(

[Coolthulhu]

Sources:
Spring to autumn - forage underbrushes. It’s a lot of food once your survival skill gets good.
Winter - pine nuts and boiled acorns. Hard to get by, but not undoable.
Heavily mapgen dependent: insects and spiders - easy to kill, but semi-rare, unless you come across an anthill
Special preparation needed: river - you need swim goggles and a speargun and you need to drop a lot of stuff before diving (or you won’t be able to breathe far from land) but there’s just SO MUCH FOOD in there
Luck-dependent: sewers - rats, snakes and fish there are tasty and easy to catch because they don’t flee

Preserving:
Winter - stuff rots very slowly in winter, treat normal food as if it was almost permafood
Jerky - needs cooking 3 and salt or salt water. If you’ve got a swamp nearby, salt water is free. Otherwise try to make it using seasoned salt. Easiest to make permafood.
FOODCO rig - ultimate food preserving machine. Slap it on a car and you can dehydrate stuff pretty much for free.

Cooking:
Carve a skewer from wood (use a knife on a wooden object). They don’t take space and don’t weight much, but they allow cooking meat (like pointy sticks).
If you have enough mechanics, fabrication and survival (about 2 each), make a quern and mill acorns and buckwheat into flour. If you can get your hands on some cooking oil, you’ll be able to make biscuits that have AMAZING nutrition value for their cost (28*8=224 nutrition just for 2 flour and 1 oil).

[Funk]

I’d raid a little, get a few gallon jugs and funnels set up for water.
Get the tank out of car and use that to store your clean water in and your good to go.

The water tank will need wheels to move it far but you can move it in short steps with the advanced inventory.

[Valpo]

you can carry arround a water tank in your hands.

[Loendal]

Yea, clean water is a big benefit once you have some gallon jugs lying about and a fireplace nearby. Smash up a table (Or Deconstruct it for better materials and a wee bit of construction training), drop the two by fours and splintered wood on the stone fireplace, light it up and kick back and make clean water. Takes 20 minutes to turn 15 toilet water into 15 clean water. Food and such, I live off the houses in town. Though I don’t use Junkfood Intolerance, they still got plenty of supplies out there you can eat.

And don’t do what I do and dump out the ammonia jugs, you’ll want those around when you learn how to make batteries

[Maur]

Large waterskins are superior to gallon jugs, actually. And easily craftable (though need a lot of leather)