Eating dirt

Slax · 2016-06-26T15:48:35.000Z

Geophagia!
It ain’t great but it might just keep you alive. Beware of shitting bricks.

BeerBeer · 2016-06-26T16:57:18.000Z

Oddly, worms aren’t mentioned. Would try out Worm category mutagens.

kevin.granade · 2016-06-27T00:41:58.000Z

The main blocker I see is we don’t track different types of soil. Even if we ascribed something beneficial to geophagy, it would require locating and preparing the right kind of soil for consumption.

Slax · 2016-06-29T04:18:01.000Z

Link it to the survival skill?
Low skill = more chance of bad things happening.

Pretty hacky and simple though.

kevin.granade · 2016-06-29T06:35:10.000Z

I’m just not buying it, if anything it’s a, “slightly delay starvation” mechanism. If we made it more general than it is in reality it would be fairly imperative to make it even less nutritious, otherwise we have a bizarre situation where we’re endorsing it as a survival strategy, which from all accounts it isn’t.

Worm or other mutations though, yea that might make some sense, plant mutations already do it implicitly.

Slax · 2016-06-29T06:54:20.000Z

Morale:
Enjoyed boulder +50

WIndburns · 2016-07-01T01:36:28.000Z

I watched a video that dealt with this. People in Africa tend to eat sodium bentomite which is the most popular because of its expansive properties making you feel full.

Belteshazzar · 2016-07-01T10:19:43.000Z

Basically no nutritive value (some minerals I suppose, one might attempt it to get some vitamins like B-12) but to point of trying to derive calories from it you’re better off trying to boil and eat leather (seriously though, don’t try this IRL as most industrialized leathers have some pretty nasty curatives left in them to prevent decomposition.)

As an interesting aside, mushrooms generally don’t provide caloric benefit either, you certainly can’t live off them. They have essentially no fats or free sugars, and their carbohydrates are primarily chitins. Humans produce ‘some’ chitinase… but not in amounts appreciable for digestion of chitin.

WIndburns · 2016-07-02T06:30:44.000Z

Eating clay is more an additive behavior, almost a drug though I doubt clay would be a happy drug in game.

Slax · 2016-07-02T14:47:13.000Z

Wear diapers to receive mineral goodies. And poo. Mostly poo.
“This is a plutonium gallstone. Your body somehow produced this. It glows green…”

Oh dear.

Soyweiser · 2016-07-02T18:41:59.000Z

WIndburns:

Eating clay is more an additive behavior, almost a drug though I doubt clay would be a happy drug in game.

A while back there was a post by some silly ‘living naturally’ person who drank a lot of water mixed with clay for the ‘cleansing’ benefits (According to clay drinkers it is not only healthy, but also curses: cancer, meningitis, hernia, and even broken bones). Nutritionists responded by saying that is was a pretty bad idea. Putting more pressure on your liver and kidneys etc. And actually draining your body of vitamins. And reducing your total hunger feeling but causing malnutrition (same as eating cotton balls (which some people with anorexia do)).

The actual news article was in dutch.

So it isn’t that good of an idea.

Now eating soil infused with the ooze, or fungus, that might be a better plan. (If you have the correct mutations).

Arek_PL · 2016-07-02T19:50:30.000Z

eating soil infested by fungaloids sounds like some logical solution in desperate times, even more than eating zombie meat (during gameplay zombie meat is better choice when you have only rotten food)

for all soil maybe some worm mutation tree? burrow ability what later allow to collect minerals and even more latter allow for tunelling what allow to get minerals and move around undetected

of course at start burrowing will make you almost blind but latter it should allow to detect targets on earth without seeing them

this will create new gameplay options and it will give partial invisibility for mutants (burrowing targets are invisible until you are right next to them)

i think i made huge deraill of thread