Forest Food "Over Abundance"

[TheZoneWizard]

Title sums things up. Been thinking about how nice it all looks rather than the practical nature of…uh…nature.

So When I kept getting hungry I would simply ignore the crap I had in my pack and go pick some fresh grown wild food. Now granted this only works when it is growing. But this is a substantial amount of wild food. You can walk a real mile through any new england forested area and unless you know exactly what you can eat. You would starve. Everything in the forest looks like everything else at a glance. The woods really isn’t friendly to those who have no knowledge of WHAT is edible.

edit: I almost forgot the main point of contention here; There is WAY to darn much wild food growing and this make no sense what so ever apart from testing purposes to what look alright for adding variety to the game. That aside it needs to be toned down to like 7% of what makes up the forests and many trees with food should even exist in the wild. We actually have laws about moving things into the wild.

On a side note if anyone wants a reasobly accurate book to know what is edible in which region of N America and Canada. Try this:

Edible Wild Plants: A North American Field Guide to Over 200 Natural Foods

There are a few other books and even a few that show the most common edible plants by region in a pamphlet format. Which could be used in game terms as “have in inventory to to see it without the skill level yet” kind of thing. Not sure if that can be coded. “if” not in inventory object remains hidden unless toon has high enough skill level. So an “if” in pack can show the edible plant to noobs without skill…am I explaining this correctly?

I’ll add this idea to the idea threads if this is possible. Feel free to add it if anyone wants too before I do.

[TheKobold]

I like the ideal of obfuscating plants. Though i woukd link it to survival skill.

[kevin.granade]

We’ve noticed, and that is what this is for:

[WIP] [CR] forage test functions

It’s a set of tests to determine how much food resources are available to the player, which can then drive tuning that number as desired.

[TheZoneWizard]

Thanks guys. Kinda forgot about this and I still like my idea. Perhaps the reason why I also made my Chef o’da Woods thread lol

Mind if I suggest a thing about nuts. The way they function at the moment where the player character can shell them and munch. It is reasonable to do this with most nuts. The hap hazard is the taste in most types of nut. It isn’t always the most healthy way to eat them either. But it won’t normally kill/poison an adult.

I’ve read other threads discussing specific wild veggies and plants and their interest in a wider range of them, beyond “Wild Vegetables”. The obfuscation idea could be fleshed out in more detail if that is the github end goal. A few ideas on this if I may.

Take that book I have here as a book(maybe a different name for copyright?) to be able to guide no skill/low level survival characters. The higher the level the less they need the book in inventory to forage accurately. Higher skill would provide a higher yield and a wider range of possible plants. The higher the skill could also remove obfuscation to see specific plants at a distance and know what to avoid. In place of searching every plant at lower level because they don’t know what they are.

If this hold any interest. Feel free to ask me any questions. I could try to think of something more specific for a framework if that needs help =)

[kevin.granade]

BTW, the biggest single change we identified via the tests is that pine nuts provide a shockingly good base level of calories.

It turns out that in reality, harvestable pine nuts don’t even appear on the west coast, but since the etting is an alternate reality earth I think that’s an “acceptable break from reality”.

[TheZoneWizard]

I think you meant East coast friend. But I understand =)

Pine nut

Technically they can be harvested in the north east like any other pine. We just don’t have a huge pine cone kind of tree that would make them something worth picking out of the cone. NE pine cones look thin and phallic. So if you consider standard pine nuts are small and those come from large pine cones. The NE kind would be rather pointless to forage for. I personally never bothered.

I do forage for Wintergreen. The other stuff I posted in my Chef o’da Woods thread =D
We also have tons of acorns. You can shell those and eat them…but unless you take out the tannin it should give a slight negative morale debuff. I can eatem. But if I had more than 15…I’d be a little grumpy. While they won’t kill you. They will probably make you crap something awful a few days later.

[Erk]

Y’know, reasonably, we could add a fake “wild vegetables” item that gives the player mild food poisoning and only gets harvested at low levels of survival skill. It annoys me that people with no wilderness skills at all can find wild greens to harvest.

[TheZoneWizard]

You mean when level 0-1? To assume this. The model could be to allow for the obfuscated plant that the Noob does not know what it is yet because it is hidden; get a wild card “Wild Vegetables” and it is actually poisonous?

Seems legit. Though in order for this to work. The Vegetables would have to be separated from Fruit. So, Wild Vegetables / Wild Fruit. Have each their own generic “poisonous wild card” for noobs.