For an item that can be made with no skill whatsoever, using tools that are available from minute 1 in the game, using a resource that is ridiculously plentiful and renewable and takes only 5 minutes to prepare, cooked meat is one of the best items in its category.
For most other crafts, low level recipes produce something that you would normally replace as you get more skilled and have access to better tools and resources. As it stands with cooked meat, it is similar to having a recurve bow craftable at level 0 skill with a heavy stick and a piece of string, while the self bow requires a welder and some rebar.
Even thematically, I hardly think a mangled piece of unseasoned meat scorched over a makeshift fire in a cold cave can be more enjoyable and filling than a nice meal prepared by an experienced cook in a well stocked kitchen.
For now, other than roleplaying reasons, most of the work put into the food and cooking system seems like wasted effort to me.
It’s that morale bonus, on top of the hot food bonus, isn’t it.
I can see where the problem is balancewise compared to other food items. I think the reason it’s gotten this far is because that bonus is offsetting all the shit causing penalties in other areas of gameplay. Looking at food in isolation, yeah. It’s really good for how easy it is to make. In context though…
I mean, for me, cooked meat was the difference between slowly starving to death with a cold, stuck soaked from the rain all depressed as hell, unable to do literally anything because "why even bother", and being able to craft a blanket so I didn’t freeze trying to sleep off all the other problems. Apparently being in the rain and eating a bit of raw possum is so depressing the average survivor can’t build a fireplace to cook meat in the first place.
I wouldn’t be entirely against nerfing or removing the cooked meat bonus, and keeping just the hot food one. Could always find something to make it seasoned meat, like those delux versions of other recipes, and add a little bonus there instead. Still, I think this is an issue related to morale moreso than cooking tiers.
I agree with this. This has long been my major beef with the cooking profession. There is no point to craft the higher level recipes when such a high nutrition recipe is in infinite supply and craftable at level 0. I had a few ideas to make it more reasonable, like reducing the nutrition benefit, having meat cooked at a low skill have a chance to be undercooked and give a chance to poison or overcooked and a morale hit, or just in general increasing the chance to fail at it at low level (essentially the same as the second choice, but don’t give the player the option to eat it, eg: “Ugh, this meat is rock hard and blackened, I can’t eat that!”)
The simplest thing seems to be to just nerf the morale bonus, I think people see “cooked meat” and see a nice steak or something, justifying the high bonus, but in reality if you have minimal butchering ability there’s no telling what you’d get out of e.g. a rabbit corpse. It would probably be pretty terrible actually.
Preparing a meal can be a heavy task for an unexperienced individual in modern-day homes. The dangers involve toxic fumes and setting up the whole kitchen on fire. But here, it really isn’t about the danger around the pots and teacups - it’s about the hazards out there. If you have a tent and a fire like you ought to (in order to survive a challenging Cataclysm game) you should be able to keep yourself fed and hydrated yet troubled with the task result. That boiled chunk of flesh isn’t really rocket science, but you might not enjoy it as much as the present values suggest. Furthermore dealing with nutrition and preserving foods should be handled pretty much as anything else - you could get hurt using a two-hander +5, right, but the other guy’s pretty much proficient with it, isn’t he? So if you prepare a meal and keep it to yourself, there’s gonna be some trouble eating it again because it’s gonna be stale, funky and possibly spoiled because of its clueless owner.
To sum up, I wouldn’t increase difficulty with trivial tasks such as boiling water with some herbs and veggies, but I’d like to see prepared foods spoiling more rapidly whilst dropping “satisfaction” morale bonuses. On the other hand, wrapping up a very tasty sloppy burger is an effort, but being full so you don’t fall unconscious from malnutrition just isn’t.
What I would like to play is a character that gets primal about eating slaughtered animals off the ground; no better than a zombie really - only more dexterous when it comes to hunting.
@vache
That wouldn’t solve the perceived problem of having no point to high-level recipes. By the time you have the skill to craft said recipes, your blackened/undercooked variants will be phased out by high skill.
For me, I don’t really see it as an issue. Nailing a rabbit & cooking it up should give a huge morale bonus- you’re surviving an apocalypse. Better than oatmeal, that’s for sure, and if I can cook it into some spaghetti even better; that’s the high life of the cataclysm.
If spawns change in the future, it might get a bit rarer too.
Ya, the morale bonus is a bit OP. Maybe it should increase with your survival skill or something.
The moral system overall could use some work, some day. You don’t get the same enjoyment out of something you enjoy daily as you do with something you only get to enjoy every once in a while. And when you enjoy those once in a while things, the moral bonus should be a bit longer lasting. If you’ve managed to make yourself a hot spaghetti dinner with marinara sauce and parm cheese post-apocolypse, I feel like you’d be pretty happy about that for at least a week afterwards
I feel there should be some ground-level “cooked meat” variations that require a little more than a fire to prepare… As it stands now stabbing a one pound chunk of meat and cooking it for a little bit provides too much happiness for some lightly browned “meat” and for whatever reason, cooking it causes it to gain 30 nutrition.
As far as the “hot” bonus is concerned that should stay, having been in a situation where a cold burger was just too cold to eat despite being fully cooked I can confirm it makes a world of difference.
However if we are going to nerf cooked meat, we’re going to need some form of comphensation. EG You can choose to eat a hunk of cooked meat, or you can take thirty seconds to throw some ketchup on that bitch. (Is it possible to assign flags in the same way the liquid-draining bionic does?)
I’m not averse to a higher-skill “well-cooked meat”
Er, “meat”? Are you implying it’s not meat?
It gains nutrition because it’s easier to digest- rather than having to rip it apart, piece by piece, cooking it denatures the proteins & breaks up the cells.
…I should change that later… But no, I’m not but as it stands Cow, Chicken, Pig, Turkey, and some creatures of the deep and subspace specimens are all “meat” zombies, a few subspace specimens, a couple creatures of the deep are “Tainted meat” Humans, NPCs, and a few “other” mobs are “human flesh” while Triffids, Fungaloids, and a handful of other things are “Tainted veggies”
Hell, as it stands Apples and the other fruits as well as a great many junk foods are “veggy” also. But I don’t feel like doing a complete overhaul of the food system as is and I’m sure the people who are kind enough to grammar check my changes don’t want me to. XD
I do find it odd that sitting naked in the rain eating squirrel on a stick is a bigger morale boost than shooting up with heroin. I must admit, however, that I haven’t tried either.
(Or in other words, I’ve removed the morale boost from cooked meat, it’ll be in the next version of the foodstuffs expansion, assuming there are no complaints…)
Sitting naked in the rain eating cooked possum isn’t that enjoyable. You’ll have a Wet penalty. And Heroin gives you like +50. I would say remove the cooked meat morale bonus but then again I’m fine with it either way.
mainly i want good foods morale to be long lasting. an excellent meal should make me feel good all day. even if it was just plus 20, that would be enough to make complex cooking worth it.
