decided to start a new character, picked one that allowed me to start in the warehouse of a military base… first off, i was not expecting the OVERABUNDANCE of literally everything in there… but something I noticed right off the bat was that there was spoilable food items in the bottom left of the warehouse…
now, i don’t know much about longevity of food items… but just google searching the name ‘shelf stable milk’ makes me feel like thats not a thing that should expire in 2 days when unopened. (it didnt have the ‘sealed’ trait like other items in the area have, like the canned pineapple that has a shelf life of 2 days.)
Edit: come to think of it… why is it that every ‘sealed’ can of food really only has a couple days shelf life?
I haven’t played experimental yet, but it used to be that the shelf life only started ticking AFTER the can is unsealed (opened). Not sure about the milk specifically, since you could use its portions in recipes without “unsealing” it, since it was a powder (I think?).
Anyway, the 2 days may just be what the milk would last at after rehydration.
Canned foods seem to stay stable for me, as does pudding and yogurt. bottled fruit juice, even marked sealed, was expiring on me. Not sure if proper behavior (yea it’ll turn rancid still) or edgecase and its still being hashed out.
But generally, as long as the container is marked sealed, it will stay fresh. The consume menu will communicate this by prefacing it with ‘Sealed’ and then whatever. I’ve been sitting on the same sealed thing of yogurt for probably 4 in game weeks, with a shelf life of 20 hours. Still labeled ‘Sealed Fresh’
specifically, i was noticing decay on cans of pineapple chunks, not sure if thats intentional considering its a fruit in sugar syrup basically… also noticed that salted fish was turning ‘old’ after a few days, even though it has a listed shelf life of 3 seasons.
but the milk, as i stated, its not sealed, its not powdered milk thats been rehydrated… its not even regular milk, its shelf stable milk, which should stay fresh if sealed for upwards of 6-9 months, real life time at least.
one would assume that a military base with military rations stockpiled in an unrefrigerated warehouse would make absolutely sure it would last as long as possible. (also, i’m absolutely sure that these containers were not already opened, considering i’m the only one in the warehouse and its a brand new generated world… who would systematicaly open 50 containers of milk and drink them down to 1 serving…)
of note, the process involved in making shelf stable milk also makes it taste /AWFUL/… which is why most people hold onto it for cooking purposes. similarly to condensed milk in cans or powdered milk.
Edit: and theres another example. pickled stuff, in jars, not sealed but should last upwards of 5-6 weeks if they’re in juice.
EditEdit: and now -this- is happening… the fire isnt going out even though there is no fuel in that spot. it seems like one fire goes out as it spreads to another tile, and then again and again, just because its so hot in that middle section… but theres no fuel there. interesting.
Someone who wanted to test if they all are still fresh?
Other than that, I think there are enough crazy people out there - gestures wildly at everything going on right now - who’d probably do that, let alone zombified/rioting ones …
But yes, it’s not likely.
Well, this can actually be explained logically… Assuming that they didn’t quickly put in fresh stuff just as the Cataclysm happened, this stuff might actually be “old”.
That explanation aside, the shelf life is also temperature dependent. Given your edit of a fire in the building, the heat from it might actually have sped up rot.
it was because a zombie with a flamethrower popped his tank… so yeah that makes sense, i kinda just let it burn.
but no, the old fish thing happened BEFORE the heat… about a day or two after i started. i’ve now made it to the armory of this airforce base and have everything from shotguns to rocket launchers… its a shame the two zombies AT the armory broke both my arms, so i guess I’m sitting around for a while.
… also, weird thought/thing i did… because the particular scenario i started only has 1 possible starting location… i actually created another character to run around and collect items while my first character was down (also to create the splints i needed… because my first character didnt have the survival skill to make splints… i knew i was forgetting something.), the second character gets diffrent zombie spawns in the same area, but the loot can be shared between the two, because same world.
… which made me wonder, if you make a static base where you started (in my case, this military base) and died on a particular character, then you still have all of your stuff when you restart a new character.
or, on a game where you died in the middle of nowhere, theres a chance you can stumble across your old dead body and stuff… which is neat.
…