simple food

[Mileaos2 15]

okay, when i join an older server, i mostly die from starvation.

like 15 times in a row, before ill get setup

to prevent that i suggest 3 types of regrowing, wild food sources, which help you survive your first days.

it shouldnt be too good, so sources like farming and animals arent useless.

the 3 types are:

flatbread, roots and mushrooms

 

first to go with the mushrooms:

thell respawn in fall each minecraft day, but slowly.

after a rainfall quite faster.

only in forest like biomes with trees in it.

those mushrooms could be eaten raw or in a meal.

 

second: roots:

you can dig them up in spring, summer fall and winter, but in winter its less common.

how?

new feature for a shovel: rightclicking on a grassblock provides a small chance, of lets say 5-10% for one root. (takes dura of the shovel)

the grassblock turns into a dirtblock by that (no farmland, normal dirt)

increased chance near trees or in forest like biomes

ofc you can eat them raw or use them in a meal

 

last, the flatbread:

its the most complex source, but provide the most filling effeckt.

hitting tall grass with a knife should bring you one tall grass item (like the vanilla tall grass, collected with a shear)

place 3 of them into you crafting grid alongside with an knife and you get 3x straw and 1x grass grain

3x grass grain + 1 stone into the crafting grid produces primitive flour

rightclicking on water with that flour produces simple dough

heat this dough in a firepit and you get flatbread

eatable and useable in meals

[Freza 0]

I like the idea of improving early game food options before you can make a crafting bench but I would suggest slightly different options.

 

Mushrooms - Yes please.

 

Root Vegetables - I would suggest just tweaking the current process slightly.  

• Potatoes, for example, take about 2.5 months to grow. In the spring it should be hard to get anything other than 'seeds' while in fall there should be an abundance of food.  
• In real life, it's easy to miss a seed potato or two when digging them up.  It would be really nice if, after a winter, a new potato plant would spring up in the location of an old one assuming the dirt hasn't been disturbed.  I have no idea if this is even possible but it would be nice.
• Like meat, potatoes should not be editable until after they are cooked.

Flat Bread - I also want to make flat bread.

• Instead of just using a stone in your crafting grid, I want to knap a mortar and then either use a 2nd rock for a pestle or knap a pestle also. Then they could be combined into a mortar & pestle which has durability like a knife.  Care would need to be taken to make sure it doesn't over power the quarn. Either it would take more grain to make the same amount of flour or the mortar & pestle can only make cracked grain.  You would need some way of adding water since you can't make a bucket yet but instead of right-clicking the water with flour, I would suggest right-click with a wooden bowl which could then be combined with the flourcracked grain to make the dough.

 

After writing all of this I noticed that you are explicitly talking about starting fresh on an old server where there is limited wild food available.  My suggested fix for that would be that every spring, wild chunks that have no wild food would have a chance to spawn new wild food.  How wild a chunk is could be an inverse of the spawn protection.

 

For myself, I used to die frequently of starvation in single player.  That finally stopped once I learned to not hit the zombies until I had good food supplies.

[Mileaos2 15]

well problem with your root suggestion is simply, that it takes a while and you can only harvest them once.

awell as your "regrowing wild stuff"

my ideas are working the whole time, thats the basic idea

you can harvest as much as you like, but this stuff doesnt fill you quite much. (it should take quite some time, so its no option forever)

but you dont have to wait for those food sources (well eccept the mushrooms)

 

regarding the mortar: jeah, i thought about bowl + stone ( would make sence) BUT it was intentionally, you have to use 3 tall grass, to get 1 grain and 3 grain for 1 flour, cuz you get alot tall grass, even on older servers

[starXephir 30]

I feel foraging is the main suggestion here. Like how Natura adds berry bushes for early-game food sources. Small berry bushes could appear in the wild, and roots or mushrooms could spring up at the base of trees during or after it rains. Really it would be like an extension to fruit trees. Providing a source of food with little player management. Only year-round and instantly accessible. It would be an appropriate inclusion. Given early game Hunter/Gatherer is a bit light on when it comes to gathering foods. That's not a bad thing though! Forces the player to progress into agriculture.

 

Grass is too prevalent to be a food source... You wouldn't need to hunt or forage, just mow some more grass.

 

Also I like the Mortar and Pestle relating to TFC in general. Herbarys, medicines, advanced foods (spices or salt dressings), a lot of things are possible.

[theJalden 21]

Grass is too prevalent to be a food source... You wouldn't need to hunt or forage, just mow some more grass.

 

I think that it may be a good idea later down the road to nerf getting seeds from tall grass.  It's already useful enough for getting straw.  If more gatherable foods are added, like the ones suggested in this thread the plan would be more viable.  I would definately like to see more plant based mechanics like gathering, brewing and herbalism in this mod. maybe for build 79, fingers crossed.

[Mileaos2 15]

the flatbread and other stuff shouldnt be too good (in form of filling effeckt) so its a better choise to start farming at some point

the idea behind the tall grass grain is, there is allways tall grass, so you can get some food in dire needs

but when you have acess to animals or farmland, its better to go with these.

because fruit trees, wild food and so on are completly gathered on older servers and you dont have acess to them. only choise is to hunt squids (if you find some) or die from starvation

and berry bushes wont be a difference in that point

and tall grass would be a sollution for that, newcomers could allways get some food, so they dont die like a million times

[starXephir 30]

Flat bread comes across as an add-on. A fix for the current early game.

 

If the updated and balanced with foraging, it should be 'easy enough' to get food. Flat bread would diminish a reason to develop foraging. Giving the player access to an almost universally present food source would almost trivialise that major part of the early game. Which you seem to have had plenty of awful run-ins with . I also don't see the point in making the player work so hard for a bad food stuff. By the time you've finished making your flat bread you'd be either gaining nearly nothing; Or flat bread is made semi-good, and if made in a batch, rather effective. Too effective for something you have so much excess of.

 

Starting out, even in a well developed server. If foraging is implemented correctly. You could set up near a forest and gather roots and mushrooms. Giving you a way of surviving when all the initial generation food sources are gone. Without removing the fear of starvation. Combine this with a river or beach, it should be easy enough to maintain your hunger. I find squid to be an excellent food source, even if calamari is a little ineffective. A great thing about foraging is that it is process-less. Maintaining gameflow similar to the current game.

 

If, what I would call, perfectly executed. The player would  forage while collecting rocks and gathering logs. Enough food to survive the first night and 2nd day by itself. Giving the player time to explore for new foraging and fishing locations. From there they can settle down, start a farm, rotate through food locations, and start building up slowly. Should the player get unlucky or spend their time ineffectively. Then they should start to stave and worry about food acquirement.

 

A side note about fishing:

Killing spiders is really easy in the game mornings. Hunt them down as soon as possible. Use thatch as defences. Between fishing and spiders you get plenty of EXP with little danger, as well as some food. Though it may take a couple of days to get a fishing rod. Once you have a rod, fish and calamari work good enough.

[Thrainn 2]

okay, when i join an older server, i mostly die from starvation.

like 15 times in a row, before ill get setup

to prevent that i suggest 3 types of regrowing, wild food sources, which help you survive your first days.

 

I like your suggestions very much, especially the flat bread. I seem to remember something about berry bushes planned? Not sure ...

 

But how you manage to die of starvation so often in the current version really is a mystery to me! You just find a pond or something or go to the beach - you could hunt squids aaall day long and have enough food for weeks! They spawn quite frequently and, honestly, already render farms quite useless, if used abundantly ...

[Kittychanley 1,002]

I seem to remember something about berry bushes planned? Not sure ...

 

Yes, I can confirm that there will be berry bushes in B78.

[Mileaos2 15]

berry bushes will be hard to obtain on older servers just like fruit trees (i promise that)

and i was hunting for squids. sometimes i was able to get some, sometimes not. and in winter, with ice... you can dig a hole, but when its freeze again youre dead

[Kittychanley 1,002]

You keep talking about problems from joining an established server. I have to ask why you aren't asking the established people on the server for help, when it comes to food? I would think it would be common knowledge that if you join an already established server, that it isn't very likely that you're going to get the whole experience that you would get starting in the stone age by yourself. If you don't want to ask for help, why aren't you travelling farther out to chunks that haven't been cleared out by the existing players? Although at that point, you might as well be playing single player if you're going to be so far away from everyone else.

[starXephir 30]

After posting in that bread-thread. I was reminded of something that would work with your suggestion of turning Grass into Flatbread suggestion.

You would still need to harvest a bunch of grass, but the results would not be guaranteed. Keeping some level of risk.

 

Indigenous Australians ground up seeds to make bread too. So maybe instead of grass seeds specifically, you can use any seeds to make 'seed flour'. Perhaps in the same way as Mileaos2 suggested. Which when cooked produces a 'seed cake'. An awful food source, but seeds are abundant once you have your farm sorted out, and thus need to be awful. In a pinch they would work just fine. Using them as a food source early game, or when you are lowly developed. The player is penalised in that they wont be able to use that seed for growing a better food item. Additionally it gives us a way of using all those god-damn seeds up!

 

With something like this I guess you wouldn't need roots or mushrooms (though they bring more life to the game). And it would be functional through-out the entire game. Where foraging is a bit iffty on game balance. Too good and it over takes farming (in so, so many ways it already would be, even if the harvested food was weak). Too weak, and it isn't work the time to program it.