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Wayward

Ideas about food preservation.

125 posts in this topic

I have two ideas for food storage. Forgive me if they've been mentioned/discussed already.The first is the clay pot fridge. It's made from a large clay pot with a small one inside it, and the gap between them is filled with wet sand and a damp cloth is draped over the top. All you need to do is keep the sand and cloth damp so evaporation can keep the contents cool. Maybe the larger pot requires a special, larger, metal age kiln to be fired.The other is an ice box/cellar.Ice could be chiseled out during the winter, or from colder areas such as mountain tops. The chiseled ice would have different properties than normal ice and last much longer. The cellar would need to have a layer of dirt or stone around it, maybe two thick minimum to pass the "cellar" check. food stored in the room full of ice would decay much slower.I'd like to add more but time is limited at the moment.

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It would be interesting, and fun, to be able to collect ice blocks to line a storage room with, especially if the ice behaved in such a way as it would keep the ambient temperature down during summer, if you have enough of it in an area. Sort of like the ice houses they used to have before refrigerators were common. I could see the ice blocks behaving a bit like charcoal, instead of melting all at once, the ice shrinks slowly bit by bit, the block getting shorter as it melts away. For storage you have to have an enclosed room or building to have the lower ambient temperature.

 

As another idea, since we can create vinegar with barrels, and we can grind rock salt, perhaps a form of pickling. You have a barrel and fill it with vinegar, water, and salt, or just vinegar and salt, to make brine. Then you put whatever you are pickling in the brine, seal the barrel and wait. Then you have pickled vegetables or meats, which would last longer than salting, but would require they be left in the barrels to prevent decay. Having the pickled food being less nutritious, and having to store all those barrels, helps offset the longer, possibly indefinite, time that you could store food.

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Do vegetables on plants also decay? I doubt it right? Seems more tempting to not harvest anymore... Ofc winter may kill the crops but aside from that...

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Do you really wan't to do that? remember that crops take time to grow, so if you let them sit until you need to eat, then replant them, you could run out of food in-between harvests

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I'm going to suggest something obvious for food preservation : pickled vegetables and fruits. Simply combine vegetable and bottle of vinegar or brine (salt + water bottle) in crafting table to get pickled vegetable. For fruit you combine fruit with bottle water and piece of sugar to get pickled fruit. Pickled vegetables or fruit act same way as their normal counterparts or need to be crafted to get back the vegetable or fruit. You can only pickle 20oz of vegetables or fruit in one bottle. Pickled stuff lasts for 5x longer than normal. It could also be required to boil the bottles first before the preservation kicks in. 

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How about jam? jam is a good way to store fruits for a long time.

 

It'd give sugar a use as well

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Turning the fruit into jam isn't what gives it great preservative properties, it's the canning process, which would require seal-able glass jars as well as a method of boiling them.

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Um.... can't we say TFC glass bottles are seal-able, and boil them in a firepit/forge?

 

Say, craft a empty bottle, some fruit, and sugar together, then boil it over the forge/firepit.

It could have a randomized recipe like the meal system, and it would be a good source of fruit in early summer/spring as most fruits only can be gotten in late summer/fall

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I believe that the further you get into the game, the easier game mechanics should become. So some food should be allowed to be preserved in some fashion with the right tools (like being able to store food in snow/ice from the last winter). Just my thoughts... It would be kinda tiresome to still run around looking for fresh food once all other game challenges have been overcome (like achieving blue/red steel). The new game also gives a LOT of food from a single harvest/kill. It is almost blasphemous to let some of it go to waste ha ha. But feels like real life that does. :D

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I like the idea of pickling as it fits into the TFC world well with the barrels and has been around for a long time. Icehouses requiring a complex multiblock system and access to ice and snow could be a good idea too since they have been around since ancient times as well. Canning however, wasn't developed until the very end of the 18th century, long after the time frame of TFC.

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Since the adment of build 78, food itself is...a issue. With having either not enough food, or more importantly for this issue. TOO MUCH. (See. Go kill a pig -.-) 

 

Now on my first play-through my first and only source of food was Calamari (Which in itself is very, very minute) and a Venison. 12 inventory slots...of Venison. Even worse it only took about a week for that venison to very, very quickly begin to rot away...now I understand that early game 'stone age' nomads can't exactly salt their meats quite yet but the issue of not being able to preserve the food you gather is quite irritating.

 

I have two solutions.

 

1st - Drying

Drying foods was a huge part of prehistoric cultures, having not much access to salt's or other such preservation methods. (Or in this case Rock Salt rocks). The process would be very simple. Players would need to first use a knife on the meat of choice after they had stripped it of any rot. This would craft X amount of Raw {Meat} Strips. Which the player could then place on a drying rack. The Drying rack would be made by placing wood logs at least 2 spaces apart and right clicking the facing sides with some Reeds. Then you'd simply right click on the rack with the meat strips in hand, and they would be placed on the drying rack in 40 oz chunks. (Meaning you'd need 4 drying rack spots to dry a whole 160 oz.) This would delay the onset of rot, but not indefinatly, (I don't know how quickly rot compounds but I'd guess-timate that drying would reduce it by about 1/3 the usual time maybe a little more or less) 

 

2nd - Pickling. 

Pickling foods would involve either Brine or Vinegar which would preserve the foods for a much, much larger span of time. (aka taking say a item that would decay in 4 days raw to taking 2 months to decay pickled and exposed)

 

Players would first need to make a barrel of Vinegar which they would then place the meat or vegetables they wish to preserve and then would seal the barrel. Now unlike sealing normally, the containers would have the option to unseal instead of being completely UN-intractable. However unsealing would allow rot to onset at a normal pace, and would remove some of the Vinegar liquid from the barrel. This would be great for early bronze/iron age during the boom of agriculture and livestock breeding players would have at the time. 

 

I'm suggesting this but I have a hopeful feeling that it will be implemented. And saying it simply, something like this is bound to happen but I'm throwing in my two cents cause...of course if the issue of opening your chests only to find out that half of it is rotted to hell cause you forgot to cull the rot and its the middle of winter...you may just be wishing for a barrel of pickled deer meat to keep you alive. XD 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My current world is probably three months old. I couldn't tell you because some meal prep bug has it perma crashed. Anyway, I was still eating on the same deer I killed on day 1, without ever salting it. Based on your post, I think there are several things you may not know.

  • Rot is exponential. The more rotted something is, the faster the rot increases. 
  • You can remove rot with a knife. Put the meat and a knife in the crafting grid and take the output. Made easy by shift clicking food from inventory to grid, and grid back to inventory. Takes about 4 seconds to process 8 units of meat. As far as I can tell, this causes no durability hit to the knife.
  • Light increases the rate of rot. I put my excess meat, freshly cut of rot, into clay vessels. I then dug one hole down in my straw hut, placed the vessels in the hole, then covered it with straw. I took meat out only as I needed.
  • I'm guessing you know food stacks, but if you didn't... food stacks up to 160 oz. I know meat comes at 160 already, but as it rots it's good to consolidate.

Regards,

TT

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As stated in another thread by Kitty, only temperature affects the rate of decay (not storage, etc). So being in a jungle biome or close to the artic will have a significant effect on your food. Maybe the decay rate is exponential, so that is something to keep an eye on.

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Like stated, food of the same kind can be combined in a crafting grid up to 160 oz.

And for the 'go kill a pig', If I recall correctly, pigs dropped a ton of meat before as well(I think like 10~20).

It's just more noticeable now as food doesn't stack

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I like the pickling idea. Like salted meats, vegetables could have a "pickled" state that would decrease their decay. You could only put 160oz in a barrel at a time. Once the vegetables are picked, you would take them out of the barrel and put them in your inventory or chest.

 

In the winter, you might have to make due with salted meat and pickled vegetables for your nutrition and I like that idea. Good suggestion!

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in line with the drying thing, i would like to point out that smoking is an effective way of preserving meat, and generally makes it taste better.  also could be done early game

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Frank. You can already salt meat. Just fine some Rock Salt. Break it with a hammer (or quern it, I don't know exactly) and combine the salt with meat. Now that I say it, I would like to see way to make salt from sea.

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Frank. You can already salt meat. Just fine some Rock Salt. Break it with a hammer (or quern it, I don't know exactly) and combine the salt with meat. Now that I say it, I would like to see way to make salt from sea.

 

My post must not have been clear. I am salting meat in TFC. When I do so, the meat has a "salted" state.

 

I think a similar state for vegetables (i.e., "pickled") is a great suggestion.

 

I like the pickling idea. Like salted meats, vegetables could have a "pickled" state that would decrease their decay. You could only put 160oz in a barrel at a time. Once the vegetables are picked, you would take them out of the barrel and put them in your inventory or chest.

 

In the winter, you might have to make due with salted meat and pickled vegetables for your nutrition and I like that idea. Good suggestion!

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I'm going to suggest something obvious for food preservation : pickled vegetables and fruits. Simply combine vegetable and bottle of vinegar or brine (salt + water bottle) in crafting table to get pickled vegetable. For fruit you combine fruit with bottle water and piece of sugar to get pickled fruit. Pickled vegetables or fruit act same way as their normal counterparts or need to be crafted to get back the vegetable or fruit. You can only pickle 20oz of vegetables or fruit in one bottle. Pickled stuff lasts for 5x longer than normal. It could also be required to boil the bottles first before the preservation kicks in. 

 

 

I suggested the use of barrels since it would take time to craft, just as it does in the real world. It takes time for those delicious pickles to ferment! I'm glad though, I'm not the only one who thinks pickling would be useful!

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This idea has been pokin at my brain for a while now, so I decided to post it.

 

How it would work: There would be a new crop, called a cucumber. It would behave as a normal vegetable with seeds and all. You would be able to put them in a barrel to pickle them.

 

How pickling will work: When you put cucumbers in a barrel to make pickles, you would also have to put vinegar in it too. There would be vinegar to pickle ratio that you would have to follow to successfully make a batch of pickles. For every three pickles you put in the barrel, you would have to put in one  bucket of vinegar.

 

In case you have any more ideas or tweaks for this suggestion, feel free to comment.

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Considering food no longer stacks beyond their weight value, I think that instead of the "for every three pickles" you should consider how many ounces of pickles any given amount of vinegar would pickle.

 

That said, I like the idea in general, it would give another use for vinegar and barrels in general and give you a way to preserve your food better (after all, you can pickle more than just cucumbers)

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This idea has been pokin at my brain for a while now, so I decided to post it.

 

How it would work: There would be a new crop, called a cucumber. It would behave as a normal vegetable with seeds and all. You would be able to put them in a barrel to pickle them.

 

How pickling will work: When you put cucumbers in a barrel to make pickles, you would also have to put vinegar in it too. There would be vinegar to pickle ratio that you would have to follow to successfully make a batch of pickles. For every three pickles you put in the barrel, you would have to put in one  bucket of vinegar.

 

In case you have any more ideas or tweaks for this suggestion, feel free to comment.

 

 

The only problem I have is pickles are not just made with cucumbers. I currently have a bucket of sauerkraut in the pantry, and some pickled zucchini relish in the fridge. ^.^  That said, if cucumber and herbs were added to the game, bread and butter or dill pickles would be pretty neat.

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I like the idea of drying food and smoking them. Dry food can last for a year or more and smoked meat and adding salt make them to last from six months to a year. The "downside" is that the food lose weight according to the water presented in that food (if meat has 40% of water, 100 oz of meat would yield 60 oz of smoked meat). With that in mind we can have dry vegetables and meat that not only reduce rooting, but also might stop it for some days/months (you can even have a preservation "level", the better you are the more free days/months you get). Here is the trick to balance it to an extend:

 

Vegetables are conformed mostly of water, you lose almost 80% or more of its weight if you dry them, but you keep some of its properties. You can say that a dried vegetable would lose 80% of its weight but "gain" 50~70% of its nutriment value (100 oz of a veggies has 100 points of "vegetable nourishment", 100 oz of dry veggies would have 150~170 points of nourishment, but to make 100 oz of dry food you need: 500 oz. of fresh veggies). The thing is that what you lose in weight you gain it in longevity. For dry veggies you might get from 6 moths to 1 year (affected by your preservation level) of no-spoiling (free days) and, after that that food start to root normally. With smoked meat you might have from 3 moths to 6 moths of free days and, if you smoke salted meat you get from 5 to 9 months of free days. Some cereals can be dried also, it can be done in the form of flour or, to keep it simple, as a dry grain.

 

Now, you can "easily" build a food drier and a smoker. For a smoker you can put 2 sticks over 2 stones (any kind) in your crafting box and open an UI similar to the grinding one where in one box you place a wood (for easiness any kind) and bowl of sliced meat meat (a knife, a bowl and meat in the crafting box) and lit the block. You can save some programming time and use the same smoker to dry also veggies and using the same recipe to generate sliced veggies to the mix.

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I'm particularly excited for sauerkraut.

 

Also, very important to note: Contrary to what some may believe, vinegar is in no way involved in the preparation of sauerkraut. To make sauerkraut, you shred cabbage and pack it with salt.

Simple as that.

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Well,I'm a TFC lover from Chinese mainland and this's the first time i start a topic in this forum.So there might be mistakes in my expression.I hope this will not make it difficult to convey my idea.

 

So, back to the topic.The idea of pickles comes from another guy in my country's forum, he meant that such devices&items can be add to the mod:

        1.pickles

        2.pickle jar to produce pickle, that is, put vegetable and a appropriate rate of salt into the jar and seal it.After a period of time--can be days or even a month in-game, the vegetable will turn to pickled ones, which can be preserved for a long time

        3.once u ate some pickle, u'll lose your thirst to some degree while u gain your hunger bar.isn't it realistic for u will fell thirsty after eating sth salty? :)

Edited by Kittychanley
Duplicate topic, merged into older existing one.
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