Spices and seasoning: improving meals

[AllenWL 186]

This is an idea that has been bouncing around in my head for a while.

 

I recently started meal-making, and I found that making a non-poor meal was a annoying thing.

For one, it takes a lot of bowls. For another, it takes a lot of ingredients.

 

After spam-making around 20~30 terrible meals for the soul purpose of getting my cooking skills up, and going through tons of bowls, mutton, and maize, I got sick of tediously grinding away to up my cooking skills to get a non-poor meal

 

So I got an idea. What if we could add spices and seasoning to improve a meal's taste?

Basically, we would have a few spice/seasonings such as pepper, rosemary, bay leaves, salt(yes, we have salt, I felt like putting it here anyways[shrugs]), pepper, ginger, etc

 

we would use the meal-making interface, but instead of the bowl, we put the meal in the slot, the add the spices, the click the 'create meal' button.

There would be a chance for the meal to get better(by two grades at most) or worse(by one grade at worst), which would be complealey random, just like the meal-making system

 

I'd like to hear your opinions on this.

 

P.S it's 11:55.PM(ish) here, so I'm half-asleep and I can hardly see straight.

If I made a mistake, well.... sorry about that

[kaldskryke 27]

I'm a bit conflicted on spices. I think it would be neat to find super-rare plants that can dramatically improve cooking, but they have to function distinctly differently from other crops in order to be interesting or worth the time.

 

If the meal system remains how it currently is (ie random) then a chance to improve quality is nice but what would differentiate the different spices? According to your suggestion it looks like we'd go from 4-ingredient randomness to 5-ingredient randomness, which isn't really changing anything afterall.

 

For spices to be useful, I think the whole meal system would need to change. Bioxx might already be interested in changing things up. Perhaps we'll have to wait and see.

[Atharsea 13]

I enjoy exploring to collect all the different plants, so I'm biased towards adding spices.  I'd rather see an optional "spice slot" that can throw the balance towards a better tasting meal than using the meal interface twice. The addition of herbs could be paired with the ability to create medicines, since many herbs also have those properties.  Plants like ginger and mint could be used to make teas to warm up.  

 

Perhaps one way to integrate spices in a revamp of the meal system would be to offer more ways to create different types of meals - for example a soup/stew might be made in a cauldron of water over a fire. The soup might require an herb/spice, and take 3-6 types of food in 2 categories.  Bowls could be filled from the cauldron. The soup would start out hot, have the ability to warm the player and multiple meals could be ladled from the same pot. Being able to quickly scoop a meal up and feed multiple people would be balanced by the stew being unable to fill all nutrients in a single dish.

[AllenWL 186]

  I'd rather see an optional "spice slot" that can throw the balance towards a better tasting meal than using the meal interface twice. 

Tried to make do with what we have, but having a slot for spices when making the meal itself is not a bad idea.

In fact, it's a great idea. It would also mean you can only put one spice per meal... hmm, I'll have to think about that a bit more

 

 According to your suggestion it looks like we'd go from 4-ingredient randomness to 5-ingredient randomness, which isn't really changing anything afterall.

not really.

From what I can tell, the meal system works like this.

There are two types of recipes, a 'terrible' recipe, and a 'non-terrible' recipe.

Whether the non-terrible meal would be poor, or great, or fine, or whatever depends on your cooking skills.

 

So when you are starting out with a cooking skill of 0, until you get a high enough cooking skill, poor meals are the best you can make.

And from my experience, even 20ish meals later, you won't make much other then poor meals.

This means that to get a non-terrible, non-poor meal, you need to make tons of meals, which in my opinion, is a wast of food and wood.

 

What I'm suggestion is adding seasoning to food for a chance to make the food better.

 

Something like this:

Let's say I have a cooking skill of 10.

I would only be able to make poor meals, right?

But if I add spices, I have a chance of turning my poor meal into a fine meal, something I won't be able to get with mealmaking alone.

Or lets say I don't have ingredients for a non-terrible meal, but I want a saturation boost because I'm going to fight some mobs.

I could make a terrible meal, then upgrade it to a poor meal with spices to get a saturation boost from that.

 

 

but what would differentiate the different spices?

Haven't thought of that yet, but I'm entertaining ideas about spices adding other boosts to foods(say, a slight increase in body temp[when we get it], healing, a slight regen-effect, a strength boost, extra saturation, additional chance to improve meal taste again, etc) and spices boosting meal taste depending on what ingredients are in the meal(for example, rosemary works well with meals with meat in it, but not as well with meals that have fruits[or something like that])

[Visitor 36]

I like the idea of Atharsea of a slot or two more in the cooking interface where player could put spices (or salt, as it would work here well as well) to improve the overall taste of the meal without changing it's nutrition value, as well as reusing the same UI and mechanics for herbalism and natural medicine potions/tinctures/etc as a new feature (a thing which I believe I suggested myself in the past).

Most seasonings should be somewhat rare, though, but able to improve taste of nearly any meal.

Given that cooking is right now somewhat messed up, what's with everyone cooking rather inedible slush till they become master cooks - which thing I consider a bad idea - and how it is encouraging players to just grind said random slush for the sake of upgrading the skill (which is very much against what I consider TFC should be about), this suggestion in general I'd consider as very much worth an implementation.

However, effect of taste should be balanced then - while it should be much, much easier to make mediocre/bland/tastes-just-ok meal, even without use of salt or other seasonings, benefits from such meals should also be less powerful.

[mdtexeira 18]

I think to really make use of seasonings in a way that respects rarity, the whole cooking system would have to be redone.  I'd like to see cooking more like metallurgy, where there's timing involved, and maneuvers you can do.  Instead of using bowls, have a craftable pot or pan.  Each could have a different interface, with multiple inputs.  Cooking in a pot would be much easier, but would be harder to produce tasty food in the absence of salt and spices.  Cooking a pan would have more nuance (the addition of oil, either from plant or animal sources would be much appreciated) and require better managing of ingredients and timing.  For instance, you'd add the oil to the pan first, and then, when the oil is the right temperature, you could add some seeds (mustard, cumin, coriander) until those seeds get hot, making sure to add the next ingredient before they get TOO hot.  In essence, metallurgy is a mini-game, and I think it would be fun if cooking was too.  Ultimately, all the cookable foods would have to be reworked to include a 'cooking time' range.  Potatoes take a lot longer to cook than peppers, and also take a lot longer to overcook.  So, potatoes cooking range would be both wider and further along the total temporal range than peppers.  

 

Of course, herbs are another matter.  Some herbs are easily grown, and make almost any unseasoned dish taste more palatable.

[landryx 36]

i'm very into this and i think bioxx already thought about something. But what I know is that there already a metal and ceramic bowl planned in futur build for those who found annoying to always make wooden ones.

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

You know it's funny, I actually had this very same idea after watching Pakratt's TFC Tuesday stream a few weeks ago. I told Dunk and he seemed really on board with it, but then Bioxx gave it the big stamp of disapproval. :/

 

Still though, perhaps he'd find favor with a different implementation we could come up with here...

[Necoxus 54]

The spices would need to be hard to obtain, maybe only thru a trade with villagers or just a rare thing to spawn in the world. Maybe even need a ok level at agriculture to grow them.(something low like 10 or 15) I also think better cooking itself could be done, like maybe you could take pork and cut it into raw bacon, that could be caramelized in a special ban to get special caramelized bacon(could still be cooked in a fire pit, but won't be as good). They could even add a new taste tab(like nutrition, or the calendar) but it random with every player and it can change slowly, for example you eat lots of spicy food to get the saturation boost, but over time your players liking for that taste could decrease or even become hated, and you would lose that boost.

 

Also one thing I MUST point out because to bugs me, potatoes are NOT a vegetable its a starch, I would very much like this to be corrected.

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Also one thing I MUST point out because to bugs me, potatoes are NOT a vegetable its a starch, I would very much like this to be corrected.

 

The food are categorized by what the average person would put them in. If you go out on the street and poll 100 people "Are potatoes a fruit, grain, vegetable, dairy or protein?" the majority vote is going to be for vegetables.

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

The spices would need to be hard to obtain, maybe only thru a trade with villagers or just a rare thing to spawn in the world. Maybe even need a ok level at agriculture to grow them.(something low like 10 or 15) I also think better cooking itself could be done, like maybe you could take pork and cut it into raw bacon, that could be caramelized in a special ban to get special caramelized bacon(could still be cooked in a fire pit, but won't be as good). They could even add a new taste tab(like nutrition, or the calendar) but it random with every player and it can change slowly, for example you eat lots of spicy food to get the saturation boost, but over time your players liking for that taste could decrease or even become hated, and you would lose that boost.

 

Also one thing I MUST point out because to bugs me, potatoes are NOT a vegetable its a starch, I would very much like this to be corrected.

 

Starches such as potatoes and yams do, in fact, count as vegetables. They are an edible part of a plant, that is not part of the seed or fruiting body thereof - that is what a vegetable is, by definition.

[Necoxus 54]

Starches such as potatoes and yams do, in fact, count as vegetables. They are an edible part of a plant, that is not part of the seed or fruiting body thereof - that is what a vegetable is, by definition

 

Ok I understand your point, my problem comes from the my liking for the culinary arts.

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

Ok I understand your point, my problem comes from the my liking for the culinary arts.

 

Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.

Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

 

-Some guy

[Kittychanley 1,002]

Miles Kington, and that quote is actually already on the food page of the wiki.

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Food

 

While some foods are biologically different from their categories (tomatoes are actually a fruit), they have been placed in the category that is typically used by society. "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit, wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad." ― Miles Kington

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

Miles Kington, and that quote is actually already on the food page of the wiki.

 

http://wiki.terrafirmacraft.com/Food

 

Ah, perfect.

Thank you, kitty.

 

leaving my other post unedited for comedic effect

[AllenWL 186]

The spices would need to be hard to obtain, maybe only thru a trade with villagers or just a rare thing to spawn in the world. Maybe even need a ok level at agriculture to grow them.(something low like 10 or 15)

I say just give them very tricky temp/rainfall requirements, and make them die more easily than normal crops(say, dies at temp 10 degrees, or dies if there is no nutrition it needs in the dirt, etc) 

[TonyLiberatto 364]

I like the idea of seasoning the meals with herbs and salt.

I would add to have a different way to plant then. 

I know in real life you can have a vegetable garden on the soil and include herbs but for gameplay purposes we could make it so once seeds are obtained we would need to plant then in some kind of pot just to have a different mechanic to the production of herbs.

I really like the idea of improving the meal quality by adding seasoning.( one or two slots )