Roguelikes have a tradition of using survival mechanics like hunger and thirst to egg the player onward. The cultural importance of water in Qud makes thirst an interesting mechanic, but our previous hunger mechanic didn't quite meet our standards. We redesigned the hunger system and added a procedurally-driven cooking system. Our goal is to evoke the unique cultural role food plays in civilization and how that role is manifested in the strange and biodiverse world of Qud.
- After a day without eating, you become hungry (no penalty). After another day without eating, you become famished (-10 Quickness). Thirst is unchanged.
- The primary way to sate hunger now is to cook at a campfire. You can interact with campfires with the use key.
- As long as you aren't in combat, you can make camp (see your abilities screen). This starts a campfire.
- As long as you aren't in combat, you can whip up a basic meal at a campfire. This costs no resources and sates your hunger, even if you're famished.
- Occasionally, the meal you whip up is especially tasty and grants you a small bonus for the rest of the day.
- If you have special ingredients in your inventory, you'll occasionally use them when whipping up a meal. They grant dynamically-generated effects.
- You can eat up to three times before you are too full to eat, but only the first meal has the chance to be tasty. This three-meal cap is relevant for the Cooking and Gathering skill, described below.
- You can still eat food out of your inventory to supplement campfire cooking.
- Most foods are now snacks, which sate a few hours of hunger.
- Corpses count as full meals, but you can no longer bring yourself to eat them unless you're famished (or a carnivore...).
- If you eat corpses or raw meat, your hunger is sated, but you become ill for 12 hours.
- We removed auto-eat.
- Fresh food spoilage is coming later.
- Hunger status is ignored while traveling on the world map, as we assume you're cooking meals along the way.
- However, if you travel more than one world map tile, you'll be hungry when you come back down to a local map.
- Traveling overland is a bit more difficult now; lost rates have increased.
- Crossing the salt desert on the overland map takes much longer now in game time (and water consumption).
- We adjusted food quantities throughout the world to account for the new hunger system.
- You can learn Cooking and Gathering from the Kyakukyans.
- If you have Cooking and Gathering, you get three new options in the campfire menu: cook with ingredients, cook from a recipe, and preserve fresh foods.
- Cook with ingredients:
- Cooking a meal with ingredients bestows a dynamically-generated effect for the rest of the day.
- You can cook with up to two ingredients (three if you have the Spicer skill power).
- Cook from a recipe:
- We added handwritten recipes and procedurally-generated recipes.
- We added procedurally-generated cookbooks with procedurally-generated recipes.
- Cooking a meal from a recipe bestows a particular effect. You learn recipes from cookbooks or by performing the water ritual with NPCs.
- You can share recipes during the water ritual.
- Each village has a signature dish that its residents are willing to share in the water ritual. For example, share water with Mehmet or Elder Irudad to learn to cook Apple Matz.
- Preserve fresh foods:
- We added a whole bunch of cooking ingredients, with tiles and descriptions. In general, you create them by harvesting and butchering food, then preserving it at a campfire.
- We converted some existing foods and liquids into cooking ingredients. Some foods can be cooked fresh. (limbs? heads? faces?)
- We added kippers to the Stiltgrounds who sell preserved cooking ingredients. There's always a kipper tent in the southeast corner of the Stiltgrounds.
- We changed the sign used for Stiltgrounds honey merchants (it's a bee now) and made the old one (a bottle) the sign for kippers.
- The final Cooking and Gathering skill power is Carbide Chef.
- With Carbide Chef, whenever you gain a level or 5% of the time you explore a new map, you become inspired to cook a meal (lasts for two days). While inspired, the next time you cook a meal by choosing ingredients, you get a choice of three dynamically-generated effects to apply. You create a recipe for the chosen effect.
- Harvest Plants is now a toggleable passive power like Butcher Corpses.
- Plants, meat, and organs you harvest and butcher can now be preserved at campfires and turned into cooking ingredients.
- We adjusted all the harvestable and butcherable item frequencies to account for these changes.
- You'll occasionally harvest or butcher items that previously required the Master skills at a low rate.
- Ripe plants now appear as a different color than their non-ripe counterparts.
- Ripe plants now appear on the alt overlay if you have the Harvestry skill.
- We added some new harvestable and butcherable items.
- Carnivores can eat raw meat without getting sick.
- Carnivores don't need to be famished to eat meat.
- Raw meat and meals cooked with meat are especially tasty to carnivores (increased chance for small bonus).
- Carnivores get no satiation from non-meat foods and may get ill from eating them.
- Carnivores can't cook with plant ingredients.
- Removed the Ravenous defect.
- Updated the Fasting Way and Mind over Body skill powers to work with the new hunger system.
- Reduced the cost of Fasting Way, Conatus, and Mind over Body.
- We tweaked the caste and subtype starting skills to account for new cooking, harvestry, and butchery.
- Added a bunch of detail to the Wayfaring skill power descriptions.
- Made harvestable witchwood rarer.
- Added an option for auto-drink threshold.
- Gave Svenlainard some preserved cooking ingredients.
- Updated dreadroots' tile and harvest properties.
- Updated the following UIs: turret selection, mine selection, recharge cell selection, book depositing, cell replacement, and pick-one-item quest reward selection.
Below is the log for the changes from last week's beta patch.
