Survival Hunger Meter

So far I've managed to stay alive and not starve to death. But it seems that you have to eat way to much. I'm so focused on getting food that I've barely time to do anything else. Just got a small farm going and we will see how farming is with 1.0. Maybe CF could tone down the eating requirement. and make more food stackable (don't want a mod to do it). I really haven't looked into all the mods available but I prefer to avoid them in case of bugs.
Been playing this game quite sometime and it feels a little more polished and the binge eating requirement is my only real complaint so far.

 

The hunger meter does decay pretty quick. I'm on the fence as to whether it's fine or needs tweaking. Farming I find to be pretty "meh" in terms of benefit per slot. I've found that spending a couple minutes hunting with spears/bows makes short work of building up food supply, but stackable food in general would definitely be an improvement.

 

I recommend finding several rice crops and making boiled rice. It is the best early game easy to get food i found. Then you can use pearlpea and combine it with rice to make risoto, i'm still using it. Farm about 10 crops of rice and pearlpea, store your risoto in a fridge and you should not have troubles anymore. Huge tip : store every seed you find, they are extremely precious.

 

I wouldn't say I've had any problems yet. Just find myself having to eat a lot. As far as seeds go. I save every seed (my seed collection before the 1.0 wipe was insane). I've got over 120 hours while waiting for 1.0 to drop. Just getting used to the new mechanics. Some things feel the same really. So it's not to hard to get going again. Just have to get used to the hunger factor. I will try the risoto and I think potatoes might be good. Also use to make a lot of break. Wheat seemed to grow pretty fast if I remember right.

 

Are you eating the food uncooked? the hunger bar will not go up very high if you are doing that.

 

I am currently using this page of the wiki : http://starbounder.org/Food

Everything you want to know about every possible food in the game. Fun fact, in starbound the most sustaining meals are hamburger, cheeseburger and the best of all, pizza.

 

Believe it or not but, the hunger bar depleted considerably faster only but, a few builds ago. Like crazy fast.

Quality of food has a large impact, there are exceptionally nourishing meals that can more than fill your bar from empty with only one serving, like shepherd's pies. it's really not meant to be a system about spamming carrots but, actually being thoughtful about the food you make and bring along with you. Bandages are for spamming

Really though, the biggest shortcoming with most 'survival' games is that they over simplify and try to get by using only a hunger/ satiation/ fullness meter. Hunger does not kill people, starvation does. there should be two meters; the first one being your capacity to ingest food--how much you can eat before you explode and the second one tracking the over all nutritional quality of what you eat. eat a bunch of junk and it slowly drains, eat good, nutritious foods and slowly improves. let it run out and you have died of starvation/ malnutrition. keep it high and enjoy help buffs. it's not an incredibly complex idea but, it's the difference between night and day in practice.

 

I hate it! So far, in Survival Mode, my character has died of starvation at least 3 times, maybe more. For me, that makes death by starvation more common than any other cause. To be fair, though, I didn't realize that hunger was going to be such a huge issue. So, when I initially started playing, I went about exploring and mining ores. (I knew that I needed raw materials to make anything.)

Keep in mind: I haven't played regularly since 2014. And I never got around to trying Nightly or even Unstable. So, I was not at all prepared for this hunger/food insanity. Back in 2014 the game did have hunger, but it was not overwhelming. And we did not have food rot. Actually, it was pretty easy to stay fed because all the animals we encountered had a good chance to drop meat if killed with a hunting-type weapon.

Here's why I think starvation is such a big problem in Survival Mode:

1) The biggest problem is how common the Gleap, Nutmidge, and Poptop are in Garden biomes. They very nearly crowd out the random monsters by sheer number! Neither the Gleap nor Nutmidge will drop meat (Raw Steak), even with a Hunting Bow. And, starting out, a new character can starve to death waiting for their first crops to grow. (Also, because the majority of monsters are these three instead of the randomly generated ones, it makes these worlds rather uninteresting and predictable.)

To compound this problem, because the Gleap and Nutmidge are so prolific, I have to fight them constantly. As a consequence, I have less time to tend to my garden, hunt for food, or do anything else.

BTW: Not even the Mandraflora that spawn on my Garden world will drop Raw Steak. (Actually, they never seem to drop anything at all...) And even when I find a monster that will drop meat with a Hunting Bow, it drops meat only rarely. More often, it will drop a Leather or something else. Also, the Hunting Bow is so weak that it's quite the challenge. And I can't get a Tungsten Hunting Bow until I find some Tungsten.

Once I learned about the Hunting Spear, I started using them. They are very effective and cheap to produce. Though, they're only one-use.

2) I have wheat... but no way to eat it? I managed to find quite a bit of wheat on the surface of my starting world. I have the seeds and it grows fast. But, I can't turn it into bread or any other food without a Kitchen Counter. Crafting a Kitchen Counter is impossible without an Engineer's Table. And upgrading an Inventor's Table to an Engineer's Table is impossible without 10 Tungsten Bars. So far, I haven't been able to find any Tungsten. And I have been doing some mining, despite having to spend most of my time tending a garden and hunting for nearly non-existant monsters that actually drop meat.

3) Wild plants will not regrow their produce? Initially, I did not know this. As I expected them to regrow, I did not put high priority on starting a garden.

4) Plants need to be watered almost constantly? How can anyone go off to mine or find stuff if they have to stick around their garden almost 24/7 to make sure they stay watered?

As such, I'm having to spend most of my time just trying to stay alive. Personally, I think Survival Mode plays like Hardcore Mode should, minus the permanent death. It does not play like my experience with Starbound in 2014.

If I had my way, nearly all monsters on a Garden world would drop meat. And most creatures would have at least a small chance to drop meat regardless of the weapon used.

My solution: Mods. I simply can't play without various mods which tweak things like food rot, food stacking, and - most importantly - drastically reducing the hordes of Gleap, Nutmidge, and Poptop on starting worlds.

Thing is: Creating a fridge requires an Industrial Workbench, Tungsten Bar, Cryonic Extract, and a Battery. Those are not exactly early game accessable. I haven't even been able to find any Tungsten. Nor have I found any Titanium for the Industrial Workbench. Heck, so far, I can't even find enough Iron for my needs.

 

Rain can water your crops for you if you leave an open roof. I just re water my farm after i harvest all my crops and everything always grows back without any more watering. But soon or later you will have access to sprinklers which do the job automatically.

You can simply steal a fridge in some village, dungeon or whatever. But before you get a fridge, you can manage your food without stocking cooked meals : simply use rice (which stacks when it is uncooked) and keep like 5 boiled rice meals with you so you are sure you will eat it before it rots.

 

Surviving starvation in this game is hard, very hard, if you don't cook your food. Food cooked in campfire is somewhat better, but those basic dishes only restore 1/4 of you hunger bar.

But once you've unlocked higher tier recipes with the basic cooking table (or just carry food on you to use the one in Outpost, free of charge), your higher tier food will restore a lot of your hunger bars (my food currently restore a little bit more than half).

TL;DR
Cook your food, unlock higher tier food, use that free cooking counter in outpost if you don't wanna make one yourself.

 

After the first time my character died of starvation, I was a lot more worried about it. And I learned pretty quick that cooking food in a campfire helps quite a bit. However, even after cooking my tomatoes, potatoes, and pearlpea, I was still running out of food before I knew it. Cooking in a campfire, alone, is really not that big of a help as such basic cooked food only replenishes a little and the hunger bar decreases much too fast.

As I explained, I can't! I can't prepare higher tier food recipes without a Kitchen Counter. And I can't craft a Kitchen Counter until I find myself 10 bars of Tungsten for the Engineer's Table.

We can get access to a Kitchen Counter at the Outpost?! Well, okay then. I haven't been to the Outpost yet. But it would have been nice to know this before having to struggle so long just to stay alive. Even so, it's pretty inconvenient that I can't find the Tungsten to craft my own.

 

Hm maybe food is not your biggest problem, why is it so hard to get tungsten ? you can dig and get some ore without having to deal with mobs if you are cautious.

 

or just buy it from Ursa Miner (presuming you have pixels and have unlocked them) I had cotton on my starting planet so, it's what I did.

 

I suspected my lack of Tungsten and Titanium was due to Frackin Universe. But I asked about that. The author's reply:

So, my reasoning stands: As things are, it is too difficult to avoid starvation with a new character on a Garden world because, without any access to Tungsten, we can't craft even a basic wood Kitchen Counter. It's ridiculous to require Tungsten for that, if you think about it.

That said, my short supply of Copper and Iron was due to the Frackin mod and that was only very recently fixed.

That is one solution. But it's not at all obvious, especially if one's Gate to the Outpost happens to be located as far away from one's start location as is randomly possible. Personally, it feels more like a workaround than a common-sense play strategy.

 

It is difficult to avoid starvation because you are not using items properly. Farm some rice, cook it with a campfire and you can avoid starvation forever.Then all you need is gather some fuel, go to some higher tier planet, mine the ores, get better food.

If you don't have access to rice because of a mod, consider playing vanilla ? It is not so hard.

 

Anyone feel like the hunger meter should be bigger? or is it just me lol

 

Hunger is so easy. How are you guys dying to it?

Do you guys use the hunting weapons or just rely on wild plants? I use hunting spears and steak fills up like a quarter meter. Four monster kills and you're set and hunting spears kill in 1-2 hits.

Do not rely on wild crops. I don't even farm. I get all my food needs just by killing monsters with hunting spears. Cook at a campfire

 

Originally, I was under the mistaken assumption that a farm plot had to be submerged in a bit of water for rice to grow (which would be hard to do with a new character). But then, I was also unaware that uncooked rice never spoils. I decided to grow Wheat, instead, because I had plenty of Wheat seed and I knew from prior experience that it should grow fast. Then I discovered it was impossible for a new character to use the Wheat for anything...

Again, such things are non-obvious to those who have little prior experience with recent builds of Starbound. Also, it goes against common sense. And I was trying to avoid cheating my way through the game with walkthroughs or wikis. No matter what kind of excuses one can give such frustrating quirks it doesn't change the fact that they're frustrating quirks to those who have to learn them the hard way.

Then there's the fact that I found a grand total of two rice seeds on my planet's surface And I don't believe I'm using any mod that would reduce the occurrence of rice (or any other Garden Biome crop).

Again, people are replying to my posts without fully reading them. I CAN'T rely on killing monsters for food on my starting planet because, for some reason, the majority of my monsters are Unique Monsters - mostly the plant-based Gleap and
Nutmidge, which NEVER drop meat.

 

you're complaining about an inability to build anything relevant when you're still on the first planet. i mean, did you really think you'd be perfectly set up before you even fix your ship enough to fly? yes, surviving in the very beginning of the game is going to be difficult because you're just some random guy or gal with a busted ship and a busted sword and a bag full of canned food. your first goal should always be -getting off the planet- because otherwise you'll always be fighting a losing battle because you've put yourself in a position in which you're trying to do stuff that you just don't have the tools for.

until you can actually make your fridge and gain access to more varied flora and fauna, you're gonna be stuck in the crappy early game hunger rut. that's why its such a glaring problem early game- because you need to fix that problem, not bemoan it.

eventually you'll have a flourishing farm and good stores of meat but you've gotta get yourself there, you know? hit the outpost, do the first mission, and once you can fly your ship around the solar system you'll be set to jet, trust me.

 

There should be plenty of meaty monsters at night then. Also the mines