Food
Food are a category of Items which are created from Ingredients at a 
Campfire, 
Cooking Pot, or 
Electric Kitchen. Food can be consumed by Players or Pals to restore Hunger and Sanity.
Food items generally provide much higher Nutrition and Sanity when consumed than Ingredients, and generally last longer before perishing.
Higher tier foods can provide useful buffs to both players and Pals, but only one at a time. Eating a food that provides a second buff will override the first buff.
Overview
Food and Nutrition are closely-tied mechanics, often collectively referred to as "Hunger" or "Satiety". Managing this is required to regenerate health and keep the sanity of your Pals high.
The food level of your character and Pals slowly drop over time. You can replenish your food by opening your inventory, right-clicking on a food, and then clicking on your character or a Pal in your party. Pals at your base can also increase their food bar by eating food from a Feed Box.
Pals that are starving tend to sleep instead of eat. Sleeping will regenerate health, but they will continue starving when they wake up again unless they eat.
When your food bar drops past halfway, you will receive a "Hungry" status as a warning. If you or your Pal's food bar reaches 0, they will get a "Starving" status and their health will slowly decrease until it reaches 1. It is currently not possible to die of starvation, but your health will not recover until you eat something.
To prevent getting your character or Pals hungry, consider investing in researching a Feed Bag. This lets you put food into a different slot in your inventory and everyone will automatically refill their hunger bar. Pals that are out of their ball can't use this feed bag, so they may get hungry while mounting them for long amounts of time.
Getting food
For a list of consumable food items, see Ingredients
Food can be gathered from the wild (Red Berries), farmed (Berry Plantation), or harvested by catching or killing Pals that drop meat.
Cake is a special food item which requires a very high Workload to create, but is the only Food which can be used when Breeding to produce Pal Eggs.
Food Spoilage
Upon acquiring a food item, a set timer counting in minutes:seconds is overlaid onto the food item's icon in the player's inventory. Once this timer reaches 00:00, the food item will disappear from the inventory, representing that the food item has spoiled/gone bad.
If there are multiples of the same food item, they will degrade one at a time, with the timer resetting back to its original value with every instance that expires. Eating or feeding a Pal a food item that still has multiples remaining in the inventory will also reset this timer. Dividing the total amount will cause the new batch of the food item in question to start a new separate timer for itself upon being placed somewhere else, that begins at whatever time was left from the original batch upon splitting. If the new batch is merged with another batch of the same food item, the timer with the lesser amount of time left will take priority in replacing both upon merging batches. If the player drops the food item from their inventory, then picks up a new batch of the same food item from somewhere else, before going back to pick up the original batch, the timer will reset to that of the new batch.
Ingredients can be cooked to increase their nutritional value and lifespan before they spoil.
Placing food in a Cooler Box or Refrigerator will vastly extend the spoiling timer, with the extended duration being dependent on the Cooling work skill level of the Pal tasked to it. If possible, do not store your perishables in a regular storage box!
Cakes placed in the Breeding Farm's dedicated chest will not have a spoiling timer/have their timer removed unless taken out again.
Other info
- Some foods like Cotton Candy can directly increase a Pal's sanity.
- Some Pals can have certain natures that cause their food meter to degrade slower (such as "Diet Lover") or faster (such as "Glutton").
History
- 0.1.2.0
- Introduced.
