Mwahaha
#BURG.L King Drive-thru
ripe idol
wide trench
You can see my full circle narrative of "I don't like meals, they're way too expensive and don't do much" to "Actually I'm really turning around on meals now" 😏
surreal hill
Tadpoloca Pudding: Utterly divine dish for pond exploration. It gives so much air when combined with the Bubble Helmet. 600 seconds when combined with the helmet and Merteen.
Paired with the Fin Flops and Merteen, you ZOOM. Like, too fast. Can't fight the spiders easily fast.
The only downside is the Mint Shard usage, but those are everywhere. The other ingredients are local.
Effect: 5/5
Accessibility: 5/5
Spaghettflea: This is literally just a worse Tadpoloca Pudding. Don't make this unless you're desperate for the effects or early game. But even then, you've likely progressed enough to the point where you can reliably get mint shards.
Effect: 2/5
Accessibility: 4/5.
Also, new rating on something.
Spider Slider: An old recipe made cheaper with the removal of the beehive nectar, by lowering the cost to a humble one nectar per slider. If you make a zipline across the pond and to the flowers, you've got a steady supply of the once rare ingredient. The Spider Slider offers a long-term Crit Chance+ and can easily be stockpiled. By far my most used dish now.
Effect: 5/5
Accessibility: 5/5
pulsar bay
huh
pulsar bay
You can see my full circle narrative of "I don't like meals, they're way too exp...
Fungospatch best meal
ripe idol
Nice spelling there Apecsh Prehdatohr
pulsar bay
Im not going to the wiki page just to search up the correct spelling
I will go to Burgonalds though
timid lion
Fungospatch is only meal I ever make, ingredients are way to easy to farm chests full compared to other meals
onyx grail
WTF @wide trench?
surreal hill
This thread has been started to both list and give personal ratings on the new food items. You can list em all with a rating of 1 to 5 with an optional summary or list one at a time. What matters is we can all compile them together into one thread and get a better understanding of each dish's usefulness, and see if we can't help balance the less than optimal ones. Enough rambling, it's dinner time!
wide trench
This is great, will add some here
Hedge cookbook, Spider Slider 3/5:
I like the crit chance on this one, similar to the other Hedge recipe for Larvagna. Berries and spider chunks are plentiful but I do think it's a really odd choice to include nectar (and 5 per meal) here since nectar isn't found anywhere close to the Hedge. If you raid the beehive you can get maybe 40 nectar at a time, which is low in terms of farming resources in prime spots -- so it isn't a meal you can very easily stock up for. I'd give it it a 3/5, in part because 5 nectar is expensive and because it doesn't have a unique effect compared to Larvagna despite being a higher tier.
Continuing the Hedge cookbook, Larvagna 3/5:
As you can see there isn't much noticeable difference between these two, which feels odd, and again there's a wildcard ingredient here that I feel devalues the usefulness. It's very easy to get Larva Spikes in high numbers and (at least pre-PTS) very easy to get plenty of Grub Goop around the Oak, but Fresh Billy Hog? That means you'd have to stock up on the fresh food spawns, of which some are in the Sandbox near two roaming antlions each. Again this doesn't feel too useful because you can't stock up on them in bulk easily (in my opinion) and though the benefits last a while, it doesn't really feel worth it to eat meals compared to just roasts 🤷 It feels like far less of a hassle to carry two aphid roasts on me than it does cook and eat a meal due to all the preparation, so I'd give this another 3/5. The benefits just don't feel they outweigh the cost of collecting the resources compared to normal eating and the ingredients are limiting imo
fleet garnet
Do you know if a tier 2 and tier 3 effect can be active at the same time?
wide trench
I can check right now, one sec
fleet garnet
I havent made even one meal lol. I find many of the meals other then wanting crit chance and a few others pointless
wide trench
Actually I moved all my meal ingredients to a different base 🙄
fleet garnet
Like bee or pond 1, you really dont need that speed idk bout yall but once I finished pond I was done with pond lol
wide trench
I have a pondside main base and pre-PTS, it was an amazing source of food from tadpole jerky (I could stock up on 40 - 50 jerky at a time, each counting as a full meal). Now with the jerky nerf, it feels like all of that setup and preparation has gone to waste because I can't make use of more then 3 roasts at a time, and a stack of jerky will come at the cost of my entire hydration bar
fleet garnet
Yeah idk, I just never found Pond meaning full
wide trench
Damn I actually don't have the ingredients to check for stacking effects 🙄 I'm always missing something but I think that kind of reinforces my point about nectar and fresh billy hog being too obscure of ingredients to make the meals useful. Sure they make sense as an ingredient from a cooking point of view, but from a gameplay point of it, feels like they thought "We have certain resources that don't get used in crafting enough, lets put them in as meal ingredients" and while that is nice because it adds to the usefulness of that ingredient, it doesn't elevate meals to be a mechanic that's very useful as a substitute for other food prep imo.
I like the idea of meals. I love that it makes the oven very useful and constantly used, and I actually really like that I can put a meal into the oven before I sleep or leave my base on some quest then have it ready by the time I come back. I don't like how they don't stack and how quickly they expire. I don't feel like the benefits outweigh the cost. If I could eat just one meal per day and never deplete my hunger? Then I'd make a meal every day. But the cost of cooking them alone is an extra arbitrary step that doesn't really feel gratifying to me to be spending so many ingredients on something that can so easily and quickly spoil in my inventory, seemingly at the same rate as roasts.
Now that roasts don't have a timer until you pick them off the roasting spit, why should I be cooking meals instead of just cooking two roasts and leaving one on the spit until I need it?
I think overall my first impressions on trying to use the meals is that:
- I love the idea and the puns in the names
- Feels great to have oven be used for so many different things now
- The meal costs themselves feel really imbalanced, to the point of me having to make an effort to make use of them. This devalues them a lot because they're completely optional, and overall I find it's far less a hassle to just eat roasts.
A few things I think would make meals far more meaningful/useful:
- Longer timers before expiration
- Ability to stack
- Full 24 hour effects
- More sensible meal prep costs. Hedge Cookbook feels like it should be based around ingredients in the Hedge, and etc. Most of the meal costs feel too steep and are cutting into resources I'd much rather put in other places
So if I'm endgame with absolutely nothing to do? Sure might as well use meals. But even at my current level in the PTS (all chip unlocks, massive base and resource stock) I already have a pretty tough time getting the resources for any given meal and when I can (unless quesadillantlion) then it's only enough for 5ish meals total
gusty scarab
Im eating funguspachio, its a tier II but keeps you full basically during daylight. Gives you +attack something... Not the best but works for me C: Easy to farm too, just red mushrooms, brown mushrooms and fungal growth, wich is extremely abundant now C:
wide trench
Funguspacho:
I think Fungaspacho and Quesadillantlion are the two best and most sensibly balanced meals
gusty scarab
I need to give quesadillantlion a try
wide trench
You might think it's weird that I say it's balanced:
What I mean by that is that the ingredients are all local to the Sandbox, which is great. It feels like a "local recipe" through and through, something that, if I were in a rush to get food, I could easily get by killing a single antlion, single black ant, and finding just 2 salt nuggets
gusty scarab
Looks easy to make too
wide trench
Once you finally get to the point of taking out antlions and build the armor/greatsword, the parts themselves begin piling up. Like here, I've spent a decent amount of time in the sandbox but I'm not actively trying to stock up on parts and I have 131 antlion parts, enough for 45+ meals
You get around 50 salt from the salt caves alone in a single sitting, and ant parts, when you need to farm them, you can get in massive numbers (though black ants are definitely tougher than reds). So I think this recipe is great -- I'd maybe cut the cost of antlion to 2 and salt down still, but moreso as a general "Meals are too resource-costly to begin with" point
Mac N Bees I think is a good counter-example:
6 Aphid Honeydew and 4 Acorn Bits which is 10 consumable items to create a single consumable? Why would I do this instead of just consuming the acorn bits and honeydew raw? It'll get me just as much if not more hunger replenished, and I've never needed fall defense as an effect before since we have gliders.
Omelant has an ant egg as a recipe which I don't think even exist as of now and even then means you literally cannot stock up on ingredients for it:
I can't have a chest full of ant eggs to throw an omelant into the oven at any given point. I have to purposefully go out and get an egg then come back and trade it out for a perishable consumable. I'm trading one timer for another timer
Miteloaf has common ingredients but why include a roast at all? I feel like I may as well just eat the roast:
Similarly to gnatchos, cute name but why not just eat the roast for practically the same hunger gain?
gusty scarab
and it spoils quicker than just raw meat
wide trench
If "Well Fed" gave me a far stronger buff then yeah I'd be into meals, but I hardly notice the effect as of right now, so whenever I do make an effort to make and use meals I still find myself eating roughly the same amount of food. In which case it feels like a sunken cost and I always think "I should've just eaten roasts instead"
I honestly have been trying to make use of and implement them, but the costs feel too steep, the timers too short, the effects aren't noticeable or strong enough, and overall it just seems like busywork around what's already a completely logical food and hunger system via alternatives like roasts 🤷
Taken from the patch notes:
Meals
-Can provide a "Well Fed" buff on top of hunger
-Prevents hunger from depleting for 8-20 minutes (real-time)
-Cannot stack in the inventory
-Can spoil
-Activates passive health regen
-Benefits scale with the tier of the meal:
--Tier 0
---Meal Duration: 8 Minutes
---Passive Regen: Half
---Number of Meal Effects: 0
--Tier 1
---Meal Duration: 12 Minutes
---Passive Regen: Normal
---Number of Meal Effects: 1
--Tier 2
---Meal Duration: 16 Minutes
---Passive Regen: x1.5
---Number of Meal Effects: 1
--Tier 3
---Meal Duration: 20 Minutes
---Passive Regen: Double
---Number of Meal Effects: 3
-Meals are obtained via "Cookbook" unlocks on BURG.L chips.
🤷 It feels like they're dancing around giving healing items by providing meals, and I don't really see the need. I'm often hungry at full health. Even though one of the meals can have multiple effects, it doesn't do anything unique, just sizzle protection (which you're already immune against with antlion armor and Fresh Defense, and don't have to worry about with just one of either)
They briefly prevent hunger from depleting, briefly boost passive regen, and more or less give you Fall Defense, Thorns, or Crit chance (all of which have a Mutation or armor set bonus equivalent accessible without meals)
They're too expensive to make 🤷 The effects aren't unique, so there's not much point in me using them instead of just equipping the perk, eating a roast, and ocassionally putting on Black Ant Armor if I needed thorns.
This is the first iteration of the mechanic as a whole as far as I know. I do love the idea and it makes sense to make non-edible resources into ingredients for meals, and maybe this is just the flagship first 6 or so of a total 20 with much more easily accessible Tier 0 meals coming down the line with far easier ingredients to work with. As of right now though, what we have doesn't feel viable to sustainably use without making farming runs every one or two days specifically to get one or two of the ingredients with rare exception
surreal hill
This was all a good read. I never knew you could raid nectar from the beehive.
wide trench
Hmmm...
Doing some more testing, and the passive regeneration really does show on Tier 2 and 3, actually.
So meals are a very decent way to restore health if you eat a Tier 2 meal then use one bandage, your health is ticking up and recovering once every few seconds.
Still seems a bit contextual because I don't really associate eating and healing as mechanics. My hunger and my HP bars are distinct, I don't usually have them in sync in order to need to recover both.
I do know Granola Bars heal a chunk instantly, but am pretty surprised in the HP recovery from the meal I just ate, I went from 15% health to fully recovered in maybe 30 seconds after eating a meal and using a bandage
Maybe I just have no idea how to play this game after all 🤷 Lol
surreal hill
I think all we need now are scores and summaries for the pond recipes.
torn path
we need some toadpoll sushi :P with the eelgrass
frank ermine
New meal system is still growing on me but after a chat with Rayman and having some success with the spider sliders I'm going to keep trying to get used to it. Finding it helps me to think of them as the Tier 1/2 versions of specific meal effects, rather than thinking of them by ingredients, since each meal effect seems to have a matching Tier 1 and Tier 2 version. If you want the increased critical hit effect, for example, you can choose whether you want to bake the (supposedly) cheaper Tier 1 version or the (supposedly) more expensive Tier 2 version for a longer duration and additional secondary benefit.
Assuming eventually we'll see Tier 3's of all of them too but at the moment the one Tier 3 recipe I have is still pretty impressive in the amount of effects it offers, plus the duration of those effects.
surreal hill
I kind of like Larvagna. It's a 4/5 for me. I mark all the Human Food locations, so it's a little RNG reliant, but it's a much cheaper crit booster than a spider slider.
If it's a 10% crit chance and it stacks with Coup de Grass, game changer. Crits for days.
surreal hill
Funguspacho, that could be a true top tier. Attack boosting is pretty great, and with farms, you only need to get the Fungal Growths. Easy to get with the haze update. Now I have to wonder if it stacks with Liquid Rage.
tawny pine
I feel like the larvagana is fine where it’s at because the billy hog makes it seem like a meaty lasagna
But honestly it would be better to make it grub meat instead
surreal hill
Not a bad idea. But that might make it too easy to make. What about tadpole meat to help steam it a bit?
You'd have to choose between using precious tadpole meat or making larvagna.
tawny pine
You'd have to choose between using precious tadpole meat or making larvagna.
True that works
But might I ask what does tadpole meat do
tawny pine
Just wanna say this recipe is outrageous for 6 aphid honeydew it seems kinda hard to get acorn bits and bee fuz because you cant trap them as easily and the acorns dont always give you bits but the aphid honeydew is outrageous imo i give it 2/5 because of the aphid and ofc the lack of cheese
wide trench
Seems that meals are meant to be used contextually, like a higher tier form of smoothies. The Tier 2/3 are definitely a great way to heal but yeah, trading 10 consumables for 1 consumable means that you essentially only benefit from Well Fed and passive regeneration in this one.
Bee fuzz and acorn bits are easy enough to farm. I still think it should be Billy Hog for Larvagna (not Fresh Billy Hog, or at least let us use either/or) but I don't think you're supposed to be eating a meal to replenish hunger every time, which is what my first impression was and why I was a bit harsh on rating them according to ease of getting the ingredients
tawny pine
Seems that meals are meant to be used contextually, like a higher tier form of s...
Makes sense I guess we would def have to see I will prolly make larvaga soon but we def need it to be any type of billy hog
wide trench
Spider Sliders and Larvagna are each relatively easy to make, but quesadillantlion and funguspacho seem to be the way to go if you need large amounts of meals. In any case looks like all meals require you go out and farm specifically for them unless you happen to have a giant stock of certain things like nectar, honeydew, etc. Quesadillantlion is all common stuff in the sandbox which is great, I suspect the Pond cookbook is going to be expanded a lot. I'd like if each cookbook had 4ish meals
I'd actually rather have like 20 generically-named meals (even if those names were placeholders) instead of the pretty small collection of witty-named ones we have now, just for the sake of balancing
surreal hill
Oh, why do meals have to spoil so fast? Wish they'd last more than a day.
torn path
Ye definitely since some use stuff that normally doesn’t even spoil
A 3 to 5 day timer would be perfect since you can get a couple than build or farm other stuff the other days
frank ermine
Spider Sliders and Larvagna are each relatively easy to make, but quesadillantli...
Speaking of meals in the sandbox, have the buried treasure chests always had a tier III meal in them? I got so many on my trial run this morning that I'm thinking you could easily live in the sandbox and eat quality meals daily without ever cooking for yourself...
surreal hill
I seem to only get Quesadillantlion meals. I'm not complaining. Sizzle protection and it's a T3 meal. It really is a top tier endgame. Local ingredients and the antlion parts pile up after you get Salty weapons going.
surreal hill
Well, this thread has all the fancy stuff that we can use as a basis to suggest ways to improve some recipes. I'm personally gonna let it archive. If anyone has any last minute things they wanna throw in here, you can. Otherwise, great input!
tawny pine
I mean I’ll make sure I keep up with and ideas I have with it but yeah let it archive just make sure it’s easily accessible
surreal hill
Unarchived for the sole purpose of the two new foods.
Black Ox Burger: Pretty expensive, but it makes you a tank. The choice to use Pupa Leather instead of the original Pupa Hides was a strange one, but the Black Ox Parts are the big thing here. This dish could help you kill more of them. Or survive in the upper yard better. Would be better if it worked on explosions.
Effect: 4/5
Accessibility: 3/5
Termite Delight: A little redundant once you make the Termite Chestplate. I guess it's good if you want to rock your current armor and mass harvest grass or rocks late-game. Not sure if it also applies to candies. If they do, big time-saver long-term for a cheap recipe. It's even Tier III, so it'll last you a while. I'm guessing it can be paired with the chestplate for even faster chopping and smashing. The only downside is it requires Dust Mite Fuzz.
Effect: 5/5
Accessibility: 4/5
I might be biased on the latter, as I'm a base builder.
surreal hill
I am hungry.