Frozen meat and Thawing


Docterrok

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Alright, this game is damn cold, now, this cold has beaten the living hell out of all of the survivors dwelling within her, but let us be able to use the blistering cold to our advantage. Hinterland, we should be able to freeze our meat. Now, frozen meat has one advantage, it won't spoil, however, cooking frozen meat will take WAY LONGER! This balancing it out, since it needs to be defrosted. Also, you can have your meat get freezer burn if it is frozen too long, making up to 30% of the meat inedible, this can apply to other things as well, thoughts?

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The meat I keep fridge/freezer ages a lot faster than the stuff I just went back and got out of the metal container at bottom of the steps at Hibernia Processing plant.  And it's been there for 15+ game days it was still above 75% I think.  The stuff in the fridge/freezer drops lower much much faster.  

Which makes sense.  The trouble is good outdoor storage.  I don't think I want to just toss it all on my deck. ;)

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1 hour ago, jwcarlson said:

The meat I keep fridge/freezer ages a lot faster than the stuff I just went back and got out of the metal container at bottom of the steps at Hibernia Processing plant.  And it's been there for 15+ game days it was still above 75% I think.  The stuff in the fridge/freezer drops lower much much faster.  

Which makes sense.  The trouble is good outdoor storage.  I don't think I want to just toss it all on my deck. ;)

With the snow shelter being available; I think it should stand to reason that you should be able to make snow storage 1/2 cost of shelter 15kg storage about 6 days of good weather life bad weather about 4.

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On 1/6/2017 at 5:42 PM, Rolandtigerfish said:

With the snow shelter being available; I think it should stand to reason that you should be able to make snow storage 1/2 cost of shelter 15kg storage about 6 days of good weather life bad weather about 4.

This would be absolutely amazing, the mechanic is already there and it would require a constant effort to keep its condition up to make it worth it, that would be a good balance. Make food last longer at the expense of daily sticks and energies.

It would be even better if food left outside on the ground lured predators to your door (increased spawn rate) and got stolen by them (disappeared while you're sleeping/somewhere else), so it would make sense to make the effort of building the snow storage to keep your food safe.

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The question is: Does having stuff outside required to freeze actually add anything to the game? If meat we toss outside is going to freeze and have to be thawed as a mechanic, then so does everything else. That means every metal or plastic box, every backpack and corpse, every car... all that stuff has to now be susceptible to the freezing/thawing mechanic. Ultimately, that means most of that stuff will become unusable or losing a good % of calories when thawing due to burst containers. That then brings up the question of whether stuff we carry around in our backpacks is also susceptible to freezing, because it definitely would be if we're outside in the cold long enough. Do we really want to go down the road of having to deal with the food and water in our packs getting frozen? Do we really want to get into micromanaging that and finding a place to start a fire and thaw stuff every time we want to eat or drink?

Personally, I'm just happier to hand wave it. Having to deal with frozen food and water is just going to lead to exploitation of starvation/dehydration mechanics, which is definitely not desirable game play.

 

Edit: Having reasonable outdoor storage, such as a container or snow pit, rather than just tossing stuff on the ground; I'm all for that.

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But why, we have all the preservation we need. The rates the food decays at is set so as to not make the game ridiculously easy. In reality, canned goods wouldn't decay near as fast as they do in-game, but that has to be balanced.

Meat tossed outside lasts a really long time. The fastest decay rate for meat is actually before you even harvest it off the animal, so you always want to do that as soon as possible. If you really wanted to micromanage your meat, you'd harvest it as quickly as possible, store it outside raw until needed or it drops down to 60-70%, then cook it (bringing it back up to 100% or near) and store it outside. That's not necessary really though. Cooked meat left outside (starting around 100%) degrades so slowly that it will be easily, safely edible for in-game weeks.

Honestly, I thought your suggestion in the OP was a means to counter how absolutely easy it is to store meat for extended periods and have easy to grab food.

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On 2017-01-08 at 0:59 PM, SteelFire said:

That then brings up the question of whether stuff we carry around in our backpacks is also susceptible to freezing, because it definitely would be if we're outside in the cold long enough. Do we really want to go down the road of having to deal with the food and water in our packs getting frozen? Do we really want to get into micromanaging that and finding a place to start a fire and thaw stuff every time we want to eat or drink?

The interesting point here is that most of that stuff wouldn't freeze solid unless kept consistently cold. Most of the canned goods have enough salts and sugars in them to prevent freezing until well below zero. However, seeing as the game regularly hits -30 it is possible for even them to freeze if kept out in that.

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If I start storing my meat outside (just had a lot go bad in the freezer inside the cabin) will get eaten by wolfs or attract wolves?  

Rethinking my initial "support" for the idea.  I'm only at like 35 days on this current play-though and some of the meat that just went bad had to have been at least a week old... maybe more.  Putting it outside would likely make it last "forever" or near enough for the game.  We eat wild game meat from a deep freeze for over a year after we process it, so with most of the in-game temperatures I could see it being pretty accurate.  

You could use snow to cool down your freezer/fridge if your shelter has one.  Agree that a nicely constructed outdoor freezer to house your food would be a good addition.  

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10 minutes ago, jwcarlson said:

If I start storing my meat outside (just had a lot go bad in the freezer inside the cabin) will get eaten by wolfs or attract wolves?  

Nope.  Wolves (and bears) will never detect meat that they did not see you drop.

ADD: This can actually be confusing if ever you are being pursued by a wolf but happen to drop your meat at the same instance he cannot see you (for being behind a tree or rock or whatever) so he then walks right over what you think is a perfectly good bait set.

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When I was leveling up Harvesting I would take all wolves down to the bone and then just dump the infected meat back on the ground.

The corpses would disappear overnight but their flesh memorials stayed eternal.   Maybe I should have rearranged each of them into a "W"?

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