[GUIDE] The Food Run: How the hell do I survive Starvation???

So ive seen a lot of people ask how to survive longer in this game when food is so scarce. The usual answer is not to worry and as you play and die more and more you will improve at staying alive. Others say kill every rabbit and pick every plant and tree. Still others just carry 12 light purification staffs and heal their way to a very unhealthy diet of magic and air like some never eating enlightened monk. The truth is its a little bit of all of these things done in just the right way. I hope this guide will give many players having a lot of difficulty surviving the early days the boost they need to reach the coveted jerky rack and goat pens and farms that bring everlasting food security...with a little bit of magic to round their diets out. We will also be basing this guide in the Warrior, the most basic class with 0 survival help.

NOTE: THIS GUIDE IS BASED ON PATCH 08/08/2020. THINGS MAY CHANGE, AND IF THEY DO I'LL REVISE THE GUIDE AND THIS NOTE

First Five Days:

When you start out I recommend only grabbing 1-2 pieces of food and getting 1 stick 1 flint. Get your axe then start crafting 2 knives. The only thing a warrior can do that helps to survive is throw daggers to catch rabbits. This is literally your key to survival. Wasting a day catching a rabbit or rat is a sure fire way to die real fast

Once you have 2 daggers, 2 food and enough materials for a torch and fire pit head into the dungeon and defeat the first boss. Leave the items in the dungeon there only grabbing things on the way and prioritizing stone. You never have enough inventory early on and wasted space equals wasted hunger. Defeat the boss (stupid easy with duel daggers) and get the tablet. Now you can setup your firepit and start cooking shit and storing stuff.

First 4 Zones:

The first thing you should do once you have the tablet, have setup camp, built your carrier and finished exploring the cave is to explore every inch of the forest and the first desolate meadow. You want to have every part of these zones explored before going into the caves for the next tier because you can see on the map anything that respawns. This is VERY IMPORTANT for farming for new materials, the more you can see, the faster you can find fresh veggies or refarm trees and grass. You should get plenty of food from first spawns doing these explorations.

Some tips for this to be successful: make a work bench and a bunch of baskets very early. Go back as soon as you have the stone if necessary to do this. The less you have on you when leaving for trips, the more you can bring back and the less food you eat just to make space. Also less trips on farming runs.

Kill every animal. ALL OF THEM. Rabbits should be ranged on sight with your daggers or bow or spells. Rabbits give guaranteed meat on kill.

Wait till food hits half stamina before cooking it. Food regains 25% its bar back on roasting or cuisine crafting. This makes your food last longer since once food passes 50% spoil it recovers half hunger.

Don't worry about cutting every tree down or getting every bush just yet. This is just an exploration run. You can only hold so much inventory right now. Don't hesitate to go back when your full.

Rush making a canopy then making a straw bed inside. You need this to make sleeping bags which heal a lot more when sleeping. This will save you from eating to heal. Bandaid once possible help even more.

It's not required, but the faster you make your first pouches, the easier your supply runs will be. Prioritize pouches before armor. A few bandaids and straw blankies will heal you enough to survive the bear maulings, wolf gnawings and badger flaillings?

First Harvest:

Now that you can get to Desolate Meadow you should try to get a shovel to unlock the way back to base. Now you can do your farm loops, the money making cycle that you will perform every 20? (unsure exactly how long the respawn cycle is) game days to gather food and harvest bushes/trees. The loop is simple:

1. Start at Base. Kill any animals. Often rabbits spawn at your base every 2-5 days. Remember RABBITS ALWAYS give meat.

2. Clear all bushes and trees at area 1. Only grab bushes if more then bush drops, leave plan bush behind since new bush will spawn over it (its useless, you only ever need 1-2 stacks at any time) . Kill all animals spotted. Grab respawned veggies. You are the endless hunger, destroyer of nature, leave nothing alive. Cept for Bush. Fuck that useless shit.

3. Clear area 2. Same as step 2.

4. Drop off everything if full. Goto step 6 if you can keep going.

5. Go other direction from base to area 3.

6. Clear area 3. Same as step 2.

7. Drop off all loot.

8. Once 20 days have passed since start of cycle and all items respawn, repeat again.

And that's it. Every respawn repeat the cycle. Every Bush can drop worms for fish and seeds for veggies at tier 2 farms or hemp for bandages. Every tree gives branches for staves, the number 1 currency for merchant shopping in this game and the easiest way to stave off Starvation if you get enough lucky light purification staves. Every Bush and tree can drop rare items at very low rates. Every animal can give meat and every loop gives 2-4 food items.

Trees respawns slower so the second loop goes way quicker. Once you have tier 2 farms make the seeds from loops way more valuable. Once the shops are sold out and your seeds are in good supply you can cut down less trees and bushes to save time on loops. The most important thing is early on gets lots of seeds and worms and hemp from bushes, get lots of branches to make staves, and grab every respawned veggie.

Tier 2, Merchant Highway Robbery & The Desolate-Valley:

This is where most deaths occur. Once your comfortable you don't HAVE TO go to tier 2. You can unlock Desolate Meadows 2 and Barren Valley and simply add them into your farm cycles. I recommend doing this before getting the tier 2 dungeon tablet. Every tier boss is a massive gear check and skill check, and you can never be too prepared for each one.

With these regions just use them for the veggies and farm their bush and trees only sparingly and when safe. You should have found a merchant by now (if not your screwed... Most seeds have 2 merchants found by now...) and you can start shoving your gigantic collection of hardwood down their throats. Somehow merchants think staffs are more valuable then gold and they will be your go to currency. Let the shrubbery people have your precious wood they crave so tenderly.

1 staff = most basic foods and ore.

3 staff = higher tier food and ore.

5 staff = crest of transcendence (this is the De facto filler item when you start overly buying out the shop. You will get used to buying these and reselling them just to restock merchant slots)

8-12 staff = most spell books

10-15 staff or 1 elven coin 2-6 staff = most bags the merchant sells.

8-20 staff = tier 2-3.5 equipment. never seen any equipment more then 20 staves yet.

Yup one tree harvest can often net you some of the best equipment mid game, tons of spells and a lot of food/ore. Just remember once stocks are wiped out you have to sell 5 staffs per crest or sell 5 crests per 3 bought to restock the store.

As a side note you can also farm for mana motes from staves. If your staff blueprint is leveled you may have a reasonable chance to get rare staves with spells attached. Any rare item disassembled has a 1:2.5 chance to drop a mana mote. I think you can get motes from normal items too but it's a lot more rare to drop from them and rare staves give no additional boost to sales so they are more valuable as motes.

Only once ready should you do tier 2. Bring any potions you found, bring enough materials to plant a camp fire under the boss as he approaches for extra damage over time, and use everything you got to kill the boss.

Once you have tier 2 you can harvest veggies with your seeds, cook your food into cuisine to save spoilage and make fridge pots which will MASSIVELY SAVE YOU TIME AND FOOD.

Fuck Forest.

Nuff said. If your going to farm this region make it fast and bring breezy clothes. Don't tree farm it or bush farm it unless you are very prepared and skilled, you will starve a lot and overheat if not careful. This place devours the unprepared. Stop forgetting your dimensional tablet hearthstone you dumbass. I told you not to forget it!!! You deserved to die to that velociraptor and baby godzilla while under heatstroke.

Tier 3

Bring your breezy setup and swap to armor in the cave before the boss room. Bring potions. Bring anything that can boost your damage or poison your weapon. Tier 3 is hard, both as a fight and how getting to it wears you down. Once you have that tablet you can finally portal to the forest which makes farming it so much safer. Also tier 3 means goat pens for easy milk and bread and sandwiches n pies, drying racks for endless jerky, and with both of those you finally will have endless food. Jerky is the best way to save your meats to last indefinitally.

You finally made it.

At this point if you die, it's either due to bodily harm, dying to nightmare spirits like some knockoff Freddy movie, forgetting you have a damn hearthstone tablet in your inventory at all times, forgetting the hearthstone tablet in your base like a dummy, forgetting your jerky rations, or forgetting you already used the hearthstone tablet the last time u almost starved. You really need to stop forgetting about that tablet you dummy - _-.

Or the heat/cold...but that's a whole nother guide.

Apendix: Heat n Cold 4 Dummies

Heat: Breezy Clothes, no thermal items, any warmth items you have, cold totem, cold stone. Stay away from fire. Tents help you reach neutral temp. Water chills you for 5-10 steps. Bushes and trees shade you.

Cold: Thermal gloves, boots, hat. Warmth on anything. Hot pockets. Fires keep you warm so carry a stack of torches which heat you by 5-10 thermal when lit. Avoid water. Tents help warm and sleeping bags keep u from dying from hypothermia while sleeping. Always place a firepit by your tent before sleeping.