Guide:Introduction to food
Food is an essential resource for your sapiens to survive, and is a constant concern for the tribe’s wellbeing as, without a constant supply of food, your sapiens will begin to receive the hunger and, eventually, starvation status effects. This guide will teach you the basics of providing and managing food for a small tribe.
Foraging
Foraging is one of the simplest ways to obtain food. This is performed by selecting plants which provide food items: fruit-bearing trees, and plants which produce edible fruit or seeds, such as sunflowers or flax producing edible seeds. These can then be harvested for their fruit from the radial menu. The food can then be stored in storage areas, or eaten immediately.
Advantages:
- Quick to produce edible products
- No preparation required
- Can sustain a small tribe for a long period of time
Disadvantages:
- Not enough output from natural sources to feed a large tribe
- Inconsistent, can result in periods of hunger
- Reduced output if the plants are removed (e.g. chopping trees for wood)
Due to the nature of foraging, it is best suited to early-game, feeding a small tribe. However, it is commonly used in all stages of the game as a supplement to a main food source, due to its ease of production.
Hunting
Hunting involves killing the animals which roam the world, butchering their carcasses with a knife, and cooking the raw meat over a campfire to produce edible food. In the early game, chickens can be killed once the basic hunting skill has been learned, by investigating a chicken. This is hunted by sapiens which throw small stones at the chicken to kill it. In later game, alpacas or mammoths can be investigated to learn the spear hunting skill, where spears are thrown to kill these animals. The carcass is then butchered by a sapien with the butchery skill, and the raw meat can be cooked by a sapien with the cooking skill. Larger animals can feed larger tribes, or feed a smaller tribe for longer. They also drop woolskins which have their own utilities.
Advantages:
- Can quickly produce a lot of food in large batches
- Flexibly provides food for tribes with different needs
- Low levels of preparation required
- Can help to supplement other sources of food for maximum efficiency, when needed
Disadvantages:
- Edible products require a long time and a lot of different skills to produce
- Inconsistent - relies on animals being nearby
- Unsustainable for constant food production - can quickly deplete nearby animal sources
Hunting can be used in any stage of the game, although it is best used as a supplement to foraged food in the early game, or to farming in the late game (e.g. during a farm expansion, extra sapiens can be fed using meat and farming if the farm cannot meet demand).
Farming
The most advanced means of producing enough food for the entire tribe, farming involves planting many food-bearing plants, such as orange trees, or wheat (which then requires processing into bread). This method can mass produce food until the tribe has enough food to consume, and expansion of the tribe can be balanced with expansion of the farm.
Advantages:
- Can produce enough food to feed a massive tribe
- Consistently produces enough food for the tribe
- Can sustainably produce food without depleting supplies.
- Can be expanded easily
Disadvantages:
- Expensive and difficult to get started; requires high amounts of preparation
- Long waits between batches of food - if batches are too small, must be supplemented with other methods to avoid starvation.
- Large land use for large farms
Farming is best suited to producing large amounts of food as a standalone source for a large tribe.
Food storage
Storing food is essential to ensure that there is always enough for your tribe members. It is stored in storage areas, when there is room, and will decay. Different foods decay at different rates, although generally food takes longer to decay when stored inside. When decayed, food is no longer edible, so prolonging its decay for as long as possible is desirable. See Mechanics:Decay for more information.
Next steps
Armed with this knowledge of food, you can now start learning about how to farm this food in the Introduction to Farming