[DEVBLOG#65] Vanilla Cooking Expanded - description visuals

Can I just say that one of the things I appreciate the most about your mods is how thoroughly, and artistically, they are documented. I hate only having a vague idea of what content is included in a mod, and I never have to worry about that with Vanilla Extended.

Resurrector nanites, aka Digestible resurrector nanites, is a condiment version of the well known resurrector serum. It can only be obtained through quests and through traders and it’s an item that shows other modders that it’s very easy to add modded condiments.

Oskar Potocki

I don't get the addition of resurrector nanites. It seems so random and out of place, having nothing to do with cooking. There is already the resurrector serum. Apart from that, it looks like you you balanced the mod quite well. I only doubt the spices: these should boost the manipulation speed, but not the manipulation itself. Otherwise, this would increase the quality of crafted items, just because someone ate spices. It's more reasonable that the person becomes faster, instead. Alternatively, you could increase blood pumping for this time.

Christian G.

yes!

Oskar Potocki

Is there an option to deep fry human meat

This is not our intention - we never want to cut the content from vanilla game, we always build around that content.

Oskar Potocki

Will there be an option to remove the vanilla meals all together?

This looks outstanding and well-thought out with minimal fluff. I’m super looking forward to seeing what is in the plants and brewing modules as well.

This feature would make about 60% of player base immediately hate the mod - not everyone wants to micromanage their food, and making it rot in the freezer would ruin so many bases. We are happy with the canned ingredients being what a survival meal is for the regular meals - easy to transport thing that doesn’t rot

Oskar Potocki

To make canned ingredients more necessary, maybe you could make all raw ingredients rot at a very low rate even while frozen? Is this feature achievable?

Shavius G

Pawns should automatically pick food closest to them based on nutrition value so yeah they should pick up grilled food :) As for other content requests you have given, we have already content-locked this mod as we don’t want to add too much unnecessary fluff - this is what doomed VGP and RC2 in my eyes. We can however always make more modules in the future, as all this content is highly moddable.

Oskar Potocki

Question Will it be possible to have pawns prioritize eating grill dishes, not just prioritise lavish / gourmet meals? Wishlist: Character traits - Vegetarian, pescatarian, cheese snob... a wine snob one would be great combined with Vanilla Expanded Medieval. In line with the fisherman title you added! Low tech options - Salting - I know some mods do it already, but a low tech option to canning would be really appreciated. Meats + Fish could be preserved. This would honestly help a lot for harsh climate tribal runs, which can be really unfun. Soup - Not sure what technology level you were planning to put this at, but if you could put a pot on a campfire and allow us to make soup that way, this would also be great for harsh tribal starts | Thank you for all the work as always! I'm increasing my donation one tier. With all the upcoming mods, I can't complain!

Celsica

Awesome!! I love all of this!

Celsica

Not at all lol I never heard of anyone dying or OD’ing from desserts

Oskar Potocki

Addictive deserts seemed interesting, but I believe the penalty won't be severe like other drugs, is it?

Shavius G

Thank you :)

Gergő Ambrus

For desserts, yes. For other things, you just restrict ingredients using bill menus.

Oskar Potocki

Is there going to be restrictions like in drugs? Like use one per day? Or they can eat whatever they want? By the way fckn good job!

Gergő Ambrus

You need to remember that for example for soups time wouldn’t be enough of a drawback - ingredients that normally would make 3 lavish meals in case of a soup make 10 lavish soups. Yes, it takes time, but if it would be just as nutritious as a normal lavish meal, this time is irrelevant as you would have dozens of soup pots running at the same time, making hundreds of meals every 3 days. We are currently play testing the mod to see all the values and how they correspond to one another with our general goal being making everything in-line with vanilla meals - not better or worse. Grilled meals provide a 25% decrease to hunger rate which is much better than flat nutrition. And if you want a high nutrition dirt tasting meal, you have nutrient paste dispensers in vanilla!

Oskar Potocki

I'm a little concerned that since all the meals are less nutritious (or have extra complexity in the case of grills) that the best option will still be the vanilla meals. I understand needing to balance the additional benefits against vanilla meals, however I would argue that the extra effort (or time in the case of soups) required should be the downside of these new meals instead of the nutritional value. I would also suggest an option for the inverse of these meals, where you can make a nutritionally dense meal that tastes like dirt.

There was a ** for tomatoes and peppers but no explanation. Will these be in a forthcoming plants mod?

Rebecca

It resurrects the pawn, quite self explanatory xd

Oskar Potocki

It’s actually a unique system - you can pull it out manually at any point after milk becomes cheese, but the longer it stays there the higher the quality will be.

Oskar Potocki

We plan to keep the new health conditions hidden until they are severe. And we also have a plants mod in the works if you want more crops and fruits! It’s completely optional and both cooking and plants mods can be used standalone. As for grills, if at any point it stops spoiling (below zero) it will lose the special trait.

Oskar Potocki

You cannot make soup before industrial era, but grill is a medieval technology for example!

Oskar Potocki

@Zachery Gaskins If it works anything like the wine aging from Vanilla Factions Expanded - Medieval, then you will be able to select a quality level on the cheese press itself, and then this will determine how long the cheese will age for. Similar to the beer fermentation barrels, once ready it'll create a job for a pawn to come remove it.

And how on earth does Resurrector Nanite Condiment function?

Zachery Gaskins

On the cheese press, how is it decided how long the cheese remains in the press? Or is each age-quality a bill option (like simple/fine/lavish)?

Zachery Gaskins

How will the diabetes, cholesterol, and HBP be tracked in terms of UI? What I appreciate about this mod is that it never tries to give a new thing that doesn't have a clear benefit. Being able to get *almost* double nutrition out of meals by adding flour as a filler seems completely legit, as does committing to a multi-day soup-a-thon. Every concept is optional and comes with a cost (time, negative hediffs, restrictions on preservation, etc.) And all of this is done with a minimum of new crops or structures, which is super-good for keeping noisey complexity down. Can grills be merely refrigerated and still retain their benefits? Steak tartare anyone?

Zachery Gaskins

Whoever coded this is a sexy asshole

Outstanding. Looks awesome. Will be interesting to see how the health stuff balances out.

Are all the new cooking benches going to have low-tech options? I.e., can you make stuff like soup without electricity?

This is my most anticipated mod. I've been looking forward to it ever since you released the fishing mod and dropped word about a future cooking mod. I love the direction you're taking with it. Seeing several new use cases for cooking recipes is really going to liven up the kitchen.