Originally posted by Gunther Ultrabolt Novacrunch:

Originally posted by grinsekeatzchen:

You know there is a sugestion-forum for? This would be in much better hands there than here :''). At least forum-wise. Whether the devs really look at it is of course the other question.

I am responding to a post that was posted in General discussion... I am not creating my own thread.

The original poster might not feel the way he does about cooking if it weren't so necessarily tedious.

Nah, it would be tedious even with a few qol features since you need so much of everything. Farming simulator is still farming simulator, even if stamina and hitboxes are better.

Cooked meat, Grilled neck tail and Cooked lox meat would be the least amount of effort and provide more then enough hp and stam to finish the game if you can manage a smaller hp/stam pool.

I do agree with Ptolemy with the sausages if you do not mind the thistle gathering. If you get lucky and find turnip early they are well worth the little time it takes to plant and farm them for a nice buff. I am suggesting the turnip more because farming lox tend to be more of a mid late game thing not that you can not kill them sooner it is just more risky same goes for serpents.

best of luck to you.

Serpents technically don't require farming (at least in the agricultural sense), but if you want to have serpent stew as a regular food item, you are going to spend a dedicated chunk of your time on a boat at night looking for serpents, which I suspect the OP may not want to do.

If you're only running on shrooms & berries, it'll be quite hard to gather lox meat imho. Don't forget that you'll need ingredients to brew potions as well, they're not as important as food but they're an emergency ticket to avoid death sometimes.
When you find seeds plant them, then plant the vegetables, repeat a couple of times while exploring elsewhere and before you know it you got a couple of stacks of carrots and turnips. Don't forget to place stakewalls (preferably) around your fields.
New foods should arrived with the H&H update, so things should change a bit.

yes its worth it

You dont need loads of prepared food, sure its nice but just cooking and sometimes making a more complex dish from the stuff you picked up will sustain you just fine. It wont be min/maxing yourself but you sure dont need chests full of pre cooked food.

I would use the good food, which includes a lot of farming or rowing in circles in the ocean only for heavy situations. When building or normal exploration, outside the plains i have always been fine with meat, honey, xy.

Lox-farming is quite easy, just mount the beast and shot him in the back. Not the heroic way, but a fast, safe way to get lots of nice meat.

For me...

It would be nice if we didn't have to hit the button for each item cooked.

It would be nice if we didn't have to run out of stamina planting stuff.

It would be nice if the "hit box" on vegetables/barely/fax weren't so small

It would be nice if Barley wasn't so hard to see against the black background of cultivated soil.

It would be nice if I didn't have to hit the "E" key 200 times every time I load my 4 windmills.

It would be nice, if I didn't need an "empty slot" to create something when the item I am making has an incomplete stack.

And before anyone says "there is a mod for that" we're talking about the vanilla game here not mods.

Originally posted by DarkSlayerofDarkness:

Hey, relatively new to the game, a little over 100 hours.

I think I hear people cook a lot after the third boss, to buff up their HP.

I see how growing stuff, cooking can be enticing in this game. But, not for me. I just don't like spending time chasing the ingredients, cooking and farming. Question: is cooking advanced soups and potions necessary to advance in the game? Or, can one do without? And, if you are further in the game, and not a fan of cooking/farming/scavenging for ingredients like me, how do you manage without it?

Thanks!

Sadly, it is a resource check. Compared to other games where you can replace extraneous grind with just "being a bit more careful" - you can't do that here. You can't run around with 50 health, low tier armor and weaponry, and expect the game to be "mildly more challenging" than if you'd grind for it.
You NEED an increased health pool. You NEED a better armor(not maxed out, granted, but you need a decent armor that allows you to stay alive after first hit).

Even the "stealth+ranged" approach, that usually allows to cheese, in other games, is not really working here, since enemies are everywhere, and they keep on respawning. You are in constant barrage of attacks, or in a constant state of waiting for them.

You can potentially pick middle quality food over other types of better food, and stick with it, if you hate grinding for the best kind there is, but then you should keep in mind that you'll be having issues during boss fights(especially solo boss fights), and during visits to newer biomes.

Originally posted by Gunther Ultrabolt Novacrunch:

For me...

It would be nice if we didn't have to hit the button for each item cooked.

It would be nice if we didn't have to run out of stamina planting stuff.

It would be nice if the "hit box" on vegetables/barely/fax weren't so small

It would be nice if Barley wasn't so hard to see against the black background of cultivated soil.

It would be nice if I didn't have to hit the "E" key 200 times every time I load my 4 windmills.

And before anyone says "there is a mod for that" we're talking about the vanilla game here not mods.

You know there is a sugestion-forum for? This would be in much better hands there than here :''). At least forum-wise. Whether the devs really look at it is of course the other question.

It's a crucial part of the game. If you put no effort into getting better and better food as you go along, then the consequence of that is you're going to be stuck with an extremely underlevelled stamina and health pool throughout the entire game.

You can eat cooked meats and get by if you are feeling lazy . Pretty sure cooked serpent, lox. And dear provided a fairly decent pool

There are foods you can get that are fairly good that don't require any farming, and the ingredients are mostly things you'll find during regular game play.

Sausages and Cooked Lox Meat for example.

https://valheim.fandom.com/wiki/Food

Then you could just look up something relatively easy to make or get to go with them.

O and Serpent Stew, if you like hunting serpents it's one of the best foods that's easy to make without any farming.

You don't NEED to cook, but you'll be heavily handicapping yourself if you don't. But it isn't as bad as you might think, farming isn't really a time sink at all and you can cook a lot of food quickly. And you don't need to be well fed all the time, only when adventuring in dangerous areas.

Without farming, the best food set you're going to get will probably be cooked meat, cooked lox meat and sausages. Though even sausages require gathering thistles, and it sounds like OP may be wanting to avoid gathering things in general.

Hey, thank you all, this is very helpful and I am glad to hear it's not that bad.

I actually enjoy just exploring, wandering aimlessly. The game is beautiful, and it's a pleasure. So, I don't mind collecting stuff for simple things like sausages.