Balance problem with vitamins when sailing

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

So I did what I was supposed to. Built a raft. Stocked it up. Left the freeport.  I had campfire, smithy, bed and water barrel all on board. Water barrel filled. All four types of foods stocked up, with extra supplies for repairing the raft if needed. I leave the freeport I spawned in at and let the wind carry me to the nearest island. Which turns out to be another freeport. No problem, restock supplies a little, geared up, head out again. Let the wind take me to the next nearest island beyond this one, which turns out to be, another freeport.

...

Okay, getting a little old but whatever. At this point I begin to notice a problem. Vitamin levels are dropping. I have food, but since I'm not actively doing stuff, just sailing, food doesn't drop very fast. Vitamin levels continue to drop as I sail to the next island heading off in another direction, which turns out to be, you guessed it, freeport island number four. Now here's a side note, if you're gonna tell me that I need to leave the region and explore in order to get beyond level 8, maybe don't have the prevailing winds wind up blowing me in a horseshoe next time.

So anyway, the point I reached was that my belly is full, food is capped out, but I'm hitting multiple vitamin deficiences because I'm neither active nor cold so food doesn't drop fast. I'm all for the vitamin bar mechanic, but it definately needs a tweak, because running into a vitamin deficiency every few minutes as you cram food down your gullet is both horribly unrealistic AND horrible gamplay mechanic. So yeah, that needs a tweak. Oh I almost forgot to mention, all of this happened even after I took a skill that's supposed to lower the speed of vitamin meter drop. WTH?

[Revenant 21]

How did you fill the water barrel?  I haven't been able to find any freshwater besides digging in the ground.

As far as vitamins goes... Our strategy has just been to sail around naked, not worry about vitamins, and just respawn on the raft bed when we die.  Stored food decays at an an accelerated rate when sailing, too, so while berries and grain keep decently because of the larger stack size, your meat and fish rots away to nothing in the space of an island or two anyway.

[boomervoncannon 1,541]

There is freshwater at each freeport, apool up a staircase from the dock area. I filled 4 waterskins. You place the filled waterskins in the water barrell and then right click and select fill barrell. It transfers the water in the skin to the barrell. As long as the barrell's lid is closed, it does not lose water.

While your solution seems like a useful workaround for the moment, I wouldn't want to have to adopt that approach long term. I think the mechanic definately needs a tweak.

Edited December 25, 2018 by boomervoncannon

[NekOnOkO 0]

Place a bed on your raft, when any of your vitals drop for any reason, suicide and respawn. No need to have any food or water. Bad for any kind of roleplay though =(.

[Robert Tyburne 17]

2 minutes ago, Revenant said:

As far as vitamins goes... Our strategy has just been to sail around naked, not worry about vitamins, and just respawn on the raft bed when we die.

Which is unfortunate, since this speaks to a poor design.

The vitamin system would be better served as providing bonuses for the player. I totally get the "balanced diet" approach to add to the survival experience, and the design goal may very well have been to add a layer of complexity for farmers and what they choose to produce on their islands with their groups to ensure everyone is properly fed.

Vitamin A for instance, if the player is able to balance it, could get a bonus to ranged attacks since Vitamin A is linked to vision health. Vitamin B perhaps could make the player's stamina pool deplete slower when active.

Food could use a look overall. Food seems to spoil pretty quickly, but there could be some kind of preservation mechanics (making jerky) further down the skill tree. I know hardtack is in there. Hunger needs some tweaking, as it feels like the player is having to eat a rather absurd number of calories to stay alive, even for an active lifestyle that players are emulating at the start. A 19th century fur trapper in North America would eat around 12k calories a day, and the sheer amount of food that players put away in 24 hours looks to rival that. 

Hydration I don't have much critique on. Likely a larger issue in Tropic and Desert regions, which I haven't been to yet.

[Kanwulf 43]

22 minutes ago, Robert Tyburne said:

Which is unfortunate, since this speaks to a poor design.

The vitamin system would be better served as providing bonuses for the player. I totally get the "balanced diet" approach to add to the survival experience, and the design goal may very well have been to add a layer of complexity for farmers and what they choose to produce on their islands with their groups to ensure everyone is properly fed.

Vitamin A for instance, if the player is able to balance it, could get a bonus to ranged attacks since Vitamin A is linked to vision health. Vitamin B perhaps could make the player's stamina pool deplete slower when active.

Food could use a look overall. Food seems to spoil pretty quickly, but there could be some kind of preservation mechanics (making jerky) further down the skill tree. I know hardtack is in there. Hunger needs some tweaking, as it feels like the player is having to eat a rather absurd number of calories to stay alive, even for an active lifestyle that players are emulating at the start. A 19th century fur trapper in North America would eat around 12k calories a day, and the sheer amount of food that players put away in 24 hours looks to rival that. 

Hydration I don't have much critique on. Likely a larger issue in Tropic and Desert regions, which I haven't been to yet.

I would like to see something more like this than the current system, I get that these Devs really really like poop but common guys, poop yourself to death because you didn't eat enough fish? ya ya I know it's called a poop deck but I don't think that is the reason.  Getting Boosts for keeping balanced and maybe debuffs for deficiencies sounds like a much better system.

I haven't made it into all of the skill trees but based on how things worked in Ark there should be systems for preserving meat and perhaps in the cooking skills there are ways to balance out vitamins through recipes without having to over eat 2 types of berries meat and fish until you get the over eating sickness, again cooking is another skill set I haven't looked into yet.

I do hope after they get a few more pressing issues under control that they will watch for good suggestions on the forums such as Roberts for this subject.  Yes I'm looking at you Jat!!!

[Teach 79]

Totally agree @Robert Tyburne & @Kanwulf!

I actually killed myself from a vitamin C overdose . I did get a good chuckle from it- but I do see a lot of potential in the system with some tweaking/expansion. I concur with Kan that Robert's concept would be a great stepping stone to taking something seen as a nuisance and make it something people wouldn't mind regulating purely for the benefit (rather than just fending off scurvy and dedicating a whole responsibility to that).

All in all, I think the scaling overall on the biological decay rates could use some tuning- especially for a game that essentially runs at a slower pace than ARK due to sailing.

[whatwhat Stormrider 5]

The whole vitamin system should be more about maintaining bonus stats as opposed to keeping yourself from dying. If the stats are balanced then reduce the drop rate of food stat or something of the sort. If we have a deficiency, make our player fatigued or something of the sort. The system doesn’t work well enough right now for it to be a life or death mechanic.