Reliable food source?

Question

I cannot survive more than 5 days without starving due to a lack of food. Berries I find do not grow back fast enough, and I don't have rabbits near the usual spot for my base.

What is the best way to make a reliable food source for a base?

Answer 1

Well, maybe the usual spot for your base is in the wrong place then. If you simply can't reach food from there, find a place where you can.

Rabbits are pretty good early on. Berries are good, as you mentioned, but aren't going to be enough on their own. Forage for them early on, but later you should dig them up and move them to your base.

If you see a bird, move towards it to scare it off -- they drop seeds at a decent rate. If you are still in a starvation situation, eat the seeds, otherwise you can combine them with manure to start farming.

Monster meat is edible, but it does damage. Early on, if you are having trouble getting enough food, keep in mind that you can eat monster meat at full health followed by a couple berries. Over the next couple days, regular eating should heal you up enough to recover to where you can do this again if need be.

Getting manure for farms will help, but since it still takes a seed and farms grow pretty slowly, this probably won't solve all your problems.

Tallbird eggs are amazing, if you can find them.

All food should be cooked before you eat it -- it will go a lot further this way.

Throughout the game, but especially early on, keep in mind you will need to rely on many types of food source. Always keep an eye on your map for berry bushes. Always approach birds for seeds. Always grab carrots. If you see a rabbit straying from his hole, hunt it. Unless you happen upon several tallbird nests within a comfortable walk of each other, you aren't going to find a single stable food source.

Answer 2

Summer (farms)

Set up near a herd of Beefalo. They'll produce Manure. Use it to make Improved Farms, which you can use to grow crops. This will get you through summer.

Winter (rabbits)

Crops don't grow in the winter. But if you built near beefalo, you're near grasslands with a plethora of rabbit holes. Create traps (you'll need lots of grass and some twigs), and put them on top of the rabbit holes. You can catch one or two rabbits per hole per day this way.

Winter advanced (jerky)

Winter's reduced sunlight leads to reduced sanity. To combat this, make Drying Racks. You can dry rabbit meat on the racks, producing Small Jerky in one day. Each Small Jerky consumed gives you +10 sanity, in addition to hunger and health benefits. You'll need 6 small jerky per day to maintain your hunger level. So build at least six drying racks. If you build more, you won't have to go rabbit-collecting every single day.

Dragonpie: The food for all seasons

The single best long-term food in the game, Dragonpie can be made in the crockpot. For dragonpie success, you'll need a bird cage, a bird trap, a lot of farms (say, 8 or 10), and a crock pot.

Set out your bird trap and catch a bird. (Bait the trap with seeds to catch a bird faster.) Imprison your captured bird in the bird cage.

Now grow crops with regular seeds. You'll get an assortment of fruits and vegetables. Feed any dragon fruits you get to the bird. For each dragon fruit, he'll give you back 1 or 2 dragon fruit seeds, and sometimes a normal seed as well. Now plant all of those dragon fruit seeds, and fill the rest of the farms with regular seeds. Keep feeding the bird every dragon fruit you get until you have enough dragon fruit seeds to plant a full crop and plenty left over. (You can speed up this process by applying manure; two manure cause a planted crop to grow to maturity instantly.)

Now use your dragon fruits to make dragonpie. Put one dragon fruit and three twigs in a crockpot. Cook. In a minute or so, you'll have a food that gives you 75 hunger, 40 health, and 5 sanity; and it lasts for 15 days before it spoils. You only need to eat one dragonpie per day to keep your hunger at a constant level. So if you make ten, you have a ten-day supply of food. In this way, you can even mostly avoid collecting rabbits in the winter. And dragonpies stack up to 40, so you can carry in one slot far more than you can even eat before they spoil.

Other crock pot foods can give you more hunger or more health. For instance, meaty stew gives you +150 hunger, two days' worth, while waffles give you +60 health. But dragonpie gives you the best combination of hunger, health, slow spoilage, and easy availability of ingredients.

Answer 3

Make your base by a field of bunny holes, and make a spear, and some traps. Bring berry bushes back to your base. I'm on day 32 living with the bunnies. Make a farm of berry bushes and plant stuff in the manure and seed farms.

Works great for me! Good luck, and remember, in future updates this game will only get better.

Answer 4

I just reached day 20 (a day before winter starts) and I have a small berry farm and I have 2 crock pots. I have only 2 bunny traps but I only use them if I run out of fruit/vegetables, I have 3 advanced farming units and altogether it makes an almost perfect food source because they all relate to the crock pot recipes. I think that having crock pots is the best thing you could do for food, there is almost no completely reliable sources for food so make sure to have back-ups. Also for your base make it reasonably close to pig villages, beefalos and bunny holes.

Answer 5

I have found actually a very good way to sty alive and get food. i built a nice little base in the middle of a swampy area, I'm on day 22 playing as we speak, and in the swamp of course there are a TON TON TON of frogs. and they attack you sure, but if you build a base perimeter big enough they leave you alone. Anyhow, bunny traps can catch frogs that get close to them. So, I just make a bunch of traps, and lay them anywhere in the froggy hopping area, and i am bound to get food. when they get caught and you pick up the trap you automatically get frog legs, which is a pretty good meal statistically and like i said, there are SO many frogs around the ponds it's a crazy good way to get food, just don't put too many traps out at once and maybe, 4 or 5 legs in a day will keep you full for that day and halfway into the next, otherwise if you put to many out and catch too many they won't spawn as fast as you can catch them and then you will only have 1 or 2 hopping around. Also, being by ponds, Make a fishing rod! It is super easy to get food by fishing and it is a good meal as well.

Answer 6

Rabbits and drying racks are the key to long term success. Just put a trap right over the rabbit holes and then go about your business then come back once a day and repeat.

Answer 7

I personally have survived through winter on just monster meat and it is fairly easy to get going, all you need is a bird in a bird cage a spider den and a crock pot , all of which are fairly simple to obtain or find.

Now kill off or trap as many spiders as possible and get at least 4 monster meat.cook them. Feed 3 to your bird and it will give you 3 eggs (already a good deal), now put 3 eggs and one monster meat in the crockpot to get delicious meatballs, they provide a pretty good amount of hunger and about 10 health (not totally sure) and I believe a bit of sanity too,but not enough to consider as a means of sanity-gain but all in all, not bad for monster meat.

Ps. I survived an entire winter on meatballs like this, plus the bird can also be used for Dragon fruit seed trick previously stated by kyralessa.

And if your bird does not eat the monster meat just cook it, on console it only accepts cooked meat.

Answer 8

Beefalos and Drying racks, and honey and crock pots, emergency food should be rabbits, and bird traps (seeds are easy to come by for bait) and feeding a bird in a cage (gotta build the cage) any meat gets you an egg, great for recipes in crock pot

Answer 9

I have found that if you play as certain characters (such as Webber or any character who can eat monster meat without penalties) it is best to farm near by spiders but don't destroy the den, or if you play as other chacters it would be ideal to move as many berry bushes as close to your base as possible while killing pigmen every now and then to get meat... perhaps getting the fish farm mod could help a bit?

Answer 10

The way I'm surviving is using a crock pot, berries, and monster meat. All you need is 1 monster meat, and three berries, and you have meatballs! Another good recipe is just filling the crock pot entirely with berries to make a fist full of jam. These are fairly reliable and easy to get, hope this helps!