Introduction[]
Food Sources are key elements of the survival experience that represent primary needs for a creature's continued survival based on their Diet. A wide range of diets exist that alter how a creature must care for itself. Should you fail to find food and/or water when it's needed, you will suffer starvation and/or dehydration, which will cause you to take damage and be prompted to press (H on PC or 
on Mobile) to sniff for nearby food sources.
Please, in order to view this page's index (Table of Contents) click on the "Contents" button, or, if you cannot see such button, click "here", thank you.
Physics[]
Fruit, Meat/Plant chunks and similar will realistically fall when dropped, following a realistic gravity and trajectory.
Common Attributes[]
All food objects have a set of common attributes that dictate how they function. Among these attributes are:
- Name of the food, visible at the top of the sniff display, on big words.
- The source of food (this changes for meat vs plants). If you are extremely far from the food, the name is replaced by "???".
- Remaining Food and Maximum Food (the food it spawned with). Maximum food value is never visible to the average player, while the Remaining Food value is replaced by "???" if you are far enough, but closer than the source-of-food range.
- The amount of time until the food despawns. This won't be visible in plants, nor if you are far enough from the meat source, but closer than the remaining food range, with a ??? replacing the timer.
- Whether or not it is a small piece of a larger food object.
- Color and texture of both meat and bones. By default, it is white bone-like bones and red plastic carcass, but some creatures can drop other colors and textures depending on their blood color, one of its primary palette colors, and other factors.
- Creatures can carry food by pressing T near them. The type of food that can be picked up changes based on the food type and diet type of the creature in question. Photovores cannot grab any source of food, herbivores only plants, carnivores and photocarnivores only meat chunks and omnivores can grab any source of food. For meat, if the carcass is small enough you can carry the entire carcass if grabbed correctly, else it'll drop a chunk of meat to grab. Plants always drop a small piece of food (usually fruit or leaf) which is carried instead when grabbed. Currently, this is bugged for meat, making the meat chunk spawn at the center of the map, underwater or at a random location on the air, as seen here.
Many of these attributes can be seen either directly as part of the model itself, or by sniffing with the H key.
Attributes of Meat[]
Meat is obtained by killing another creature or by leaving behind a body autotomic part. This creature can either be another player, or one of the NPCs in Sonaria's underground ocean.
Coupled with having the attributes listed in Common Attributes, meat also includes some of its own behaviors. Namely:
- The amount of time until the food rots, which precedes the time until despawn/decay. While the counter is above 0, the meat will be displayed as "Fresh Meat" in the name title. Once this time expires, the amount of time until the food despawns appears instead, and the meat gains the attribute and name title "Rotten Meat". The decay value is not displayed if you are far enough from the meat source, with a ??? replacing the timer.
- "Rotten Meat" will damage players when eaten, apply the sickness effect and take away thirst if they eat it, while still restoring some hunger, albeit only a small fraction of what it would normally give. Spoiled meat can be recognized by its yellow color and yellow fumes, or by reading the title.
- The meat shrinks as it is eaten, providing a visual indication of how much is left of the full carcass.
- Meat always reflects upon the species it came from. This will either be the species of a player's creature, or the species of a fish.
- NPC Fish carcasses will always use the T1 model, but have different food values depending on the type of fish.
Meat Values[]
For generic tiered carcasses, a number of factors play into the amount of meat present. These factors are:
- Age (modified)
- Elder status
The amount of food is determined by the following function:
-- All percentage values in code are decimals between 0 and 1 due to how math works.
-- 0 = 0%, 1 = 100%, 0.5 = 50%, etc.
baseAmount = ... -- Look at the table below this block of code.
elderFactor = 1.00 -- Default is 100%, or multiplying the value by 1 (does nothing).
if isElder then
elderFactor = 1.25 -- Set to 125% instead of 100%, which adds an extra 25% onto the value.
end
ageFactor = clamp((age + 10) / 100, 0.10, 1.00) -- Make a percentage based on (age + 10), but allow it to be no less than 10% and no more than 100%
-- ^ Above: This means that an age 1 creature would provide 11% food, an age 50 creature would provide 60% food, an age 90 and older creature should provide 100%.
foodAmount = baseAmount * ageFactor * elderFactor
An interactive demo can be seen here. Play with the sliders on the left and change their value. The height of the purple line is how much food there is.
| Tier | Base Amount | Rot Time (Minutes) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 10 | 7 |
| 2 | 30 | 14 |
| 3 | 50 | 21 |
| 4 | 100 | 28 |
| 5 | 200 | 35 |
Hotspots[]
Hotspots are areas where meat is commonly found, either from NPCs or players. A well known site is the Oasis, mainly because of the amount of players there. The Dunes and the underwater territories just West of it are a cluster of Fish NPC hotspots (but notice that most of these NPCs can move), so it's a haven for carnivores seeking to grow away from conflict. However, since plants rotate, most player hotspots will change or diminish depending on that factor.
T̨͈͗̌ͥHͥ̽ͣ̃̔Ḛͭ̉̇͟ C̵͉͋̔͞R͉̜̎͡͠Ḛͭ̉̇͟A̷͙ͭͫ̕T̨͈͗̌ͥU̠҉̷̙ͦR͉̜̎͡͠Ḛͭ̉̇͟[]
Sometimes meat will randomly spawn in at select points on the map without being from an NPC or a player. They are seen as belonging to the creature " T̨͈͗̌ͥHͥ̽ͣ̃̔Ḛͭ̉̇͟ C̵͉͋̔͞R͉̜̎͡͠Ḛͭ̉̇͟A̷͙ͭͫ̕T̨͈͗̌ͥU̠҉̷̙ͦR͉̜̎͡͠Ḛͭ̉̇͟ ", and will always be a Tier 2 carcass of default coloration (red flesh, white bones). Spawned meat was formerly seen as belonging to the creature “Mystery Meat Co.”
- A more detailed map of these locations can be found here.
Clams[]
Clams are a permanent food source, the mostly-aquatic (albeit some can be found on sea shores, damp areas and volcano) carnivore equivalent of Clover Grass and Algae. They look like somewhat tall, grey rocks with some orange clams attached to them.
Plants[]
Edible plants for herbivores or omnivores may appear above land (however, while rare, bushes may spawn deep underwater too, as seen here) as different kinds of bushes and herbs or on the ocean's floor as something similar to palm trees.
- Their name title is "Fresh Herbs".
- All non-exclusively-carnivore creatures can carry berries, fruits or similar by pressing T near a bush. Carried berries no longer spoil quickly. They can be obtained from any plant source, including seaweed. Different types of aquatic flora drop different types of fruit as well.
- Unlike meat, no visible rot countdown appears, replaced by an indicator telling the sniffer if there are extra bushes/plants nearby or not (Yes/No).
- Seaweed palm trees' leaves / Bush flowers and fruits will disappear, indicating how much has been eaten from the plant.
- Almost all kinds of plants (which are called fresh herbs) are original, except for the melon, strawberry, cherry and gourd, although they are their own unique kind.
Plant Food Values[]
Plant food value is entirely mathematical. It is affected by the season, the food type's own modifier, and a random range.
In order, the following operation applies to determine how much food a bush contains:
| Step 1: Random Range A random value in the range of [12, 25] is selected. Step 2: Type Multiplier
Step 3: Seasonal Multiplier
|
|---|
Bush Spawn Locations[]
Terrestrial Herb Spawns[]
Spawns for plants are randomized across 5 possible spawn clusters. Every time the food system cycles, which is once around generally 4 in-game days, plants in the current region die and despawn, and a new region is selected randomly. The only constraint is that it will never select the region that it was on prior to picking the new one (prevents going back and forth).
When spawning in a new region, a resource pool is used to spawn a certain grand total amount of food. The grand total currently sits at 4500. This means that bushes are spawned until 4500 food is used (note that this does not count the seasonal multiplier or the fruit multiplier, only the base random amount, which makes food rarer during seasons like Famine). Once this is done, the cycle continues.
Please note: Many people are led to believe that food is "glitched" because they are unable to find it. It has been verified on several occasions that bushes are working as-intended. If you can't find bushes, try another region!
Highlighted sections of each of the 5 clusters (OLD). Please notice dunes pond later got added into another section as part of the pink cluster and swamp as a new cluster.
Aquatic Herb Spawns[]
Aquatic plant spawns can be quite extense, specially x: 1023 z: 1352, and have remained mostly unchanged for a very long time, with the exception being Dunes' Pond, which got added after it got connected with the main freshwater masses. They may spawn three types of seaweed now.
- The pine-tree-like seaweed drops dark blue leaves, orange SeaGrape1, pink SeaGrapes2 and blue SeaGrapes3 fruit, depending on which part of the plant you try to grab and if the plant is filled with orange, pink or blue glows. Curiously, the SeaGrape2 and SeaGrape3 cannot be scented if the sniffer is underwater.
- The 3-pronged-leafy seaweed can also offer StemKelp1, StemKelp2 and StemKelp3.
- The brownish-feathery leaf seaweed drops LeafedKelp1 and LeafedKelp2 fruit. Curiously, these fruits are unscentable if the person is underwater, but can be scented if the sniffer is outside water.
Clover Grass and Algae[]
Clover grass and algae are a permanent food source for herbivores. Clover grass is located on dry land, while algae is located underwater. Clover grass looks like a patch of green terrain with yellow flowers, while algae looks like a darker, plain, irregular patch. They provide less food than other plants, and are unscentable (and thus only detectable through visual means). Since they're permanent, they're an easy source of food for AFK farmers.
Algae doesn't count as sea kelp regarding the mission system.
Gallery[]
This gallery represents the current appearance of bushes and meat in the legacy game.
This gallery holds the development of bushes in the future of the legacy game.
