Ever since the Appreciation of Food Variety upgrade become available I've had it in the back of my mind to try to figure out some way of tracking things so I could have an idea of what to eat instead of going willy-nilly. I thought about using a spreadsheet to do it, but I thought that instead I might come up with something featuring SDBs for those of you who want an in-game solution.
Who's this for:
- organizational freaks
- hoarders
- chefs
- farmers/gardeners who cook a lot
- people with lots of currants and/or time on their hands
What you'll need:
- Appreciation of Food Variety upgrade
- a guano-load of SDBs
- enough space in your house for the set-up
- an idea of how much food you eat each day
- some sort of marker - anything will do, but I find this meat stick to be apropos
- seriously: way, way, way too much time on your hands
Here is a snap of how I've set things up.
So according to the upgrade, food goes to Super Bonus iMG status every 30 game days, which turns out to be about 5 real-time days. I approached this in several different ways and this seems to be the most straightforward.
I haven't tested this and may make adjustments as things progress.
OK. Figure out how much food you're gonna eat each day for your energy needs. As a goal you'll want to figure out what the MOST food is that you could want on your busiest day. But in the interest of setting this up, you could just start with the general gist of things and go from there. I've probably done WAY too many meals, but I wanted to be thorough.
On your wall, set up five separate groups of SDBs and fill them with meals. It's a good idea to get a good variety of meals - some low and some high - in each group. High-energy food is always good, but the low-energy meals are also great because you can eat a whole stack without needing to fill up a whole lot of your energy limit. So for instance, you might have your Awesome Stew and, say, your Common Crudites in the same group.
OK, so this in in REAL-TIME days - each day you sit down to play, go into your "fridge" and put into a Meal Sack one stack from each SDB. Since you can only eat and thus get the Super Bonus iMG from one stack at a time, it doesn't do you any good to eat more than that. So with the picture above, I have eight stacks of food in my Meal Sack.
When you fill your sack from that group, put your marker in front of it to remind yourself that's the one you're working from.
If you run out of food and need more energy that real-time day, use meditation or ingredients (not meals) for energy.
If you don't eat everything from your Meal Sack, you have two choices.
First, you can just put everything you haven't eaten back in the SDBs. This can be handy when you're running low on a meal in storage.
Second, you can keep eating on it and not move your stick until you move on to the next group. This can give the meals a little bit more time to "age." (Since I haven't tested it, I'm not sure if I need one more group - so six total - in order to let things age long enough to get back to Super Bonus iMG. I'll modify my instructions upon testing if this turns out to be the case.)
It might take a couple of cycles to really get on track, especially if (like me) you've been eating things willy-nilly and have no idea when it'll go back to Super Bonus iMG.
If anyone has anything to add, please do so. I know this is a lot of work and kinda silly, but I spent a game day working out the kinks and it was a way to pass the time. :)