How to get early game food supply since fishing nerf

[Yablon]

Hi

I've come back to the game for the first time since the fishing changes and I'm really struggling to work out how to get a brand new character fed in the early game now that fishing is so much harder.
I actually really like the change because fishing was probably way too overpowered but now I'm struggling to find a reliable way to get new characters (i.e. ones who don't have all their basic tools yet) fed.

If people could share their reliable methods for getting food at the start of the game I'd appreciate it.

[koteko]

Lots of berries (as emergency but mostly as bait), lever traps, all good mushrooms you can recognise. Make simple stuff and trade it for food, which is usually cheap enough. Throw stones at squirrels which are free food. Make stone knives until you have a decent one.

I've also had some difficulty, 5 koivu bois dead in a couple of days, but I've gotten to a good space with the next one. It's a bit like another game altogether 

[Shrimp]

Yeah, it was hard to get used to it too. Instead of a persistent activity that you do until you catch something, active fishing became something you should do once a day just to try your luck or something. Do it once when you wake up, maybe two if the activity takes less than 2 hours, and then stop. If you caught something then good, if not then tough luck and try the next day. If you keep persisting you will just waste the day and get hungry needlessly.

Berries and herbs seem to be the way to go. Don't worry about losing nutrition, they reach a point where eating them will just barely fend off starvation. They also are plentiful and easy to get so it compensates for getting hungry faster too. Just don't start on winter or spring, they are a death sentence at this point.

I like the changes too, it makes winter feel more dreadful. It's actually scary to think how much more preparation you need to do now that clothes need coords to make, bows and fishing rods need maintenance to the bowstring/hook and villagers don't accept many boards or stale cooked meat now. I actually found myself making arrows for the first time ever. it's exciting.

[Bert Preast]

If you don't have a fishing rod or net, then fishing is only going to make you starve a little more slowly. 

The key is berries, but as Koteko said you should only ever eat them in an emergency.  Berries make bait, so find a fishing spot and get or make yourself a fishing rod then start catching roach and perch.  If you can, fish in rapids and make a raft, that way you can use the roach and perch as bait for salmon and trout in the deep water.

If for reasons of RP or because you're trapped on an island you cannot trade for a fishing rod, then yes you are in the doggy doo-doo.  To make a rod needs yarn, and this can take some time to acquire.  Also, if berries are out of season then you'd best get hunting and trapping as you won't get any amount of fish worth the time invested unless you have bait.   

[Plotinus]

Fishing:

I've been keeping a spread sheet, and I've had luck using berries, leaves, roots, and mushrooms, in addition to the more obvious baits of meat and fish.

meat and fish make the best baits, then leaves and roots are about half as good as those, berries are a big worse than leaves and roots but still all right, and mushrooms are a lot better than nothing, but not as good as berries.

Even with nothing you will sometimes get a roach or a perch and then you should use that as a bait for another fishing round


Trapping: I like to put all kinds of traps in the same general area, with a fence, and bait them with berries, roots, and eventually meat too (spoiled raw meat works fine, cooked or dried or smoked meat doesnt work so well). Each day I reset the traps to train up my skill and eventually it pays off.


Active hunting: this gets less annoying once you have a dog to tire the prey out, before that you want to be good with a bow and arrows or very patient or stick to pine mires.

If it's the time of the year when the ice is thin, wander around along the edge of lakes looking for animals that got overconfident and fell through the ice

[Auspice]

So does spoiled meat/fish work as a bait, or does it have to be fresh?

[d2shr6o8av]

Make sure to sell off any clothing that you don't absolutely need, especially Fine/Masterwork quality ones since AFAIK their only benefit is a higher bartering value.

Edit: sorry, clicked on edit, not quote /JP

[JP_Finn]

So does spoiled meat/fish work as a bait, or does it have to be fresh?

Uncooked / non-cured spoiled meat, fish, and fat all work as bait. Spoiled roasted/boiled/cured meat, fish or fat won’t work as bait.

[JP_Finn]

Make sure to sell off any clothing that you don't absolutely need, especially Fine/Masterwork quality ones since AFAIK their only benefit is a higher bartering value.

Armor, at least warmth values are affected by quality. (Or used to at least in 3.51 or so. I haven’t really bothered with minutiae in a while)

[Plotinus]

So does spoiled meat/fish work as a bait, or does it have to be fresh?

Uncooked / non-cured spoiled meat, fish, and fat all work as bait. Spoiled roasted/boiled/cured meat, fish or fat won’t work as bait.

i haven't branched away from uncooked meat and fish in my spreadsheet yet but I plan to. However this information from news.txt makes me think the cooked/cured meat should work as bait:

- fixed: dried cuts as fishing baits got used up in one single fishing attempt

         Now a single dried cut lasts for a couple of fishing attempts.

Though I don't know how much the fish will like it compared to other baits.

I also want to test out bread.

[JP_Finn]

So does spoiled meat/fish work as a bait, or does it have to be fresh?

Uncooked / non-cured spoiled meat, fish, and fat all work as bait. Spoiled roasted/boiled/cured meat, fish or fat won’t work as bait.

i haven't branched away from uncooked meat and fish in my spreadsheet yet but I plan to. However this information from news.txt makes me think the cooked/cured meat should work as bait:

- fixed: dried cuts as fishing baits got used up in one single fishing attempt

         Now a single dried cut lasts for a couple of fishing attempts.

Though I don't know how much the fish will like it compared to other baits.

I also want to test out bread.

Bread works for small fish. Bait comment above was for trapping
Cooked/cured/raw/spoiled/stale/fresh can all be used as fishing bait.

[Plotinus]

Preliminary results, average amount of fish gained per fishing attempt with high skill (90)  and a fishing rod with iron hook

No bait: 30 grams, 100 trials
berries: 430 grams, 56 trials
mushroom: 480 grams, 100 trials
leaves: 520 grams, 28 trials
roots: 670 grams, 47 trials
flowers: 620 grams, 100 trials
raw fish: 1.48 kg, 100 trials
raw meat: 1.98 kg, 100 trials

i haven't tested roasted/dried/smoked fish/meat or bread in a systematic way yet but anecdotally cooked fish/meat seems to work well too.

[ineedcords]

Preliminary results, average amount of fish gained per fishing attempt with high skill and a fishing rod with iron hook

No bait: 30 grams
berries: 430 grams
mushroom: 480 grams
leaves: 520 grams
roots: 670 grams
flowers: 620 grams
raw fish: 1.48 kg
raw meat: 1.98 kg

i haven't tested roasted/dried/smoked fish/meat or bread in a systematic way yet but anecdotally cooked fish/meat seems to work well too.

I appreciate this. Can you also post the sample size with each test result, please.

[Plotinus]

I edited my post! My goal is to have 100 trials with each type of food, but it's winter and my character ran out of berries, leaves, and roots. I'll gather more this summer and get flour for bread and and test out grains (barley, rye) and seeds too.

[Plotinus]

So because I have fewer trials for berries, leaves, and roots, I'd say that the exact difference between their quality and the quality of mushrooms and flowers is still unknown, and might be due to random chance, they seem to be all about the same as each other.

No bait: very bad but sometimes you get lucky
Plant matter (berries, leaves, flowers, roots): much better than nothing, it's worth collecting as much as you can when you're first starting out
raw fish: good
raw meat: great

unknown but probably good or great: cooked meat and fish
unknown (though i'd guess "same as other plant matter"): bread, seeds, grains, peas, broad beans
unknown but probably not very good: spoiled meat/fish (I'd guess "better than nothing" for this but i haven't tested it)