Rancher Survival: Food, Water, Sleep

[MLeonhardt]

Something I think might improve the gameplay, give the player something else to manage.

Food
Like your slimes, you need food as well. Raw fruits and vegetables can be eaten, but chickens and some plorts need to be cooked at your Ranch house before consumption. Cooked food confers a greater increase to the food stat, but requires you to return home.

To eat food in the field, simply elect one in your vacpac slots, and hit E
Having a full Food bar allows you to regenerate health quicker.

Water
Your need for water can be satisfied by sucking up water from ponds and oceans with the vacpac and consuming it the same way as food, or by going home and making fruit/vegetable smoothies. Eating Fruits also restores a bit of water as well.

Sleep
Sleep is required to stay healthy and alert on the Far Far Range. At least 6 hours of sleep is optimal. Missing out on sleep could make you run slower, or have to frequently stop to Yawn, or even make you hallucinate.

Cooking
When entering your home, you can now access your inventory in order to prepare delicious food and beverages. Foods like Chickens and Plorts must be cooked at home before being consumed. You can also make vegetables and fruits into salads and smoothies. Cooked/prepared foods restore a great deal more of the Food bar than eating raw fruit and vegetables.

Food List
Stuff you can eat in the wild includes:
Carrots
Pogofruit
Cuberries
Heart Beets
Mint Mangos
Water

Stuff that requires cooking/preparing at home:
Chickens
Pink Plorts
Honey Plorts
Puddle Plorts

Meals you can prepare
Chicken Dinner (Chicken, carrots, Oca Ocas)
Veggie Salad (Carrot, Heart Beets)
Fruit Salad (Pogofruit, Cuberry, Mint Mango)
Chicken Soup (Chicken, Water, Carrot)
Chicken Jerky (Elder Chickens)

[FarmerYuuma]

I don't think this game is meant to be a survival tho.

Even when you "die", all that happens is you go to sleep

[Kaite20]

I personally think it's a little much... it's hard already for me to keep all my slimes fed, and while those mechanics aren't bad ideas, it would be very difficult for someone who's far enough to keep track of both the slimes AND myself.

[MLeonhardt]

Eh, thought it might be worth consideration but I see what y'all mean.

Perhaps a different game mode?
Like Survival mode means you have to feed yourself as well as your slimes
While Freedom Mode is like the current system.

And then a Hardcore mode where if you have to eat and such, but if you starve or get killed by Slimes or fall into the ocean, your Save is deleted.

[clmurphy74]

Oh Minecraft but with non-lethal slimes? Nah... I already play MC so full up on survival games.

[AsrielDreemurr]

tbh i like the idea of survival mode

[CaptainTango]

I love the idea of survival, but maybe a bit less intense? Or at least variable levels, depending on difficulty. I like the idea of it being more like Harvest Moon/Rune factory: You need to sleep, but maybe can get a tent to sleep off the farm if you're exploring, and you need to eat one meal a day to maintain health.

[asdfghjklinkin]

I like only the idea of needing sleep. Something I noticed almost immediately was how strange it was that I didn't have to sleep. But I actually quite like it, because then exploring isn't a huge pain in the butt.
I think it'd be cool if you needed to sleep like once a week, though.

[MLeonhardt]

Personally I just wanna snack on some carrots or eat a nice chicken dinner after a day of tending to my slimes.

Maybe tone it down to like, just a popup message when you haven't eaten for a while.
"You're a little hungry"
"You're very hungry!"

And the one downside to not eating would be that your health regenerates slower when you're hungry, and not at all when you're really hungry.

[glinkBobby]

I've always thought about the downsides of "staying up all night" in the game, because there aren't any right now. Maybe if you stay up all night, your energy total slowly decreases, or doesn't charge as fast. Or maybe one of your slots starts to malfunction leaving you only 3 to work with. Your aim starts to waver, your vision gets blurry. Maybe if you don't sleep for 3 whole days, you just pass out.