running out of food on this site stops the gameplay loop and is not fun to deal with. i'm not sure if the food nerfs from the last patch are still in place, but i would like to suggest against food nerfs at this time.

my reasoning is that once i got a good supply going after early launch, it felt great! i had to maintain my stores, but i was able to do what i wanted and go on Campaign multiple times a day. after the nerf, i ran out of food for the first time since launch week (when i expected it to be hard to maintain food stores). i keep my Professions active consistently so this was a surprise. before, i could do Campaign reliably without neglecting Professions and was in a good groove where sometimes my food would get low, but never run out completely unless i really hogged around in Campaign and ignored my Professions. in that case, it felt like an earned consequence.

I agree with you about the food situation. Speaking for.myself as someone who has ADHD, running out of food and having to stop what I am doing interrupts my process and makes me less likely to be able to continue playing. It is frustrating when I am in the zone wild.wolf hunting or trinket/pebble hunting to run out of food and essentially run into a wall. I am a very active player, so I am hunting for hours a day, but when I get interrupted it gets very frustrating.

Another thing I feel adds to my frustration about the food nerf is that, before the nerf, I could get enough food to continuously campaign with one wolf and one companion. If I had two wolves, I would start to struggle and wouldn't be able to keep them both fed. Now I don't get enough food to keep one wolf running, and with the (in my opinion uneeded) buff to the bosses in Campain, I need three wolves. That essentially triples the amount of food I need. With the nerf to food, that is impossible.

As you said, the nerf makes it feel less like a free to play and more like a pay to win, as I need to spend a lot of MS/pebbles on restoring my food stash. Being an avid player who spends hours a day playing on the site, I feel like it should be easy for me to get enough food to continuously campaign. I feel sorry for those more casual players who can't dedicate as much time to the game; it seems almost impossible for those types of players to succeed without spending real money to buy food storages.

Just some of my thoughts on the issue. I love this site and I want it to thrive, so I hope that there is a solution soon! I know the site staff loves their game and it's players, so I'm not worried. They have a track record of taking feedback and making the game better.

agreed!! even as a casual player who can only spend a few hours at most on the game, I run into this problem far too quickly.

@Raintree what wolves/companions are you using? i've been able to do fine with two wolves

I have been using a Bracchus, a Jocol, and two swan scorps. I've pretty much stopped trying the boss battles though and haven't been able.to play around with it a lot since I've been super busy.

What team are you using, if I may ask?

@c h I v e

@Raintree i've been using two jocols and two scorpions, are your scorpions in the back?

Personally I think the nerf was needed. Food was exceedingly abundant, and you could entirely neglect cooking and just build up endlessly growing stores of food from the campaign. Campaign is a money printer, and stamina as a limiter was rendered completely obsolete by the amount of food.

I'm curious where people who are struggling with food are currently grinding, and how big a team they're taking? From my testing most zones seem roughly food neutral if you have one wolf and aren't cooking anything, and slightly food positive if you have one wolf and are cooking. That seems like a good balance.

I also haven't done large scale testing, but making the bosses require at least two wolves also seems like it should actually be advantageous for more casual players. Before, if you could grind endlessly you would make bank off the boss drops, and food was abundant enough to never be an issue. Players with a lot of time were at a massive advantage. Now, since bosses require a larger team, players with a lot of time have to choose between a long grind (say for ww) or for a profitable short grind (beating bosses). They're limited in how long they can fight bosses by the food, which prevents them from running away with infinite pebbles. There's a trade off. Casual players with limited time can simply go through their stamina bar, get the benefits of boss drops, and then set the game aside again to check in later. It seems like it should help level the playing field just a bit.

I'm certainly not opposed to monitoring and tweaking things as needed, but I don't think food drops should go back to how they were.

@Hawkfeather

"I'm curious where people who are struggling with food are currently grinding, and how big a team they're taking? From my testing most zones seem roughly food neutral if you have one wolf and aren't cooking anything, and slightly food positive if you have one wolf and are cooking. That seems like a good balance."

that's a good point, oh no… haha… i have been taking bigger teams in this week to farm Vespen, and i didn't think about it. i was running a two-wolf squad, now i am running a three-wolf squad. i'll go back to two and see if i still have any issues.

@Raintree

ADHD buddy! <3 yes i think the gameplay loop appeases the neurodivergency well and im hoping the site can maintain it as it grows larger. i like all parts of gameplay atm, professions, campaign, gauntlet – the only thing i don't do is arena is because alt tabbing has been glitchy lately. i feel like it worked OK the first week but hasn't since. maybe i am seeing things though lol.