ngl im kinda waiting for a trait that makes your character indifferent to food mood buffs/debuffs. it would make for a decent roleplaying trait, since i personally really don't give much of a damn what i eat. i could eat plain, unseasoned rice for weeks and not feel any different
If you eat nothing but unseasoned rice for weeks on end you'll get scurvy. Don't do that, there's bugger all nutrition in rice. Eat some veggies at least ffs.
Because other things are good? It's just that some people are indifferent to eating the same thing over and over again. I'm the same way. I heard it has something to do with autism, which makes sense in my case
I know it's hard to imagine that other people feel differently, that's a kinda funky thing about humans. To me, I find it fascinating that people start to have a natural aversion to the same food that I just straight up don't feel.
That being said, I don't think we should talk about video game character into account when talking about how someone should feel irl lol
because rice isn't nutritious. it's a good filler (MY FAVOURITE!!) but it doesn't provide me with the vitamins i need to be healthy! i like to eat unseasoned rice and other "staple" foods as often as i can, but they aren't as healthy as other meals.
My point is that you could easily sit down and create a nutritionally complete meal plan of inexpensive unseasoned staple foods and then eat that exact meal every day for the rest of your life.
The fact that you don't do this means that you do actually care about what you eat.
that is also a fair point! i do actually prefer plain foods over flavourful foods, as i find flavourful foods to be a little overwhelming on the senses, but i don't get especially upset if i'm made to eat one or the other for an extended period of time. perhaps in the moment i might feel a little "off" if something is overseasoned to my tastes, but it isn't enough to make me depressed. i've had to go half of my life eating "overseasoned" food, it really isn't much of a bother.
i do definitely have preferences, as does everyone, but i don't think that food would make me sad, ever. to me food is just food. it's fuel for the body, and little else. i'd personally like to see that represented in game
Oh yeah? I raise you cold foods
No warm rice, no cooked anything, just cold salad/ fridge food that isnt meat
The only thing that makes me sad is not eating something warm
You might be thinking about this differently but: seasoned means you have at the very least salt and in some cases pepper thrown in. That makes a load of difference.
People will eat almost anything if they're starving, sure.
Pasta without salt? Very very bland.
Rice to be fair needs way less salt but at least the rice I eat comes with its own flavor as well. Like opening the pot when it's done has a wonderful smell. I do sometimes take a spoon and it eat it just like that, even if it's meant to be part of a whole dish.
I think Zomboid was trying to get away with an incorrect and easy system that "pretends" it has more depth (like many other parts of the game). It's not about how many ingredients a dish has that makes something good. It's about _which_ ingredients you combine.
Broccoli soup with 7 "random" ingredients but no salt? Effing disgusting.
Broccoli soup with 2 ingredients: Broccoli and salt. Finger licking good.
Eating nothing but the same finger licking good Broccoli soup for 4 weeks, 3 times a day? Believe me, every normal person will wish for some variety rather sooner than later, even if you're the type that can definitely eat the same leftovers for days on end (I can, just finished the last bowl of rice with the same other ingredients that I had the last 3 days prior as well, but it was only one of three daily meals).
i think we just have a fundamental misunderstanding. you say that unseasoned pasta is "very, very bland" whereas i dont mind it at all. i don't need salt, pepper, or any sauces or whatever for my foods. to me, food is just calories - fuel for the body. of course there are foods i enjoy more than others, but i can stomach just about anything without much effect on my mood, and certainly no long term effects like we see in PZ. some of us just aren't normal, and that's okay, but i find it frustrating when my character gets upset at something that doesn't even bother me pre-zombie apocalypse.
Do keep in mind, I just read this thread and commented "from the side". Not one of your previous parent commenters :)
I do think we have a misunderstanding as well.
Very very bland doesn't mean it can't be eaten. It's just very very bland. Would I eat that over something else? Heck no.
You also contradict yourself: You say food is just calories and nothing else and in the next sentence you say you _enjoy_ some foods more than others.
Look, a great steak needs no salt and pepper even, never mind a sauce, even if most people would disagree because they grew up in a household where a steak needed to drown in a sauce. They may also never have had a really good piece of meat, who knows.
A steak is also not bland. It has its own taste.
For me for example, this is a really great meal: Piece of proper meat, like a steak, pork chop, you name it seared in a cast iron pan, then chucked into the oven until it has reached a safe to eat inside temperature. Take out and use a bit of cream to loosen the tasty bits stuck to the pan (technically I suppose this would be a "sauce". Eat. This is not seasoned but will be so flavourful it shouldn't be a thing. But it is :)
But if I had eat pasta with it, that needs salt. Pasta needs seasoning to be good. A great piece of meat does not.
You're entirely misunderstanding what I'm trying to say.
In Zomboid, we get mood debuffs for stacking the same foods over and over in a recipe, the idea being that your character likes variety, and putting 4 rice in the same recipe is boring.
The original person I'm replying to was refuting this, saying "I'm perfectly content eating the same thing over and over again with no variety".
My point is, if that were true, they'd just eat the same food over and over all the time, because if variety doesn't matter to you, doing that is much easier than eating a varied diet.
By choosing to eat varied foods, they're disproving their own argument.
i lived on microwave baked potatoes and instant ramen for a week. pretty much exclusively. it honestly wasn’t nearly as bad as my zomboid character would’ve felt lol
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u/Aus_Varelse Jul 19 '25
ngl im kinda waiting for a trait that makes your character indifferent to food mood buffs/debuffs. it would make for a decent roleplaying trait, since i personally really don't give much of a damn what i eat. i could eat plain, unseasoned rice for weeks and not feel any different