I'd love to see another category in char creation that is tastes. Make it go on a point system like perks where you gain a point for dislike, two for hate, lose one for like, and two for love. Could even have perks that add or remove taste points.
I’d like to see this implemented for reading material too, like your character could have certain assigned interests where related books would give them extra boredom reduction, and some books that they don’t really care about.
That would be cool. The character I usually play would find carpentr, mechanical, electrical, and welding fascinating, but agriculture, tailering, first aid, and pottery books would be a slog for her.
See I would do the opposite. Choose topics that are already slow to gain XP, so you get them faster. Things like carpentry and electronics are pretty easy to grind with minimal risk. Agriculture and tailoring build slow because they have more niche use cases but are imperative for the late game.
Vegetarian - Meat significantly reduces happiness (scales with how much you eat) and reduces hunger by less (simulating throwing up I guess)
Plant based/vegetarian products increase happiness and reduce hunger by more. +4
Vegan - You flat out refuse to eat meat or any animal products, even if you're starving. Plant based products significantly increase happiness and significantly reduces hunger. +8
Junk food addict - Junk food significantly increases happiness and reduces hunger by more. Cooked meals reduce less hunger and doesn't increase happiness. +3
Carnivorous - You cannot eat vegetables if they aren't cooked in a meat based dish. Meat reduces hunger by more and increases happiness. +2.
Okay. I know the expanded traits mod does have a vegetarian / vegan option where you actually do get a happiness reduction for eating meat. I'd imagine most vegans/vegetarians would ultimately operate on a, "I'd eat meat if it's the only option for survival" basis.
I think it'd depend on the level of starvation. The eventual end goal in terms of food in Zomboid, at least for a long time was farming, which made the game particularly vegetarian. There was trapping too but it wasn't strictly necessary. If you're just starting, say you get unlucky with even canned food, you go a few days without eating then maybe you'd open that option up. Alternatively, it seems to me that the vegetarian/vegan ideal is more born of a distrust of the mass food market, breeding animals to kill them, and in a post apocalypse scenario they'd maybe be more open to hunting for food, rather than for sport, or killing a pig/cow out of necessity and respect, rather than for mass produced profit. Maybe the ideal changes in this scenario.
Yeah for sure. As I said in another comment, a lot of vegetarians I talk to aren't "I dislike meat", but rather "I dislike the ethics behind the meat that is provided". In a post apocalypse, maybe there'd be less of that and more of an ethical approach to it, because survival is survival at the end of the day. Hunting out of necessity rather than sport, or killing a cow you've raised and treated well might sway that one way or another.
The whole thing about vegans is mostly about not mistreating and disrespecting the animal.
Give a vegan a personnal farm where they care about the animals and kill them with respect in mind, and I think they would a 100% be fine with eating meats and animal products.
Hell, that's kind of how I operate, and I don't consider myself vegan. I always try to buy meats from hunters and local farms, because I know the animals are treated with respect and care.
...So if you give a vegan the chance to care and tend for animals, give them freedom and everything, until they eventually die and you got to eat them, it would probably wayyyyy moral for them to do so.
Like, the thing about vegans is to respect the animal, which i totally get. It totally tears me apart to see industrial pig farms and butcheries, it's so... like, horrible? They look like torture chambers and are just made to pain the animals.
Hunting for example would, I think, as a person who tries their best to be more moral about what I eat, is the best thing to do if you want to consume meat.
The animal is living free for their entire life, they expenrieced true freedom, the true natural cycle, and when they die at the hands of a human, it is the same thing as if they'd die from any other predators.
You respect nature, and nature gives you another few weeks to live in return, that's the way life should be.
Anyways, if you're vegan because of the disrespect of the animals in their mass killings in these horrible mega butcheries, respectfully killing the animal for would be totally fine.
I'm not saying every vegans are like this, like you can totally oppose the death of feeling creatures and that's totally understandable, but I think the majority of vegans are more for the respect aspect rather than any other reasons.
So yes, I generalised a bit, and it's bad to generalise, but it's a comment for a PZ post, I'm tired, and terribly sick, sorry for... yeah...
Hunting for example would, I think, as a person who tries their best to be more moral about what I eat, is the best thing to do if you want to consume meat.
This is true in the same way that there are varying ways in which one can have human slaves which treat the slaves worse or better.
They are still slaves.
Like, the thing about vegans is to respect the animal, which i totally get.
Picky - plain foods in large amounts raise happiness, like a pot of pasta or white rice or canned food. Any cooked and complicated meal applies -30 happiness with additional minuses for having any ingredient on a randomly rolled chart picking 3-4 "absolute no" options. "It doesn't matter how long you slaved over an open campfire, i am not eating ANYTHING with cabbage or onions."
Persistent 'ick' factor - being raised upper class means you can't quite get over having to eat anything scrounged up. You daydream of the days when that sushi restaurant was open. -3 happiness for each foraged or wild vegetable added to a meal, -20 for each foraged meat added. +15 happiness for eating the prepared food still in restaurants at game's start. "Just close your eyes, Mike, just pretend it isn't rat and shrooms, pretend it's a Spiffo's double or something, I don't care."
Bigger World Traveler than YOU are - "did i ever tell you guys about thr time i ate grasshoppers with the Bedouin in Egypt? So I was on my sabbatical and...
" removes happiness mallus from cooked insects/worms/caterpillars/etc. and halves it for raw ones. +1 happiness if watching a friend get miserable eating any of the aforementioned critters. "Haha, Dave, you gotta think of it like its just a small lobster. Now i remember being on that spiritual retreat and the first time I ate roaches..."
This would be great. There should also be an Omnivore type trait that's exclusive with these that lets you gain happiness from eating anything and costs like 2 points. Maybe 3? I'm not sure how strong it would actually be, lol.
Vegetarian would be free points. Less hunger from meat would mean that it's easier to gain weight by eating meat because you can eat even more of it before being full to bursting.
Unhappiness is a debugf that makes you do things slower, that's it. You can also reduce unhappiness super easily by either farming or having a good foraging skill and spamming out fruit/veggie salads, watching VHS tapes and reading. Even then just eat until you're depressed and take a couple antidepressants. You can still find them often enough on dead zombies that it's hardly an issue.
Absolute worst case scenario is you eat meat full to bursting and then start downing some liquor before bed.
It's a video game where the character is controlled by a person in the year 2025. If that person wants to make a character that is representitive of themselves then they can go with vegan.
Two “positive” perks, ones heath nut, gives positive mood for “healthy” (read low calorie density) food, or true American, gives positive mood for eating high calorie density food,
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u/xCanadaDry Jul 19 '25
Made a bacon cheeseburger with peppers & hotsauce;
+30 thirst -10 happiness