Market-bought Food

Have a new general feature to suggest, or think one should be tweaked? Share your ideas here.
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Irylia
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Market-bought Food

Post by Irylia »

I realize this isn't a very realism-based request, but I'd like to ask that market-bought food items reset their expiration cooldown on-purchase or that the market not sell food items with less than maybe... 3 days of expiration left on their timer. Essentially, the market would only sell "fresh" food for the sake of QOL. Otherwise if there are items about to expire first in line you have to manually choose newer items. Players can't easily bulk buy and know how many items might be affected or if what they're getting will last as long as they need. This would only apply once the food was purchased so normal market expiring would still take place to keep overstock issues down.

Some people might argue - well if the expiration magically resets when you buy the food, then won't there be a risk of people just re-selling it to keep it on the market longer? Well, I guess... but it would be at a riln-loss due to how the market works. I think allowing something like this would just make it easier to manage buying and selling so you're not bulk-buying food that will expire before you can use it.

Below you can see that ordering 15 of ghostroot would give you at least one item that lasts less than a day in your overall order, but doesn't tell you how many of those items might suffer this low expiration date. Ordering the 5th item in stock individually shows that it will last a week. To make sure the whole order lasts a decent amount of time, the player would have to individually buy each food item and check the timer.

Example:
order ghostroot qty 15
You set your sights on a twisted thick white ghostroot.
A twisted and tortured-looking root, hairy and a bit thinner than a carrot.
There are about 3 bites left, and it looks slightly unappetizing. (Nutrition: 22%)
It'll probably keep for about less than a day.
It is a small item.

order 5 ghostroot
You set your sights on a twisted thick white ghostroot.
A twisted and tortured-looking root, hairy and a bit thinner than a carrot.
There are about 3 bites left, and it looks slightly unappetizing. (Nutrition: 22%)
It'll probably keep for about 1 week.
It is a small item.
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nobody
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by nobody »

A good alternative might be factoring in the expiry period into the price. If it's going to expire in a day, it should certainly be worth less than if it is expiring in a week.
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Irylia
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by Irylia »

That wouldn't really solve the bulk-buy issue unless there's a way to specify you only want the ones that cost more/have more time. But I agree that might be a good way to handle things otherwise.
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Irylia
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by Irylia »

I just ran into this again. I bought 15 ghostroot thinking it would last me a few days for my critters and the next day the 14 that weren't eaten were spoiled and my critters are starving. It would be super helpful to know that food you buy from the market is actually fresh and will last a reasonable amount of time without having to single-buy each piece to check its expiration clock. Feedback on if this is even being considered would be much appreciated.
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Rias
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by Rias »

Yes, I'm trying to decide how to best implement at least partial freshness guarantees at the market. I might just remove food items when they've got less than half of their freshness time remaining.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
<Fellborn> NO
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Irylia
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by Irylia »

I think that would be a good solution if there's population and supply to support it. The issue is often there's very few of any particular food item available. But I definitely appreciate you considering options. Thanks!
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nobody
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by nobody »

I just had an idea for this when I logged in today and realized my backpack had one loaf of bread and it's a few days old, probably stale by now. Might it be workable to have the market evaluate food (at the time people view/search for it) to see what percentage of it's shelf life is remaining and label it:
100-81%: very fresh
80-61%: mostly fresh
60-41%: slightly old
40-21%: rather old
20-0%: nearly spoiled

This would make it possible to buy fresh ghost root and be sure it'll last a while, or you could only buy very fresh when it's on the market. Might even adjust prices based on the freshness.
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Irylia
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by Irylia »

Bumping this rather old thread because I'm starting to run into this issue again.
Staz
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Re: Market-bought Food

Post by Staz »

Serious issue. I ended up out by New Emberlight with very little money or food. I figured the salted fish probably would hurt morale, so I just bought a bunch of berries at the market. Half of them spoiled within 20 minutes.
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