Farm Life is a mod that adds more items to the game which focus on farming, raising livestock, and (of course) everyone's favorite cooking! This mod does not attempt to modify any of the existing food recipes in the game. Those systems are left in place on purpose for a couple of reasons.
First, my goal is always more options. While I appreciate what the Pimps have done for vanilla cooking and crafting, I want more. I'm tired of making meat stew and bacon and eggs. I want options, I want complicated recipes, I want MORE things to do at night in my base.
Second, removing or modifying the existing systems is error-prone, liable to break things when new versions are released, and generally, something I do not want to maintain at all. I'm focused on adding new optional paths that give players rewards for going down those paths and learning the new systems I have built. Anyone can install this Mod on a server for instance, and players are free to completely ignore all of the content, aside from a few items that they may find while looting or at a trader.
Farm Life is really just about more options that when pursued, reward the player for their hard work. After all the game is about having fun and who doesn't want more reward systems for all their hard work?
Q: This thing says it has "farm" in the name. Does that mean I can like, grow some crops?
A: Yes, it sure does!
Fundamental to Farm Life is growing crops. The vanilla system provides us with a few good options in the post-apocalypse. Farm Life builds on these options to add more crops to grow. There are a wide variety of crops, and each has a purpose in making food. Certain crops are used for making other ingredients such as flour or black pepper. Most crops are also, themselves, an ingredient in recipes.
All crop growing is modeled directly off of how vanilla crops are grown.
Q: Can I raise things like cows and chickens and stuff?
A: Of course you can!
Another aspect to Farm Life is livestock. Raising cattle, elk, etc. adds another depth to the recipes that have been added. There are specific meat items that you get from each type of livestock, which are required for certain types of recipes.
This system will evolve over time, but the basic idea is that you:
- build a "pen" to keep your livestock in,
- feed them periodically
- over time they become harvestable for meat, hide, bones, fat, and more.
It is similar to the way crops are grown, but you have to actively use resources to make them grow.
Q: Now that we have all these fancy crops and meat, what do we do with them?
A: I'm glad you asked!
It would be silly to just make some more versions of bacon and eggs or veggie stew. While there are analogs to those recipes (for the sake of more options), we can do much much better than this.
Cooking is a personal hobby of mine. I love to try new cooking recipes and find ways to make recipes I find my own by taking things in different directions. In my experience, except for when I literally make vegetable soup with existing stock, cooking is never a one-step process. Even in the vegetable soup example, you still have to wash (I hope you wash your veggies) and chop, dice, cut the plants.
Cooking can and should be more detail oriented. Every recipe you find has a set of step by step instructions. You do things in stages, over time, adding on top of the previous result until you have the final product, a tasty yummy meal.
The food and drink systems will evolve over time, but the basic premise is the more time and more ingredients you put into food, the more benefit you receive from that food. If I make a smoothie, act lazy, and only toss in some milk and a banana I definitely have a smoothie. But that smoothie is not as good for you as one with more fruits or protein powder or even adding some yogurt or kefir. When you add more and appropriate ingredients to recipes, you get better results.
This system will evolve over time, but for these complicated recipes, you cook things in steps. Each step requires certain ingredients and cooking time. The results of each cooking step are used as an ingredient in the next stage of the process. This process goes on until all the steps have been completed and you have the final product, such as Veal Bolognese Sauce. Often these final products are yet combined again with another product to make an edible item, like Veal Bolognese Dish
Q: I like to drink beer on the weekdays, but have some wine or mixed drinks on the weekend. Can I role play like this in Farm Life?
A: Indeed you can!
Alcohol serves two main purposes; to give status buffs and for roleplaying with your drink of choice.
Just like in real life, you can make beer, wine, and other types of alcohol. Drinking has benefits, just like in real life! Beer gives you punching power and a stamina boost (like vanilla beer). Wine makes you suaver and gives bonuses with traders or player groups. Unlike vanilla beer effects, the effect duration can stack.
Also unlike the vanilla beer, there are consequences to over drinking. Because the effect duration stacks, the more you drink, the longer it takes to recover. As you consume more and more alcohol, you become more and more inebriated, and debuffs are applied. At a certain point, you become wasted and falling down (literally) drunk. Eventually, you can even die if you continue drinking and your blood alcohol level gets too high, just like in real life.
Alcohol is also fun to drink or even get drunk occasionally. Your character will emote things to you on the toolbar message window whenever you take a drink. Depending on how much you have drunk, the messages change.
Q: Vanilla food is boring AF. If I eat one more baked potato I'll puke my guts out, please tell me there is more stuff I can cook?
A: Well of course there are a million things to cook now!
This system, like the rest of the mod, is a work in progress and evolving over time.
Food and drink repay you with stamina and health, food and water based on how much time and ingredients you invested in making it. This mod has a very unique "dynamic" system for determining values for food, water, health, and economic values. Every ingredient that goes into a crafted edible contributes to its overall effect. For the most part, every single edible has a unique and scaled set of values based primarily on their ingredients. If a recipe changes between versions, its values will be recalculated automatically. This is something unique to Farm Life and sets it apart from any other mod offering to date.
Buffs are reserved for specialty food and water items. Some things have buffs, some do not. You are encouraged to try and craft everything to discover what edibles give which buffs. Of course you can always cheat and look at the xml :)