Cooking Pots - They could actually be useful someday....

[Wids]

As someone who has been on a fair share of camping trips, I think I know a way to turn this 5.5 pound hunk of iron into something worth carrying around.

As things are, it goes like this.  You kill a deer.  You loot the meat.  You build a fire and you cook the meat.

But how your character does this is more or less poking a stick through the meat and holding it over the fire.  And when you cook meat like that, you tend to get less than perfect results.  The fatty parts melt off or burn off, some parts of the meat get charred or portions of the meat can't stand the stress of hanging on the stick while being directly exposed to a source of intense heat, so they fall off and land in the fire or roll off into the grass.  And who wants to eat food that's covered with dirt and ash?

As in real life, a cooking pot would solve these problems.  You don't lose nearly as much of the food that way; the food can't fall anywhere and the surrounding iron container disperses the heat more evenly, resulting in fewer undercooked portions and less risk of scorching or charring the meat (or beggar's cup, or purple bolete, or whatever you happen to be cooking).  The end result?  Less waste, more even cooking and an overall better quality of cooked food.  Iron cookware can make any camping trip better.  

So what if we gave the cooking pots a right-click function?  The quills have a right-click function to designate a sheet of paper for writing; perhaps we could do something similar for cooking pots.  Simply right-click the cooking pot and target a meat hunk, beggar's cup or purple bolete in your inventory, then right-click the designated foodstuff and target a campfire.  This extra step will increase the yielded food rations to more than the customary six, perhaps even doubling the amount of yielded rations (to 12).

Then again, you'd have to be a pretty sloppy camper to lose half of your ham slabs, hot dogs, marshmallows, freshly harvested fish filets and freshly harvested rabbit meat everytime you cooked them on a spit.  Perhaps a 150% yield--9 food rations instead of 6 if you use a cooking pot--would be sufficient.

Thoughts?  

[ThAnswr]

What's wrong with ashes mixed into the food? I used to smoke while cooking all the time.   

[Wids]

What's wrong with ashes mixed into the food? I used to smoke while cooking all the time.   

I swear, I will never, ever eat at your house for as long as I live.... 

[ThAnswr]

What's wrong with ashes mixed into the food? I used to smoke while cooking all the time.   

I swear, I will never, ever eat at your house for as long as I live.... 

No problem.  I quit smoking in 1987. 

[Mcskinns]

I think it'd be nice if the cookpots were used on the campfire to alter it to the "campfire with pot" appearance, and perhaps that sort of placeable might yeild a better return on rations [shrugs].

[Wids]

I think it'd be nice if the cookpots were used on the campfire to alter it to the "campfire with pot" appearance, and perhaps that sort of placeable might yeild a better return on rations [shrugs].

You know, I like your idea even better than mine.  But what happens to the cooking pot if some barbarian with a greataxe comes up and smashes the campfire?  Would we be able to retrieve our cooking pot (as an item drop), do you think, or would it be lost? 

[Mcskinns]

I think it'd be nice if the cookpots were used on the campfire to alter it to the "campfire with pot" appearance, and perhaps that sort of placeable might yeild a better return on rations [shrugs].

You know, I like your idea even better than mine.  But what happens to the cooking pot if some barbarian with a greataxe comes up and smashes the campfire?  Would we be able to retrieve our cooking pot (as an item drop), do you think, or would it be lost? 

item saves or returns "Broken Item" maybe...

[failed.bard]

If the "campfire with pot" placeable has DR and HPs like a normal campfire, I'd assume there would be nothing left of it.

[Mcskinns]

If the "campfire with pot" placeable has DR and HPs like a normal campfire, I'd assume there would be nothing left of it.

typically yes.. but it is much easier to break apart a pile of burning wood and ash than it is to break an iron pot... those things could be used as weapons you know

[Dreaderick]

What's wrong with ashes mixed into the food? I used to smoke while cooking all the time.   

Aha! Now that reminds me...

[Kadtreko]

I had 120 rations at one time. Nobody asked for any...
The cooking pot idea is something that's been on my mind though. Examined the item several times to find out it was just a 5.5 pound piece of junk.

Tent, fire, pot, bedrolls...That's a good to go camping trip.

[Wids]

I had 120 rations at one time. Nobody asked for any...
The cooking pot idea is something that's been on my mind though. Examined the item several times to find out it was just a 5.5 pound piece of junk.

Tent, fire, pot, bedrolls...That's a good to go camping trip.

...and deer to hunt, and fish to catch...do you think we'll ever get fishing skill on this server? 

[LoLJohnFerro]

Psshhh who needs a fishing skill when you can rp fishing. *nod nod*
I have done it with jade was a very fun thing we caught two fish

[yakon]

How about if you build a campfire you get the option to place the cooking pot or not?

and if you have placed it the amounts of rations increase then useing a camp fire without a cooking pot

[Wids]

How about if you build a campfire you get the option to place the cooking pot or not?

and if you have placed it the amounts of rations increase then useing a camp fire without a cooking pot

That's exactly what Mcskinns suggested...except that it would probably be easier to code if we just right-clicked the cooking pot on the campfire.  There's really no reason for the engine to search our inventories for cooking pots everytime someone builds a campfire.  

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to change the "foul-smelling stew" description of the campfires with cookpots when they're built by PCs, though.  Viorica doesn't cook stinky stew.  She cooks good stew.  

[ethinos]

I really don't see how cooking in a pot would double the amount of edible food. However, mix in a bit of water and a few vegetables and I could see you getting increased servings for that original amount of meat. (After all, the stew, casserole, and stir-fry are commonly used for a reason...) How many rations do we get now for a piece of meat? 5? If so, I could see a stew giving two or three more per piece. Any more though, and it would be pretty easy to amass a fortune just by hunting animals or poaching livestock.

On the other hand, the pot could continue to be just an RP device, like rope, the canteen, shovel, etc., but being able to set it up is cool.

[Wids]

Actually, you get six rations for each meat cooked.  So that's six for a regular deer, twelve for a lake deer or a boar and 36 for a grizzly bear.  If you've ever seen a whitetail deer or a mule deer--alive, dead, field dressed and cleaned...--then you probably have some idea how much meat you can get out of one deer.  But I'd need a mathematician to figure out exactly how big one in-game ration is, whether or not the proportions of meat yielded by various animals of various body masses are correct and yadda yadda yadda.

As for how cooking in a pot would increase the amount of cooked food, I already covered that in my first post.  There's a certain amount of waste when you prepare and cook food, and cooking on a stick tends to result in more waste than cooking in a skillet or a pot.  I remember when I was cooking a one-pound ham slab on a metal spit over a campfire once, and the whole thing somehow tore itself off the spit and fell right into the fire.  I wasn't about to reach in and grab it, either.  Finally got it out with the spit and a meat fork, but it was pretty well shot at that point.  A few chunks cut from inside the ham slab were still good, though.  Ticked me off so bad....