The hunger bar. A forgotten mechanic that makes you eat things every once in a while. I think the hunger bar should be reworked into a food cooldown. At the bottom I will explain why I think this should happen and going through some possible counter arguments or reasons to keep the hunger bar, as well as a place where the hunger bar is useful.
The main idea is to change the hunger bar to a status effect that prevents eating food. If you have played Terraria this is basically potion sickness, though you might want to add various levels of it so eating a decent failure (only seasoning or rotten fish) doesn’t prevent eating as much as a 400 hunger god meal. Some ideas for levels of fullness are:
A little full: “You are still a bit peckish, and wouldn’t mind some seconds.” Lasts from 0-3 minutes. You can still eat with this debuff.
Well fed: “You don’t feel like eating anything else.” Lasts from 3-10 minutes.
Plenty Satisfied: “You feel full, as if you have eaten a meal fit for a king.” Lasts from 10-20 minutes.
Exquisitely stuffed: “You feel very full, as if you have eaten a hearty family’s worth of food.” Lasts from 20-40 minutes.
Yeah, I copied the names above from Terraria. I also don’t feel like making any more buff names since I feel like some people might interpret them as innuendos. When the buff timer goes below a milestone the debuff changes to a lower tier one (when your buff timer goes below 10 minutes it changes from plenty satisfied to well fed for example).
Also make sure that the fullness debuffs don’t last longer than the food buffs, otherwise you will have a period of time where you are full but have no buffs. Dying will remove your food buffs and hunger, so you can buff up before a boss every time you die. Some people might suggest just accelerating the hunger bar, which would work but at the very bottom I say that the hunger bar was meant to facilitate buffs, not provide pressure to the game. Even then it fails at the latter. With this change, starving to death doesn’t exist and food can actually be reasonably used for a boss fight!
Regular food will become useless with this change, as it would only grant the fullness debuff (which is bad). I would change it so eating regular food gives a small amount of health, but it is based on numbers and are rather small. Regular food would become obsolete quickly past the very early game and fish buffs should always be better (Regular food still gives fullness so you can’t spam healing). It will give a use to the fruits that taste worse when cooked as well! You might also want to consider not cooking food, though this could be fixed with a cooking station that doesn’t use heat (this idea belongs to a food feature request, not a hunger bar rework).
There only issue I can think of with this change are food quests, mainly the 400 hunger one. I would make it so each meal shows how long the fullness debuff lasts for, and change that quest to be based on the fullness timer. Simple change.
The only place where I can see the hunger bar being useful is the Dark Sea. I don’t want to suggest ideas for the Dark Sea, but a hunger bar can be useful as a pseudo-timer for how long you can stay. If you make players bring cargos of food to the Dark Sea, and accelerate the hunger bar by a lot, there will be a time pressure there which can be fun and fitting. If only one person had to be fed then the Dark Sea would be pretty easy, so I would make it so your crew also needs hunger. I think this will create a very interesting and fun dynamic, as your hunger bar is effectively your time in the sea. Your time is related to your power level, as bringing more crewmates leads to less time but more strength. Your time is also your buffs as you can consume more time (food) to get powerful buffs for fighting sea monsters for example, but obviously this is quite risky. And finally, your space on your ship is related to your time. You might have to lose time in order to store more treasure, and now you will have judge what you really need the most. The hunger bar would make the Dark Sea miles more interesting (if it isn’t already unique) and is the only place where it would fit into the game. Vetex also wants players to only go to the dark sea with a good boat, and a good boat can store more food so it helps in that department.
Why do I want the hunger bar changed, you may ask? Well, the hunger bar is just annoying. You occasionally eat something and thats about it. You can use it to get buffs in a boss fight, but the buffs are generally short lived and if you die you have to wait for your hunger to go down because you can’t eat while above 100 hunger. You can get better buffs, but that requires a lot of grind both for high level ingredients (especially fish) and cooking skill. Having to grind just for a half-decent buff for one attempt is stupid and insane copium. Also cooking skill increases the hunger gain of food which is actually bad! (Maybe also the buff length but I’m not sure) There’s sea water but having to drink sea water is also stupid lets be real (also a mechanic most people don’t know about).
Some people might say that the hunger bar is to prevent macroing, especially for fishing. However you already get random knockback from fishing, which is to prevent macros. Also it isn’t hard to eat food in a macro. The hunger bar also takes a whopping 42 minutes to run out, so it isn’t even a threat at all. And hunger shouldn’t be an issue in the game, at all. You have more than enough food and past Redwake you should have enough stockpile to never go hungry. On the trello, Vetex even states that the hunger bar is for facilitating food buffs and not to add pressure over 42 minutes. The only good reason to keep the hunger bar is that it is mildly humorous to see Youtubers slowly lose their hunger while doing a video, and then eat midway through. That’s the end of my rant on why the hunger bar is bad, and also the end of the suggestion.