This idea is pretty simple, it adds a new cooking ingredient/food item status effect. ‘Palate Cleanser’, which have one, simple idea behind them:
Eating a Cleanser clears status effects on your character
The idea behind this is twofold- one, you can clear negative potion effects, and two you can ‘reset’ for the next meal. Most people know this, but you can’t stack meal effects. If you eat a recovery two meal, then an invigorating four meal, you will not get both status effects, only the effect of the one you ate first. I find this to be a thematically appropriate way to let players juggle between effects- if they need to.
Of course, we can’t avoid the elephant in the room, which comes down to potion effects. These shouldn’t completely invalidate using potions in combat, but they should also provide options to people who may not be as hyper-prepared as their opponents.
Tiers
Tier 1 - Clears your food-based status effects and one potion status effect
Tier 2 - Clears food based status effects and all potion effects
Tiers 3 and up would clear status effects, and also give an effect that prevents effects from being placed on you for a short duration.
Obviously, this needs to have some sort of cooldown like healing, it would be more harm then help if it was spammable, but it should help lessen the gap between someone with thirty hours of potion farming and someone who hasn’t touched them yet.
Another idea possible drawback: You cannot palate cleanse twice in a row, you have to eat a meal between each use (After all, in the real world they are used to basically ‘scrub’ a taste from your mouth.) So unless you think you can juggle a full course meal mid-combat, these won’t put potions down all that much.
Food Items
Onto the foods, there are two I have in mind:
Parsley, which spawns on islands as a basic tier 1 herb. Eaten on its own, it functions as a Palate Cleanser, when used as an herb it gives a boost to fish based status effects.
GInger, which is somewhat rarer is a tier 2 herb. On its own, its a basic herb, but when cooked alone, it becomes Pickled Ginger which is a tier 2 Palette Cleanser.
Higher tiers would be exclusive to the Dark Sea & Sun Caraway Cooking.
I’ll be honest, this could be considered a bandaid fix for some of the more overtly overpowered potion options, but the alternative is a massive rework to potions and that could dampen how fun they are to use.
As always, I look forward to feedback so the idea can be tweaked to perfection.
