I have been playing with this mechanic of insanity today and yesterday and so far to me this mechanic is a tedious annoyance that causes more problems for the sake of causing problems. I can understand the devs idea of not wanting you to afk all day, but to force us to go do some random tasks outside of our routine to keep from going to a madness level i feel is counterproductive to a sandbox game. On top of that at madness level 1 i had the Precious event when sifting occur 6 Bloody times! (i had a rant but id rather talk about my idea then this patch)
Now I think back to haven, far cry etc and think about what i would replace this insanity with but still achieve the same goals the devs want, but make it fun and not annoy the crap out of the player base.
This is where Starvation comes in, Whereby a player must eat every so often and drink as well else but this is separate to normal bile regen whereby foods that we use to regen help reduce our hunger but not as much as a proper meal would.
What does this achieve?
Dont eat you die, Dont drink you dehydrate and die.
What pros?
Besides staying alive each time you eat you gain a random buff for 15/30 mins something to be the incentive to eat, but not be an idoit and go nuts eating everything in sight. Note Gluttony doesnt affect this idea at all.
Now lets go more into detail.
We gain a Hunger bar or in JCs case an icon of a Man/Woman. The hungrier we get the more starved the face becomes the fuller we get the more bloated the face becomes sort of like:
Chubby/Normal
Food becomes classified as Snacks, Meals, Appetizers and Moorish.
Each food you eat to regen biles helps a little to reduce your hunger, but satisfying your hunger can only occur if your at max biles and then eat something. If you dont eat for a long time say 4 hours you start to starve, now you might say so what that seems easy enough, gobble some food nothing big but heres the kicker the 4 types of foods change how long your full for on top of the buffs you can get and you can only eat them once at full food and then you have a cooldown until you can eat again (probably length of buff).
When you eat you get a buff and if your not eating by sitting down at a table like a civilized pilgrim you have a chance to proc moorish or snack buffs (these ones make you hungrier and accelerate your hunger rate) and the hungrier you are and not sitting at a table the more likely to proc moorish/snack.
When you eat at a table you are going to proc appetizer and entree buffs (generally better and last longer, but cost more to prepare). This is where i steal Havens feasting type where you sit down and you have items on the table and the better the items gold forks etc the better buff or longer. We can extend this idea more by saying if your in a town and you have a table ready for 6 people you all sit down and eat at same time (say 1 minute to eat food animation) the greater the buff/timer.
What sort of buffs could we have?
Sugar fanatic- You do tasks alot faster but in your haste you cause more problems, mine a tile you increase chance of cave in plane boards you can do them faster but have an increased chance to fail etc.
Vegetarian- Decreased damage to animals but a 10% gain on using non meat foods to regen with.
Shrooming- Giant flowers and mushrroms appear on the ground that arent there.
Carnivore- Increased damage to animals reduction in using non meat to regen with.
Vegan Lord- Character randomly says how awesome they are because they're Vegan.
Messy Eater- crickets and rabbits auto aggro you to get your leftovers all over your shirt.
But wheres the death you ask? its simple if your a poor fellow that cant afford a table and eats straight from the pot you never feel quiet full and you keep starving when you icon looks emancipated you start to take max bile damage (yes you lose biles
![¦]](./images/smilies/troll.gif "Trollface")
) the more your character is starving the greater the loss until you die. You want to stop the loss then eat at a table after each buff wears off eat again etc. Here we have a system that people aim to actually set up areas to have a meal and get rewarded for putting in the effort of having a decent setup.
