Hi all!
I just started playing a few days ago, so forgive me if this was already suggested, on the way or already is a thing (I did search tho!):
There's plentiful fruits, fish and meats in the game that only ever get munched on by us individually.
There's also the Hunter's Call that exchanges your leftovers for gold.
I propose a type of quest in which you are rewarded for delivering a "gourmet meal", consisting of a list of ingredients, maybe in varying states of cookedness, across the sea.
I am aware that the Hunter's Call do not offer voyages, but delivering the requests via parchments with the recipe, location and expiration date should do the trick.
On top of that, if you get more reward the sooner you deliver, it would put some strategic planing on the table and prevent players from simply cooking everything on delivery site.
E.g: routes to islands with multiple campfires are needed to increase time-efficiency and reward.
The idea is to make use of the variety of ingredients, further encourage exploration and reward the timely execution of the logistics involved, without overly complicating things; putting the requested ingredients on a plate that works like a chest would suffice.
Additionally, it could expand the food system in a few ways:
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Adding some flavor (pun totally intended) to the lore with real world, traditional recipes that fit into the setting, like Ceviche. (TBH Don't starve was a huge inspiration here)
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Giving some situational value to lesser sought after ingredients, like bananas or common fish.
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Allowing a small window of time for preparing well-cooked fruits - that occasionally could be a requirement for a recipe - would ad some incentive to cook fruits for, let's say, an extra 5% health outside the gourmet system.
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Introducing new gourmet-meal-only ingredients that can not be consumed by themselves and spoil, should prevent players from just preparing every request as soon as received and would open the doors for some dedicated storage system that runs on ice as a valuable resource.
Of course only applying to the dedicated ingredients and keeping meat and fruits non-spoiling as they are now -
Giving new stuff to sell to the Hunter's Call if you miss the request's expiration date or want to make more gold from the food you currently have.
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And lastly it opens up the door for introducing some reasonable temporary player-buffs when consuming a gourmet-meal.
Like: better diving lungs, increased strength for rising anchor/sails, increased resistance to sleep, venom, fire, drunkenness... etc.
Read "resistance" as: instead of 1 sleep-bomb, it needs 2 to get you knocked out
A note on buffs: it should really only complement situational gameplay and not become an abused mandatory system. Only one over-writable buff at a time and at most a 1 to 3 minutes timer, depending on the buff is my gut feeling. Also unrefrigerated meals should spoil in the course of, let's say, 10 to 20 minutes.
No running/swimming-speed, defense or attack buffs
Anyways, the buff thing is debatable and I would already be happy with only the stuff before it.
Hendrick would have a field-day!
