Contaminated chunks

[dpeg]

As far as I see it, the problem lies with the rat.

[CommanderC]

Removing chunks entirely would be fine too, I guess.

I agree with you. Most races shouldn't be able to eat any kind of chunks at all; only permafood. Chunks should still exist because of sublimation/simulacrum, ghouls, kobolds, or trolls (and maybe orcs/ogres).

[mageykun]

As far as I see it, the problem lies with the rat.

I can just see the countermeasures to prevent using weak living monsters as chunk reserves forming...

From now on, monsters will age. This won't make them any weaker as they get old and feeble- it'll just affect the meat. Take too long to kill them, and you end up with old and stringy chunks. Wait way too long and they turn cancerous.

In all seriousness, I would love to see contaminated chunks and their associated tediousness go. Or to see the whole system reworked, so only ravenous or carnivorous species ate chunks, with the 'normal' species eating permafood, and vegetarians eating their narrow subset of permafood (with reworked food generation rates as appropriate). The whole concept of casual sushi almost-cannibalism practiced by even civilized races in roguelikes has always seemed really weird to me. I mean, helping yourself to a steaming raw face-full of freshly killed gnome worked in nethack mostly because the game was so silly to begin with- it had a kind of refuge in audacity to fall back on. In crawl's more reasonable, well thought out environment... it's a little harder to ignore.

This is kind of long term wishful thinking though. Chunks got changed around quite a bit in trunk, and I don't reasonably expect more drastic changes until people have a chance to see how the new system plays. :p

[Yet Another Stupid Noob]

The problem is with the "I'm starving to death, why can I not eat this chunk of mutton."

If you want to remove the food clock, I would think that would involve basically rewriting the game (since spells/abilities would need to get an alternate resource).

[Stormfox]

I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall that the last time I hit "Near Starving" with nausea, I was able to eat a clean chunk. Extreme hunger overcomes your churning stomach.

[TehDruid]

I agree with mageykun. On the "the system should be reworked" part.

There should be more permafood available in different ways. I love the permafood vaults in trunk (the steamer, the merfolk room, the spriggan baker). The removal of Hive in 0.10 is a "maybe, maybe-not" hit on the food clock. When you get 3 medium/big sized minihives in a game you're bound to end up with more honeycombs than what Hive would get you. But you may also have a game where you find none or just one medium mini-hive and end up with 15 honeycombs to say at best. So I think there should be more "food storage" vaults. In the forts for example. It blows my mind that a whole army of orcs/kobolds/gnolls don't have a food storage area. They do have loot which may be food sometimes, I know. Yet some guaranteed meat/bread(meat only in the case of kobolds ) rations would be nice.

The food clock shouldn't be such a pain for non-saprovores. Sure, I can hear some of you saying that there's always enough permafood to last you through the extended game if you are not careless, yet It promotes stress to new players I think, in the form of "I have to conserve more permafood for when I reach the endgame!". So they eat contaminated chunks and may even end up in a YASD because of refusing to eat permafood in risky situations.

Of course there's always the option to scum the Abyss for permafood with rings of sustenance where that's applicable. But that is a little frowned upon (unless you're looking for the rune) and can be potentially fatal.

Chunks should still remain differentiated. Brown ones are there for saprovores.

P.S: All rats should have contaminated chunks.

[XuaXua]

As noted elsewhere, there is a problem with the Vampiric brand; tell me the last time you used it on a blunt weapon? I like my Vampiric Artefact Demon Trident, but I can't use the damn thing.

[varsovie]

Can't chop?
Animate skeleton.
Or any mean to make them explode.
Or rely on your permafood and/or ring of sustenance.
Anyway it's a real and fine choice to do, and this is good. ^^