Ystoir has no hunger bar: your character never starves. Food is how you heal faster and how you get useful effects, and most of it goes off if you keep it badly. This guide covers what a meal does, how spoilage is computed, and the stations and containers that make food last.
Eating
Hold a food in your hand and hold the right mouse button: after a short time (0.6 to 2 seconds depending on the food) one item is eaten. A meal does two things:
- It heals at once by its own amount (from 0.25 health for a head of garlic to 6 for a meat pie; your health tops out at 20).
- It gives effects, most often Nourished, which gives back 0.15 health per second while it lasts. Eating again adds the meal’s time to the effect, up to 3 minutes in all.
Some prepared food gives stronger or extra effects:
| Effect | What it does | Longest |
|---|---|---|
| Nourished | 0.15 health per second | 3 min |
| Sated | 0.08 health per second | 20 min |
| Hearty | 0.3 health per second | 5 min |
| Hardy | 0.05 health per second, and you feel 3 °C warmer | 10 min |
| Warmed | You feel 8 °C warmer | 10 min |
| Second Wind | Gives back 2 breath per second | 5 min |
Times add up for each of them, up to the longest. Effect healing works even in the middle of a fight, unlike your natural recovery (0.05 health per second once 10 seconds have passed without a hit, four times faster asleep and three times faster within 4 blocks of a torch). See Creatures and combat for health and damage.
What the main foods give
| Food | Heals | Effects | Keeps (days) |
|---|---|---|---|
 Berries,  Blackberries,  Bilberries | 1 | Nourished 15 s | 3 |
 Wild Apple | 1 | Nourished 20 s | does not spoil |
 Egg | 1 | Nourished 20 s | 10 |
 Cabbage,  Turnip,  Onion | 0.5 | Nourished 10 to 12 s | 12 to 24 |
 Bucket of Milk | 2 | Nourished 40 s | 1.5 |
 Cooked Meat | 5 | Nourished 90 s | 3 |
 Cooked Fish | 4 | Nourished 100 s | 2 |
 Bread | 3 | Nourished 60 s | 5 |
 White Bread | 4 | Nourished 60 s, Second Wind 60 s | 5 |
 Flatbread | 3 | Nourished 45 s, Hardy 90 s | 8 |
 Meat Pie | 6 | Nourished 120 s, Hearty 120 s | 4 |
 Pottage,  Bean Soup | 3 | Nourished 60 to 75 s | 3 to 4 |
 Black Stew | 6 | Nourished 90 s, Warmed 180 s | 3 |
 Honey | 3 | Nourished 45 s, Second Wind 45 s | does not spoil |
 Salted Meat,  Salted Fish | 3 | Nourished 90 s | 60 |
 Smoked Meat | 4 | Nourished 120 s, Sated 300 s | 40 |
 Smoked Fish | 4 | Nourished 120 s, Sated 240 s | 40 |
 Dried Meat | 3 | Nourished 60 s | 30 |
 Beer | 2 | Warmed 120 s, Nourished 20 s | 30 |
 Wine | 2 | Hearty 90 s | 120 |
Raw Meat and raw fish cannot be eaten: cook or preserve them first. A few wild
plants are poisonous; see Herbalism.
How food spoils
Every perishable food has a number of days it keeps (the last column above). Its tooltip shows
Freshness as a percentage, and its slot shows a freshness bar. When it reaches 0 % the whole
stack turns into the same number of 
Rot, which is not lost: rot is a fertiliser
for farmland (nitrogen 15, phosphorus 5, potassium 5, see Farming).
The days are counted at a spoiling rate of 1, which is the rate at 20 °C. The rate follows the temperature, in straight lines between these points (and flat past both ends):
| Temperature | -20 °C | -5 °C | 0 °C | 5 °C | 10 °C | 20 °C | 30 °C | 40 °C |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rate | 0.02 | 0.08 | 0.15 | 0.3 | 0.5 | 1 | 1.6 | 2.4 |
So bread that keeps 5 days at 20 °C keeps 10 days at 10 °C and only about 3 days at 30 °C.
- Carried food spoils at the temperature you feel: the climate where you stand, the hour of the day, the water you swim in, and also the warmth of a torch beside you or of a warming meal.
- Stored food spoils at the air temperature of the container’s column, with the season’s offset (see Seasons and weather), cooled further in a cellar, times the container’s factor.
- Food sitting in a station’s slots (a campfire, a cooking pot, a smokehouse…) is being worked and does not spoil there.
- When two stacks of the same food are merged, the new stack takes their average spoilage, rounded towards the more spoiled one: merging never freshens anything.
- One world day is 20 real minutes, so “5 days” is 100 minutes of play at 20 °C.
Keeping food
Containers
Any container keeps food, but two kinds slow spoiling down:
| Container | Slots | Takes | Spoiling |
|---|---|---|---|
 Jar | 4 | food, remedies, materials | 0.1 (ten times longer) |
 Barrel | 12 | food, materials, plants | 0.5 (twice as long) |
 Basket | 9 | food, plants, materials | 1 |
 Oak Chest | 18 | anything | 1 |
 Iron Banded Chest | 27 | anything | 1 |
These containers remember when their food was last updated: when you come back to an area that was unloaded, their food catches up on the time it missed (up to 20 days), at the temperature of the place at that moment.
A jar is shaped from 3 
Clay Ball on the clay forming surface (see
Knapping, clay and smithing), then fired:
Pit Kiln 
- Time
- ⏱ 5 minutes
- Temperature
- 🌡 600 °C
A barrel is made at the workbench from planks and withies (any planks):
Cellars and the cold
What counts is the temperature of the place, nothing else:
- Dig down. A container more than 1 metre under the ground of its column starts to feel the cool of the earth. From 5 metres down it sits at 8 °C all year, whatever the season or the weather above (a rate of about 0.42). Between 1 and 5 metres it is in proportion between the air and 8 °C.
- Cold places and winter. In a cold region or in winter, the air itself is cold, and a container in the open spoils slowly. Below 8 °C the open air beats a cellar: at 0 °C the rate is 0.15, at -20 °C only 0.02.
- Ice and snow do nothing by themselves. Putting a container next to ice or under snow does not cool it: only the column’s air and the depth count.
- Combine. The container factor multiplies the rate: a jar in a deep cellar spoils at about 0.042, so bread keeps nearly 120 days there instead of 5.
Preserving
Preserved food keeps far longer than fresh, and some of it feeds better. All these are stations; their slots work like those of the fire stations. Durations are in game seconds (1200 to a day, so 900 seconds is 15 real minutes).
Salting
The 
Salting Tub needs no fire. Put meat or fish with 
Salt in
its two input slots. Salt is ground from 
Rock Salt in a 
Quern
(1 rock salt gives 4 salt).
Salting Tub - Time
- ⏱ 15 minutes
Salting Tub 
- Time
- ⏱ 15 minutes
Any raw fish works (trout, carp, cod, herring, pike). The tub is made at the workbench:
Smoking
The 
Smokehouse burns its fuel four times slower than an open fire and never gets
hotter than 90 °C (70 °C on wood). It has four slots for the meat, two for fuel; light it with a
torch or a fire starter (E with the igniter in hand). The meat needs 40 °C.
Smokehouse - Time
- ⏱ 15 minutes
- Temperature
- 🌡 40 °C
Smokehouse - Time
- ⏱ 15 minutes
- Temperature
- 🌡 40 °C
Smoked meat and fish give the long Sated effect on top of Nourished.
Drying
The 
Drying Rack needs no fire: hang raw meat on it.
Drying Rack - Time
- ⏱ 10 minutes
The same rack also malts barley for beer (600 s) and dries herbs and hides; see Fire and slow stations.
Cooking
On the campfire
The 
Campfire bakes and roasts. On wood it gets to 600 °C, far more than food needs.
Campfire - Time
- ⏱ 40 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 150 °C
Campfire - Time
- ⏱ 30 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 150 °C
Campfire 
- Time
- ⏱ 60 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 180 °C
Campfire 
- Time
- ⏱ 60 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 180 °C
Campfire 
- Time
- ⏱ 30 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 150 °C
Campfire - Time
- ⏱ 80 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 180 °C
Flour is ground in the Quern: one grain of 
Wheat,
Rye or 
Barley gives one flour in 4 seconds of grinding. The quern
only grinds while you turn it: press E on it with an empty hand, each turn giving 2 seconds of
work.
In the cooking pot
The 
Cooking Pot hangs over its own small fire: three input slots, two of fuel, two
outputs. On wood it reaches 250 °C (300 °C at most). Made by hand or at the workbench:
3 
The fired clay pot is shaped from 3 clay balls and fired in the pit kiln (300 s at 600 °C).
Cooking Pot 
- Time
- ⏱ 90 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 100 °C
Cooking Pot 
- Time
- ⏱ 90 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 100 °C
Cooking Pot 
- Time
- ⏱ 60 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 100 °C
Cooking Pot - Time
- ⏱ 90 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 100 °C
Cooking Pot - Time
- ⏱ 60 seconds
- Temperature
- 🌡 100 °C
The pottage takes either carrot (purple or white), and the poached fish any raw fish. Poaching makes three cooked fish from two, where the campfire makes one from one. The pot also simmers the remedies of Herbalism.
Brewing
The 
Brewing Barrel (a Barrel and 2 
Birch Tar at
the workbench) needs no fire and works over days:
Brewing Barrel 
- Time
- ⏱ 40 minutes
Brewing Barrel 
- Time
- ⏱ 1 hour
Beer takes 2 world days, wine 3. Wine keeps 120 days, the longest of any food.