Most food is useless unless it has Speed. Add a time buff to them.

[DemiserofD]

There's a lot of food that provide a variety of buffs, but unfortunately, most of them are extremely niche or outright useless compared to Speed. For example, later in the game, Farming buffs are only useful when HARVESTING crops, not when watering or anything else, because energy becomes abundant, but speed does not.

I'd like to suggest that skill buffs be given a secondary effect; they should slow the passage of time while doing the activity in question. For example, right now, using your watering can doesn't slow down or pause time at all, which can make watering lots of crops an impossible task. Using your pickaxe doesn't slow down time, which makes bombs the only acceptable way of getting very deep in the skull caverns.

With this, you might get, say, a 50% reduction in the passage of time while doing these actions with a +1 buff. A 75% reduction with a +2 buff, and an 87.5% reduction with +3.

This would mean players would be more encouraged to use a Foraging buff when chopping wood than a Speed buff, and a Mining buff when mining as opposed to just a speed buff and bombs.

 

[Freizeitfarmer]

Nice idea.
At the moment I don't use food-buffs very often. But I would widely with such slow-mo buffs. I think this would be a very mighty addition, so it should be expensive.

BTW, have also a look here: https://forums.stardewvalley.net/threads/magic-shop-in-the-wizards-tower.6658/

 

[Luceat]

I would also be nice, if food-buffs don't replace itself. Like when you eat different meals... it should than be on top of it .. and no replacement. For limitation... you could only combine 2 meals at max.

 

[Zen_the_Ogre]

I would also be nice, if food-buffs don't replace itself. Like when you eat different meals... it should than be on top of it .. and no replacement. For limitation... you could only combine 2 meals at max.

Then that makes food like prismatic candy obsolete. That was why it was so expensive and hard to obtain or qi seasoning I mean if you can eat trout soup and a seafoam to get +7 fishing then what's the point of seasoning

 

[Salty1]

Alternative - give a little time stack to different cooked foods that currently give no buffs.

What exactly would a time stack be? Basically it adds X time to whatever buff timers are already up, rather than replacing them. Doesn't need to be a lot either - like one or two hours if it's a cheap dish, or six to eight if it requires rarer stuff.

So you can have your spicy eel earlier in the day, then when it's near running out but you still need to squeeze a bit more time on it, you can eat alt-foodX to extend its timers enough for your purposes. All timers expire overnight, so you can't force a timer to hyper-extend into the next day and you'll still have need/desire to get the originals rather than just compound stacking time buffs forever.

 

[FlyingCatPhillips]

This conversation sounds a lot like Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns. They have a method similar if not identical to what @Salty1 is saying. No doubt it's a good and practical method, I really like it.
To some extent it may need to also go into what the buffs are; say if it is the same basic type of buff for plus in fishing, let the better buff take over or "renew" the buff time with the better fishing. This could easily get very complex. But buff stacking is nothing new, the real trick would be finding out how to do so, without the problem @Zen_the_Ogre pointed out.
Meal maxing, might not be such a good idea though. It runs the risk of energy depletion without a way to gain more... or only the ability to gain substantially less energy than what may be needed. Makes sense, if you think someone may stand there and eat 5 meals to get all the buffs at 1 time though, so I can definitely see where your coming from. And there would be players who would do that, just for the sake of it too. (need a sigh emoji)

 

[imnvs]

Not being able to stack food with food or stack drink with drink is a balancer, I think. I mean if you could just eat 3 of a food that gives +1 to fishing, what point is there to food that gives larger buffs? It makes them obsolete. It makes any high-end buff food obsolete, not just magic rock candy.

 

[DemiserofD]

Not being able to stack food with food or stack drink with drink is a balancer, I think. I mean if you could just eat 3 of a food that gives +1 to fishing, what point is there to food that gives larger buffs? It makes them obsolete. It makes any high-end buff food obsolete, not just magic rock candy.

The flipside is that the current method makes the lower buff foods obsolete right now. Many of them aren't really much easier to make; why, for example, would I ever eat a Complete Breakfast instead of a Farmer's Lunch? Farmer's Lunch is much easier to make and gives a stronger farming bonus, while the complete breakfast takes many types of food to create and only gives a relatively useless +50 max energy in exchange for an additional farming bonus.

That's one reason I'd like this proposed effect to increase exponentially. The difference between 75% and 87.5% is relatively small, and even 50% is quite useful, so you would be more willing to use a slightly weaker effect for regular activities like watering.

 

[Zen_the_Ogre]

The complete breakfast though is not truly for your character it main purpose is for relationship building. These type recipes are for the qi quest 50 loved gifts. Just because the perk may be small they do have other uses.

 

[FlyingCatPhillips]

Has anyone here actually played Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns? I should have originally explained the system I meant better.
Some food buff stack while others don't. Now since it it a console game it's not nearly as complex. A simple break down is thus:
All food buffs wear off,
Fishing buff stacks with non-fishing buffs
If you eat a 2nd fishing buff item it will "renew" fishing buff with the potentially higher/ newer buff- so the newer one basically takes over.
This would mean however that you cannot eat 2-3 fishing buff dishes to nullify higher quality buff items.

I could see that some of the lower food buff items, may not really be intended for buffing the player. Having alternate purposes, would better explain why the buff would be so low, while the item may be harder to make. I don't know if there is a list of the items with alternate intentions, though. I would not be surprised if some dishes are in game just for the sake of having that dish! It's like having Cotton Candy on Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can easily replace it with a far more common/ powerful cherry! But Cotton Candy looks cuter.

 

[Freizeitfarmer]

Not being able to stack food with food or stack drink with drink is a balancer, I think. I mean if you could just eat 3 of a food that gives +1 to fishing, what point is there to food that gives larger buffs? It makes them obsolete. It makes any high-end buff food obsolete, not just magic rock candy.

Very true. But stacking the time of each buff would be possible.

 

[s4mothy]

Not to hop in a year later, but the stacking problem could be slightly curtailed by just making food buffs use a two food item queue. So, if you add a buff, if the queue is full it dequeues the oldest buff and enqueues the newest one. So, high buff food items outside speed ones would have a spot next to the speed ones, and efficient food items at least can be paired with others not replaced.