Food are a large group of consumable items found throughout Barony, serving to combat the player’s insatiable hunger and provides a ticking clock for players who spend too much time over-examining the floors of the dungeon.
Description
Food allows the average hero to travel through the dungeon without starving to death in the first few floors, satisfying their hunger and preventing malnutrition for players who can manage their hunger well. Hunger proceeds at a steady rate, even when the player is idling or not being physically assertive, meaning that the player will have a limited time in the dungeon dictated by how long they can go before starving.
For each type of food, they can be found scattered across the dungeon, or often as loot from defeated enemies. Meat for example is an extremely powerful food item early on into the game, as it has the third-largest satisfaction of any food and comes from killing common Rat enemies in the Mines.
Consuming Food
Like most items, right-clicking on food inside the inventory will show the option to eat that item. When in the hotbar, the item will be automatically selected and eaten by the player.
The Tin Can is the exception to all of this, requiring a Tin Opener in order to access its contents, and a possible penalty for players in the form of grease that will cause them to fumble their weapons. If the player has the tin opener, and maybe a Towel to wipe themselves with after, then they can consume the tin can. Alternatively, the Goatman allows players to eat the tin outright, though will still need a towel to wipe down with after.
It should be noted that consuming too much food can be dangerous, as it will force the player to vomit and reset their hunger to a normal value, effectively wasting food items in the process. Drinking cursed Bottles of Booze, or an excess of booze at one time will also result in vomiting, causing hunger to decrease and the player to become hungry.
Hunger Saturation
Each food has its designated “Hunger” value, which is added to the player’s current value. This is normally hidden from the player, only indicated through the player changing hunger states or checking themselves with the Mirror.
Hunger is depleted at a value of roughly 2.78 hunger units per second, with a soft cap at 1500 hunger units before the player is overstuffed and prone to vomiting out excess hunger values. This allows a full player to go without food for nine minutes before needing to feed again.
Monster Races
When considering the eight other monster races from the Myths and Legends or Legends and Pariahs DLC packs, there are certain races which interact differently with food than the average human.
Skeleton
Unlike every other race in the game, Skeletons lack the need to consume any food throughout their exploration of the dungeon, remaining at a stable hunger level for a majority of the playthrough. Attempting to consume any food as a Skeleton merely drops the food item, unlocks a Steam achievement and displays a status message: ”Skeletons have no use for food!”.
Potions of Polymorph can let them experience food-related drain and consumption again, as well as gaining another Steam achievement.
While they cannot gain saturation from normal means, nor drain of any hunger, potions such as bottles of water or fruit juice can add to the overall saturation of the skeleton, potentially resulting in oversaturation and the need to puke out excess, alongside the stat penalties. Since the skeleton cannot vomit, this results in a permanent stat decrease. The only work-around to this is consuming a Potion of Polymorph so one could puke as a human, then return to their skeletal form without the penalty.
Automaton
Automatons do not use normal food items, but instead use alternative sources to gain Heat (HT), which is their cojoined equivalent of both mana and hunger. Heat has several unique interactions, notably those with consuming Water or entering bodies of water that generally drain Heat when in contact.
Automatons cannot vomit, akin to the Skeleton race, instead having a mode of over-saturation known as "super heated". In this state, an Automaton will generate Heat faster and keep the boiler on max for its duration until returning to normal values again.
Items that can be consumed by Automatons include:
Insectoid
Insectoids function similarly to Automatons, having their Hunger and Mana values cojoined in the form of Energy (EN). For Insectoids however, they still consume the same sources of food that other normal races consume. This comes with the added bonus of ignoring food qualities all together, as well as gaining bonuses from consuming “sweet liquids”, including Fruit Juice, Restore Magic Potions and Booze.
Overeating will cause the Insectoid to vomit, resulting in a "projectile acid". Projectile acid equates to casting Spray Acid, except it does not consume any Energy.
Types of Food
| Food Name | Weight | Hunger Value | Follows Vegan Conduct? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Apple | 5 | 100 | Yes |
| Bread | 10 | 400 | Yes |
| Cheese | 5 | 200 | Yes |
| Cream Pie | 10 | 200 | Yes |
| Meat | 10 | 500 | No |
| Fish | 15 | 600 | No |
| Tin | 30 | 750 | No |
| Tomalley | 5 | 400 | Yes |
Food Qualities
Like most other items in Barony, each food item will have an item quality associated with it when it is picked up, changing how the item acts in regards to edibility and how “safe” it is to be consumed. Stats such as constitution also play a role in how the player tolerates food quality.
| Quality Title | Chance to Puke |
|---|---|
| Fresh | 0% |
| Slightly Aged | 4% |
| Aged | 10% |
| Mouldy | 25% |
| Rotten | 100% |
Disabling Hunger
Within the Options menu, the player can opt out of Hunger in favor of disabling natural health regeneration. Doing so, food sources will begin to heal for five health each, making them smaller scale Potions of Healing to an extent.
This allows players to explore the dungeon more thoroughly, and get a better feel of how the game works before delving into the more difficult parts of the dungeon, where taking high damage is more common and food sources generally becoming rarer to come across.