Foraging

Foraging
Survival	Surface

Foraging is an essential for survival in the world of Vintage Story and is necessary to craft tools, find food and improve your shelter, especially in the early stages of the game.

While most gathering does not require specialized tools, and can rather be accomplished using stone tools featured in the starter guide (see axe , knife and spear ), tools will speed up resource gathering relative to performing tasks like digging soil or collecting mushrooms by hand.

The uses for items provided in this guide are not "all encompassing" but are targeted towards "early game" necessities and can be used in conjunction with the Starter Guide .

Overview

As a new player, you may be tempted to gather everything you find and place them in your toolbar, but this usually isn't a good strategy as you have only 10 storage slots to start out with. Here is a list of items that are best to have in the beginning of the game, especially when away from your base:

• sticks (from branchy leaves)
• knapping stones (picked up from off of the ground)
• a knife (from knapped stone and a stick)
• an axe (from knapped stone and a stick)
• soil blocks
• torches (dry grass and a stick)
• firewood (chopped using the axe)
• cattails (harvested with the knife)
• and two spots for food, berries and cooked meat

The below image shows an example of what this looks like when these items are equipped in the player's hotbar:

If you find stones that are not flint (like obsidian and granite, among others), you can either make tools with these or throw the stones as a ranged weapon. Be sure not to accidentally aim for your feet! Note that some stones are too soft to knap with; in this instance, they can still be thrown for inflicting damage.

As you gather more reeds, 10 of them can be used to make a handbasket, expanding your inventory beyond the hotbar by 3 slots per handbasket for a total of four such expansions. With this expanded inventory it is a good idea to keep a second knife, some firewood, and additional food.

Clay, metal nuggets and tree seeds should be left where you find them, but noted in your map so you can collect them later. (Plant the tree seeds to get them out of your inventory and already growing in the soil)

Tool making

Loose stones

Loose stones are used to knap stone tools . For instructions on creating stone and flint tools, see the knapping page. Look around on the ground for loose stones of a type that can be used when knapping . Break it or pick it up to collect.

• Types of stones that are useful for tool making include: Andesite, Basalt, Chert, Flint, Granite, Obsidian and Peridotite.

Sticks

Sticks are used to create torches as well as tools by serving as handles to stone-tool heads. Players can find sticks on the ground, break it or pick it up to collect. If there are no sticks on the ground, look around for "leaves". There are two type of leaves in the game, regular and branchy. Regular leaves have an extremely low chance of dropping sticks and seeds. Branchy leaves can be broken without tools and are guaranteed to yield sticks.

Additional uses of sticks to keep in mind are: the crude door, crude shield, tool racks, fence, fence gates, and a fuel source for firing pottery. Recipes for each can be found in the in-game Handbook by pressing "H" at any time.

Essential crafting materials

Wood

Wood-related resources include sticks, logs, firewood, and tree seeds (acorns, pinecones, etc.). To collect logs, fell a tree using an axe while chopping the base log. Logs can be converted to firewood using the axe in the crafting grid and can be used for other early crafting needs, including a pan used in panning and the primitive weapon, club .

A few sticks might be dropped from chopping a tree without first removing the leaves, but not many. Removing leaves first provides better odds of collecting sticks and seeds, as well as reducing the amount of wear on your axe while chopping the tree down. Firewood is an important resource to make a firepit for cooking foraged foods and making improvised armor.

Note: as of v1.16 and newer, creating torches no longer features any form of firewood (i,e, placing sticks in a firepit will not yield torches, but will rather remain sticks and burn as fuel).

Grass

Grass is one of the most abundant resources in Vintage Story. Use a knife to harvest both tall and short grass . This yields dry grass, a material used with firewood to make the firepit but also to make the hay bed and the straw hat, the last of which you can wear to provide yourself protection from rain that can lower your body temperature. You do not need to dry-out freshly harvested grass as it automatically becomes dry grass, though this may change with future updates.

Reeds/Cattails

Reeds are an essential resource as they are used in quite a number of ways, and are pretty consistently found around bodies of water like lakes and ponds. Use a knife to harvest cattails tops . breaking the block with an empty hand allows players to collect the cattail tops, but it destroys the plant and its roots.

Reeds are used to craft the simplest portable containers, the hand basket to expand the player's inventory. Combined with horsetail , they will make useful poultices to heal you. Additional uses for reeds include but are not limited to making rope, rush matting, skeps, and basket traps.

Gathering wild food

Berries and tree fruit.

Different plants are generated in different climatic regions including wild crops, berry bushes, cactus, and mushrooms. Anything that can be eaten raw is useful for maintaining the player's satiety early game.

You may find it useful to note that while cattails are primarily considered a resource for making other items, their roots may serve as an emergency food in the event your normal food stores are depleted, though this of course consumes the plant and reduces the number of cattails available to produce reed tops next spring.

Crops

Wild crops are remnants of what were domesticated cultivars, now found freely among the forests and fields. These can be harvested using using an empty hand for both seed used in farming and edibles including beans, grains and root vegetables. A crop that is not mature won't provide as many edibles, though wild crops always drop some number of seeds which can be replanted in tilled soil.

While any of these foods can be eaten raw, it is best to keep in mind that saving some for later will provide you the ingredients you need for more hearty cooked meals. Mark locations of wild crops on your map so you can return to them later if your inventory is full. This also lets you return to places where you previously harvested edibles as they sometimes regrow in the area they first were found. Wild crops currently are left alone by wild animals, so you do not need to worry about gathering them on first-sight.

Berry bushes

Berry bushes grow in temperate and colder climates. Ripe berry bushes can be harvested with bare hands to collect berries. Cuttings can be collected from bushes with a knife and replanted back at your house for an additional fruit source. Berries can be eaten raw and later used along with honey for making jam. Just be careful to stay vigilant in harvesting berries in areas of high raccoon populations as you will be competing with them for the sweets.

Mushrooms

Mushrooms are naturally generated in colder, wetter climatic regions, including the default Temperate climate. breaking the block with an empty hand allows players to collect them. Mushrooms can be harvested faster using a knife. Over time, they will respawn given the conditions are right for their regrowth; chopping down a tree that had deer's ear or chicken of the woods growing on its bark will obviously remove this source. Consult the in-game Handbook by pressing "H" if you are unsure which mushroom species are edible or toxic.

Saguaro

Saguaro or cactus fruit are naturally generated in arid or desert climatic regions. Breaking the cactus block using an empty hand allows players to collect the fruits, but the tops will not regrow. Fruits can be selectively harvested with a knife . Over time, the fruit will regenerate.

Hunting wild animals

Any animal can be killed and butchered for meat using a knife . Use a knife in the active hand to harvest animal products. When the butchering process is complete, a small window will open that contains all the animal products for collection.

Hunting wild animals in the winter can be a useful way to maintain satiety when food storage is otherwise low. Animals will also provide more feathers and better pelts in the winter, though with less fat and meat. Enabling true winters will also reduce animal spawns.

Meat

There are four types of meat that can be obtained in Vintage Story. All meat must be cooked before eating, but can be roasted using a firepit .

• Poultry is meat from birds, namely chickens
• Red meat is meat from most common, passive creatures, such as pigs, sheep and hares
• Bush meat is meat from aggressive or semi-aggressive creatures, such as wolves, bears and foxes
• Fish meat is meat obtained from fish by either throwing a spear or using a fishing pole .

Fat

Lumps of fat can be eaten raw as a source of protein, or cooked into rendered fat to be used as fuel in a firepit, or combined with a raw hide to create a pelt .

Later in the game rendered fat also serves to fuel oil lamps, the first permanent light source available to players, as well as to seal crocks for long-term food preservation. Keep these uses in mind as you collect fat so that you are able to distribute this resource across your needs going forward.

Hides

Raw Hides can be oiled with rendered fat to create pelts. Taking a pelt and reeds allows you to create a hunter's backpack and expand the player's inventory further than a reed basket (not to be confused with a reed chest) can as it provides more storage slots than the handbasket.

Basic Shelter

Rammed earth is useful for making your first shelter as it eliminates the need for chopping extra trees in the effort to make a log house. This saves the player time and allows the wood to be utilized elsewhere, such as for making firewood.

Rammed earth is made by taking normal soil (preferably using low fertility soil instead of medium or higher fertility so as to save the latter for agriculture) and packing them together to make packed dirt. The packed dirt is then combined to make rammed earth, which can be placed in the crafting grid multiple times to result in different textures.

Rammed earth is also a stable block for making walls and ceilings if sideways instability is enabled fully, affecting normal soil.

Tutorial Video: How to make basic tools and fell trees

Thanks to SmileOnSpeedDial for creating and sharing with the VS community