Acquiring Food

In Unreal World, one of your major concerns is getting enough food to stay alive. Luckily, there are a couple of methods to do so.

Foraging
The most basic method of getting food, Foraging simply entails picking up different kinds of edible plants. There are three kinds of edible plants in URW: berries, vegetables and mushrooms.

Berries start ripening in summer, when blueberry bushes start growing. They grow until late autumn/winter. The different kinds of berries are:

Both the cranberry and cloudberry can only be found marshes. They are easy to find, but yield little in the way of food. However, it's an easy way to feed yourself day to day, ~10 fistful is enough for one day.
 * Blueberry
 * Northern bilberry
 * Cranberry
 * Cloudberry

In a normal course of a game, you find little use for berries as they yield less food than most compared to other activities and gathering is such a boring thing to do. However, in certain starting condition (winter, no weapons, wounded) berries are god-sent. Gathering them in marshes for a few days while waiting for your wounds to heal is very productive and beneficial as long as you remember your warmth condition. 100~ fistful of berries are enough to help you travel to any village.

Alas, per version 3.13, nutritional value of raw berries is zip. You can make berrie porridge but at the start it's not that easy to get a cooking pot and some flours.

There are many different kinds of mushroom in the game. They range from delicious to deadly. Many a poisonous mushroom has meant the end of an otherwise successful character. Remember to boil all mushrooms before eating them, as chances are they will be poisonous otherwise, and never, ever even think of eating a sand mushroom.

Fishing
One of the better ways of getting food, there are two kinds of fishing, Active and Passive.

Active fishing means that you actually stand by the lake/river shore, with a club/spear/fishing rod, waiting for a passing fish. The best tool to use for this is the fishing rod, followed by spears (javelins count) then the club. A complete session of fishing lasts about 3 hours, less if you manage to catch something.

Passive fishing uses nets, which you must trade for. Use the fishing skill to set a net, and also to check it. After setting the net, wait for a few days, then check it. Hopefully you will have caught something. Nets, especially multiple nets, are a very good way of getting food. However, if you forget to check it, the fish inside the net will rot, and you will have nothing to eat. Nets should be checked every two days at the latest. A good trick is to check your nets on every even or odd-numbered day so you don't forget. (You can check your character log, it will display when you set your nets.) If you can get more than 6 nets to set down at one rapid water tile, your food source is secure: just dry your surplus catch to store in cellars.

One thing to remember is that active fishing with javelins is a slow way to starve to death. You just cant get ahead with this method even if you use rapid water tiles. Either barter/rob/steal a fishing rod and/or net, or get food by another way.

Hunting
Everybody's favourite way of getting meat, hunting can be a daunting challenge. While hunting for small game (squirrels, hares, foxes and badgers to name a few) may be easy, larger game is not and can easily injure or even kill you if you aren't careful.

To find an animal, either climb up on a tree and scan the surroundings, or use your tracking skill to locate some tracks. Follow the tracks to the animal, where you can choose whether or not to zoom in and look for it. An animal will always be on the same screen as you when you first zoom in, however they may be obscured by trees/facing.

Different animals behave differently. For example, squirrels like to jump from tree to tree, while hares take off as soon as they see you. Forest reindeer tend to run, but will attack if enraged. Bears and lynxes are deadly, and can kill you with a single swipe. For this reason, it's a good idea to hide to get close enough to attack to attack them from a distance. Most of the times it's effective to strike them on the legs to prevent running away. With Bears and Lynxes it might be a good idea to head-shot.

The weapon of choice for many hunters is the bow. Failing that, javelins with Oath of Iron performed on them are also very effective. In any case, attacking from a distance is much safer than trying to get up close and personal, unless you are doing it on purpose. Javelin has one advantage is that it can be used in melee therefore free you the one turn you need to wield melee weapon along with the bow.

Dead animals give great rewards in the form of meat and hide. Meat is very nutritious, and hide can be worked into a number of useful items, such as clothing and cord.

If an animal runs, it is possible to find it again just by wandering on world map in the direction it ran in, but it is an uncertain process and not aided by any in game mechanic (valid from 3.11 and previous versions). It doesnt always run in a straight line, however. Chase after them from the track they left on the ground is a long process and tedious one in winter.

Note that in the newest version, 3.12, tracks can appear on the zoomed in view if an animal has been moving around in close proximity. This is dependent on the terrain type, e.g. it is very easy to track animals in the snow, but only large game will leave tracks on harder ground. You can use your tracking skill whilst on the same tile as these tracks to find out which direction the animal is travelling from this point, and therefore finding the locations of game can be easier.

Once you have encountered an animal on a zoomed in view, if it runs out of sight, it is possible to encounter it again on the zoomed-out map nearby.

With the appearance of version 3.13, berries gathering is no longer a viable method for winter food so hunting become upmost important for Hurt, Helpless and Afraid scenario. Make at least 7 javelins, oath of iron them if possible, and hiding around a big marsh. Even if you are 70% hurt and starved, it's still more viable than fishing.

Trapping
Perhaps one of the best ways to get food, trapping basically means setting traps in random locations and waiting for an animal to stumble into them. Traps are very easy to set up, and can yield huge rewards. One of the most popular types of trap is the trap-fence, a long line of fences and trap pits, designed to force animals (usually herbivores like forest reindeer or elk) into the pits. Trap-fences are set up as follows: ==O==O==O== where = is a fence or obstacle and O is a pit Naturally, there is a lot of individual variation on the precise spacing of the trap pits. The most common trap pit used is the trap pit with sharp stakes, as it often kills whatever animal stumbles into it, which is advisable if something dangerous such as a bear or lynx has been caught. However, if you don't have the time (or don't want to) check the traps every few days, it may be more useful to set a plain trap pit as they incapacitate, rather than kill, animals. Since corpses are wiped from the map after a period of time, this will give you a greater margin to kill them, and also provides skill gain. You cruel, cruel player.

Traps can be baited with raw or cooked fish or meat. Predators are known to try to steal food from the player, and if food is placed on a trap, they will wander into it.

Agriculture
A more civilized way to produce food is through agriculture. The type of farming practiced in the Unreal World is slash-and-burn agriculture, where an area of land is cleared by burning, which fertilizes the soil for planting crops. In game terms, this means that you must first burn something--firewood, wooden blocks, stick, etc--over the spot you wish to farm, and then plant your seeds. These plants will take some time to mature (a few months) before they can be harvested.

There are only three kinds of grow-able crops in URW, turnips, broad beans and peas. They can be grown with the Agriculture skill. You can acquire seeds by either taking crops from fields, completing the Agriculture task in the Living in the Wild course, or by buying them from stores. Occasionally, general stores will also sell rare vegetables such as cabbages.

Trading
Trading easy-to-make goods such as wooden bowls for flat rye bread or rye flour can be a very easy way to get food, provided that you find a village with a food shop. Of course, version 3.13 nerfed bowls' value a bit.

Unreal world use a barter system: you trade this item for that item(s). However, there's a kind of a currency you can use: roasted meat cuts. It can be used as a rough estimate of the value of item you buy or sell. For the purpose of acquiring foods, sometimes you have to drastically undervalue your goods just to buy some much needed food. Then again, a broad sword cant measure up to 10 cuts of roasted meat in the eyes of a starving man., not if he's a honestman.