Finding food is only the beginning.
On Last Resort, how you handle, prepare and preserve it can matter just as much as finding it in the first place.
CLEAN SKINNING
Cutting tools are not automatically safe just because the game lets you use them.
The condition and cleanliness of the tool can affect the chance of contaminating meat while skinning an animal.
A disinfected cutting tool gives you the safest result.
Tools can be disinfected with suitable alcohol or disinfectant, or sterilized by boiling them in water.
Gloves matter too.
Damaged surgical gloves can introduce additional risk.
Bare hands are also a safe way to skin an animal — but once you’re finished, your hands will be bloody.
Wash them before eating or handling food.
COOKING IS MORE THAN ROASTING
Vanilla DayZ gives you the basics: roast something, boil something, eat it.
Last Resort allows food to develop further if you keep cooking it.
Boiled potatoes are still boiled potatoes.
Leave them cooking long enough, with the right ingredients and enough liquid, and they can become part of a soup.
More complex meals such as stews may require several stages of preparation.
If you get the process wrong, you do not destroy the food.
The ingredients simply remain in their simpler cooked state.
WHY COOK?
Proper meals can provide substantially more value than eating individual ingredients.
Soups and stews can provide high energy, fill the stomach and make limited supplies go further.
Some teas and soups also have medicinal uses.
That matters especially when food is scarce or winter makes finding enough of it more difficult.
A handful of ingredients may not look like much.
Cooking them properly can turn them into enough food to keep someone going.
YOU DON’T NEED A KITCHEN
A cooking pot is useful, but you do not need a complete kitchen setup to prepare a proper meal.
Empty food cans can be reused as small cooking containers.
They are enough for a simple personal meal such as soup.
Last Resort also supports cooking by proximity.
A container placed close enough to the heat of a campfire can cook without requiring a tripod or fixed fireplace.
If you have a tin can, some food, water and a fire, you already have enough to start.
ADVANCED COOKING
Once you have better ingredients and proper cookware, the cooking system opens up considerably.
Soups, stews, teas, cider and other prepared foods use their own recipes and preparation methods.
Recipes can also be found in-game through the Last Resort cooking book, so players do not have to leave the game every time they forget one.
PRESERVATION
Fresh food does not last forever.
Last Resort includes several ways to preserve what you find, including brining, pickling and other preparation methods.
When supplies are plentiful, preservation may not seem important.
When they are not, it becomes very important.