4Game

Currently, eggs are unlocked after defeating Yagluth, as part of the Mistlands update. This feels like the wrong spot for them, and I think they should be moved to being unlocked earlier, when you reach the Swamp. Why?

Cooked Eggs

Currently: In their current iteration, cooked eggs are useless. They are a health food that gives 35 hp/12 stam. This puts it at the same level as cooked deer meat. This has no actual use to anyone that's at the level of beating Yagluth. You could use it as a 'just farming and chilling' type food, but why go through the trouble when you can just eat deer meat. There are several easier to obtain foods that give better 'just putzing around' stats.

Change: If chickens were obtainable after the Elder (i.e. swamp tier), the eggs should be changed in type and stats to deliver a balanced food option between boar jerky and wolf jerky. They should have stats of 28 hp/28 stam (+5 to boar jerky, -5 from wolf jerky). Balanced food is pretty lacking in the game right now, so this would be a nice option for the tier.

Cooked Chicken Meat

Current: Cooked chicken meat currently has the exact same stats as Cooked Seeker Meat, but requires far more effort and set up to obtain. Why eat cooked chicken meat (which requires hatching an egg, growing a chicken, getting more eggs, then killing the original chicken) when you are literally slaughtering seekers by the hundreds; I for one am currently drowning in Seeker meat. Much like the egg, it's pretty useless for someone actively engaging in Mistlands.

Change: Cooked chicken meat would be adjusted to be an HP food in between deer and wolf. It should give stats of 40 hp/13 stam which would put it right between the two, and be equal to minced meat sauce. This would provide a cooked meat option for the swamp, which currently has none (in fact, swamp has no food items that can be directly prepared without other ingredients). The proposed stats would still be less than sausages, which require more effort to make, much akin to other tiers between cooked meat and recipes with meat in them.

Mistland Recipes

These would require no changes as a result of moving chicken unlock to the Elder. All of them require an additional ingredient that requires traveling to the Mistlands, and/or a Level 5 cauldron and a stone oven.

Allowing people to unlock the chicken after Elder would be similar to Boars. You can tame boars in the Meadows and use them for simple food like cooked boar meat and boar jerky (an HP and balanced food, like eggs and chicken meat would be), and then you also use them later on in Swamp food. So unlocking chickens in the swamp and then also using them later in the Mistlands would be thematically similar for chickens.

Swamp also currently has no animal that can be tamed, so you wouldn't be piling on too much husbandry/farming by making this change. There aren't many animals you would tame that actually live in the Swamp itself, so having a new livestock animal available at the trader instead would make perfect sense and provide something to do that doesn't involve spending all of your time in the wet, dark environment of the swamp.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.