Berries

Berries are a vegetable raw food obtained by harvesting wild berry bushes or domesticated strawberry plants. Unlike most raw foods, they can be eaten raw with no mood penalty.

Acquisition

The following plants provide berries:

Plant	Harvest Yield
Berry bush	10
Strawberry plant	8

Note that only strawberry plants can be planted. Berry bushes only spawn naturally.

Berries can also be created by a berrymaker dryad.

Berries can be foraged by a caravan when traveling through any biome, other than arid shrubland and both deserts, in its growing season.

Summary

As a raw food, berries can be be eaten raw, with a flat 2% chance of giving food poisoning, or cooked into a meal with a food poisoning chance dependent on the skill of the cook and the cleanliness of the kitchen. When used in food recipes that require specific types of nutrition, such as fine meals, berries are classified as a vegetable.

Unlike most raw food, eating berries directly does not result in the −7 Ate raw food mood penalty.

Berries are also unique in that they are the only raw plant food that conceited nobles will eat.

Berries take 14 days to rot without refrigeration, half that of most other vegetarian foods.

Analysis

Strawberry plants are not particularly work or space efficient to grow, nor are they fertility-insensitive. Berries have 3 major niches:

You can forage from wild berry bushes, giving you food in the very early game.
Pawns automatically forage for berries inside a caravan. Foraging can supplement a caravan's existing food, and a good enough pawn can survive indefinitely off of berries.
Berrymakers are dryads and not plants. They and their requisite gauranlen tree can survive up to -50 °C (-58 °F), meaning they can "grow" food in a tundra. However, they are quite work-intensive; plants should be grown if at all possible.

Berries have a number of other possible niches, but these lack much application.

They can be eaten raw without mood penalty. However, cooking food into meals is almost always better: cooking offers increased nutrition and a decreased food poisoning chance. You could use a sterilizing stomach , nuclear stomach,, or the strong stomach gene to remove the risk of food poisoning, but it is still more efficient to cook. In addition, the only xenotype that spawns with strong stomach, the pigskins, also has robust digestion gene. While it makes raw food as nutritionally efficient as simple and fine meals, it also eliminates the mood penalty from all raw food, removing the only advantage berries have over other raw vegetarian foods.

They can be grown in hydroponics basins, unlike corn, and unlike potatoes, strawberries receive the full benefit from hydroponics. Compared to rice, strawberries require 75% as much work for 86% the yield per tile. While this sounds good on paper, each hydroponics basin costs a lot. Therefore, tile efficiency is usually valued more than work efficiency. In addition, this requires that you are using hydroponics at all, that outdoor farmland for growing corn/potatoes is unavailable, and that planter work is an issue at all. A moderately skilled planter (8 Plants) can handle 1 full sun lamp setup, 24 basins, with plenty of time to spare.

Nobles

Berries can be eaten by conceited nobles, but that requires that you have nobles and that they are conceited. Even then, fine meals are far more nutritionally efficient, and can be eaten by praetors and below. Lavish meals are net equal on nutrition, give +12 mood, and suit any noble rank. Even a conceited, pigskin noble would be more efficiently fed by growing corn, and turning that into vegetarian lavish meals.

Therefore, berries only have a niche if you have a conceited noble and cannot make fine meals at all. Or, you have a conceited baron (or higher), can't make lavish meals, and aren't willing to tank the −3 from the combined Ate fine meal mood buff and Ate low-class food mood penalty but are willing to risk, or are immune to, food poisoning.

Gallery

Old sprite
Even older sprite

Version history

0.2.363 - added

Food

Meals: Chocolate • Fine meal (Carnivore, Vegetarian) • Kibble • Lavish meal (Carnivore, Vegetarian) • Nutrient paste meal • Packaged survival meal • Pemmican • Simple meal • Baby food
Raw food - Animal: Meat (Human, Insect, Twisted) • Insect jelly • Milk • Hemogen pack
Raw food - Eggs: Cassowary egg (fert.) • Chicken egg (fert., unfert.) • Cobra egg (fert.) • Duck egg (fert., unfert.) • Emu egg (fert.) • Goose egg (fert., unfert.) • Iguana egg (fert.) • Ostrich egg (fert.) • Tortoise egg (fert.) • Turkey egg (fert.)
Raw food - Vegetarian: Agave fruit • Berries • Corn • Hay • Potatoes • Raw fungus • Rice • Toxipotatoes