More Vegan Recipes

I consider it a glaring thematic misstep that the game purposefully makes it near-impossible to kill predators and that ecological instability is one of the plot’s core conflicts, yet the game also heavily incentivizes carnism. If you’re going to make a story about learning to live peacefully whether the people and creatures around you feel the same way, then the gameplay should give you the tools to do that. To that end, while vegan options probably should not be quite as powerful as carnist options due to gameplay mechanics making them easier to mass-manufacture, there should at least be a healthy variety of them.

Here are the ones that seem easiest to implement and most immediately useful, with both full flavor text and gameplay dynamic breakdowns:

• Edible Water: Water containing particles belonging to multiple minerals and countless benign microorganism species. The presence of fiber analogues technically qualifies this as tea. +20 Water

Made from 3 Fibrous Pulp using a Fabricator (lifepod fabricator included) instead of a Processor. The primary purpose is to make it possible for the QI to fulfill their initial survival needs prior to unlocking a Processor; Oily Salad is available immediately, but there is no vegan water source I could find. This makes an early game vegan playstyle impossible without either knowing in advance where to go or allowing yourself to die multiple times.

• Cherimoya Smoothie: A nutrient-rich fluid made from the useful components of Cherimoya Rotsac. Made with 0% Cherimoya. +40 Water, +10 Food

Made in the Processor, at 2 Cherimoya Rotsac per smoothie. This makes it far less resource-efficient than using Fibrous Pulp to make regular Water, but a straight improvement in terms of usefulness per inventory slot. I believe the QI would only lose ~27 food in the time it takes to lose 40 water, so while smoothies don’t fully prevent food loss, they do significantly increase the amount of time that can be spent in the field over regular Water. Smoothies are essentially the low-hanging fruit encouraging QIs to experiment with large garden plots.

• Saute a la Pent: Nutrient-dense Pent and vegetable analogues made palatable by application of Luciferian Rotsac oil and liberal amounts of heat. Add Cherimoya juice to taste. +40 Food, +10 Water

Made with 1 Pent, 1 Luciferian Rotsac, 1 Cherimoya Rotsac, and 2 Fibrous Pulp in a Fabricator. It’s made from a variety of ingredients that would be a serious pain to forage for and not worth the effort to farm in small amounts, but presents an all-around more efficient alternative to Nutrient Blocks for QIs with large and varied garden beds.

• Isotonic Water (Alternative Recipe)

Made in batches of 3 by putting 3 Waters back into the Processor alongside 1 Salt and 1 Cherimoya Rotsac. This makes it fairly easy to make large quantities of Isotonic Water for a QI with a large garden bed, a stable energy budget, enough floor space for multiple Processors, and a reliable salt supply. I consider this in line with the carnist recipe that uses a Flash Slug, as while carnism is inherently limited by opportunity to some degree, Flash Slugs are easy to catch and the recipe requires near-zero setup.

• Medical Paste: A precisely calibrated solution to fulfill the metabolic needs of default Alterran reprints. Includes chemical receptors inhibiting the antiquated human gag response. +45 Water, +30 Food, +25 Health

Made in the Processor from 2 Pent, 1 Medical Gel, 1 Salt, and 1 Water. (The use of raions technically makes this an entomotarian recipe.) I believe the QI needs 1.5 times as much water as food, so Medical Paste exactly satisfies their needs without waste while also healing minor injuries that would otherwise be just severe enough to warrant wasting a First Aid Kit on. This makes it incredibly convenient and inventory-efficient, but its large and varied ingredients require a large garden bed to reliably sustain and prevent a Processor from queuing more than three at once. While substantially weaker than Pavlova, they have a simular use case: worth always keeping one in your inventory for emergencies, but not something you’d use on a regular basis.*

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I like the recipes themselves, but the reason we can’t kill is purely because of how they want the game to be played, which I agree with.