Food & Water Consumption.

[jayrshaw]

Hi all,

I just figured since I haven't seen very many posts on the topic that I would explain my recent findings relating to food and water consumption in Dungeon Master. Basically, I decided today to stop training my characters' Healer and Wizard skills after obtaining enough experience to ensure that all of my characters had reached Pal Master (i.e., Level 5 Master) level in the Fire wizard subskill. Because of this, I have been observing my characters over a long period of time with full Health/Stamina/Mana gauges while working on Ninja levels (which I still haven't finished working on).

Basically, what I discovered was that your characters' food and water meters decrease far, far more slowly over time if their Health/Stamina/Mana meters are full than they do if they are actively recovering Health/Stamina/Mana when periodic recovery ticks occur. I was working on Halk's Ninja level for ~40 minutes when I saw that his food meter had fallen to about 25-30% of its maximum level and his water level to ~75% of its maximum level. I checked my other characters, who were at full Health/Stamina/Mana the entire time, and discovered that their food and water meters were all in excess of 90% of their maximum levels. It appears that simply recovering the stamina he lost due to repeatedly performing the Stab technique over time made Halk's food and water meters deplete by several multiples compared to how far they would have fallen if he had remained at full stamina the entire time.

Also, I don't know why, but I noticed that Halk's food meter seemed to deplete somewhat faster when he was recovering only stamina than it did during my earlier training sessions when my characters were actively casting spells and recovering mana every recovery tick. As I mentioned above, it took around 40 minutes for Halk's food meter to fall to 25-30% of its maximum value when he was recovering stamina alone. However, during earlier training sessions when all of my characters were recovering mana each recovery tick, it reliably took roughly 60 minutes for their food meters to fall to this level.

Anyway, I hope someone finds this information useful - I was definitely surprised to see how little the food and water meters decrease over time when your characters' Health, Stamina, and Mana gauges are full!


--Jay

[Sophia]

I don't think health affects food/water decrease at all, but stamina definitely does, and mana does due to its effect on stamina.

When your stamina is below the maximum, you have the chance to recover some every few ticks, using a formula based on your vitality. DM uses some algorithm that I don't totally understand what it's trying to do (I just kind of blindly translated it for DSB) but basically it iterates over a loop and increases your stamina and decreases your food and water. If your stamina is already at the maximum, it won't use this extra food. Recovering mana causes your food and water to decrease faster because recovering mana uses a lot of stamina; I think we've all seen the stamina bar go down momentarily while sleeping to recover mana.

Hopefully this helps somewhat explain what you're seeing.

[jayrshaw]

Thanks for the additional information, Sophia! I was just shocked to see how little the food and water gauges drop when you are at full stamina/mana - over the course of ~40 minutes of training (from the inventory screen where the speed of time is roughly doubled in my version of the game), the food/water gauges for my idle characters with full Stamina/Mana bars barely dropped at all.

Like you said, recovering health does not seem to have an impact on the rate of speed at which the food and water meters decrease. I didn't mention it in my initial post, but two of my characters (Sonja and Stamm) were constantly taking minor damage from screamers while I was working on Halk's Ninja level. After 40 minutes, there was no perceptible difference between the level of Sonja and Stamm's food/water meters and Hissa's, despite the fact that Sonja and Stamm had been recovering minor amounts of health the entire time while Hissa's health had constantly remained at its maximum. Conversely, Halk, who had been repeatedly performing Stab the entire time and who, therefore, was recovering stamina throughout the ~40 minute training period, saw his food/water meters (especially food) fall by several times the amount the amount that the other characters' food/water meters fell by.


--Jay

[jayrshaw]

When your stamina is below the maximum, you have the chance to recover some every few ticks, using a formula based on your vitality.

Hi Sophia,

I just tried testing to see what would happen with one of my character's (Stamm's) stamina recovery if I boosted his vitality significantly. I had Stamm drink Neta (i.e., vitality) potions until his vitality was 154. I also buffed his wisdom to 124 so that I would have an accurate comparison to what I was witnessing when I was actively training my characters' magic skills. Strangely enough, having really high vitality did not seem to help Stamm's stamina recovery at all in these circumstances. It took Stamm 7 mana recovery ticks to recover a single stamina point, which is about the rate at which he was recovering his stamina at with his natural vitality level of 82 (in other words, Stamm's stamina did not increase or decrease on the first six mana recovery increments, but it did increase by one point on the seventh mana recovery increment). Once Stamm reached his maximum mana level, he started recovering stamina in ~6 point increments at about the same intervals that I was used to seeing for mana recovery increments.

Does vitality work for stamina recovery in a manner similar to the manner in which wisdom works for mana recovery? In other words, does having higher vitality basically just result in a higher likelihood that you will recover stamina on a given recovery tick?

Also, do you have any theories for why boosting Stamm's vitality seemed to have little or no impact on his stamina recovery while he was recovering mana with Dane potion wisdom buffs up? Is there some sort of ceiling that prevents vitality from providing an additional benefit at higher levels (kind of like additional wisdom does not help once the result of [Wisdom + Healer Level + Wizard Level] exceeds 112)?


--Jay

[Sophia]

Yeah, you're right. Another look at the code reveals it is trickier than it seemed at first glance. Your health recovery is determined by your vitality and your stamina; if you're below 25% stamina, you can't recover health. I was just glancing over it and saw vitality and stamina together and I misremembered how it works.

I've double-checked the code and based on this, combined with your observations, I think the actual way it works:
Health recovery is determined by vitality.
Stamina recovery is more or less fixed, though if your maximum stamina is higher, you recover more.
Mana recovery uses a similar formula to health recovery, only wisdom-based.

[jayrshaw]

Thanks for the clarification, Sophia - this is great info!


--Jay

[jayrshaw]

Stamina recovery is more or less fixed, though if your maximum stamina is higher, you recover more.

I should add, though, that if I recall correctly, the impact of a character's maximum stamina value on stamina recovery does not seem to be very extreme. I say that because when I was observing Stamm recover stamina very slowly over time (one point every several mana recovery increments), I seem to recall that Hissa's stamina was also recovering a very slight amount over time, as well, despite the fact that Stamm's maximum stamina was 999 and Hissa's was only ~850. I admit that I wasn't observing Hissa's stamina too carefully, but I believe I would have noticed if Hissa's stamina was declining over time instead of staying even or rising slowly.


--Jay

[jayrshaw]

I should add, though, that if I recall correctly, the impact of a character's maximum stamina value on stamina recovery does not seem to be very extreme. I say that because when I was observing Stamm recover stamina very slowly over time (one point every several mana recovery increments), I seem to recall that Hissa's stamina was also recovering a very slight amount over time, as well, despite the fact that Stamm's maximum stamina was 999 and Hissa's was only ~850. I admit that I wasn't observing Hissa's stamina too carefully, but I believe I would have noticed if Hissa's stamina was declining over time instead of staying even or rising slowly.

On second thought, I stand corrected on this. I just happened to observe Hissa's stamina recovery when his stamina and mana were both far enough below their maximum for a few observable recovery increments to occur. He was frequently losing one stamina point when mana recovery increments occurred; conversely, my other characters were all neither gaining nor losing stamina the vast majority of the time they recovered mana (while occasionally gaining one stamina point instead of breaking even). I guess the one point stamina losses Hissa was incurring over time were just not significant enough for me to notice until I was specifically looking out for them. For reference, Hissa's maximum stamina is now 902, whereas my other characters all have a maximum stamina of 999.


--Jay