Food security, variety, and reliability

Overview
The purpose of this guide is to go over a generalized roadmap to overall food security, variety, and reliability.

The short, TLDR version of this guide is: Barns are the fast lane to food security.

Important Concepts

 * Lifespan - All food items in Farthest Frontier are perishable and will only last for a fixed number of months before they spoils.
 * Preserving - Farthest Frontier includes a game mechanic for food preservation, thereby extending the lifespan of the food. This manifests in three ways:
 * Preservation Buildings - There are multiple buildings in game for preserving food including the Smokehouse, Preservist Building, & Cheesemaker
 * Lifespan Bonuses on Buildings - There are a number of buildings that provide bonuses that will extend the lifespan of food items. Root Cellar, Granary, Etc.
 * Barrels - Barrels are a manufactured items that are used to increase the preservation bonus on specific buildings. Root Cellar, Granary, & Storehouse
 * Food Variety - One of the key requirements for house upgrades is food variety.

Early Game
When you first start up your game, you are going to have limited options for generating food. There are three starting buildings to facilitate this, and whenever possible, you should try to utilize all three:

Crop Field are also available at the start of your game, but these take some time to get going and are usually best to do once you have the other three setup and going.

For more information on Crop Field, please see the detailed Farming guide.

Hunting
Depending on your map, Hunting is likely going to be fairly critical to your early game play. The Hunter Cabin generates three critical resources:

When setting up a Hunting Cabin, you will most likely want to put these near spawn points for Deer. You can also put them near Boar, though everything except Deer fight back and you risk your hunters health. Wolves spawn at wolf dens and you do not want your city near these if you can avoid it when starting out. Bear are random and do not have clearly defined spawn points.

For more information on Hunting, please see the Hunter Cabin page.

Fishing
Fishing requires one or more Fishing Shacks and a body of water. If you are on an arid map with no water, then fishing is not going to be an option for you.

Once you have placed a Fishing Shack and set it's activity zone, the assigned worker will harvest fish with no further prompting or management.

Unlike the Hunting Cabin, the Fishing Shack will only generate Fish. There are no other by-products created.

For more information on fishing, please see the Fishing Shack page.

Foraging
The Forager Shack is a very useful building and should not be overlooked. In addition to generating food items, it can also generate materials used in other crafts and for medicinal purposes.

For more information on foraging and what can be gathered by them, please see the Forager Shack page.

Mid Game - Phase 1
{| Once you reach Town Center - Tier 2, the Barn is unlocked. The Barn is required for the production and management of Cows and is the key to true food stability.
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When you are looking to setup your first Barn, you can only acquire Cows from the Trading Post vendors. The minimum number of Cows to get started is 2 as you will want them to reproduce. Since you are still early in your game and your income is likely still relatively low, Cows can be relatively expensive costing 550-750 gold each. Buying an entire herd to max out your barn (10 cows) may not be financially feasible.

When setting up your first Barn, it is important to bear in mind the food requirements for your Cows. During spring and summer, your Cows will graze in the designated grazing area you define. However, during the winter months, your herd will require that you provide feed. Cows can eat Grain and Root Vegetables

Once you acquire your first two cows, you can leave them to breed for several years until your herd size maxes out. While a Barn without a full herd will still produce Milk, it will not generate any Meat, Pelts, or Tallow. The herd size setting in the barn sets the limit at which cows start being butchered. By default this is set to 10. While you can change this value so that meat will start being generated at a lower herd size, it is important to factor in the negative impacts from this. The larger the herd size, the higher the birth rate of new animals and the more milk that gets generated per year.

Summary
A good way to get started is to setup a Barn, acquire 2 Cows, setup a small Grain Crop Field, and then let them reproduce until you have a full herd. Growing grain in this field rather than Root Vegetables will ensure that it all goes to your Cows since you will not be using Grain for anything else at this point. If you grow Root Vegetables, your villagers can potentially use this as a food source and your herd could end up low on fodder in the winter. Grain also has a longer lifespan in storage than Root Vegetables. ||


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Mid Game - Phase 2
{| Once you have your first barn going and your herd is beginning to expand, you should spend some time adding Crop Fields. Crop Fields will help with your overall food production levels, increase food variety, and provide fodder for your Cows in winter. It is important to keep an eye on your crop outputs to ensure you can stay ahead of your population growth, Cow herd growth, Barn expansions, and the inevitable variability of crop yields due to weather, pestilence, or wildlife.
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The main point here is that it is important to plan ahead. If you are going to want to add a second Barn, it is a good idea to get the Crop Fields setup ahead of time to ensure you do not run low on fodder and food. REMEMBER: Herders are indiscriminate about how they stock a Barn with fodder. They will grab both Grain and Root Vegetables even if that leaves your villagers without a meal.

For more information on Farming, please see our detailed Farming Guide.

Cheese
The Meat produced by your Barns is only part of the equation. Of almost greater importance is the ability to make Cheese. Cheese is the super food of Farthest Frontier. Not only does it have the longest shelf life of any food at 36 months, it is also an excellent trade item when produced in surplus.

As soon as you have your Barns up and running and you Town Center upgraded to level 3, you are going to want to get a Cheesemaker setup. As you increase the number of Cows you have and thereby increase your Milk yield, you will want to scale up the number of workers making cheese and over time add additional Cheesemakers.

Orchards
Another useful building at this phase is the Arborist Building. The Arborist Building employs up to 2 villagers to manage an orchard of fruit trees. These orchards can be planted with a mix of 3 tree types: Apple, Pear, & Peach. Each tree has unique pros and cons ranging from the trees life span to the time of year they produce fruit. While the Arborist Building will provide reasonable yields, the shelf life of the fruit is fairly short. The primary benefit from this building is the food variety it provides, which is a key requirement for housing upgrades. Fruit (grown or gathered) is also crucial to preventing scurvy infections in your villagers.

Bread
As you start growing surplus grain, one useful option is to grind some of the grain into Flour using a Windmill. Flour can be turned into Bread using the Bakery. Not only does the Bread provide an additional food source from otherwise inedible grain, it also adds to your food variety. The Bakery building also provides a desirability bonus to structures surrounding it.

Key things to keep in mind: There are a few key things to keep in mind when dealing with Flour & Bread. First, while Grain has a shelf life of 24 months, Flour only lasts 16 months. Additionally, Bread only has a shelf life of 5 months. Windmills and Bakeries will continue to churn out product non stop as long as they have the labor and raw materials to do so. Your villagers will only eat so much Bread and your Cows can not eat Flour so it is important to micro manage your production to ensure you are not losing food or raw materials to spoilage.

One of the best ways to manage production so it does not run rampant, is the use of production limits. Production limits can be set by opening any building that makes an item, then, click on the item you want to set a limit for (Bread in a Bakery). This will open the production limit window for this item. Next either set production to infinite or set a minimum and maximum production limit.

Storage
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