Oxygen not included food and morale tips

Are you struggling with feeding your duplicants, and keeping their moods high? Keep on reading as this article will give you Oxygen Not Included food and morale tips. These tips will help you in your quest to feed your duplicants and keep them happy. We will start with the basics and explain what food does in this game. Then we will discuss which machines we use for which cooking process. And finally, we will discuss each recipe that can be made by that particular machine. But first, the basics.

The basics

Food is pretty simple. This game does two things. One, food provides the duplicants with calories per day. Each duplicant needs 1,000 calories per day. And second, food gives the duplicants morale buffs or debuffs. When we look at the consumables list, we see the high-end food on the far right end; they provide +16 morale bonuses. That high-end food typically has to be processed a few times to get up this high, along with hard-to-get ingredients gives you that morale bonus of +16.

But at the far left end of the consumables list, we have meal lice, muck root, and nutrient bars, items you often get right at the start of a game. They give duplicants a morale debuff of -1. It is something you need to consider, as duplicants get debuffed by the food they eat.

Food storage

Place your food storage in a little pit. The carbon dioxide will fill up the cavity and create a sterile environment, which means food would last significantly longer. It’s not that hard to do, and it’s one of those things that gets a little bit of extra life from your food.

On top of that, you have two different food storage types. You have the ration box, which we all start with, a two-by-two item, even though it doesn’t look like it. And we also have a refrigerator.

The ration box

The ration box holds 150 kilograms, and the fridge holds 100 kilograms, but it is half the size. Therefore, if you put two refrigerators next to each other, you will get a storage increase of 50 kilograms for the same amount of physical space.

The refrigerator

You don’t have to plug a fridge in, even if it states it needs to. Refrigerators can be handy if you have a pure oxygen atmosphere. You can put food in your fridge and get a little extra life out of them by using 120 watts of constant power to keep the refrigerator running. In time, it will bring the temperature of the food down to four degrees. But the fridge also puts out heat, which is 500 DTU/s. You should consider this.

You can use the refrigerators in a sort of pantry style. You can keep it unpowered in either a carbon dioxide or chlorine pit. The advantage of the chlorine pit is that chlorine kills off any germs that it covers.

Food processing

We have four machines that we can use to process our food: the microbe musher, the egg cracker, the electric grill, and the gas range.

Microbe musher

The microbe musher is the one we all get early in the game. That will make you four different types of food: mush bar, liceloaf, tofu, and berry sludge.

Mush bar

First, the mush bar, it’s only useful if you’re desperate. Make some mush bars rather than having your duplicates starve to death. It requires 75 kilograms of dirt and water each to make 800 calories. As stated earlier, a duplicant needs 1,000 calories per cycle to keep them up and about. Considering this, you will need to feed each duplicant 1.2 mush bar daily to keep them running. A mush bar is something you don’t want to use unless you have to. On top of that, if you feed your duplicants mush bar for too long, they will get food poisoning germs.

Liceloaf

The next one we have is the liceloaf. Liceloaf comes from meal lice. Again this is one of the early foods. Meal lice from the mealwood plant gives you 600 calories worth of food. If we take two meal lice and add 50 kilograms of water, we get liceloaf. With this, we increase the food quality and morale bonus from -1 to 0. At the same time, we get a whopping 1,700 calories worth of food.

Tofu

Tofu is the third recipe, and it takes six nosh bean. Nosh bean is an ingredient that duplicants can’t eat raw, unlike meal lice. It also needs water and gives 3,600 calories worth of food. It is very good food if you find nosh beans growing in the wild.

Berry sludge

The fourth and last one is berry sludge. It is excellent quality food. It takes in 5 units of sleet wheat grains, an ingredient that the duplicants can’t eat raw. It also needs bristle berries to produce berry sludge.

These are all the foods that the microbe musher can process. Keep in mind that for the first three, you will need water. Therefore, during the early game, get a pitcher pump set up to get clean water as soon as possible. It can be either from a pit you have made and collected water in or another clean water source.

Egg cracker

The next two machines are the electric grill and the egg cracker. The egg cracker will let you crack different eggs you find in the wild. Or, if you’re already ranching creek critters, it enables you to break those eggs, turn them into raw eggs, and finally cook them into an omelet. The big thing with an omelet is that it needs 100 grams worth of fresh eggs. If we look at something like a pinch roe, they automatically come with 100 grams of raw egg. But other critters give less, so you will need a couple more eggs to get that omelet. A fried egg gives 200 grams of raw eggs; as such, you can get two omelets out of it.

Electric grill

An electric grill is a handy machine; it does require a level one cooking upgrade to operate, though. It is also excellent when you are in a pinch. Should you find yourself in a situation where you need to make a mush bar, fry that mush bar on the electric grill and serve your duplicant a mush fry instead. It will bring up to 1,050 calories to feed one duplicant per cycle. It also takes the quality up by one and removes the chance of food poisoning germs.

With an electric grill, you can cook the following meals: fried mushrooms, gristle berries, pickled meals, cooked fish, barbecue, and frost bun.

Fried mushrooms

You can feed fried mushrooms to your duplicants for the whole game. It is easy to get and make them. You can take mushrooms, cook them and get a morale bonus of +1. At the same time, you get a little calorie bump of 400 calories to a total of 2,800 calories.

Gristle berry

The next food we have is gristle berry. You cook these from gristle berries. Gristle berry is also a simple food to make as well. It takes in 1,600 calories and gives you 2,000 calories.

Pickled meal

A pickled meal is a unique food. Regular meal lice spoils in four cycles. Pickled meal lice, however, take 16 cycles to spoil. For long-term food storage, pickled meals and berry sludge are great. Berry sludge never spoils. As long as you’re storing it in a non-germy environment, it will never go bad. The pickled meal doesn’t come with any calorie bonus. Also, the quality is not that good. But it does last for a long time.

Cooked fish

The next one we have down the list is cooked fish. Its food quality is 3. That’s pretty impressive. You order a duplicant to attack a pacu and cook it on the grill. The raw pacu goes from 1,000 calories to 1,600 calories after cooking—another simple recipe. Cooking also increases the food quality from +4 to +8.

Barbecue

We can attack our hatches, which we can find all over the map, and cook their meat. It takes the meat from 3,200 calories to 4,000 after cooking, which is a lovely increase in calories. The quality of the food also increases significantly from -1 to +8.

Frost bun

Lastly, we have the frost bun. It takes the sleet wheat grain, a pure cooking ingredient. After cooking, it turns into something duplicants can eat at 1,200 calories. That’s not so great food-wise, but sleet wheat grain is one of those harder-to-get ingredients. Sleet wheat grain is seldom grown. You harvest it from the wild.

Gas range

The last machine we have for processing food is the gas range. It gives us high-quality foods. It also comes with two catches. The gas range uses 240 Watts of power, which considering how late in the game it is, it’s not an issue at that time. However, it does require 100 grams of natural gas per second. That is something that you need to take into consideration. You’ll have a constant supply of natural gas in this machine to keep it running.

On top of that, it outputs 9,000 DPU of heat, which sounds like a lot, but considering its late game, you probably outfitted your base, hopefully with air conditioning. The one big thing it does is it outputs 25 grams per second of carbon dioxide into the immediate atmosphere. It has a gas pipe in but doesn’t have a gas pipe output. If you have a food storage pit locally, that’s probably perfectly good, as it will ensure that the food pit stays full of carbon dioxide.

The other thing you’re probably going to need to do is to put a carbon skimmer somewhere near it. You would want to put the carbon skimmer left and right of the gas range just entering and leaving the kitchen. Placing carbon skimmers at each end of the kitchen prevents the carbon dioxide from spreading through the rest of the base.

You can cook the following high-quality meals: stuffed berry, mushroom wrap, surf’n’turf, pepper bread, spicy tofu, and frost burger.

Stuffed berry

It needs gristle berry and pincha peppernuts. The raw gristle berry must be cooked on an electric grill before pincha peppernuts are added and baked into a stuffed berry. Pincha peppernuts are also one of the harder-to-grow plants. Cooking gristle berries into stuffed berry merely slightly increase the calories. The main upside is that the quality of the food increases significantly. The quality goes from +1 to +4.

Mushroom wrap

Mushroom wrap takes two of our fried mushrooms, wrapping them in some lettuce, bringing the food up to a quality of +4. You will not get much increase in calories, but again a significant increase in the food quality. You can harvest lettuce in the wild or grow it yourself. There isn’t much to say about lettuce.

Surf’n’Turf

Surf’n’Turf takes in our barbeque and our cooked fish. It brings the food quality up to +12. We already know that cooked fish is +8, and our barbecue is also +8. Surf’n’turg, with a total of 6,000 calories, is going to feed six duplicants. Or one duplicant for six days. Depending on how the duplicants decide how to feed themselves that particular because a duplicant will only eat 1,000 calories per cycle. The rest of it will drop on the floor. Hopefully, in the mess hall, because that’s where they are eating it. But honestly, they’ll drop it wherever they feel like it, and probably, the next duplicant will come along and eats it in the next meal cycle.

Pepper bread

Pepper bread takes in the sleet wheat grain and the pincha peppernut. Pepper bread gives 4,000 calories and has a quality of +5.

Spicy tofu

Spicy tofu takes in tofu. Remember that to make tofu. You need a clean water source. The food quality from the tofu will jump from +2 to +5 by just adding one unit of pincha peppernut. It is a perfect recipe to make if you can get the ingredients.

Frost burger

The last recipe is the frost burger, probably the hardest one to make. You need a frost bun, at 1,200 calories, which uses sleet wheat grain. We then need lettuce and barbecue. For this recipe, we bring in 5,600 calories to get to 6,000 calories and give us a food quality of +6. It is the highest quality food your duplicants will get. On top of that, this is the only food with the soul food bonus.

Soul food bonus

The soul food bonus comes with a catch. It is maybe -20% or -15% stress for two cycles. Furthermore, it also has a debuff; it has a -2 for athletics because it’s like a celebration dinner. The duplicant tummy is full and just walks around a little slower.

The frost burger, the spicy tofu, and the pepper bread have a morale of 16. The surf’n’turf is one of the easier ones to make. You just need to domesticate some sort of animal and some fish. Run both the grill and the gas range in tandem, and you get surf’n’turf. You can opt-out of that soul food buff and debuff by making spicy tofu or pepper bread. But then again, +16 morale is an awful lot. Most of the time, the duplicates get their morale buffs from their rooms and the base décor.

Conclusion

That’s the list of the machines and meals that you can prepare with them. Hopefully, the Oxygen Not Included food and morale tips are helpful. May your duplicants be well-fed and have high morale for many cycles.