FineDining

FineDining is a server-synchronized Valheim food overhaul focused on food storage, diet variety, and the Cooking skill.

Showcase

Spoilage and preservation

Food can spoil in containers, as loose drops, and when placed for display. Remaining time stays visible where the item is used.

Expired food becomes its configured rotten result. Cold biomes and the Icebox instead pause active spoilage timers.

Diet, Chef's Choice, and Full Course

Recent meals influence Chef's Choice. Natural food expiry or a food removed by Puke advances the list.

Tooltips show Chef, diminishing, and stale multipliers. Filling every unlocked food slot activates Full Course.

At higher Cooking levels, the most likely Chef multiplier moves toward the configured peak.

Cooking and station hints

Cooking skill can auto-eject finished food, while hover hints expose valid inputs and processing state for vanilla and modded stations.

Cover and depth speed fermentation. Compatible custom Fermenters receive the same clear hover information.

Production buildings and supported ValheimCuisine stations expose compact hover information.

Features

• Configurable spoilage, freshness-scaled food stats, and an Icebox.
• Six- or nine-slot diets with diminishing returns, Chef's Choice, and Full Course.
• Cooking experience, production bonuses, auto-eject, faster fermentation, and station hints.

Spoilage

Ordinary food starts its spoilage clock when it first enters a player inventory. Untouched food in location loot and ordinary containers remains fresh until that first pickup. Placed food starts from its placement time.

An active clock uses Valheim's network world time. It continues in ordinary containers and unloaded zones while that clock is running, and it survives restarts without resetting. Time does not advance while the server is offline, while an empty dedicated server pauses world time, or while the item is preserved.

Spoilage pauses in:

• An Icebox.
• Biomes listed in No-Spoil Biomes; the default is Mountain, DeepNorth.
• Water, for world items classified as Fish.

The default Spoilage.yml policy is:

version: 1
lifetimes:
  farmingHarvest: 72
  cookingStationInput: 24
  cookingStationOutput: 48
  unfermentedFood: 48
  fermentedFood: 72
  feastMaterial: 72
  feastResult: 48
  fish: 24
  otherEdible: 24
chefChoiceBlacklist: []
overrides: []

Lifetime values are hours. Valid values are 0..720; 0 disables spoilage for that group or exact override. Positive fractions are supported, with one second as the minimum internal lifetime. unfermentedFood covers Fermenter inputs whose conversion path eventually reaches directly edible food, including paths that continue through a CookingStation.

Exact prefab rules use this compact format:

overrides:
  - ModdedFood, 100
  - ModdedProduce, 72, FineDining_RottenProduce
  - DecorativeFood, 0

The optional third value is the replacement prefab. By default, farming harvests become FineDining_RottenProduce; CookingStation inputs, CookingStation outputs, and Fish become RottenMeat; unfermented food, fermented food, feast items, and other edible food become FineDining_RottenFood.

FineDining_RottenProduce and FineDining_RottenFood cannot spoil again. Eating them applies Puke for five and ten seconds respectively.

Timers appear in inventory and container slots, item tooltips, loose ItemDrop hover text, and placed-food hover text. Merging with a timed stack keeps the lower remaining lifetime. Vanilla loose-item cleanup remains active.

Freshness

An edible item's own freshness scales its health, stamina, eitr, and health regeneration from x1.00 to the configured minimum, x0.75 by default. The scale is captured when the food is eaten.

Ingredient freshness is not inherited by recipes, CookingStation output, Fermenter output, or feast output. Food duration and consume status effects are unchanged.

Diet and Chef's Choice

Maximum Food Slots accepts 6 or 9 and defaults to 9. Slots unlock as the player learns directly edible Health/Stamina/Eitr foods:

Known foods  0-6  7-9  10-12  13-15  16-18  19-21  22+
Food slots     3    4      5      6      7      8      9

The six-slot and nine-slot stat scales default to x0.45 and x0.30. A complete current diet therefore totals about x0.90 of three equivalent vanilla foods before other effects.

• The recent-food history tracks seven unique foods by default.
• The fourth and later consumption receives the default x0.75 diminishing multiplier.
• Chef's Choice contains seven foods with multipliers between x1.10 and x1.50 by default.
• Higher Cooking skill favors higher food tiers and stronger Chef multipliers.
• Recent Health/Stamina/Eitr proportions influence new Chef choices by 70% at the default setting.
• A naturally expired food or a food actually removed by Puke advances Chef's Choice once from the oldest entry.
• Full Course becomes available at six unlocked slots and defaults to x1.20 while every unlocked slot is filled.

Chef's Choice only uses consumables with positive health, stamina, or eitr. Exact exclusions belong in chefChoiceBlacklist in Spoilage.yml.

ResourceMap.yml defines Chef food tiers from lowest to highest. The server or single-player host creates, hot-reloads, and synchronizes it. Connected clients ignore their local copy, and invalid edits keep the last valid map.

Cooking and stations

Successfully eating a directly edible Health/Stamina/Eitr food grants 0.15 Cooking experience by default. Setting Cooking Experience per Food Eaten to 0 disables it.

At Cooking level 100:

• Normal recipes and CookingStation outputs have a default 25% bonus-item chance, configurable from 0% to 25%.
• Fermenter outputs use a separate default of 20%, also configurable from 0% to 25%.
• Lower Cooking levels scale both chances linearly.

Production Bonus Excluded Output Prefabs disables the bonus for matching output items across recipes, CookingStations, and Fermenters.

CookingStation auto-eject is available only when the conversion has a separate burnt or coal stage. Its chance equals the inserting player's Cooking level, and the result is decided when the item is inserted.

Fermenters can run faster with cover and depth. Full cover and eight meters of depth each provide up to x2 speed by default, and the two multipliers combine. Prefabs listed in Fermenter Bonus Excluded Prefabs keep native timing and output; FineDining acceleration, output bonuses, and insertion/collection Cooking experience are disabled for them.

Hover hints show available inputs and processing time for CookingStations, Smelters, Windmills, and Fermenters. Icon scale and rows are client-side settings. Optional AzuCraftyBoxes integration includes nearby container contents, and optional ValheimCuisine integration adds Grimpy Box and Freydis information.

Icebox

FineDining_Icebox is found in the Hammer's Misc tab and always pauses spoilage inside it.

• Size: eight columns and four rows by default; rows are configurable from 4 to 20.
• Recipe: TrophySGolem:1,Obsidian:8,Crystal:16,Silver:32.
• Map and minimap pins: enabled by default for Iceboxes owned by the local account.
• Placement limit: two per Steam account by default, configured through the server-synchronized Icebox Default Placement Limit setting.

Use -1 for unlimited placement, 0 to deny placement, or a positive number for a maximum count. Exact Steam64 overrides are configured in the server-only Icebox.yml and take priority over the synchronized default.

Configuration

The main configuration file is BepInEx/config/sighsorry.FineDining.cfg.

Server configuration locking is enabled by default. Config descriptions identify every entry as server-synchronized or client-only.

Section	Scope	Contents
1 - General	Server-synchronized	Configuration lock, Cooking bonuses, and fermentation
2 - Client	Client-only	Station icon scale and row counts
3 - Diet	Server-synchronized	Food slots, stat scales, history, and diminishing returns
4 - Chef Choice	Server-synchronized	Choice count, multipliers, tier weighting, and food-type preference
5 - Spoilage	Mixed	Preservation, stale-food minimum, Icebox default limit, recipe, size, and local pins

Additional files are created under BepInEx/config/FineDining/:

File	Purpose
Spoilage.yml	Server-authoritative lifetimes, replacements, overrides, and Chef blacklist
ResourceMap.yml	Server-authoritative Chef food tiers
Icebox.yml	Server-only per-Steam64 Icebox limit overrides
Spoilage.reference.yml	Generated spoilage classification reference; not configuration
FoodTier.reference.yml	Generated Chef tier and food-type reference; not configuration

Invalid YAML keeps the last valid policy. Files from older names are not read or migrated; the former Icebox.yml defaultLimit field is unsupported.

Admin commands

Command	Action
fd:rerollchef	Reroll the local player's Chef's Choice list
fd:clearrecent	Clear the local player's recent-food history
fd:printstate	Print the local player's FineDining diet state

Compatibility

• InventorySlots 1.3.7 or newer: spoilage-aware stack merging.
• AzuExtendedPlayerInventory: hidden-slot merge compatibility.
• AzuCraftyBoxes: nearby-container station hints using its configured range.
• ValheimCuisine: Grimpy Box and Freydis hover information.
• Expand World Data: custom biome names in No-Spoil Biomes.
• Feaster-style placed food: spoilage metadata and hover information.

FineDining performs spoilage work only for authoritative loaded inventories, containers, and world items. Unloaded progress is timestamp-based rather than continuously simulated, and dedicated servers do not require a local HUD.