Complex Food Needs
Overview
Villagers prefer to eat complex food, like 
Pie, instead of raw food, like 
Roots. While this need is satisfied, the villager will get a bonus to their Resolve and a +5% chance of producing double yields. The bonus to Resolve is higher than satisfying their needs for Housing and Clothing, but not higher than satisfying their Services Needs.
Villagers satisfy their need for complex food when they rest at the Hearths. When resting, they will eat one of every food item available for every complex food that they can satisfy, and the Resolve and production bonuses from every need they satisfy stack.
Consumption and Satisfaction
| Species | Complex Food Needed | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Bats |
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 Beavers |
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 Foxes |
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 Frogs |
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 Harpies |
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 Humans |
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 Lizards |
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Species differ in which of the complex foods they want, so you may need to supply more than one type of complex food to satisfy all three species in your settlement. In addition, every species has more than one complex food need, which means they can get more than one Resolve bonus if you provide enough variety.
On the other hand, if your settlement is running low on food, villagers will eat a complex food that they do not need if there is no other food available to them, including raw food. If even that is not available, villagers will starve, resulting in stacking Resolve penalties and eventually, death.
Like with raw food and services, access to complex food can be disabled through Consumption Control, and denying a food incurs a Resolve penalty to those villagers who need that particular food.
List of complex foods
Each complex food can satisfy more than one species. Correspondingly, each species require different combinations of the complex foods available. The following table shows these relationships.
The food production building options are shown for convenience.
See the next section for a detailed and highly sortable table of buildings that can help you choose your Blueprints.
| Complex food | Species | Production building | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Biscuits |
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 Jerky |
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 Paste |
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 Pickled Goods |
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 Pie |
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 Porridge |
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 Skewers |
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Strategies
- In addition to producing Complex Food through your settlement's buildings, you should also consider what Complex Foods are available to purchase from Traders or can be obtained as rewards from opening abandoned caches and solving other Glade Events. Although these sources are temporary, providing extra Complex Food for even a short period of time can greatly increase the amount of Reputation your villagers can generate from high Resolve.
- No Complex Food recipe creates less food than its raw food inputs. You can use this to your advantage to feed your villagers more efficiently and save raw food for making more Complex Food or producing other goods, even if the Complex Food created is not one that they prefer. Simply disable all raw foods in Consumption Control once sufficient Complex Food is available.
