Stranded Deep Better Meat

Better Meat improves several parts of Stranded Deep's meat handling without replacing the game's food system or introducing custom meat items.

The mod focuses on three practical problems:

• raw, cooked, smoked and spoiled meat being treated as interchangeable when stacking;

• accidentally eating raw or spoiled meat;

• having no clear way to see how far meat has progressed while cooking or smoking.

STATE-AWARE MEAT STACKING

Vanilla Stranded Deep primarily identifies meat stacks by their item type.

This means pieces of meat in different states can be treated as compatible even when one piece is raw and another is cooked, smoked or spoiled.

Better Meat adds the meat's current state to the compatibility check.

Meat is separated into:

Compatible examples:

COOKED + COOKED

SMOKED + SMOKED

Incompatible examples:

RAW + COOKED

COOKED + SMOKED

SPOILED + RAW

Better Meat does not change the game's stack size.

It only decides whether two pieces of meat are compatible with the same stack, leaving stack capacity to Stranded Deep or other mods that intentionally modify it.

SAFER EATING

Better Meat can prevent the player from accidentally eating raw or spoiled meat.

These protections can be configured independently.

The mod does not replace the food objects or create new versions of meat. It works with the existing Stranded Deep food and cooking systems.

COOKING HUD

When looking at a Camp Fire or Smoker containing meat, Better Meat can display a compact cooking HUD.

The HUD reads the actual cooking and smoking state from the game and shows the progress of the attached meat.

It does not use hard-coded cooking times for Small, Medium or Large Meat.

Instead, each piece is tracked using its real current cooking and smoking values.

This allows the HUD to show useful information for:

• Cooking progress

• Smoking progress

• Multiple pieces of meat on the same station

LOCAL SPLIT-SCREEN

Better Meat was designed with local two-player split-screen in mind.

The cooking information is resolved independently for the relevant player view, allowing both players to use the feature on the same PC.

SAVE COMPATIBILITY

Better Meat does not create new meat prefabs or a separate save format.

The game continues to save the normal Stranded Deep meat objects and their existing cooking/smoking state.

The mod applies its behavior at runtime through BepInEx and Harmony.

IN-GAME SETTINGS

For the easiest configuration, install Stranded Deep Mod Settings.

It allows supported Better Meat options to be managed directly through:

Options → MODS → Better Meat

Better Meat remains a standalone mod. Mod Settings is optional; without it, configuration is available through the BepInEx config file.

RECOMMENDED COMPANION MOD

Stranded Deep Mod Settings

https://www.nexusmods.com/strandeddeep/mods/293

SOURCE CODE

https://github.com/bamex-mods/stranded-deep-better-meat

MANUAL INSTALLATION

1. Install BepInEx 5 for Stranded Deep if it is not already installed.

2. Close Stranded Deep.

3. Extract the archive into the Stranded Deep game directory.

4. Allow the included BepInEx folder to merge with the existing BepInEx folder.

5. Start the game.

Install Stranded Deep Mod Settings to manage supported Better Meat options directly through:

Options → MODS → Better Meat

https://www.nexusmods.com/strandeddeep/mods/293

UNINSTALLATION

1. Close Stranded Deep.

2. Remove the Better Meat plugin folder from BepInEx/plugins.

3. Start the game normally.

Better Meat does not use a separate game save file.

• Separates meat stacks by actual meat state

• Distinguishes Raw, Cooked, Smoked and Spoiled meat

• Prevents incompatible meat states from being merged into the same stack

• Does not modify the game's stack-size limits

• Optional protection against eating raw meat

• Optional protection against eating spoiled meat

• Cooking HUD for Camp Fires and Smokers

• Displays real cooking progress

• Displays real smoking progress

• Uses the meat's actual game timers rather than hard-coded durations