FEP
- See the FEP Table for information on the FEP values of specific foods.
Food Event Points (FEPs) are obtained by eating food. Once you have enough points, one of your Attributes (Strength, Agility, etc.) will be increased by either one or two points.
By placing the cursor over the Food Event Points bar on the character sheet, you can see how many FEPs you currently have and how many you need. To increase an attribute point, you must accumulate a number of FEPs equal to or greater than your highest attribute (ignoring modifiers).
- Example: My highest attribute is Strength, which is 57.
- To gain another attribute point, I must eat enough food to gain at least 57 FEP.
- However:
Eating a unique food item lowers the total number of FEPs needed to gain an attribute point. This modifier resets every time you gain an attribute point, and you can again eat unique food items.
- Example: Eating two blueberries, a three blueberry pies, and eight roasted perch counts as 3 unique food items.
- If you gain an attribute point, you can eat the food items again and get the same bonus for three unique foods.
Which attribute is earned is determined by how many FEPs you have towards each attribute.
- Example: if you only eat yellowfeet gives 1 STR and 1 AGI per food item.
- Upon filling the FEP bar, you will have a 50% chance of Strength increasing by one, and a 50% chance of agility increasing by one.
- After an attribute is increased, your FEP bar is reset, so any excess FEPs are lost
- Do note however that excess FEP will be calculated in determining your next attribute point.
The FEP value a food item gives is determined by its quality
FEP Requirement Reduction/Variety Bonus
Although new players start out having issues keeping their character full on food, it quite quickly reverses as a settlement gets set up. Eventually emptying the food bar becomes a chore that must be done in order to gain stats. Eating a variety of food makes this go much more quickly, but often involves introducing the possibility of gaining stats of a type you're not currently interested in. Obviously there's a balance of eating as many food types as possible and eating only the FEP types that you want. Better quality food helps too since it increases the quantity of FEPs a food gives without changing the amount of fullness you gain from it.
The FEPs required to fill a food bar are reduced for each and every unique food item you consume while filling that FEP bar. The FEPs provided by the food itself are irrelevant, as long as the type of food is different. For example, if you eat Roasted Fox Meat and Blueberries (both give 1 INT), the bar will still be reduced.
According to Loftar, the forumula for the FEP reduction is:
or approximately
where max = the highest unmodified attribute of the character.
Example: The highest attribute on a character is Con at 64. That means for each new food type eaten, the required FEP is lowered by 0.632 * sqrt(64) = 0.632 * 8 = 5.056 or rounded to 5.1
NOTE: This is according to a post by Loftar here: http://www.havenandhearth.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=9383
Example:
Joe has 15 in all attributes. So he needs 15 FEPs to get his next attribute increase. He eats enough bear meat to give him 10.5 Strength FEPs, and his Strength goes up by one. Wait, he needed a total of 15 FEPs didn't he? This is an example of the "variety bonus" that's applied to eating. The first item he eats reduces his required FEPs by 30%, to 10.5 from 15. Because he ate only STR giving FEPs, his STR went up to 16.
Joe now has 16 STR, so he'll need 16 FEPs for his next attribute increase. He eats some bear meat, reducing his needed FEPs to 11.2 (30% reduction). Later that day he decided he'd like to eat blueberries. Upon eating blueberries his total FEPs required drops to 8.8 (21% reduction from 11.2). The variety bonus concerns food types, not the FEPs they give. Both cooked perch and blueberries provide pure INT FEPs, but they count as two separate items for the variety bonus.
At the end of the day, he's eaten only cooked bear meat and blueberries, giving him 4.0 STR FEPs and 4.8 INT FEPs. When the food bar is full, the proportion of the whole that an FEP type represents of the food bar becomes the chance that he will gain that stat. As a result, Joe has a 45.5% (4.0/8.8) chance of gaining STR and a 54.5% (4.8/8.8) chance of gaining INT. Despite having more chance of getting INT FEPs, Joe gets another STR point and his total STR goes up to 17.
If INT had gone up to 16 instead of STR getting another point, his total FEPs required to level would not have changed. Because his STR went up though, he'll have to eat more FEPs next time around to get another stat point. This of course could be compensated by the variety bonus if he has more food types around to eat instead.
As per the example, increasing FEPs is based on your highest attribute. This is why it is recommended to raise your attributes evenly, since it will affect how many FEPs you require to raise every other attribute. Before allowing one attribute to become excessively dominant, consider increasing your other attributes so that you'll have a greater variety of skills available when needed. Raising Intelligence from 10 to 11 when you have 200 strength is just as difficult as raising strength from 200 to 201.
Satiations
Satiations are another factor which affect FEP and attribute gain, so be sure to read about satiations as well.