This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Hunger Management
Hunger plays a permanent role in Minecraft, much as in real life. While it’s possible to starve to death only on Hard difficulty, hunger does affect your character in other ways, so it’s always important to ensure you have the equivalent of a couple of sandwiches packed before heading deep into a mine or on a long trek.
Hunger is a combination of two values: the one shown in the HUD’s hunger bar, as well as a hidden value called saturation. The latter provides a buffer to the hunger bar, decreasing first. In fact, your hunger bar doesn’t decrease at all until saturation reaches 0. At that point, you see the hunger bar start to jitter, and after a short while it takes its first hit. Saturation cannot exceed the value of the hunger bar, so with a fully satiated bar of 20 points, it’s possible to have up to 20 points of saturation. However, a hunger level of 6 points also only provides a maximum of 6 points of saturation, and that makes you vulnerable.
You’ll find some key information about the hunger system here:
- On Easy and Normal Survival modes, your character won’t drop dead from hunger, although it can still pose a danger because your health won’t regenerate if hunger has dropped more than 2 points from its maximum. If you’re close to home and pottering around in your farm or constructing some building extensions, you’re fairly safe, but your health will start to drop. Eat something as soon as you can to rebuild your hunger bar and therefore your health.
- Sprinting and jumping up blocks both cost hunger points. Also, sprinting becomes impossible when the hunger bar drops below six hunger points, or three shanks, as shown in the HUD.
- Keeping a relatively full stomach at 18 hunger points (9 shanks in the HUD) allows health to regenerate at 1 point (half a heart) every 4 seconds.
Health depletes if the hunger bar drops to zero, increasing the risk of dying from one of the many imaginative ways on offer in Minecraft’s deadly smorgasbord (see Figure 3.5).
FIGURE 3.5 The effects of extreme hunger on Normal difficulty: health depletes to just one point, or half a heart.
- There are some limits to the amount health can drop that vary according to the difficulty level. On Easy, health cannot deplete from hunger further than 10 points, or half the full quotient. On Normal, it can drop to 1 point, which is an extreme level of vulnerability. On Hard, there are no limits; don’t ignore the hunger bar, or death from starvation could be just moments away. See “Food on the Run” later in this chapter to avoid this unfortunate fate.
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