Food Items: Stats and Uses

Why Casualties: Unknown Food Is Mostly a Weight Problem

Every Casualties: Unknown food decision is really a packing decision — what you eat, what you haul, and what gets left behind on the floor of a life pod. The item system tracks far more than calories: each entry carries weight, condition, and a trade value, and all three decide whether a supply run works out. With 432 items in the Itch.io build (including inaccessible ones), you cannot carry everything, so every Casualties: Unknown food item you pack has to earn its slot.

Weight sets two limits at the same time. It eats into your carrying capacity, and it determines which containers an item can go into, since containers cap both total capacity and the maximum weight of a single item. Heavier items also kick harder when thrown, so the dense foods are clumsy to hurl compared with something light.

Scale weight: heavy food gets cheaper to carry

Many items shed weight as they degrade. This is called scale weight: an item sits at full weight at 100% condition and slides down to 0.1u at 0%. A quick way to estimate it is 0.1u + (full weight − 0.1u) × condition%.

That matters for big, calorie-dense food. A 3.00u chunk is a real burden fresh off a food box, but after a few bites it takes up noticeably less room, so the heaviest foods become easier to justify the longer a run goes. The full item weight and condition mechanics apply to everything from food to tools.

Documented Food Items: Hunger, Mood, and Hidden Costs

Food items are consumables that mainly fill the hunger bar and influence permanent mood. They drop from food boxes, drop capsules, and life pod chests. Only two entries carry full stat lines in the available data, and that data comes from a build that is no longer current — treat the numbers as a baseline rather than gospel.

The banana is the friendlier option. It is light, it covers a little thirst, and it nudges mood upward — but it also raises radiation sickness by 1 per use, so stacking them has a cost. The big flesh chunk delivers the largest single hunger refill in the documented Casualties: Unknown food list, yet it drags mood down by 0.5 and weighs three times as much.

Efficiency per unit of weight

Because capacity is the real currency, it helps to compare foods per 1u carried rather than per bite.

Ratios use full-condition weight. Once the banana drops below full condition, its weight falls faster than its remaining hunger, which is why finishing food rather than hoarding half-eaten pieces keeps your pack honest.

Plant drops and other flesh

Two plant drops and one "other" item round out the edible-adjacent pool. These entries list a duration rather than a per-use condition loss, and the reference data does not spell out hunger or thirst values for them.

The browncap is the lightest edible-adjacent item on record at half a unit, which makes it the easy throw-and-forget option when you need to clear a slot quickly.

Drinks: Thirst, Mood, and Sickness Tradeoffs

Water items mainly fill the thirst bar and directly raise permanent mood, and some grant energized or caffeine. They drop from medical crates, food boxes, drop capsules, and life pod chests.

Alcohol is the cheaper drink by trade value and the lighter of the two, but 17.5 sickness per use is enormous — it is a survival tool of last resort, not a routine thirst fix. Apple juice is heavier and pricier, but it pays you back with mood and a small body-weight gain, which is useful when hunger management has been rough.

Liquids are the exception to the "full effect at low condition" rule: most of their effects scale to the actual volume consumed. A 1% apple juice is worth a sliver of a full one, so finish drinks rather than carrying a shelf of near-empties.

Condition, Uses, and What Wet Items Do to Your Supplies

Condition measures how much time or how many uses an item has left. Most items are destroyed at 0%, which for food means the item is gone entirely — no salvage, no trade-in.

Two rules matter more than the rest. First, condition transfers between identical items: drag one onto another and the surviving stack absorbs the value. Two half-eaten bananas become one full banana, which frees a slot and lets you keep the item's weight from being wasted. Second, some consumables deliver their full effect from the inventory regardless of condition — the documented example is a Neural Booster performing identically at 1% and 15%. Liquids are the known exception.

Antibiotics belong in the same conversation as Casualties: Unknown food because they cut infection in every limb by 8 while shaving mood by 0.5. Mood is driven by what you eat, so a course of antibiotics is easier to absorb if you have a mood-positive item on hand.

Wet supplies decay six times faster

Items that touch liquid become wet and passively lose condition six times faster; wetness lasts 120 seconds. Fire-starting gear and campfires are hit hardest — torches and campfires snap to 0% condition and go out — and firearms and the jetpack pick up a flat +4.5% malfunction chance while wet.

For food, the practical lesson is simple: do not swim or wade with a full pack of perishables if you can avoid it. A wet banana is already halfway to dust, and two uses disappear fast at six times the decay rate.

Building a Food Loadout Around Containers and Weight

Containers are where weight planning becomes concrete. They store any number of items, limited only by capacity and maximum item weight, and most decay while in use (while holding at least one item).

The backpack holds nearly twice the volume, but its 60-minute duration is a fraction of the belt's 1440 minutes. Budget for replacing it. Neither container accepts anything heavier than 4–5u, so a 3.00u big flesh chunk fits comfortably while bulkier finds will not.

Three example kits and their math

All three fit inside a 7.50u backpack and every item is under the 5.00u per-item cap. The light kit leaves more than half the bag free for tools and medical supplies, which is usually the right call early. The sustained kit trades mood and variety for the most total thirst coverage and five separate uses from a single chunk. The balanced kit gives the highest raw hunger total in the pack, at the cost of a little thirst.

If you plan to throw food to distract, break, or clear obstacles, remember that heavier items produce more recoil — a 3.00u chunk is a poor projectile compared with a 0.50u browncap.

FAQ

What is the best Casualties: Unknown food item for raw hunger? The big flesh chunk refills 14 hunger per use, the highest documented figure, but it weighs 3.00u and costs 0.5 mood. For hunger per unit of weight, the banana wins at 9 hunger per 1u, though it adds 1 radiation sickness each time.

Does food get lighter as it degrades? Yes. Scale weight pulls an item from full weight at 100% condition down to 0.1u at 0%, so a partially eaten chunk takes up meaningfully less capacity than a fresh one.

Can I combine two partially eaten food items? Yes, if they are identical. Drag one item onto the other and the condition transfers, which consolidates two weak items into one stronger one and frees inventory space.

Do wet food items really decay faster? They do — six times faster while wet, and wetness lasts 120 seconds. Keep perishables out of water, and check condition before committing a slot to something that has been soaked.

For a wider look at how these entries fit alongside tools, drugs, and materials, the full item category breakdown is the place to cross-check weights and trade values before your next drop.