Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch

A few more points (since I can't figure out how to edit the original bug report, if that's possible).

(Having belatedly read the FAQ) the steps to reproduce my first two claims are in the linked Steam thread, if they're not obvious. Basically:
Have a hungry character in vanilla Survival. Eat Razorgrain. Watch buffs stack up in your Status - Effects page. Watch no change in your hunger status. Keep eating Razorgrain until you die of Radiation poisoning (well I ate 18 Razorgrain.

I probably should have classified this as "Item" rather than "Papyrus", but I didn't see that in the drop down. I see "Item" in the version history and in the FAQs, so I must be blind. However, it's kind of an interaction between the Papyrus of HC_Manager and the keywords on the items. I still suspect that the Papyrus is coded wrongly, and not what Bethesda really intended.

I can produce an .ESP to fix this, using CK. So there is no need to assign it to anyone. On the other hand, the fix is pretty trivial, so you can probably do it 100x faster than me (I've never done an ESP before and only opened the CK a couple of days ago for the first time). Your call. I am keen to tackle it.

It's just an inference on my part that HC_IgnoreAsFood is a member of the keyword array NonFoodKeywords. It's an inference from the observation that Razorgrain gives a buff effect regardless of hunger state, and never any hunger reduction.

But I can't figure out how to see and inspect a keyword array in the CK UI. Arrays seem to be a special case of some kind? I can see the property of that name in the Import Property dialog when I try to import properties from the Hardcore:HC_ManagerScript but the import fails because I am doing something wrong. The property is not explicitly set in the Papyrus script - it is set via a form I think? Effectively almost what I would call a runtime value? So I don't have the actual list of keywords in that array, frustratingly. If anyone can tell me how to get that list it would be a great help. (Possibly a question for the AFK forums rather than here in the bug report?)

Meanwhile I need to test out my hypothesis more thoroughly, by testing other food types that have the same characteristics as Razorgrain to check for the same result (or not) and foods different from Razorgrain to see if I get a different result. I have high confidence in the bug but I guess lower confidence in my root cause analysis.

Ok Wild Mutfruit behaves more like "food" - it recovers hunger. But it lacks the HC_IgnoreAsFood keyword. So it is expected that it would behave differently from Razorgrain, which has the keyword (wrongly, I assume).

I am now in the territory of guessing Bethesda's intentions. Did they intend that some wild plants would be foods, others not? Wild Mutfruit, Wild Corn, Wild Tarberry, and Silt Bean specifically?

I have an ESP done now which I will test and then upload.

The ESP tested out ok to fix the main issue, Razorgrain.

Continuing to test the other aspects, and then regression test (ie the "Buff" chems and the herbals).

Looking forward to what you come up with on this. I wish we had the time to investigate every issue in this much detail. Unfortunately that seems to be what's necessary to fix what should be simple things.

Thanks. Yes I think I might be going too detailed. I probably need to just fix the immediate problems and not, for example, try to remove the presumably redundant keyword from the Chems and Herbals. Because what if I'm wrong about it being redundant. Doing the regression testing is going to be very hard, to prove there's no unanticipated effect on the Chems and Herbals. So probably I should just reduce the scope, to the 5 or so affected food items. Then it's feasible to regression test and have a fair confidence that nothing else got broken.

Updating this slightly to confirm it's no longer just an inference that the keyword is a member of that keyword list, and that I've done more testing. I'm content to make the changes to Razorgrain and to the affected wild plants. I think it would be unwise to also change the affected Chems because of the greater amount of regression testing needed.

However I am not sure if players are going to see this as a bug fix since players may simply have adapted to using these wild plants in this way. So the only safe fix might be to fix only Razorgrain, in terms of not adversely affecting anyone's experience.

You could look at it this way. Razorgrain is analogous to eating wheat in its raw state. Since that's basically what Razorgrain is is radiated wheat. IRL we don't generally go around consuming raw wheat off the stalks because it's not going to do much for you other than fill your belly. So it's entirely possible that Bethesda saw it the same way and has intentionally because they don't think it should satisfy hunger - but their engine seems to still pass on the health effects despite this.

I'm not sure I'd be willing to go so far as to start adding this keyword to things like wild corn or beans though since even in their wild forms those plants provide actual nutrition and were consumed regularly IRL before the onset of agriculture. We may not eat that kind of thing much now, but it could still be done, and the Commonwealth has been regressed to a state where eating wild food plants is probably considered more normal than it is for us in the real world.

And I agree, messing with the chems probably isn't a good idea. Especially if the way they're set right now isn't actually doing anything.

Hi again, it's a year later.
So the most conservative patch would be to only fix (nonwild) Razorgrain.

The only regression impact then would be on players who were deliberately using nonwild Razorgrain as a low-yield HP buff while hungry. Post-patch, these players could still use the nonwild Razorgrain as an HP buff, but only while "well fed".

Meanwhile, a probably much larger group of players, who had been consuming nonwild Razorgrain as Survival food without noticing it had no food/hunger effect at all, would benefit.

Also, reading about grain in general - as humans we probably ate them wild for tens of thousands of years before we learned to cultivate very minor variants of the wild plants. In fact it was our sustained gathering of the wild plants that created.the selection pressure for the cultivatable variants.

So I'm saying yes I agree with leaving the wild versions as having food/hunger value.

I think after this much time the conclusion is that cultivated Razorgrain should have the keyword removed.

The rest is likely intended, and since the chems part doesn't affect anything I see no reason to edit those.