Food

Food is a feature in Niche. It is required for survival. Every night, food will be consumed. The food consumed is the same number of creatures you have. If you run out of food/do not have enough food for every creature, the creatures without food will be hurt.

Alphas, Betas, & Omegas- The Food Ranking

Each creature in your tribe is assigned a rank (the default rank is Beta), these ranks are Alpha, Beta and Omega. These ranks determine the eating order of your creatures, Alpha eats first, then Beta and finally Omega. These ranks can be changed on the creates info page, by clicking on the small coloured circle.

The purpose of this feature is so certain creatures you want to not starve don't while creatures you favour less do when you don't have enough food. For example if you have 5 creatures (all beta) and 3 food, 2 creatures at random will starve, if you promote 3 to Alpha, the betas will starve.

Gathering Food

There are currently 6 ways to gather food: from berry bushes, meat (from slain prey or predators), acorn trees, digging up tiles, clams and fishing.

Berry Bush

To gather from berry bushes, the player needs a creature with the Collecting ability adjacent to it. When the creature is selected, a berry icon will appear on the bush when the cursor is over it. The amount of berries harvested is dependent on the creature's Collecting ability and the amount of berries on the bush.

Another version of the berry bush is the cactus, which yields the same amount of food but causes damage each time a creature collects from it. Each non rainy day, the berry bush generates 2 food points. On a rainy day, the berry bush is completely refilled.

Creatures without collecting can destroy a berry bush for 5 berries, no matter how much food was on it when it was destroyed, and also give 4 nest material. The bush will regrow over a course of 5 days.

Current appearance of meat

Meat

Creatures can also obtain food from killing other animals ,with the exception of your species . After killing the selected entity, the creature must gather the pile of meat they leave behind, or else carnivores and wandering creatures will steal piles of meat.

The appearance of meat is of a red chicken leg, with a bone sticking out of the end. With the only exception being a crabbit, replacing the normal chicken leg, with an upside down crabbit model.

If not collected in time, meat will despawn.

Acorn Tree

Acorns appear on the tiles around an acorn tree. The player can direct their creatures to shake the acorn tree, causing it to drop more acorns. Each acorn is worth 2 points of food. Acorns can only be collected with the cracking ability.

Digging Land

By using the smelling ability a creature can find roots scattered around. If a creature has the digging ability they can dig up these roots. The amount of food however is equal to the level of digging (Max is 5 food per root).

Digging Water

If a creature has FeedingFromTheBottom ability they can dig up empty water tiles for 1 food each.

Clams

Clams spawn in the water around islands. To harvest them, creatures need the cracking ability. Clams give 2 food and new clams will randomly spawn.

Fish

Fish randomly spawn in water and act similar to bunnies, running away from creatures. Unlike bunnies, though, they cannot be on the same tile as your creature. This makes it easier or harder to catch them, depending on your strategy. Creatures with the fishing ability can catch them for food. Clown koi provide 5 food and need 2 fishing ability, fish swarms provide 1 food per fish caught- the number caught depends on fishing ability- and Razorahna provide 3 food, needing a fishing ability of 4, and are currently the only carnivorous fish.