---

#📌 Overview

A Discord user requested more significant negative consequences for failing to maintain a complete diet, potentially through a tiered system of increasingly severe negative effects.

The current nutrition system primarily communicates the player's diet through food-group bars and nutritional information. While this provides feedback about what the player is eating, there is currently limited mechanical pressure to actually maintain a balanced diet.

On a server, this can result in players simply eating whatever food is convenient without caring much about their nutritional state.

The proposed solution is a Diet Deficiency System that progressively penalizes players who consistently fail to maintain a complete diet.

The important distinction is that this should not simply be:

"Missing vegetables = Weakness."

Instead, the system should make nutritional deficiency feel like a condition that develops over time.

A player should be able to have a bad meal or temporarily lack a food group without immediately being punished.

However, consistently maintaining a poor diet should eventually become a genuine gameplay problem.

---

#🎯 Primary Goals

• Give the nutrition system meaningful gameplay consequences.

• Make players care about maintaining their diet.

• Create consequences that become progressively worse instead of appearing instantly.

• Avoid punishing players for short-term dietary gaps.

• Make the severity of deficiency understandable to players.

• Integrate with existing Nourished systems where appropriate.

• Keep the system configurable for different server playstyles.

• Keep server owners in control of how punishing the system becomes.

• Avoid forcing a single "correct" way to play Nourished.

---

#🚫 What This Should NOT Be

This feature should not turn Nourished into a constant punishment system.

The objective isn't:

"You forgot to eat a vegetable, so now you can't play."

The objective is:

"You've been neglecting your diet for a long time, and your character is beginning to suffer because of it."

A temporary deficiency should be relatively harmless.

A persistent deficiency should become increasingly difficult to ignore.

---

#🧠 Core Concept

Introduce three levels of nutritional deficiency.

                    COMPLETE DIET
                         │
                         ▼
                  ┌─────────────┐
                  │ Deficiency  │
                  │   Begins    │
                  └──────┬──────┘
                         │
                         ▼
                  ┌─────────────┐
                  │   LEVEL 1   │
                  │ Mild        │
                  │ Deficiency  │
                  └──────┬──────┘
                         │
                  deficiency persists
                         │
                         ▼
                  ┌─────────────┐
                  │   LEVEL 2   │
                  │ Significant │
                  │ Deficiency  │
                  └──────┬──────┘
                         │
                  deficiency persists
                         │
                         ▼
                  ┌─────────────┐
                  │   LEVEL 3   │
                  │   Severe    │
                  │ Deficiency  │
                  └──────┬──────┘
                         │
                         ▼
                  Critical state

The player should also be able to move backward through the tiers by correcting their diet.

LEVEL 3
   ▲
   │
LEVEL 2
   ▲
   │
LEVEL 1
   ▲
   │
COMPLETE

Recovery should potentially take time as well.

Eating one piece of food shouldn't necessarily erase a severe deficiency immediately.

---

#🥗 What Counts as a Deficiency?

The first major design question is how Nourished determines that a player is deficient.

The existing food-group system already tracks:

• Fruits

• Vegetables

• Proteins

• Grains

• Dairy

• Optional/custom groups

The deficiency system could use the existing food-group state rather than introducing an entirely separate nutrition calculation.

#Possible rule

A player enters a deficiency state when one or more required food groups remain below their configured nutritional threshold for a sufficient amount of time.

For example:

Fruit       ██████████
Vegetables  ██
Protein     ████████
Grains      ███████
Dairy       █████████

             ↓

Vegetable deficiency detected

However, the system should probably distinguish between:

Temporary absence

"I haven't eaten vegetables recently."

and

Persistent deficiency

"I haven't meaningfully consumed vegetables for an entire day."

---

#⏱️ Deficiency Should Accumulate Over Time

One of the most important parts of this system should be time.

A player shouldn't immediately receive negative effects after eating an unbalanced meal.

Instead, deficiency should accumulate.

#Example

Healthy
   │
   │ diet becomes incomplete
   ▼
Deficiency Detected
   │
   │ time passes
   ▼
Level 1
   │
   │ more time passes
   ▼
Level 2
   │
   │ more time passes
   ▼
Level 3

This makes the system feel more like nutrition rather than a simple checklist.

---

#🟢 Level 1 — Mild Deficiency

#Purpose

Level 1 should be the game's way of saying:

"Your diet isn't great."

It should be noticeable but not devastating.

Possible effects:

• Slightly increased hunger exhaustion

• Slightly reduced natural regeneration

• Slight reduction to movement speed

• Slight reduction to mining speed

• Slightly increased exhaustion from activity

• Increased frequency of nutrition warnings

• Visual indication on the nutrition HUD

• Notification when entering Level 1

#Design philosophy

Level 1 should encourage correction, not force it.

A player who notices the effect should be able to simply think:

"Oh, I should probably eat some vegetables."

---

#🟠 Level 2 — Significant Deficiency

#Purpose

Level 2 is where the system starts becoming a genuine gameplay mechanic.

The player has ignored their nutritional deficiency long enough that it is now affecting normal gameplay.

Possible effects:

• Increased hunger exhaustion

• Reduced movement speed

• Reduced mining speed

• Reduced natural regeneration

• Increased exhaustion from sprinting

• Increased exhaustion from swimming

• Increased exhaustion from mining

• Increased exhaustion from combat

• Reduced effectiveness of saturation

• More aggressive warning notifications

• More obvious HUD indication

• Notification explaining which food groups are deficient

Potentially:

Diet Deficiency — Level 2
Your diet has been incomplete for an extended period.

The player should now have a very obvious reason to fix their diet.

---

#🔴 Level 3 — Severe Deficiency

#Purpose

Level 3 should be the point where ignoring nutrition has serious consequences.

This is where the system can become the "nasty" part of the design.

Potential effects:

• Significant movement penalty

• Significant mining penalty

• Major increase to exhaustion

• Severely reduced natural regeneration

• Increased exhaustion from physical activities

• Additional negative status effects

• Reduced combat effectiveness

• Reduced ability to sustain sprinting

• Potential interaction with starvation

• Severe HUD warning

• Periodic deficiency notifications

• Potential health consequences if deficiency continues

The player should reach the point of:

"I need to fix my diet."

rather than:

"The nutrition bar exists, I guess."

---

#☠️ Potential Level 3 Mechanics

This is where the system could become considerably more interesting.

Rather than simply increasing the strength of vanilla effects, Level 3 could introduce Nourished-specific consequences.

Potential ideas:

#Physical Exhaustion

The player becomes dramatically less efficient at physical activity.

Sprint
   ↓
More exhaustion

Mine
   ↓
More exhaustion

Swim
   ↓
More exhaustion

Combat
   ↓
More exhaustion

This would make the existing Activity system much more relevant.

---

#Recovery Problems

A severely deficient player could recover from damage more slowly.

For example:

• Natural regeneration becomes less effective.

• Healing from food becomes less efficient.

• Saturation becomes less useful.

This would make a poor diet matter without simply giving the player arbitrary damage.

---

#Starvation Interaction

A severe deficiency could potentially make starvation more dangerous.

Possible behavior:

Normal
   ↓
Hungry
   ↓
Starving
   ↓
Severely deficient
   ↓
Critical

This should be carefully balanced so that the system doesn't create an unavoidable death spiral.

---

#🍖 Calories + Diet Deficiency

The calorie system creates another interesting possibility.

A player can theoretically have:

#Enough Calories + Poor Diet

Calories:       GOOD
Food Groups:    BAD

The player is eating enough food, but their diet is incomplete.

This should potentially produce nutritional deficiency.

---

#Poor Calories + Complete Diet

Calories:       LOW
Food Groups:    GOOD

The player is eating a balanced selection of foods but simply isn't consuming enough.

This could represent a different nutritional problem.

---

#Poor Calories + Poor Diet

Calories:       LOW
Food Groups:    BAD

This could potentially be the most severe nutritional state.

---

#🧬 Possible Combined System

Instead of treating nutrition as one number, Nourished could eventually have several independent conditions.

                  PLAYER NUTRITION
                         │
          ┌──────────────┼──────────────┐
          ▼              ▼              ▼
      Food Groups     Calories       Nutrients
          │              │              │
          ▼              ▼              ▼
      Deficiency      Energy        Deficiency
          │              │              │
          └──────────────┼──────────────┘
                         ▼
                  Overall Effects

This could become extremely powerful later without requiring everything to be implemented immediately.

---

#🏃 Activity System Integration

The existing activity modules make this feature particularly interesting.

A deficient player could potentially become less efficient at physical activities.

#Sprinting

Normal:
Sprint → normal exhaustion

Level 1:
Sprint → slightly increased exhaustion

Level 2:
Sprint → increased exhaustion

Level 3:
Sprint → severe exhaustion

#Mining

Level 1 → slightly more exhaustion
Level 2 → significantly more exhaustion
Level 3 → severely more exhaustion

#Swimming

Same principle.

#Combat

Combat could potentially contribute to deficiency-related exhaustion.

This would make the system feel interconnected rather than consisting of unrelated debuffs.

---

#🧠 Important Design Question: Deficiency vs. Missing Food Group

A player shouldn't necessarily become deficient simply because one bar isn't full.

Possible distinction:

LOW
↓
Warning

VERY LOW
↓
Deficiency accumulation

DEFICIENT FOR LONG ENOUGH
↓
Level 1

DEFICIENT FOR LONGER
↓
Level 2

SEVERELY DEFICIENT
↓
Level 3

This would prevent the system from becoming overly sensitive.

---

#❤️ Recovery

Recovery should probably be gradual.

A player shouldn't be able to reach Level 3 and then completely reset their condition by eating one carrot.

Possible recovery:

Level 3
   │
   │ balanced diet maintained
   ▼
Level 2
   │
   │ balanced diet maintained
   ▼
Level 1
   │
   │ balanced diet maintained
   ▼
Healthy

Potentially, recovery could be faster than deterioration, or configurable by the server.

---

#⚙️ Configuration

Everything should remain configurable.

Potential configuration options:

#General

• Enable deficiency system

• Enable Level 1

• Enable Level 2

• Enable Level 3

• Require complete diet

• Allow custom food-group requirements

#Timing

• Deficiency detection delay

• Level 1 delay

• Level 2 delay

• Level 3 delay

• Recovery delay

• Critical deficiency delay

#Effects

• Level 1 effects

• Level 2 effects

• Level 3 effects

• Activity exhaustion multipliers

• Regeneration modifiers

• Movement modifiers

• Mining modifiers

#Calories

• Calories contribute to deficiency

• Calories contribute to severity

• Separate calorie deficiency

• Combined calorie + food-group deficiency

#Notifications

• Deficiency notifications

• Level-change notifications

• Recovery notifications

• HUD indicators

• Warning thresholds

---

#🖥️ HUD Integration

The existing dynamic HUD provides a natural place to communicate deficiency.

Potentially:

┌──────────────────────────────┐
│       DIET STATUS             │
│                              │
│  Fruits       ████████       │
│  Vegetables   ██             │
│  Protein      ████████       │
│  Grains       ███████        │
│  Dairy        █████████      │
│                              │
│  ⚠ DIET DEFICIENCY — LVL 2  │
└──────────────────────────────┘

The system should make the cause of the problem visible.

The player shouldn't have to guess why they're suddenly suffering penalties.

---

#🔔 Notifications

Potential notifications could occur when entering or leaving a tier.

#Entering Level 1

⚠ Your diet is becoming unbalanced.

#Entering Level 2

⚠ Your nutritional deficiency is beginning to affect you.

#Entering Level 3

⚠ Severe nutritional deficiency! Your physical performance is being heavily affected.

#Recovery

✓ Your diet has improved. Your nutritional deficiency is recovering.

These should ideally use the existing Nourished notification system rather than creating another notification framework.

---

#🧩 Compatibility With Existing Systems

This feature should build on existing Nourished systems wherever possible.

Potential integrations:

• Food-group tracking

• Daily trackers

• Calories

• Activity modules

• Starvation tracking

• Nutrition HUD

• Activity Log

• Milestones

• Command Center

• Config system

• Server/client config synchronization

Avoid creating duplicate tracking systems when existing infrastructure can support the feature.

---

#🏗️ Implementation Considerations

Before implementation:

• Inspect current food-group tracking.

• Inspect how nutritional thresholds are calculated.

• Inspect calorie tracking and verify current behavior.

• Determine whether calorie tracking currently has unresolved bugs.

• Inspect existing activity module architecture.

• Determine where persistent deficiency state should live.

• Determine whether deficiency should be server-authoritative.

• Determine how deficiency state should persist through logout/restart.

• Determine whether deficiency progression should use game ticks, Minecraft days, or real time.

• Determine how custom food groups interact with required groups.

• Determine how optional/custom groups should affect deficiency.

• Determine how recovery should work.

---

#🧪 Testing Plan

#Basic

• Player with complete diet receives no deficiency.

• Player missing one food group eventually enters Level 1.

• Player missing multiple food groups progresses appropriately.

• Player can reach Level 2.

• Player can reach Level 3.

• Effects become stronger at each tier.

• Eating the required foods begins recovery.

• Player can fully recover.

#Persistence

• Deficiency survives logout.

• Deficiency survives server restart.

• Deficiency doesn't reset unexpectedly.

• Deficiency timers don't advance incorrectly while offline.

#Multiplayer

• Server configuration is authoritative.

• Client configuration cannot override server deficiency rules.

• Multiple players can have different deficiency states.

• One player's deficiency does not affect another player.

#Edge Cases

• Player dies while deficient.

• Player changes dimensions.

• Player changes difficulty.

• Player enters creative mode.

• Player enters spectator mode.

• Player is cured/removed from effects.

• Food-group configuration changes.

• Datapack overrides change nutritional values.

• KubeJS overrides change nutritional values.

• Required food groups are modified.

---

#⚖️ Balance Questions

These should be answered before implementation.

• How long should it take to develop a deficiency?

• Should the system operate on Minecraft days or real time?

• How quickly should players recover?

• Can a player maintain a diet by eating tiny amounts of every food group?

• Should quantity matter?

• Should variety matter?

• Should calories be completely separate from deficiency?

• Should all five core food groups be mandatory?

• How should optional/custom groups work?

• Should Level 3 ever become lethal?

• Should effects stack with vanilla potion effects?

• Should deficiency effects work in peaceful mode?

• Should creative/spectator players be exempt?

• Should server owners be able to make the system extremely punishing?

---

#💀 Potential "Nasty" Version

If this system is intended to eventually become significantly more meaningful, there is room for a much harsher configuration.

Example progression:

LEVEL 1
Minor exhaustion
Minor regeneration reduction
        ↓
LEVEL 2
Movement reduction
Mining reduction
Increased exhaustion
Reduced regeneration
        ↓
LEVEL 3
Severe exhaustion
Major movement reduction
Major mining reduction
Poor regeneration
Reduced combat effectiveness
Potential starvation interaction
        ↓
CRITICAL
Potentially dangerous consequences

The important part is that the nasty version should be configurable.

A casual server could effectively use:

Level 1 → warnings
Level 2 → mild penalties
Level 3 → moderate penalties

while a hardcore server could use:

Level 1 → mild
Level 2 → severe
Level 3 → brutal

This keeps Nourished aligned with its existing philosophy of allowing the server owner to decide how the system should behave.

---

#💡 Longer-Term Possibilities

This feature could eventually provide a foundation for more advanced nutrition mechanics.

Potential future systems:

• Macronutrient deficiencies

• Protein deficiency

• Carbohydrate deficiency

• Fat deficiency

• Vitamin deficiencies

• Fiber deficiency

• Ingredient-derived nutritional values

• Recipe nutritional calculations

• Food quality

• Temporary nutritional bonuses

• Nutritional recovery mechanics

• Special effects from exceptionally good diets

• Custom deficiency types

• Datapack-defined deficiency rules

These should not necessarily be part of the initial implementation.

The initial feature should focus on making the existing food-group system mechanically meaningful.

---

#📋 Proposed Initial Scope

#Phase 1 — Foundation

• Create deficiency state tracking.

• Determine when a player becomes deficient.

• Implement Level 1.

• Implement Level 2.

• Implement Level 3.

• Implement progression timers.

• Implement recovery timers.

#Phase 2 — Effects

• Add Level 1 effects.

• Add Level 2 effects.

• Add Level 3 effects.

• Integrate activity exhaustion.

• Integrate regeneration.

• Evaluate movement/mining effects.

#Phase 3 — Feedback

• Add deficiency HUD state.

• Add level-change notifications.

• Add recovery notifications.

• Clearly identify deficient food groups.

#Phase 4 — Configuration

• Add server configuration.

• Add tier timing configuration.

• Add effect configuration.

• Add recovery configuration.

• Document all options.

#Phase 5 — Calories

• Verify current calorie tracking behavior.

• Fix calorie bugs if necessary.

• Determine whether calories should interact with deficiency.

• Implement calorie interaction only if it makes the system clearer rather than more complicated.

---

#🔍 Open Design Question

What should actually happen when a player completely ignores their diet?

This is probably the most important question for the feature.

The system shouldn't just add arbitrary debuffs.

It should create a logical progression where the player's declining nutrition affects their ability to perform normal activities.

The ideal experience would be:

"I've been eating poorly."
        ↓
"My diet is becoming deficient."
        ↓
"I'm starting to feel the effects."
        ↓
"This is actually becoming a problem."
        ↓
"I NEED TO FIX MY DIET."

That gives the existing Nourished systems an actual gameplay loop:

Eat → maintain diet → monitor nutrition → respond to deficiencies → recover → repeat.

---

#📝 Discord Feature Request

Feature Request: Tiered Diet Deficiency Effects

A community member suggested adding more significant negative consequences for failing to maintain a complete diet.

The idea would be to introduce a three-level deficiency system where prolonged nutritional deficiencies progressively affect the player.

Instead of immediately applying a strong debuff whenever a food group is low, deficiency would build over time:

Level 1 → Mild deficiency
Small penalties and warnings.

Level 2 → Significant deficiency
More noticeable effects such as increased exhaustion, reduced regeneration, movement/mining penalties, etc.

Level 3 → Severe deficiency
Major effects that make continued neglect of nutrition increasingly difficult to ignore.

The system could also potentially interact with Nourished's existing calorie and activity systems, allowing things like increased exhaustion from sprinting, mining, swimming, or combat when severely deficient.

Recovery would also be gradual, meaning a severe deficiency wouldn't necessarily disappear immediately after eating one food item.

The exact effects, progression times, and calorie interaction would need to be designed and balanced.

The main goal is to make nutrition something players actually have to manage, rather than something they can simply ignore after looking at the HUD once.

---

#📌 Current Decision

Do not implement yet.

First determine:

• Exact definition of deficiency.

• How deficiency accumulates.

• Exact Level 1 effects.

• Exact Level 2 effects.

• Exact Level 3 effects.

• Recovery behavior.

• Calorie interaction.

• Activity interaction.

• Configuration requirements.

• HUD/notification presentation.

Feature should remain configurable and server-authoritative.