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UnReal World => Modding => Mod Releases => Topic started by: Bedlam on February 12, 2018, 07:53:58 AM

Title: Njerpez Cookery Mod v2.0 - Dec 2025 Update!
Post by: Bedlam on February 12, 2018, 07:53:58 AM

NJERPEZ COOKERY MOD - Dec 2025 Update! by Bedlam v2.0
for URW 3.87+ Steam and Free-versions

Cook like Picasso, eat like a steppe chieftain. A fascinating variety of new Njerpez-culture inspired cookery recipes to play with.
 
(https://i.imgur.com/1ymQeKG.png)

The mod features dozens of new dishes and reworked old favorites, carefully balanced for gameplay purposes. There are no "filler" recipes, everything here has its proper use and a strategic importance in the life of the nomad warrior. No longer will you cringe when opening your cookery menu, to just give up and "stick to my smoked cuts", with this mod you always have a wide variety of synergistic and exciting new options to work with. Most have some kind of real-life link to the prototypical Njerpez culture.

What's new at a glance:

(https://i.imgur.com/IrDyCZg.png)
   

• Wholesome and filling recipes that last longer than vanilla, both in terms of calories and with regard to spoilage. The cookery menu is now your gateway to superior food, as it should be, yet is not too overpowered and invites roleplay depth. All recipes in this mod are tuned to use the whole pot capacity as a concession to gameplay flow, so the days of making 1.4lbs of porridge over and over again are finally behind you. Here you make 6lbs at once, and it will be more rich, manly porridge too, because water use in this mod is more abstract than vanilla. But everything else is kept realistic, after all this is URW - and nutrition is never created out of thin air, it always comes solely from your ingredients used.
• New concepts for URW, like legit small-game shishkebabs (with makeable "shampur" sticks and all), traditional loaves of oven bread that can be twice-baked and made into salty Njerpez "traveller biscuits" for preservation and the sustenance of a warrior on the move, Njerpezit kvass (a truly delicious, tangy fermented non-alcoholic drink made with rye bread) and salo (salt-cured animal fat with berries and condiments)!
• All-new uses for flour, salt, milk, many vegetables, grains & herbs. Now you can make easy and quick roast-turnip in the embers of a fire, and enjoy them like that. OR, take the roast turnips and mash them in a bowl sprinkled with minced smoked meats... Delectable!
• The ability to use one recipe to enhance another, e.g. make mashed turnips and some roast pike, then use these as stuffing for your own oven-buns (Njerpez pierogi). Fingerlicking good.
• New tile-graphics for many of the recipes, thoughtful balancing to make your cookery options expand meaningfully and satisfyingly the more variety of ingredients you possess. Flour and milk are the key advantage of a well-settled character, as they will allow you to make previously unimaginable delicacies. But even if you don't have those luxuries at hand, the potted dishes, whole cooked fish, unique Njerp soups like Hunter's Borsch and Okroshka, will encourage you in the exploration of the traditional culinary arts.

Basically, the only thing we're not going to be cooking in this mod is Njerpez cuts. So sorry, our cannibal brothers and sisters, this is not the mod for you despite the misleading title. If however, your interest is piqued to try some of these steppe goodies, then I am hopeful you will enjoy it at least as much as I do in my games. Njerpez cooking has many interesting "strategies" in it to discover, and I will dedicate a whole post below to offer a guide to both enlighten you to some new possibilities and give a little historical context. Meanwhile... grab it below.

What changed in version 2.0:
- the famous cookery overhaul got an overhaul itself, many recipes adjusted for latest URW version
- spoilage rates on some dishes reasoned down to somewhat "more realistic' levels where appropriate based on extensive research I did on perplexity.AI, repeatedly demanding to know how long it would take for a bean taco to spoil in an iron age Finnish cellar in summer, assuming it's not snowing too hard on that day.
- Three all-new bonus recipes included!
- Updated visual recipe guide is finally back in action, with some new pics & descriptions.
- Mod will now come with a visual PDF recipe guide included so you can refer to it even offline if you ever forget what "Pelmeni" was, just look it up, takes one second. It's doughy Njerpez dumplings, buddy.
- All new ability to make Aspic with animal bones!
- All the fixes and improvements I made to the original mod with community help (thanks everyone who reported and fixed bugs!). V2.0 of the mod is the version I'm playing with myself at the moment extensively, and I am quite enjoying it, so I wanted everyone to have it available as well in their games.


Installation:


if you want v2.0, then download two files: 
NjerpezCookery 2.0 - for URW v3.87 and newer.zip
NjerpezCookery 2.0 - for URW v3.87 and newer.z01

for the old version, you only need to download: NjerpezCookery Mod 1.01 for URW.zip


Installing NjerpCookery 2.0 - for URW 3.87+  [RECOMMENDED]

To install this mod properly, you need to follow two steps now:

1) Copy the included files and "truetile" folder to your URW folder (confirm overwrite when asked).

2) Open the text file "diy_glossary.txt" in the URW folder, search for this entry (it's under Containers):

.Birch-bark pot. [effort:1] [phys:hands,one-armed]  *CARPENTRY*   /30/   |-2|  [patch:5]  [noquality]
{Sheet of birch-bark} [remove] [patchwise]
{Branch} [remove] [noquality] [patchwise]

.. and simply delete that entire entry there. Save with Ctrl-S, and close the file. All done.

(Why this is necessary: the mod adds its own redefinition of this entry, in order to restore this pot's capacity to 6 lb and make it work effortlessly with Njerp cooking recipes. If you don't do this step to remove the original, you'll then have a confusing dupe entry in your crafting menu).


If you need the original NjerpCookery 1.01 - old version for URW 3.30+ [LEGACY & FREE URW versions]:

Spoiler: show

Download just the "NjerpezCookery Mod 1.01 for URW.zip " file
Copy archive contents to your URW folder and overwrite when asked.
For Steam version, the URW folder is going to be in: YourSteamFolder/SteamApps/common/UnRealWorld/
(no need for any textfile editing in this version)

Have fun!

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Bedlam on February 12, 2018, 07:54:17 AM

Bedlam's Dirty Visual Guide to Njerpez Recipes

Flatbread

(https://i.imgur.com/pV736ua.png)

The mod introduces many new uses for humble flatbread... It's the same trusty flatbread you love, but bigger, and you can add some seeds to make it more crunchy and nutritious. It is eaten by itself, or used to prepare bean tacos, and to ferment a special Kvass beverage (rye variety only). Can be made with a campfire.

Korovai loaf

(https://i.imgur.com/Pjr0blf.pngj2x.jpg)

The Loaf of Sunshine... Milk, a pot, and an oven are required. This bread has a deep ritual significance for the Njerpez people, and it can be very fancy, a work of art, usually prepared to welcome someone of importance, weddings, etc. Korovai evokes the sun, and at the same time, eternity. But with a pot and an oven, less fancy versions of the same tasty loaf can happily be produced for daily nourishment...

Salted biscuits 

(https://i.imgur.com/hdn2tfY.png)

Dry biscuits made from Korovai loaf. They are also known as "sukhari", "traveller's biscuit" or "rusk". Salt is required. Expensive to make, but once dried will last forever without spoiling... Archeologists these days are still finding (edible) egyptian and roman sailor-biscuits made using the same basic twice-baked bread technique.

Bean taco

(https://i.imgur.com/dmSvmwP.png)

Make those with broad beans and any flatbreads. No oven needed. How did the Njerpez obtain this signature recipe from the Mexicans? Answer is simple: Stealing.

Stuffed oven buns

(https://i.imgur.com/3yjj88c.png)

With flour and an oven, you can treat yourself to these. Twist: Njerp pierogi-buns are stuffed with ALREADY ROASTED ingredients, this is their pecularity in real life and here in the mod too. That's what possibly makes them the most versatile recipe in the game. Very useful, and you can use up those bland or stale roast cuts, getting delicious buns back if your cooking skill serves!

Goulash stew

(https://i.imgur.com/5lPjGB5.png)

A very thick, meaty stew, usually dark brown.Takes a long time to stew, but steppe chieftain's nutritious favorite. Veggies and smoked cuts, and spices, stewed together. Along with Okroshka soup, it's a champ at lasting without spoiling for a long time, ten days give or take. Longer in a cool cellar. Pot and oven required.

Porridge (4 new varieties)

(https://i.imgur.com/8WmCSHD.png)

Now porridge is worthwhile to make, filling and convenient, but it's still the same good porridge.

Shishkebabs

(https://i.imgur.com/R6qeATG.png)

Make kebab sticks from branches (Lumber menu under Make), then use any raw cuts of meat, fats, and herbs to complete your delicious kebab. Lasts the same as any other roast meat, but slightly more convenient and nutritious if enough herbs are used. According to Njerpez traditions, you're not a real man if you can't make proper "shashlyk" (kebabs) to blow your guest's minds on the weekend. Techniques for soaking the meats in the right mix of herbs and spices are a close-guarded family secret, each Njerpez family claiming theirs is the best kebab technique... In the game, these offer you the easiest and fastest way to efficiently utilize leaves from hemp, nettle, milkweed etc. in your cookery.

Hunter's Borsch

(https://i.imgur.com/qbL3rWF.png)

A hearty meat and root veggie soup, that gives you options on top of options in game. Based on stock made with dried meat or fish, add root vegetables, seasoning... Can be very nutrient rich, depending on ingredients used.

Pelmeni soup

(https://i.imgur.com/8gGJAL6.jpeg)

Njerpez Pelmeni are doughy dumplings, filled with minced meats or fish. They are boiled and make for an excellent soup. Slightly more long-lasting than other meat soups. Requires flour...

Salo

(https://i.imgur.com/bL1hr1a.png)

Delicious, salt-cured animal fat, the staple of Njerpez cuisine as it's addable to most veggie soups as thickener, used in frying, and is an excellent non-perishable snack by itself. The best-made Salo tastes mildly chewy, smooth and rich in salty flavour. It melts on the tongue almost like icecream, and has a bouquet of tastes from the berries and herbal sesonings used to cure it. Lasts for well over a year properly stored in a cellar...

Whole-cooked fish

(https://i.imgur.com/IHTlkuY.png)

This is a method of prepping raw fish on a campfire, without gutting the fish first. The fish is wrapped in herbs so it will not burn, and then left on top of the smoldering coals to slowly boil in its own juices. The result is scary tasty... In URW the herbs add to nutritousness and the recipe is faster than generic roast fish. Lasts the same as any roasted fish. Tip: Use for large fish like salmon, pike - and try to put other fish away from your inventory temporarily when making this - due to how the game works, it will use the first fish it finds in your inventory and you may not want to bother whole-cooking tiny roach-fishes!

Fish soup ("Uha")

(https://i.imgur.com/sSeZeBK.png)

Called "Uha" by the Njerpez, it's a basic fisherman's soup. Good for preparing many smaller fish. The soup lasts about a day longer than generic roasted fish.

Roasted turnip

(https://i.imgur.com/GlvOw4T.png)

Njerpez people often say "oh that's simpler than roast turnip" when they want to say that something is stupidly easy. In recognition that you don't have to be an Owl Tribe scientist to enjoy turnips roasted in the embers, we have this recipe. It's simple but actually quite good! More nutrient-rich per pound than uncooked turnip, worth making for sure. Also more convenient to eat than individual turnips. Lasts for 4 days or so, once cooked.

Mash-turnip

(https://i.imgur.com/8b5cfxJ.png)

Using milk, roast turnips, and optionally smoked cuts and herbs, you can make this delicious filling. Eaten by itself or used as stuffing for oven buns. Lasts a whole 2 days longer than roast turnip before going stale. Can be incredibly nutritious with the right ingredients.

Kvass drink

(https://i.imgur.com/khcN7UY.png)

Gives a whole new life to Rye bread. Why do people plant rye, if barley is 20% more nutritious? Now you know why - because KVASS! This drink is made by fermenting rye flatbreads with herbs and berries. Nutritious, delicious, lasts for a very long time, and is the keystone ingredient for Okroshka soup. It has a fizzy, tangy taste that is very refreshing and helps with thirst reduction. Despite looking like beer from a distance, it tastes nothing like it, apart from perhaps being just as addictive... A Njerpez warrior's highest pleasure: to come back home alive from that Kaumo village raid, sit with the wife on the steps of the house and sip cold, fresh-from-cellar Kvass... Interestingly, in real life the best kvass requires STALE rye bread. I left this out of the mod, but if you're hardcore, you can edit it back in. Then you can set out rye breads in the summer and eagerly check up on them to see if they went stale yet...

Okroshka soup

(https://i.imgur.com/FHaThlG.png)

Unique "summertime" cold soup, Njerpez version of the Green Soup, but uses Kvass instead of water, making it more refreshing, tasty, and longer lasting than most soups you can make. Also incredibly fast to prepare if you already have ingredients ready. Add salty toppings to taste... Try adding salty biscuit crumbs or salt meats for max authenticity and nourishment. As to how it tastes, the soup's closest relation outside the game is perhaps japanese Miso-soup, though Okroshka is more fresh and green-tasting, and of course it's always served ice-cold!

Pea soup

(https://i.imgur.com/hIJ3n7j.png)

Good old pea soup, optimized for more nutrition, and optionally you can add some Salo to thicken it. Lasts about 5 days, like most soups in the mod.

Veggie soup

(https://i.imgur.com/pvrCC6b.png)

A light vegetable soup, except this version is more flexible than others you tried. Make sure to utilize those milkweed roots and lakereeds (counts as veggie). One Njerp trick is starting the soup with 1 bear pipe root, then adding all the other vegetables you want, like turnip or beans, or roots. The resulting soup will refresh you (tiredness) and nourish you (hunger) at the same time.

Mushroom soup

Provides decent nutrition now, no longer useless like it was in vanilla incarnations of itself. Soup will be poisonous if the mushrooms were poisonous. You can boil the mushrooms first and then make soup to get rid of the poison for most mushrooms.

Dried mushrooms, Dried berries

You can sun-dry these now in the summer for preservation in large batches, with a board and some patience. Lasts more than a year in a cellar. Careful with poisonous mushrooms, they will still be poisonous after you dry them. For most mushrooms the solution is to boil them first to remove the poison, then you can dry them for preservation. Extremely poisonous ones like the Sand Mushroom will be deadly even when boiled, you best know what mushrooms you're using!

Bonus New Recipes now included in V2.0 of the mod  (needs URW 3.87+)


Toasted seeds

(https://i.imgur.com/lmEIdSo.png)

Latest versions of URW introduce a whole new cooking method, ember-roasting where you first make those glowing embers after a big fire burns out, and then you can cook some unique things. This is the first recipe in the mod that uses the new method, so now you can utilize hemp, clayweed,and other nutrient-rich seeds that normally require an oven to cook, even without having one in the wilderness. You do have to micromanage big fires and ensure the embers glow for long enough, so an oven is still way more convenient. The toasty seeds are a great travel snack, and are not going to spoil too. You can even toast Turnip Seeds, though those are tiny, annoying and barely give any nutrition when eaten.

Meat Aspic

(https://i.imgur.com/OtCoG24.png)

Aspic is tasty meat jelli, made from animal bones by cooking them for a very long time, optionally with actual meat also cooked into it, so the jello has some nice "substance" to it too when you enjoy it. You know how your URW dogs love to gnaw on those bones and seem to get nutrients out of them? Well! I did tests on it for the mod, and the bones do actually have proper nutrients in them. URW is truly an amazing universe of possibilities, now we can actually have this traditional recipe work in-game in a very natural way with close to the same proportions of ingredients as would be required in real life. It's a moderately filling dish, that tends to spoil rather quickly, a couple days and it's rancid, so be sure to enjoy it before that happens. Bet you never thought you'd be eating bones in URW, like Belka & Strelka!

Crates Monsieur

(https://i.imgur.com/0Rknyxn.png)

Morish freshly made wooden crates under natural pine sap sauce.... I kid, of course, cheftains. Not edible, these are just utility containers that I'm using in my game a lot to be able to grind flour into. Decided to include them for you, you'll find them in the Make menu as usual, and it's up to you if you need/want to use them. Purely for convenience, the crate stays put near your flour grinding spot and gets used for weeks until full. Each of the crates can potentially hold a massive amount (120lbs) of flour for you, getting rid of the need to hunt all over your base for "where the heck did I drop those empty grain bags yesterday?" and organizing your vast flour stores neatly. 

Pro tip: Any time your recipe includes the option to add "Seasoning", not only can you add leaves and flowers, but you can also press "TAB", to switch the selector to your beverages section. From there, select your pre-made Bear Pipe beverage or something like that, which adds a small amount of it to the dish as liquid seasoning. Now the soup you're making will give Bear Pipe buffs when consumed. Cool hidden trick that wouldn't be obvious unless you know this is possible. Beverages are made by simply boiling any plants you want to use in a pot and can be stored in cups or bowls.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Dungeon Smash on February 15, 2018, 04:30:09 PM

awesome!! have always loved this mod.  Thank you!

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: demol on April 06, 2018, 02:07:56 PM

Does your mod work with 3.50?

(please-please-please  :))

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: PALU on April 06, 2018, 02:14:14 PM

It does (I haven't updated to the very latest version, but ported the previous one). There's nothing in it that's affected by the updates to UrW as far as I know.
My character eats Hunter's Borsch when possible, and Goulash otherwise, with a smattering of stuffed buns (got to do something with the roasted meat robbers and Njerps donate, and it's also the best usage for fish, in my view), with dried meat as a fallback when running out of "real" food during trips.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Lin on April 10, 2018, 10:03:50 PM

Just chiming in to say I love this mod and very much appreciate how well balanced it is. It's been a staple of my games since you first made it. I've owed you a nice korovai loaf as a thank you for a while now, I'm gonna go make one now. :)

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: zhihao1 on July 09, 2018, 11:24:32 AM

Regarding the mod, you are allowed to dry already dried mushrooms, creating "dried dried mushrooms." Is that a bug? Also, is rehydrating fruits and mushrooms a future possibility?

Love the mod btw.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: PALU on July 09, 2018, 01:04:29 PM

Quote from: zhihao1 on July 09, 2018, 11:24:32 AM

Regarding the mod, you are allowed to dry already dried mushrooms, creating "dried dried mushrooms." Is that a bug? Also, is rehydrating fruits and mushrooms a future possibility?

Love the mod btw.

If's a function of how the scripting works. You need a wild card to be able to match multiple kinds of mushrooms, but wild cards are just string matching functions that don't know that "dried" isn't a kind of mushroom, and so can't block it (wild card don't know about mushrooms or anything else at all).

I don't know why you'd want to try to rehydrate dried items, as the results aren't going to be very palatable. Dried items are good for cooking, though.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Dungeon Smash on April 20, 2019, 03:29:22 AM

Encountered one minor issue with this mod - due to new modding architecture, my Fine wooden tub of water did not work for the Kvass Drink recipe.   Changing it to {*wooden tub*} resolves the issue.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Valor on July 08, 2019, 02:02:45 AM

What seeds would be best to get highest nutrition flat bread? I am currently using Hemp seeds, which seem to be quite easy to get but I wonder if any other would be better.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Bedlam on October 17, 2019, 02:23:41 AM

Hemp seeds are a great choice since they're common, but I believe nutrition-wise, clayweed seeds beat them.
Turnip seeds are poor and kinda not worth cooking unless you just had some around and don't mind throwing them in.

It's too bad all the pics have vanished from the mod guide, I will try to get some time to fix it and update the mod (it should still work in the latest 2019 version, but might need small convenience changes for cooking pot size etc).

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Brygun on October 18, 2019, 06:01:19 PM

fyi Tinypic no longer showing the graphics in post 1

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Teellox on August 27, 2025, 03:05:09 AM

I know this is necro'ing this thread, but I just wanted to say thank you, because after playing with this mod I made my own kvass at home and it was *delicious*.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v1.01
Post by: Bedlam on December 01, 2025, 10:35:54 PM

Quote from: Teellox on August 27, 2025, 03:05:09 AM

I know this is necro'ing this thread, but I just wanted to say thank you, because after playing with this mod I made my own kvass at home and it was *delicious*.

That's heartwarming, that's the kind of feedback Njerpez chieftains would cheer for!  I too love home-made kvass in real life very much. Apparently since the fermentation naturally "catches" the spores flying around in the air and sitting on the breads you use, that means that the kvass made in each home can be expected to be slightly different in species & even taste to some degree! Your house must have the good vibes, no doubt.

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v2.0 - Dec 2025 Update!
Post by: Bedlam on December 02, 2025, 05:14:34 AM

I finally got around to updating the cookery mod properly. It's up to date with URW 3.87+ latest Steam and Lifetimer versions.  8)

Enjoy everyone. And please do post if you notice strange things, I have been playtesting my own mod alone so far, and there have been a lot of changes done to it for v2.0, so there might be annoyances or bugs we have to work out together as we find em'.  Cheers, cheftains!  >:(

Title: Re: Njerpez Cookery Mod v2.0 - Dec 2025 Update!
Post by: Bedlam on December 03, 2025, 12:20:07 PM

Posted v2.02 of the mod today, minor tweaks and fixes.

In the latest URW 3.87 there's now a hardcoded "ember-roasted turnip" recipe, which mods can't update or remove. Of course NjerpCooking mod always  included its own version of this, so I did experiment with using the base game one and getting rid of the one we always had. But sadly, the base game one felt too inconvenient, as you need to burn fires for many hours to get some decent glowing embers and even these go away fast. I dont' feel that's very realistic, I myself successfully cooked root veggies in the embers of an ordinary small campfire in real life before, not to mention that you could dig a small pit for the veggies, cover with earth, and start a campfire on top to slowcook them down there.

Our vision in the mod is that roasting the turnip should be simple and convenient (otherwise why would a player not just eat them one by one, in the raw). So the current version has the original mod's "Roast Turnip" recipe included just under the base game one. You can use both, but the mod's one is recommended since all it requires is a fire and it cooks more turnips at once. It's a little confusing, having two "roast turnip" recipes under Vegetables. I hope future game versions might improve on this by making the base game ember-roasted turnip recipe a normal one, not hardcoded.

And now just for fun, a couple of mod-theme "postcards from the East":

(https://i.imgur.com/1Y9FEif.png)

(https://i.imgur.com/o6QO1bT.png)