Food is the most important resource in Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville. The player starts the game with 25-50 units of food, depending on your selected difficulty. Most survivors consume 1 unit of Food per game day (except those with the no ration, half ration, or double rations perk. Certain policies can also change this).
When the player runs out of food, the following happens:
- Happiness decrease
- Survivors collapse from hunger and have to be hospitalized.
- Survivors stop working.
- Survivors starve to death.
Food can be gained by:
- Scavenging from buildings. Buildings containing food are marked by an apple icon on the overlay.
- Reclaiming or building farms or large farms. A Farm will produce food each day. One-block farms produce ~2.5 rations per day, two-block farms produce ~3.75, and 4-block farms produce ~5 rations per day. Assigning survivors on Farming duty increases the yield; the food produced is decided by the sum of farmers' Scavenging skills(and researched techs). The Green Thumb perk (on survivors assigned to farming) and certain research can further increase food production.
- Hunting in Field squares.
- Fishing in Park, River, or Bridge squares.
- Under most circumstances, farming is far more efficient than hunting or fishing.(With the possible exception of hunter perk?)
- Trading with other factions.
- The Good Cook perk will rarely cause a survivor to create bonus food out of nothing. When it happens, it will be called out as an event. The currently-assigned mission seems to be irrelevant; in particular, the survivor does NOT need to be assigned as a farmer for this perk to work.
- Cannibalism or other random effect.
At start of games, player has a storage capacity of 50 food, food gained beyond capacity will go to waste. The capacity can be increased by researching the three farming-related techs or reclaiming warehouses.(+50 storage for each tech/warehouse)