Carcass

A Carcass and a leg taken from the carcass

Carcasses are the primary source of food for carnivorous creatures. When a player dies, a carcass will drop in their last location after the creature's death animation plays. Carcasses may also spawn randomly, whether on land or in the ocean. The difference between player carcasses and spawned carcasses are that player carcasses offer satiation, while spawned carcasses do not. Player carcasses will also not start decaying until they have been eaten form. In order to eat a carcass, a player must be near it, point their camera at the carcass, and hold the use key. As a carcass is eaten, the flesh will begin to disappear and show more bone, leaving blood red bones when all of the flesh is gone. Over time the bones will turn white.

Carcasses can be carried by carnivores via double tapping the use key. Depending on the size of the creature, a player can carry the entire carcass or only chunks of meat from the carcass. These chunks, frequently called legs or drumsticks, decay faster than a whole carcass. The talent Stoic can help players pick up heavier carcasses or larger chunks of meat. Carcasses come in a wide variety of sizes, dependent entirely upon the size of the creature that created the carcass. For example, larger creatures create larger carcasses, in direct proportion to their size stat. If you are able to pick up a carcass without breaking a chunk off of it, it will show a special symbol when you smell it.

Tooltip given when smelling a fresh carcass. It reads "This carcass is very fresh!"

Tooltip given when smelling a fresh player carcass. It reads "This carcass gives satiation and is very fresh!". The addition of "gives satiation and" is present on player carcasses of all levels of rotting

Tooltip given when smelling an iffy carcass. It reads "This carcass is beginning to go bad. It is probably still relatively safe to eat."

Tooltip given when smelling a rotten carcass. It reads "This carcass is going bad. It is likely to make you sick"

Carcasses decay at a rate of 3% per minute, lasting about 33 minutes in total before disappearing entirely. A player can determine the freshness of a carcass by its appearance and scent. At its freshest, the flesh will be blood red, but as the meat spoils, it dulls in color until it appears rotten. The scent also reflects this by turning from a red scent to a yellow-green scent, and a ui tool tip pops up when smelling the meat. The player can suffer from the loss of comfort bias by eating old meat. The effect is more extreme dependent on how old the carcass is, and a creature may risk suffering from food poisoning. However, having the Scavenger talent can help negate this effect.

Bones from carcasses stay forever, so many bones may accumulate over time. Server restarts will get rid of those bones and refresh any decaying carcasses that still have meat on them. There is an administrator console command to remove all carcasses on the map to easily clean up without a server restart. This command is:

RemoveAllCarcasses