If you’re struggling to stay fed, try these tips:
* Don’t eat right away when the game says you’re hungry. Wait until you’re starving and below 50% health. This makes each food ration last way longer!
* Don’t eat pasties or meat. When you find an alchemy pot, use the recipe that combines one food ration, one piece of meat, and one pasty to make a meat pie. The meat pie is way more nourishing and gives you a “well fed” health regeneration buff.
* Try to be efficient with your movement and exploration. If you’re not careful you can end up wasting a huge amount of time wandering around not accomplishing anything. This also leads to more monsters being generated which means you take more damage, taxing your resources.
* Along those same lines: always try to fight dirty. If you see an enemy coming towards you try to hit them a bit at range (throw stuff or zap wands) then retreat behind a closed door or around some tall grass. When the enemy comes through the door or around/through the grass, hit them with an attack. You should see a yellow ! mark on the enemy indicating a surprise attack. Now retreat behind another obstacle and repeat. As long as you keep breaking line-of-sight and then hitting the enemy immediately when they reestablish line-of-sight (this also works with ranged attacks) you’ll get guaranteed surprise hits. This lets you defeat enemies more quickly without taking as much damage standing there missing all the time.
* Don’t overdo it though. After you’ve gained some levels and find you easily outclass an enemy then kill them quickly. Leading enemies all over the place takes more time (costing food) and can end up getting you surrounded, causing even more damage!
* Throw stuff down pits instead of carrying it around. This applies mostly to weapons, armour, and scrolls (before you get the scroll holder). Anything you throw down a pit will show up on the next level. This is a great way to avoid running back and forth swapping items when you’re low on inventory space and you want to sell things or do alchemy. Don’t throw potions though, they break (but do throw them at enemies or obstacles when the situation calls for it!)