Cooked Chicken

A chicken pecking by the road, a rock in your hand, nothing else in your pockets. It cannot hurt you and it barely runs, so for many players it becomes the first meal of the wipe. Harvest it, put the raw chicken breast on whatever fire you have, and you get a little health, hunger and thirst back.

A little is the honest word. One bird does not give much, so chicken fills a gap between bigger hunts; it will not carry a group through the evening the way a deer or a bear does. Watch the fire, too. Burnt chicken damages your health instead of restoring it, according to its own text.

Later in the wipe the bird changes jobs. Hens in a chicken coop are there for eggs, and killing your layers for a few breasts throws away a steady supply. Hunt wild ones for meat and leave the flock alone.

Groups that farm crops have one more reason to keep chicken around: the chicken pie raises the chance of better genes from crops for a short time.