Board Thread:Community-endorsed Suggestions/@comment-68.200.76.90-20170512152035

I'm just back from playing Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (awesome game, by the way, can't wait for shadow of war), and have a small suggestion. While I am aware the mod developers do not want us suggesting ideas from non canon sources, I have done some research and found that this is actually mentioned by Tolkien himself in one of his later writings.

Ladies and Gents, I give you: Earthbread.

What is earthbread?

As put by the Tolkien Gateway:

Earth-bread was an edible root known only to the Dwarves . It was white and fleshy and after boiling was good to eat and similar to bread.

This root was mentioned in the late Tolkien's book The Children of Hurin. In the book, dwarves are carrying full sacks of these roots.

So now that I've proved that this plant is, indeed, canon, what do I propose that it does in the mod?

well, think of it as a wild potato on steroids.

Basically, the earthbread can be found uncommonly in the iron hills, blue mountains, and (possibly, but not really canon) rarely in Mordor. Breaking the plant gives you 1 earthbread root. When eaten raw, it is not very  nutritious and filling, only restoring 3 (1 1/2 little "drumsticks") food. however, when cooked (and salted, according to some sources), it tastes just like a finely milled bread, and restores a whopping 9 (4 1/2 drumsticks) hunger. To balance the overpowered hunger restoration, this plant can be as rare as athelas (1-2 in every 16 chunks).

A good question that came to me while writing this was Should Earthbread be farmable?

In my opinion, yes. Due to how rare it would be, I believe you should be able to farm it just like a potato (plant the actual root and when harvested, gives 1-3 randomly), this way you don't have to go scavenging around the hills for a good source of food. For those who are thinking that farming this incredible root would be too overpowered, think about this; Steak gives 8 hunger points (1 less than earthbead would), and how easy is it to find cows? they're literally everywhere. 