Once the PC finishes the area around Terinyo, he will have to cross a large area of wilderness to reach the Caverns of Chaos, the main dungeon in the game. The same warning about food requirements in the wilderness applies. After reaching the Caverns of Chaos, a short descent to the Arena level will provide a very good food source. Ratling traders are found on this level, selling various comestibles. The best are cooked lizards. These are light at 3 stones each, fairly inexpensive and nutritious. Food problems are generally solved at this point.
Most of the corpses that monsters leave are edible. Some are to be avoided. Kobolds of any type cause sickness. Rats (simple rats, not giant rats) will make any race other than trolls or orcs vomit, but still increase satiation level slightly. Eating humanoid corpses, such as goblins, causes the message "This meal does not sit well with you." or "You feel uneasy." to be displayed. Several players have tested eating a variety of humanoid corpses while wearing the Platinum Girdle, which kills if a chaotic act is committed. It never killed the PCs.
Having said that, PC's who have trained the Law skill will receive the message "You feel as if transgressing some law." when eating a humanoid corpse, even a lowly goblin. However, there is no effect on alignment. This seems to imply that there is a bug somewhere in the humanoid corpse-eating code.
Bear in mind that Thomas himself has stated that eating humanoid corpses is not a chaotic act.
Dwarves refuse to eat dwarven corpses. They also refuse to eat orc corpses unless they are starving.
Hurthlings refuse to eat black hurthling corpses.
Races other than trolls refuse to eat doppleganger corpses unless starving.
Be aware that some food items are susceptible to rotting. These include corpses of all types, apples and pieces of raw meat. Eating rotten food does not cause sickness or other negative effects. Food that starts to rot has actually become cursed and will soon disappear. Eat it quickly if possible. In the case of corpses, especially strategically important ones such as chaos creatures or quicklings, rotting may be indefinitely stopped by repeatedly dipping the corpse in holy water when necessary, thus blessing it. Cooked corpses decay more slowly than uncooked corpses. Cooked corpses can be created with the Cooking skill or by blasting them with fire, from the fire bolt spell, for instance. Blessed cooked corpses carried by PCs with Food Preservation at 100 decay at the slowest rate. This is very handy for preserving the corpses of Chaos Orb guardians (see section 0.10.3.1.1).
Wearing certain items causes a need for increased food consumption. This includes all items that grant invisibility, artifacts (especially for PC's that are not crowned) and worst of all (since they grant no positive effect) amulets of hunger. Interestingly, intrinsics, including intrinsic invisibility, do not have any effect on food consumption. Likewise, the Fate Smiles / Lucky / Cursed / Doomed intrinsics have no effect.
The level of satiation is displayed on the screen. High levels of satiation (satiated or bloated) will cause a speed decrease.
One type of herb, stomafillia, is extremely filling. Blessed stomafillia will cause a PC to be bloated immediately.
The satiation value of food items is increased by 25% for blessed items and decreased by 50% for cursed items.
More quantitative information about satiation levels produced by various food items is found in Appendix G Food - complete list.