Early Access survival game Scum has a pretty intricate metabolism system. If your character is malnourished from not eating enough, they'll lose muscle mass and strength over time. Conversely, if they eat a lot, they'll put on weight. One player is taking that to new heights—and widths—by aiming to become the heaviest character in Scum. What's the amazing secret to weight gain?
"Mainly what I do is lay on the ground and eat fat."
That's what the player, who asked to be called Tojimaru, told me in a message on Reddit. Tojimaru has been playing approximately eight hours of Scum each day since the survival game launched into Early Access last week, and it sounds like most of that time has been spent eating.
"I'll eat fat until my stomach is nearly 100 percent full," Tojimaru says, "and when it drops a bit then I'll eat some more."
The fat Tojimaru eats is mostly from zombies, which can not only be killed in Scum but chopped up for parts: human steak, bones, guts, and slabs of fat. Having found a pistol and rifle, Tojimaru will sometimes also hunt deer or boar, but it's usually zombie fat that's being consumed.
"I'll poop and pee whenever it is necessary. When I'm deficient in Vitamin D, there is a nice patch of Psilocybe Cyanescens [mushrooms] that I visit from time to time and that will keep those numbers up for a while."
A screenshot in one of Tojimaru's Reddit posts shows a couch covered with steaks and rows of fat lined up in front of it, and an astounding 132,737 calories consumed to that point in the character's life displayed on the metabolism menu. The character's weight at that time was 160kg, which has since grown to 183.
There may be some hard limits on the percentage of body fat a character can have, even while gaining weight. "I cannot seem to get my storage fat to go beyond 43kg,"Tojimaru says. "It will fluctuate between 39 and 43. However, my weight has always been constantly increasing. Slowly but surely. I started I believe somewhere around 125~~ and so far am up to 188kg."
Along with fat and mushrooms, Tojimaru has experimented with eating things like butter and vegetable oil, which appear to add calories on the metabolism meter much more quickly than eating fat does. It doesn't seem to make the character gain weight at a greater rate, however.
"After that," Tojimaru says, "I haven't bothered to constantly look for those things and just stuck to good ol' fat." Bon appétit.
