In your suggestion the XP pie is no decision besides “can I afford it or not”. The optimal way to play is to always have it active. Why not just double XP and remove the cake?
If you can stack buffs, the optimal way to play will be with stacked buffs. Everyone will want to play like that because everything else is suboptimal. All this does is increase the upkeep of playing the game, leaving less time to play it the way you want.
So just spit balling. What if you ate a teaching pie and a berry pie and it cut the time in half but you could technically stack them but you would burn thru more if you stacked them?
This was always confusing me - which buffs stack and which not (I still don’t always remember what I can eat without losing currently active buff).
Maybe it could be removed? The existing system where some buffs stack and some don’t.
Make combining buffs possible, but introduce limit for total level of active buffs.
Let’s say it’s set on 6. Meaning that 2 pies could be eaten and their buffs can be both active no matter what type of buffs (so for example I would eat persisting pie and teaching pie). That would effectively mean 2 buffs possible on maximum level, or 3 different buffs level 2 or 6 active buffs of level 1.
Or the limit could be 5 to make it a bit harder of a choice (no 2 maximum level buffs possible, but one level 3 and one level 2: I could eat a teaching pie and persisting bread or different way around).
That would introduce some interesting choices when hunting or mining or gathering or building… whatever activity and on whatever world.
Will I have maximum xp buff and average durability bonus or maximum durability buff and average xp bonus? Or maybe I could go for lvl 2 for persisting and teaching foods and on top of that eat a shielding lvl 1 food?
I’d rather not play red-light, green-light with a mechanic in a game designed to be just an annoyance that doesn’t provide any benefit to fun gameplay though. I honestly fail to see how this game’s energy mechanic and hunger mechanic to go along with it is anything but tedium and annoyances.
Personally, I prefer the minigame. Breaking up the activity with pauses decreases fatigue. Starberry pies do well to reduce the breaks if that’s your jam, though.
So needing to eat food in Minecraft is an annoyance too?
Minecraft doesn’t force you to constantly play Stop & Go with a stamina bar that depletes with every single action one takes, whether it be swinging your sword, swinging a pickaxe (even if you don’t hit blocks with it), actually mining blocks or placing blocks.
You also don’t have to eating a starberry pie.
I dislike having to choose between this buff or that. If I spent 23 hours gathering ingredients for the mass crafts I should be allowed to have both.