As of 1/29/2024, cooking will not unrotten the food but u can still cook them for satiety bonus, I will advise players eat them (rotten food) when u already have a disease as they dont stack anyway

Outdated. Cooking rotten food no longer removes disease.

For me, the best skill so far is the one that reduces search time. You get that twice, and you only need to use 1 AP to search thins. Huge speed improvement.
I chose that,
Head damage +
Cats eyes (night vision +)
Most games I only have enough time to read 3 books, but if I get the student, I also get,
Cold resistance, XP increase, Weapon durablility.

Looking at this game for the first time now, and this is the first review I read. I was going to it already, but the last line in the review really earned a ""

Most of the skills are situational, so it's hard to tier them. i.e. cat-eye is generally pretty good, but it has less value if you already have tons of small flashlights.

You can get value out of even situational ones like Ariadne's Thread if you figure out how to use them well. For instance, that one makes backtracking fast enough that you can back out immediately if you travel to a bad area.

I think the more xp one is the only trash trait unless you're taking an extraordinarily long time to finish the game. Longest game I've had was 12 days but generally I finish closer to 8, which just isn't enough time for the extra xp to break even, much less be worth being down a trait early.

Best class I think is the Athlete. Construction worker is a close second. Student can be good, but you're at the mercy of the book RNG for what you get.

For stats, I value Strength and Health. Everything else is nice but a few points of those are essential.

skills?