4 star culinarian recipe discrepancy.

Manderville hat on, detective mode engaged.

So having obtained my master culinarian book 2, i have noticed a big discrepancy with the starting quality of one of the recipes compared to the others.

Flint Caviar: max starting quality 1184/5783 (2/4 mats can be HQ)
Bacon Bread: max starting quality 1744/5783 (4/6 mats can be HQ)
Bacon Broth: max starting quality 1203/5783 (4/6 mats can be HQ)

Then we have the 4th recipe, which seem to be woefully short on starting quality compared to the others:

Triple Cream Coffee: max starting quality 163/5783 (3/6 mats can be HQ)

It seems to be very very low compared to the other recipes, and the other recipes seems to sit in the same range as one another in terms of starting quality. Is this working as intended? It would be good to get a response from a rep/dev on this, otherwise i will have to employ Hildebrand to solve this most perplexing of culinary conundrums :).

LOL, the bottom line. Yes CUL get shafted again. I mean Buttons is the best we can do. SMH where is my Raman Noodles. HELL. I want a Grill off-hand now

The reason is because SE was clever with the way they made HQ ingredients impact the starting quality on a recipe. If the recipe's "primary ingredients" are HQ, you get a bigger boost to quality at the start.

In this particular case, the coffee beans and the water are the main ingredients, and all 3 of those cannot bq HQ, so the starting quality is very lowl.

It's the same thing as making say... A Rose Gold Nugget (3 Gold Ore, 1 Copper Ore). If you add 1 HQ Gold, you get like 250 bonus quality, but if you add 1 HQ Copper, you get under 10 bonus quality. Why? Because Gold is the main ingredient, not copper.

I know it sucks, but it actually makes sense so I highly doubt this particular instance is a bug.

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Originally Posted by Archadius

The reason is because SE was clever with the way they made HQ ingredients impact the starting quality on a recipe. If the recipe's "primary ingredients" are HQ, you get a bigger boost to quality at the start.

In this particular case, the coffee beans and the water are the main ingredients, and all 3 of those cannot bq HQ, so the starting quality is very lowl.

It's the same thing as making say... A Rose Gold Nugget (3 Gold Ore, 1 Copper Ore). If you add 1 HQ Gold, you get like 250 bonus quality, but if you add 1 HQ Copper, you get under 10 bonus quality. Why? Because Gold is the main ingredient, not copper.

I know it sucks, but it actually makes sense so I highly doubt this particular instance is a bug.

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I can kind of see the point you are trying to make here, however it doesnt follow through to say the bacon broth, where the primary ingredients are also not available in HQ (Smoked Bacon and Xelphatol Spring Water) yet the starting possible quality is significantly higher than the starting quality of the Triple Cream Coffee. Also, these are all an artifical construct by someone, so saying that, there has to be some logic behind the ingredient choices in these recipes, as well as all the factors in the starting quality of the recipes. It still makes very little devolpment sense to have extremely similar recipes have such a vast difference in starting quality. Take the new healer body and leg pieces, would it make sense for one to be able to start at 2000 quality and the other to start at 200?

Edit: also, all previous culinarian recipes were balanced more-or-less where if you used all HQ starting ingredients where possible, they would start with a similar range of quality. This one recipe seems to be an anomaly in regards to how SE have constructed the previous recipe balance for culinarian, which is why i have brought this up in the first place :)

I Support this message! CUL Theory-crafting commence!

The weight that an ingredient adds to quality has to do with the ilvl of the ingredients (ilvls taken from the Gamerescape website):
Roasted Coffee Beans: ilvl 110
Mineral Water: ilvl unknown, but likely around 4
Sweet Cream: ilvl 6 (HQable)
Maple Sugar: ilvl 1 (HQable)
Cinnamon: ilvl 4 (HQable)
Filtered Water: ilvl 70

The HQable ingredients in this list are all VERY low ilvl, and so add very little weight to the quality of the synth.

Now, take a look at Bacon Broth:
Smoked Bacon: ilvl 110
Xelphatol Spring Water: ilvl 110
La Noscean Leek: ilvl unknown, but likely 90 (HQable)
Garlean Garlic: ilvl 11 (HQable)
Volcanic Rock Salt: ilvl unknown, but likely 55 (HQable)
Black Pepper: ilvl 14 (HQable)

Garlic and Pepper are still low level and don't add much weight (though, both are still higher level than any of the HQable ingredients in the Coffee), but the heavy hitters are the Salt and Leek. The fact that they're high level add a lot of weight to quality - though the fact that the Water and Bacon are even higher level means that the weights of these ingredients still don't add a whole lot to the quality bar.

This is why there's a huge disparity between the Coffee and the Broth. The HQ ingredients in the Broth are much higher ilvl than the HQ ingredients in the Coffee.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

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Yep, i get how the ingredients add to the starting quality. The devs have created these recipes, usually similar level recipes in similar crafting disciplines have a similar range in the starting quality. These dont. Its either deliberatly done this way (i can't think of a reason this recipe would be made so difficult to HQ compared to the other 3), or it is an oversight, and isnt working as intended. They may use different ingredients, however, again, these ingredients are choosen by the devs, and previous patterns in culinarian crafts have had the recipes start off at a similar HQ range when using all HQ mats. This one doesnt. This is an anomaly, and once again, its the devs who have created this recipe, thus deciding the starting quality possible, the recipes can be tweaked if this is not what they intended.

These coffees are atrocious to HQ... Typically I'm around the 40's+ in steps when I do HQ them and it isn't uncommon for me to Reclaim with 10-11 Inner Quiet stacks. Reason for the Reclaim with a high stack count is that sometimes even a good BB on 11 IQ will only land 84% Quality depending on Hasty Touch conditions. Caviar may as well only have 1 HQ ingredient since the fish is rather annoying to catch and only adds 2% to the overall quality. Woohoo, only 4600 or so quality to go spamming a 80% skill... Even after getting a HQ synth you have the issue of people actually having high enough stats to actually consider this food, like you need 660 base Crit to actually reach the potential of Caviar.

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Originally Posted by Laurell

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Yes to everything you said. Also, i am pretty sure your server will be like mine, awash with HQ Bacon Bread since its so easy to craft, whilst the other reciped HQ dont sell too well due to stat caps making them not really worth the money. Its almost like culinarian is lagging behing with every patch, 3 star recipes becoming more relevant now, whilst the 4 star stuff can not be used to its full potential really.

The coffee can be utilized by a BiS Healer with almost every gear set available to them (i've calculated it). The Coffee is actually a unique food in the sence no other food offers the same choice of stats. 4star food is pretty much for Final Coil BiS geared players atm, while 3star food is what people in progression groups would be using. Bacon bread can be used either solely for the VIT gains or for any PLD that actually prioritized parry (rare thing these days) and has a minimum of 660 parry. Flint caviar is the hardest food to maximize, however still offers some usefullness in the VIT department. Its also possible for casters to reach the 620ish CRIT region in PVP so u could consider this a PVP food until 3.0.

All in all, Nothing new here. CUL has always been lagging behind in the food departments and many people still dont have the stats to eat 2star food (Black Truffle 350 Det min). Bacon Broth is probably the most usefull 4star food atm for its desynth stat.