Food Crafting seems imbalanced (time vs value)

I think that food (mats used and the buffs) need to be looked at and adjusted. As it stands, the time invested to gather materials and craft the food do not even come close to the gains they provide.
For a basic item like La Noscean Toast, 10 different items are needed from all over Eorzea. The travel time alone is getting up there towards the buffs duration and when the time it takes to do the 7 steps to craft it, you are pushing close to the actual buffs duration.

In my opinion, the current setup for what it takes to get the materials and craft foods versus the buff itself only encourages botting or RMT. With the changes to gathering experience and leveling speed, the behind the keyboard time invested does not even come close to the market value of the materials.

Hell, wait till you need to farm shards to make food. It will probably take 3x as long as gathering the mats. I really hope they look into changing it.

We need to make like a minimum of 5 food items per craft. Or perhaps food needs to persist through death. It's just such a monumental time sink every single week for regular raiding. I literally helped every single person in my raid group get to 50 culinarian (I got to 50 first then just made them HQ food for the triple turn-in leves) so that everyone would be able to make their own food instead of having one or two guys spend several hours per week making enough for everyone.

It's patently ludicrous.

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Originally Posted by Xbob42

Or perhaps food needs to persist through death. It's just such a monumental time sink every single week for regular raiding.
It's patently ludicrous.

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I do think that persisting through death would be a good solution or at the very at least as a temporary solution but I'm personally all for the food to persist through death.
Coil is a place were one persons slight mistake can easily lead to a raid groups wipe and even if you take a VERY conservative 15 minutes per food crafted, that equals 2 hours of lost time (8x15 minutes) and all just cause of a mistake, no matter how slight it was or even worse, something out of a players control (since we all know how fantastic the instance servers can be on any given day.)

I would venture a guess that 2 hours is about an average amount of time a random group puts into a night of raiding. So, a single wipe with food equates to an average days worth of raiding...... that seems to me to be a pretty stiff penalty for death, don't you think?

I was sitting here making la noscean toast and thinking this exact thing. i spent the better part of the day collecting the mats to make the walnut bread then to make the toast. i bought some mats from the vendor but still...i then had to sit down and craft 99 pieces of toast. it was very very tedious and hardly time effective for the amount of profit netted. Amount of materials required per synth should be lowered OR the amount created per synth needs to be increased.

You used to be able to buy walnut bread, but they fixed that with the hotfix.

They should have just removed walnut bread from the la noscean toast recipe, or changed the walnut bread leve to something else.

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Originally Posted by madolyn

I bought some mats from the vendor but still...i then had to sit down and craft 99 pieces of toast. it was very very tedious and hardly time effective for the amount of profit netted. Amount of materials required per synth should be lowered OR the amount created per synth needs to be increased.

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This in a way brings up an interesting point to how the different foods need to be adjusted. 2 common used foods of La Noscean Toast and Buttons in a Blanket vary massively in the amount of crafting involved to make them. Currently, it takes about 6 separate steps to make the toast vs 3 steps needed for Buttons. To add more to this, you need to collect enough materials for 30 toast in order to use up each and every item (due to some of the crafts having a multiple yield) vs the Blankets only needing to craft 6 at a time to use all materials.

I think food should persist through death, or at least make HQ food persist through death. The effort involved to make them isn't too bad if they didn't vanish the moment you die.

im for persist through death as well ^^^

for the toast, I have been quick synthesizing 50+ walnut breads when i gotta afk for a littl while, then i buy pretty much everything else off MB. takes me a total of 20 mins to make like 20 toasts then add like 20 more mins to gather mats. I dont buy HQ items either, i have all my chef gear to easily HQ toast out of normal mats. Still Way cheaper than buying HQ toast off MB.

My advice is dont use food when u are still pretty new to an instance, like ur new to turn 1 and havent quite mastered it yet, maybe dont use the food until you have a good grasp on it. The thing is, you dont need the food, its just nice to have and makes the fight a bit easier is all. I dont stress about food.

Agree 100% OP, I already have a thread on this here:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ading-on-death.

Let's all keep it in a single thread(like the japanese do) to help SE see all our feedback more easily and fix this issue.

I'm only a lowbie Cul but I think all the time requirements is probably intentional for the most part. Economy needs consumable goods and the fact people are taking the time to make em / lvl 50 Cul to make it themselves / or to buy them etc.. means it's in demand. Don't see what's wrong with the situation

Hey guys! I love cooking to death. I have some issues with the Luminary stats and Materia, but let me put that aside. As far as the recipes go, I don't find them a bother. Sure, there are a lot of materials to gather. But, I think the main problem(s) are the shard cost and the death issue. My take: Reduce the amount of shards it takes or up the quantity produced. As far as the death issue is concerned, I personally think food should be removed when you die. My only reasoning is that will cause more people to run out of food faster so they can buy it from me. :P The whole goal is to *not* die, and this is a death penalty, as well as gear getting damaged.

So I think everything is fine except perhaps lowering the shard usage or upping the quantity (which maybe can be an additional effect if you get Luminary?). Just my thoughts! Cook on!

It's not just that, I find that food in general has become horribly subpar since phase 2 of the beta. Before then, it was much closer to what FFXI has - lots of variety with different effects for each food type. And more stats were increased as well (e.g. Meats typically gave +STR and +Attack, Sweets INT and Magic Attack etc.)


Now it's all just +VIT, Accuracy, sometimes PIE and either lolskillspeed, spell speed, determination and crit. Why evasion was removed as a stat is beyond me but of course no more evasion or defense/hp food either (we get +parry though, yay! OOO and +VIT, instead of a direct % of HP).


Food SUCKS in this game. For an 11+ year old game now I'm amazed that FFXI did a much smarter job of it, with cool little things like SAM benefiting from Rice Balls with the right gear on. (I also hate that FSH in general is borderline useless in this game compared to XI but that's a separate topic).

Devs dropped the ball on this aspect of the game hard.

Food is so lame in FF14, 4-8% stat increases are pathetic. Try harder SE and at least make foods give 10-20% stat buffs for the high end. Food should damn well be compulsory for end-game content AS well as being highly desirable for everything else.

^ you've kinda got it reversed. High end food is supposed to have low percentages because of higher base stats. But again this isn't FFXI where a Bard can throw up Minuet to dramatically boost your base attack in order to really abuse stuff like Yellow Curry. Low end food should have much higher values with lower caps, but also worthwile stats to begin with. I'm still confounded as to why they did the revamping of every food back in phase 2. Was direct attack/magic attack food too good in the new system? Why was evasion removed as a stat entirely?!

Really they should just make food craft in batches, similar to how it is in XI.
EX: x10 the current mats for x10 the food.

That being said I think the EFFECTS of food are good as they are. They are still pretty much required for end game raiding, and they are balanced in that they increase several stats by 4-7% rather than increasing one by 21%. I dont think they should persist through death (giving cooks a viable market, and more incentive not to die). My only problem with it is i have to spend hours crafting food in order to make enough for my whole raid.

Food actually did craft in batches back in 1.0, though it was a bit excessive in some cases.

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Originally Posted by Arakatos

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The problem is the demand for food ISN'T there. Due to the time and resources expended to make a piece of food, food is rather expensive even if sold at-cost. Most players don't consider this cost worth it.

This is a factor of three things: The price is obviously one, but the other two are the low amount that each stat is increased, plus the fact that the stat increases are often ones that don't grant a direct and noticeable increase.

The main market for food is tanks (As the VIT that all foods give IS a direct and noticeable increase) and crafters (As they need the bonus from food just to hit the requirements to craft certain items). Unfortunately, that means a lot of the market just plain doesn't exist.

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Originally Posted by Astarica

I think food should persist through death, or at least make HQ food persist through death. The effort involved to make them isn't too bad if they didn't vanish the moment you die.

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I really like the idea of high quality food giving extra features like persisting through death instead of just marginally better stat bonuses. Quality-of-life bonuses to food and equipment is worth putting down extra gil for versus normal quality stuff.

I think one viable option will be:

- You craft one pie/toast/sandwich and get x3/x4/x5.

The market will be full of foods, but i can choose waste my time collecting mats to craft foods knowing one of them have more use.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

The problem is the demand for food ISN'T there.

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I and everyone in the three groups in my FC which raid coil all use food. The demand is there, the problem is the time to craft to meet that demand requires the prices to be charged to be way higher than what most people would pay.

Adding 15 vit, 16 determination and 10 critical is a very noticeable buff.. Same for the tank food.

Also - The reasons food doesn't increase DPS by 10-20% (And this is argueble in FFXI, since people want to bring it up.. +~60 attack is not going to be a 10% DD Buff, especially in a raid setting.) is because the content is tuned for 8 people. Not 8 + an extra 1 in effectiveness because of food. Food is meant to give you an extra edge, or cover you in places where your gear may fall short.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

The demand is there, the problem is the time to craft to meet that demand requires the prices to be charged to be way higher than what most people would pay.

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This is basically what I was trying to say, but I shortened my post up some to try and fit the 1000 character limit (Don't like having to edit my posts afterwards). I was using the word "demand" to mean the number of people who will buy it, meaning those who feel the stat boost is worth the cost. We could lower the price and encourage more people to buy, but that's not possible without actually taking a LOSS on each synth.

While there are exceptions, like your coil group, most people even in endgame aren't using food, and food use pre-50 is borderline non-existant barring someone just snagging whatever for the xp bonus. For the food market to thrive we either need to have a greater benefit from food so the price will feel worth it, or be able to make food for less time and/or money.

http://i.imgur.com/Dp4w0P6.png <-- everyone in BG seems to use it.. Most of the other groups I know also do.. But not to argue over that. They need to make it batch crafting to fix the problem. Thats all.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

Also - The reasons food doesn't increase DPS by 10-20% (And this is argueble in FFXI, since people want to bring it up.. +~60 attack is not going to be a 10% DD Buff, especially in a raid setting.) is because the content is tuned for 8 people. Not 8 + an extra 1 in effectiveness because of food. Food is meant to give you an extra edge, or cover you in places where your gear may fall short.

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Which brings back the point, content at endgame should have been designed for 8 man + 20-25% from food buffs. If instead of 15 vit, 16 det and 10 crit, you had food that gave 40 vit, 45 det and 30 crit.. you would pay a good price for it.

People aren't using it because it's amazing or anything though, that's the thing. It's used at endgame because we need all the buffs we can get for Coil, because we don't have the iLv 80 gear from Crystal Tower to compensate.


Food Effects were much more powerful back in 1.0 leading up to Phase 2 of the beta. I'd much rather see the old food effects brought back, like getting +STR and Attack from meats instead of lolSkillspeed and Determination.

Increasing the food buffs and increasing difficulty of content to match provides no net benefit to buffing the food, except you see bigger numbers.

agree with OP. I have all crafts at 50, and I rarely used culinarian because really, it's a huge pain in the ass.

I'd also like to see them add something to the crafting log to indicate how many items a craft makes, as this is something kinda unique to culinarian (well alchemy too, but that all comes in 3's).
I decided to make some Finger Sandwiches or something the other day and Iooked at the ingredient list and saw walnut bread. This was followed by rage and cursing.
So I had to go make the ingredients for walnut bread, completely forgetting things like butter comes and 5's or whatever, and I end up filling my inventory with way more crap then I need. Terrible when your OCD.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

Increasing the food buffs and increasing difficulty of content to match provides no net benefit to buffing the food, except you see bigger numbers.

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Er, the net benefit is food is not just desirable, its needed. Even for weaker dungeons, it goes from the current "nice to have" to "wow thats good!".. overall much higher demand for food items, more crafting by cooks, more buying of mats by botanists and fishermen.. its an overall economic boost.

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Originally Posted by AylaYukihana

Er, the net benefit is food is not just desirable, its needed. Even for weaker dungeons, it goes from the current "nice to have" to "wow thats good!".. overall much higher demand for food items, more crafting by cooks, more buying of mats by botanists and fishermen.. its an overall economic boost.

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The food is already needed for end game content. As for economic boost, as tedius as it is i have made quite a bit of gil selling Toast and Buttons.. So its still economically feasible.. it just takes -a long time-. The fix should be batch crafting.

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Originally Posted by cearka

I'd also like to see them add something to the crafting log to indicate how many items a craft makes, as this is something kinda unique to culinarian (well alchemy too, but that all comes in 3's).

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It... does tell you. Above the ingredients/durability/whatever there will be a number on the picture of the item you are making that indicates how many will be created. Table salt says 6, butter says 5, for example.

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

The food is already needed for end game content. As for economic boost, as tedius as it is i have made quite a bit of gil selling Toast and Buttons.. So its still economically feasible.. it just takes -a long time-. The fix should be batch crafting.

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Only for BC. Most normal dungeon runners dont even use food. Very few people use food while leveling up at all, period. It's a waste of a market opportunity. Compared to food FF11, food was desirable from level 1 to max through almost all content, because the buff was THAT GOOD many people are willing to folk out some gil for it.

Currently what drives the culinary market is leves turn-in from other cooks leveling up. When the pyramid scheme is over, the entire market will stagnate and only a few food items used by top raiders will sell.

No offense but BC Is really the only thing that matters at this point.. And i use food in WP too, cause why not? At least there i know i wont (or shouldnt) die and lose it =P

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Originally Posted by Laryndra

No offense but BC Is really the only thing that matters at this point.

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To be fair, the food buff isn't really that important in Coil either. Even if the 4 DD use something like Buttons in a Blanket, that 8% extra Crit and 16% extra Det is not going to make or break an encounter. Nearly ever mechanic in coil is execution, not brute force. The food buffs are simply not good enough to be a needed until at the very least you reach a point in the fights that you have the execution part down.
On the flip side, that ~ 50K gil per half hour or few hours spent gathering and cooking the mats could ultimately provide more gains per group used elsewhere in terms of being able to fill out players with high quality crafted gear & materia and provide a permanent buff so to speak to the entire group.

There are some good ideas in here that could make food buffs be more useful for all aspects of the game and a number of them would be great to see make it into 2.1.
**In no particular order**
1) Crafting in batches. Even being able to cook in batches of 10 would really lessen the time sink burden placed on cooks. While crafting HQ food isn't all that difficult once you reach a certain point in crafted gear, it still does add some risk if a mistake is made when dealing with larger batches of food stuffs at one time.
2) Persisting through death. Seriously, the buff is only 30 minutes, we already take a fairly severe penalty if revived during combat, why do we have an added penalty for loss of the food buff if we decide to use it?
3) HQ extend the duration. A nice little benefit for using HQ. Jump it up to say 40 minutes, it's not going to break the market to extend the buffs duration a little.

I do believe that even these 3 small tweaks to the way food is handled would greatly enhance the culinary job to make it worth while even in the long run. Being realistic here, a games population does not continue to grow at the same rate for long periods of time. We have to remember that since every player can do EVERY job in the game that at some point, each server is going to get over saturated with DoL/DoH making these jobs become more self sustained then market sustained. Players that want to stay in Final Fantasy for the long haul are going to end up not seeing the market being a viable option for crafting at a point. The only way crafting could have remained a viable option in the market sense would have been to limit the number of jobs each player could have obtained but we are far passed that as an option for changes.