Poor, Poor Culinarian [dev1016]

So, I got to thinking after posting in another thread about changes to crafting, and I have to ask if it would be possible to consider making some further adjustments to culinarian.

I know the devs have indicated that tooltips and stats would reflect changes coming from food. That's great news!

However there are still some problems to consider:

1) Many ingredients for food are rare and expensive (hardly ever on the wards, often overpriced or in very small quantities when they are). This leaves culinarians like me hoarding every food ingredient they can find and filling our inventories with them because otherwise making almost ANYTHING requires 2 or more teleports and in some cases, harvesting ingredients yourself.

2) Almost the only simple recipes Culinarian has are the ones turning fish into sand. While it is nice to have such a simple and obvious route for grinding... I don't like getting sand in my frying pan! Please consider adding some more simple recipes (4 ingredients or less) to our cookbooks!

3) Stacking! How come we can stack logs to 99 but chocolates only stack to 12? I can understand not allowing 99 stacks for potions in terms of game balance - but since it doesn't matter how many chocolates you eat, you will have the same 30 minute effect - this just becomes another inventory filler. I haven't been cooking much because I would have to throw all my pretty, difficult to make things in the garbage (npc them) because no one really buys food.

I would wager that right now I have at least 60 inventory slots holding items which are almost exclusively for cooking. That is a real discouragement for people to take up the craft.

Why oh why did i pick Culinarian? Do I enjoy lost causes? Being on the outside looking in? I feel like a loser with all these Dordore-sportin' crafters running around complaining about how much money they have. I can barely afford Natron at this point. And ever tried getting your hands on a stack of gelatin? May as well be an end game quest! If only cul's could make beer, I could drown out the ghostly sounds of failure

All valid points, and along with the somewhat underwhelming/unknown/mysterious benefits of food currently makes Cooking one of the last crafts most crafters level up. Hopefully the tooltip/char. pane changes and food revamp puts a greater focus and importance on cooking, but in the meantime here's a few tips to help you out a bit:

1) Ingredients can be a pain for sure, especially the ones that only produce 1 item as that makes it harder to recoup your expenses. Some items are pretty easily harvested, check out DoL for a pretty good resource finder: http://www.disciplesoftheland.com/Maps.aspx Otherwise, you can look to farm the mats yourself by finding out what mobs drop the item. Another good way of indirectly farming mats is to make EXP groups to kill the mobs that drop the items, for example, if you need Black Pepper, go kill the Galka abundant around Bald Knoll with a small group and ask them for any black pepper that drops. Pretty sure they give bonus SP too for being humanoid/sentient mobs.

2) Awful Machiavellian but if that's the route SE offers as the easiest means to skill up, then by all means take it. I think things only get bad in the 30+ range once its hard to skill up easily on fish. Maybe if SE introduced more fish desynths it would be a somewhat easier, albeit boring path to 50. The upcoming recipe changes may also make Cooking less complicated.

3) I do believe a community rep said they would look into the possibility of food stacking to 99. I think everyone would love to see this change, not just cooks, but anyone who buys and uses food. Also, try to skill up on stuff that people actually buy and use. There's actually a pretty good market now on higher-end foods because of the R45 dungeon, try to focus on: Grain foods like Knight's Bread, Sweets like Crowned Cake, Attack food like Meat Miq, Aldgoat Steak, Smoked Raptor, Shepherd's Pie, and Pies like Tomato Pie. Tuna Miq and Stuffed Cabbage also sell pretty well for crafters. All of the above items sell for 5k+ on my server, Crowned Cake and Knight's Bread get as high as 7-8k each at times.

Hope that helps.

And Deviled Eggs! Deviled Eggs are great for +craftmanship...and u only need 54 lightning to get delicious bonus! Every rare occasion that I see them on the wards I stock up, cuz they really dont show up very often.

Also, isnt it a great sign that higher lvl food is now in demand because of the dungeon? I see it as a great omen =)

I actually skilled on deviled eggs for awhile.

:)

The problem with trying to grind on profitable recipes only is just that most of them are higher end. My cul is only 25 now, so there isn't as much I can make. I appreciate the advice though - and I do actually harvest a lot of my own ingredients... but again it comes back to needing to hoard tons and tons of mats.

Oh and natron.

/cries

I was lucky cause I have alchemist high enough to make my own natron and I begged all my LS mates to give me their sparkly water for a few weeks so I have a small stash of it... but wow is it ever expensive. Effervescent water is selling for like 10K each on my server. It really isn't very affordable, and natron is so pricey from the npc.

my <3 goes out to Culinarians. Let's hope with the revisions that your recipes receive a sorely needed overhaul!

Agreed on pretty much everything you said. Here's to hoping that leveling mine 45+ will eventually pay off.

@LuxLex

At 25 you can do Hammerhead Sharks I think to ~30 quickly and easily. Smoked Raptor and Tuna Miq'Abob are also good to make and sell in that range. Raptor Shank should be abundant from all the grind parties farming the lower level ones, and Sharks/Tuna are easily caught around Cedarwood with ~20 fishing skill. Once you hit 30, you can do Apple Juice to the mid-40s.

As for Effervescent Water, its pretty cheap on my server but I know that varies greatly. You can farm them pretty easily though, there's tons of little Taru ninjas in the cave structures around Halatali. Pretty easily farmed at 50, if you have a few friends with classes in the 30s you can EXP on them. They drop the Water at ~20-30% clip up to 2 per kill.

Thanks for the tips on water... my highest battle class is 33, and I don't really do anything but craft and gather anymore, but I will keep it in mind.

I have a lot of sharks, but see above, I find it boring and lacklustre to sit in front of my screen making sand. I know it is weird, but there you have it.

Also I am actually using the sharks I catch to make shark oil on my alchemist as well, which is more amusing to me than making sand... yes, silly, but I don't think it is that strange to want to make food as a cook

I appreciate all the tips guys! I am storing them in my data banks!

2.)Yes i agree: IF U WANT 2 CUL U MUST FSH.

It would be easier on the culinarian if there were player farms in the game.

Stay tuned for FF14-2, Harvest Fantasy Online!

Yeah, thankfully I love fishing but I would prefer to actually make even

grilled newt (recipe = nether newt + salt) for example - over sand.
more sand.
sand.
sand.

sand.sand.

I know it shouldn't make a difference but it does. Especially since no one wants said sand and it npcs for nothing.

I don't fish and I'm almost 50 cul... lol I really don't care for grinding fish to sand. It's like a waste of good fish! lol

You forgot to mention culinarian gets the most lackluster abilities to top it off.

oh and i have around 100+ slots on my retainers used up on food, it doesn't help that buffalo milk stacks to 12 like you said. -_-

cul is probably the one crafting class that did need its recipes simplified. the rest of the crafts are not hard to make parts for other stuff to grind off, but cul gets no love. it's either a super hard synth or turn fish into sand.

edit: as in hard i mean collecting all of the mats to have enough materials to grind.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Anon

You forgot to mention culinarian gets the most lackluster abilities to top it off.

oh and i have around 100+ slots on my retainers used up on food, it doesn't help that buffalo milk stacks to 12 like you said. -_-

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Actually.... Elemental Appeal is right up there with Hand of the Gods in my opinion....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by darkstarpoet1

edit: as in hard i mean collecting all of the mats to have enough materials to grind.

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yeah this. I mean you often need 8 ingredients - of which 4 are either harvest only (and sold rarely) or cost more than 3K each from an npc... it is pretty icky.

I'd love to start cooking but yeah, not really worth it right now

They said they need to fix the battle system before they can add effects or meaning to foods. Still a long way to go I think. And yes I still do CUL crafting (only lord knows why).

The reason food's not selling? well almost needing to have a mba in theoretical physics to understand the blasted bonus system has a bit to do with it.

but hopefully you guys will get a lot of lovin with the recipe overhaul.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Griss

The reason food's not selling? well almost needing to have a mba in theoretical physics to understand the blasted bonus system has a bit to do with it.

but hopefully you guys will get a lot of lovin with the recipe overhaul.

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thanks for the support.

Yeah, I have to say the bonus system is really convoluted - and with the elimination of the player rank and point allocations - it will get totally ruined too, won't it?

Not that anyone cares since no one understands it anyway.

I am still hoping for some love here. Forgive the bump.