Cooking shard costs, 30 minute duration, fading on death.

[Aragor]

P.S. When has risk been a negative drawback when being penalized for failure.. don't die and play smart and you won't waste your resources.. but to many gun hoe players always rushing.. and if you do die ... learn and expand your knowledge or find a slower simpler game to play.

Looks like someone has never raided in his whole life and plans on running CM and AK forever. Seriously, that "don't die and play smart" made me facepalm myself so hard I broke my wrist...

Three points I need to make here :
1- Food is mainly relevant for those pushing high end content as you absolutly do not need food for safe stuff, other than for synthesis and gathering foods.
2- While pushing high-end content, you are expected to die quite often learning new bosses where those precious stats buffs are necessary.
3- Food is indeed an important money sink, but, as it is right now, it is NOT accomplishing that purpose because of all the issues aforementionned. Most people simply just won't buy them because of the cost : benefit ratio. I'm certain that applying some of the principles people suggested in this thread would make them more popular and become a way more effective money sink.

[Umbrah]

Food last 2 hours.
Loses 50% effectiveness one wipe/death.
If in an instance and food is eaten, it last until you complete the instance.

my suggestions.

[MStowastiqVahlshdeh]

seems to me that this keeps the shards worth mining/logging for and AHing...

otherwise, you cooks would have to go gather them yourselves ON TOP of cooking =P

Yeah I think SE was/is trying to provide viable markets for gatherers and cooks to make a profit. Seems like there needs to be more incentive for people to buy the food and that may be in the buff duration like OP suggested.

And if Legacy characters are having no shortages on crystals, you wouldn't think so with the constant RMT crystal seller's shout spam and naked RMT DOL with position hacks farming crystals 24/7 on Legacy Servers. I have always and will continue to use food but that comes from just habit in XI, CUL was my main and highest job. I feel naked without food in battle. lol.

[BunnyChain]

While I don't mind the way food is, I think 2 star meals need to be looked at.
For example the very commonly used food for dps jobs:

• Deviled Eggs (HQ)

  19 - critical hit rate - 24
  11 - vitality - 14
  8 - accuracy - 10
  

• Apkallu Omelette (HQ)

  22 - critical hit rate - 27
  15 - vitality - 19
  9 - accuracy - 11

Now I won't call myself the best crafter but having all HQ gear, all slots filled with materia (7 forbidden melds), it's still pretty difficult to make 2 star meals in HQ without HQ ingredients. While Deviled Eggs HQ (especially when buffed with some control food) are quite easy. Also do they provide better stats (HQ), with the exception of vitality, than the 2 star meal (non HQ).

[sasakusaku]

Food is super expensive here, I mean it's like 10k+ gil per use atm for the top variations atm on some servers...maybe higher on others.

At the very least it should last longer and or persist through death. Not even that other game had consumable costs this absurb.

[Telrunya]

Oh wow, food actually becomes useful later? That's good to hear. I'm definitely in favor of it lasting longer.

[Astarica]

In all the DF raids I do I can see that people rarely have food buff icon at all, and if they do it's usually something cheap like Raisins. The benefit of food is relatively small and the cost is way too high, which just means only the super rich guys can afford it. Most near level 50 food sell for at least 1K on AH (they use 11 shards and that alone is at least 500 gil worth of stuff). Let's imagine food is now compulsory on raids, so you always have the buff and when you die, 1K gil is deducted from your bank account. How long will you keep raiding, especially against stuff you know you've a high chance of dying? That's why nobody uses food.

[Shiyo]

Please fix consumables in 2.1! I will be very sad if I need to wait until 2.2 or later!

[Trikki]

I know the OP is about cooking, but Alchemy is in a similar situation.

Something else that is interesting to look at are the materials needed for mega-potions of ____.

Mega potions of Mind or Intelligence cost nearly nothing to make and are great for when you need 15s of extra burst healing/damage. Cost-Benefit ratio is perfectly fine.
Mega potions of Strength or Vitality need very expensive materials for the same benefit (shark oil and pudding flesh respectively). Cost-Benefit ratio is way off.

I'm not suggesting to make Mind more expensive, I'm suggesting to examine the mats for some of the other potions to bring them all in line.

[Estellios]

While I don't mind the way food is, I think 2 star meals need to be looked at.
For example the very commonly used food for dps jobs:

• Deviled Eggs (HQ)

  19 - critical hit rate - 24
  11 - vitality - 14
  8 - accuracy - 10
  

• Apkallu Omelette (HQ)

  22 - critical hit rate - 27
  15 - vitality - 19
  9 - accuracy - 11

Now I won't call myself the best crafter but having all HQ gear, all slots filled with materia (7 forbidden melds), it's still pretty difficult to make 2 star meals in HQ without HQ ingredients. While Deviled Eggs HQ (especially when buffed with some control food) are quite easy. Also do they provide better stats (HQ), with the exception of vitality, than the 2 star meal (non HQ).

It should also be said that the stat requirements for 2 star food are so high that you most likely are getting less stats from them than if you were eating lower tier food.