Chef Archive

I charge according to the buffs. If you sell Sunburns that cheap, how much do you sell your other stuff for ? 10 creds/unit ? Educate your playerbase to buy 1500/1500 300 secs buffs for 250 creds a unit and they will riot as you say when you'll try to sell them 120/120 250 secs buffs for 70 credsaunit.

Looks like you don't care since you went only for mix and cooking. But for other chefs like us who try to sell a lot of different food, we can't afford to sell cheap sunburns, or we'll sink our own boat.

Jonzun wrote:

For me, maximizing the profitability of my business venture is as much of a goal to shoot for as killing the "ubermobs" is for the combat characters. Grinding and making stuff isn't particularly fun in the long run. It's building the customer base and competing with the other people making the same product that is the thrill for me.

I totally agree with this sentiment. In fact, I consider it the only real challenge in the game atm, and I'm having a good time at it. That will always be the problem with 'skill-based' systems like SWG and Morrowind as opposed to class based systems like EQ. The achievement factor of advancing your character through combat is lacking (or will be lacking as soon as you max your profession) thus there is no reason to go out and do much of anything.

fatgit wrote:

I've never charged per charge, it is a basic 5cr per resource used

I agree with the methodology (pricing per resource used) but I completely disagree with the price you use fatgit. Its very common that just base resources cost 3 -7 resources per unit (even higher for rares/high quality). Add to that the fact that ALL of our items are handcrafted which means we WASTE (assuming you set a bar for minimum quality before you brand your food) a lot of resources on failed efforts, 5 cr per unit is a guaranteed money-losing price.

I think that a lot of people that set these low prices are looking attheir ownfood and saying 'but...I wouldn't buy this junk at a higher price'. To which I say don't judge the price of your food before you give the market a chance to do so! I sell ALL of my food & drink items for a minimum of 10 credits per resource used. Sometimes this means I'm putting stuff on my vendor at a price that I frankly think to myself 'man no one is going to buy this' but time after time after time I am surprise with how well it sells! If I make a food that just simply doesn't sell at 10cr per resource, I mark it down to 'market research' and never make that food again. We have LOTS of recipes. I guarantee that you will find enough recipes that you can sell at 10cr per resource to keep you very very busy.

I have simply learned to not judge my own foods based on my own cheapness standards. There is a huge customer base out there. Some will never want your foods, no matter how cheap, and some will always buy no matter how expensive. Don't cater to the cheapskates, it will frustrate you and keep you overwhelmingly busy for little or no profit.

I have a wacky pricing scheme... for the not-so-loved items, I only charge 3-4cr per depending on the type of resources used.

On my hard-to-keep-instock items, I charge around 5-6cr per to try to control the demand a bit.

A few things:

• Sunburn is waaaaay better than the other food out there. So it should be more expensive.


• Sure sunburn may cost a lot less in resources than what you're charging. But don't forget all the resources you threw away on wastril bread and gwouch and Ithorian mist.


• It is easier to lower prices than to raise them. Start high, then drop.


• If you can't keep in stock, then it sounds like you are selling too low. I am usually able to keep about 5-10 sunburns on my vendor, and I think that reliability is important to customers.

I sell them for 500c a charge

why

because I use extremly high quality Reactive Gas

They Sell like hotcakes

I get bombarded by Requests for over 100 at a time

I dont like making just one item

As soon as Facotries are fixed crates for 50 will cost 250k thats my price and it wont change

I forgot to add

I had to pay for my training every level from novice chef to master chef it cost me a ton.

I dont have any Harvesters because I wanted houses on a couple planents to have more and more venders avialable for the players.

Also The people buying Tatoonie sunburns are soloing 20k missions so they really can afford alot more.

When I first got Tattonie sunburns I sold them 1cr per stat buffed so they cost 1559c per charge and I still sold them like crazy

....what the market will bear.

Tatooine Sunburn is HOT HOT HOT...the word is out and regions, cities even some PLANETS cannot keep them in stock. This is about the only true money making thing that us chefs have. So from a business stand point, it is just the thing to help propel us chefs and our food into the market.

I play the market - check the bazaar regularly to see what the Sunburns are going for and price accordingly. It is not a surprise to see tatooine for over 1000c/per. Customers know the value of these precious drinks and are happily to oblige.

Who knows, maybe there might be a time when Tatooine Sunburn is not in demand, but while it is - this is the best thing for us chefs to make a living. When factories start working, we will see another drop in pricing most likely, especially with the chef population growing. (Supply/Demand) So enjoy the player's desire for sunburn at the moment - it's about time some chefs got rich for all the grinding and hard work anyways.

Aikiave
Novice Chef
Joh City, NW of Dearic on Talus
Corbantis Galaxy

Thanks for the responses Glad it didn't create any flaming.

Most of the responses are what I had expected - what the market will bear. Although a few ones surprise me. The idea of selling per item obviously makes sense based on other professions, but it just seems ugly to me, because experimentation can be so random -so sometimes, customers might pay twice what they paid yesterday for the same effect, if they buy in small quantities.

Something that kinda surprises me though is that you're allreacting like heavy harvesters will cost you a lot. Again, I'm in a particuliar case: I didn't fully abandon my architect skills, and still had some ore, so I made my food factory myself, as well as a medium chemical and a few medium minerals, stuff I had from when I was an architect.

But I still bought a heavy gas harvester, which should have roughly the same cost as a large flora farm. And I paid 36k. How come? I know the right people, and I'm in the right PA. The master architect of my PA got very low prices most of the time, and he sells even cheaper for PA members. You get the point.

I doubt you'll find that type of stuff for 36k easily. But what I mean here is:When buying expensive stuff like heavy harvesters, don'ttake the first offer, ask around! And if you're a PA, inform yourself about potential special PA prices.

Finally, a little tip: Macros for crafting are very far from being last time. I got a helping macro up and running for starshine surprises, on which experimentation is useless. This helping macro allows me blazing speeds. I don't have the time to explain the whole macro, it's fairly complicated, but he's an easy part to implement:

/nextCraftingStage; /nextCraftingStage; /createPrototype; /createPrototype;

Use this macro when you just finished entering the resources for the draft schematic, and when not near a crafting station to experiment. And tada! The item is directly in production. I hope that helps

Uttar

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Wellsi wrote:

How, pray tell, are you getting more than one charge of TS? I have Mix 2, and Cooking 3. And still only make one charge. And that's with experimenting for quantity.

I thought this was bugged atm.

Tell me what if anything I could be doing wrong.

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In addition to Ookoi's suggestion to check the quality of the reactive gas resource that you are using...are you failing when you try to experiment with the quantity? I know, might sound like a stupid question...but if you don't experiment with the quantity, you might actually come up with a higher number of charges per item by default. I always thought I started out with 1 charge by default...but I found that out that the default by just doing experimentation was 3 CHARGES (for 25% initial experimentation value for quantity) and that every time I failed while experimenting with the quantity, I LOST 2 charges. (hehe, my wookie BF pointed it out to me while I was grinding.) Also, the quality of your starshine components matters too. Not sure what part of it matters...the complexity? *sigh* I don't know much about the real specifics - I'm sure other chefs of this board can contribute more information, but try experimenting with your 'experimentation'. Try not experimenting, see what you get as a base. Use different quality of resources and see what you get. Make better quality starshine and see what you get. hmm, is this the blind leading the blind? Maybe, but hope it still helps, at least a little.

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(hehe, my wookie BF pointed it out to me while I was grinding.)

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woops, spelt "wookieE" wrong...AGAIN. Please forgive me.

Use different quality of resources and see what you get. Make better quality starshine and see what you get

FYI - Starshine quality seems to have no effect. I get 1-3 sunburns unexperimented, 4-6 experimented (with one precious 7) at cooking II. Get a good reactive gas, improve your cooking skill, and update your crafting tool and crafting station to the best quality possible.

I sell sunburn at 400/use.

To put this into perspective heres the prices of other stuff on my server:

Master-made Scout blaster(novice made ones never sell): 11K

Composite armor: 150K

Large harvester: 250K from some... shopping around can get you 125K if lucky.

The people that need the sunburn are high-level characters that need the ability to use lots of specials at minimal cost. They've got lots of money. Market prices are decided by supply and demand. Once there's more chefs, and factories work, unless demand rises, I will drop my prices some. I was also told to raise prices by two of my customers... Only ever got one complaint about prices.