Chef Archive

Yesterday I took the day off from chef because I was getting sick of it, and actually went out and for the first time used the products I was making. The following is my overall (personal) opinion of chef. Btw this is not 'flame bait' or trolling; it is my sincere opinion. Basically with the exception of the brandy. its a waste of time and I'm sorry I got involved in it. Its like the Emporer's clothes, because it is new and the revamp was touted by the development team everyone got excited about it. Most of this excitement is due to that fact that people who have been playing the same game for a year will readily sieze upon anything that is novel to relieve the tedium. So as each new food comes out people will convince themselves that they cant get along without it (whatever it is they fancy).

When I say waste of time I'm saying that from the point of view of the end user. From the merchant perspective its fine. Similar to a classically trained chef opening a McDonald's franchise: he would never eat it but he knows he can make great money selling it, eat whatever the hell he wants thereafter, and have it served to him by an obsequious staff.

Yesterday I went out with my lower toolbar pane loaded with food and drink to work on rifle. I came back to coronet a half hour later, swallowed my resentment,and joined the line waiting for doc buffs. I was 9th in line; I waited 30 min or so and when i got to the doc he said 'bank tips only' (I had previously withdrawn all my credits), bythis time another doc had started a line so I switched over to that (5th in line), by the time I got close to him he declared he was no longer buffing. Went to a third doc, 6th or 7th in line. This guy wasnt saying how much he charged (wasnt saying anything) so when it was my turn I quickly tip'd 10k; he bangs out 5 buffs in rapid succession 1.5-2.5k each and then there was a long pause. I'm wondering wt* is this guy doing? Well I guess he was rummaging in his pack for that **edit**ty enhance d action pack because the last buff he gave me was for 800 action. Didnt say anything and went off to hunt.

I relate this story because I had hoped chef would enable me touse and sell decent albeit modest stat buffs that would give me and others the option to be self sufficient in the field. In my opinion brandy and accarragm are the only 2 that somewhat achieve this but they are both drinks and interfere with eachother. Also they can only be medium enhanced for nutrition bonus so in reality they are not that great. There is no drink for the health stats and it dosnt look like there will be (garrmorl is a f-ing joke) and the food stat enhance are a laugh with 10min duration and 40 filling (average). Completely useless in my opinion.

From a practical standpoint these ineffective foods serve only to complicate the managment of your character in a game that is already filled with micro management, i.e., constantly opening windowsto checkyour filling bar to see when you can eat/drink again. For my purposes as a veteran fighter (previous to this first run at merchant) I wouldnt even bother with the skill enhance food/drink but would instead use stat enhace food/drink if there were any that were effective and worth the time to consider.

Again these are general statements (as it is called generalizing) but for me it represents the overall picture of chef and its uses to the game. I know and can see how many of you cream all over yourself getting an extra 5 pts here in duration, post lengthy exegisis on the benefits of +2 pts more for for bivoli tempari, continue threads for a week 4 pages long on the benefit of those extra 2 experimentation points, launch into a heated diatribe when someoneoffers critique ona pet method or technique, and hey, if losing yourself in minutia turns you on then live it and love it. I prefer looking at the the big picture and what I see is too abstract for my taste