Chef Archive

• When making Bivoli Tempari (using components with PE 300, FLA 600, OQ 600 - for personal use only), on research, I was able to increase stack size and effectiveness quite well (I started at about 10% and broght them up to about 40-45% with a similar increase in the stats). However, I could not seem to increase duration. I started with abou 7%, and even with "great success" and 3 experimentation points, duration would only move up by a point, adding about 3-5 seconds on to the time. Is that normal? I thought withthe decent FLA of my components (or at least, not horrible) the duration would increase at a better rate than effectiveness. Thoughts?


• How do you make a name for yourself as a master? I want to wait until I have produced a whole bunch of food before I advertise on my galaxy's forums, but while grinding, I have been trying to sell Tatooine Sunburn and "Wastril Pet Food", but have been VERY unsuccessful. I think I have had about 50 cases of 25 on my vendor at 220 per use (27,500 per case) and I haven't sold one. The vendor is advertised on the planetary map as "food, spice & slice" under the food category... The only other competitors on my planet are spice dealers and one master chef that only makes Fishak and sells it for 85,000 for a crate (standard stats more or less).


• Do you have vendors on multiple planets? I was at one of the largest cities on Lok, and found only ONE case of 5 Muon Gold, and it was selling for 2X what I sold it for on my planet (Naboo- and that's if I could sell any... I have had 80 cases on the vendor for 3 weeks without a sale, priced at 9,000....). There was not a single other buff available in the city, and it looked ripe for potential business. But that would require a lot of extra travel & work to maintain two shops... Do you other chefs do that, or do you concentrate on one "home" planet only?


• How much attnetion to you devote to custom orders? I have a lot of people asking for specific things... one person may want Fishak & Bivoli to buff their mind, but another will not touch Fishak because it occupies 80% of the "fill" meter, and so wants Durindfire as it is less filling. Should I be doing large runs and hope that the first order from the "custom" customer will cover the costs, and anything else I sell is gravy, or should I do small runs to keep myself able to satisfy the custom orders?


• What do you think of my planned lot allocation? I am planning to run 2 factories, have 2 lots from my house, and will use the remaining 6 lots for harvesting (4 florals, and 2 rotating gas, metal, water or radioactive as necessary). I plan to do big harvesting runs on good materials, so if something good pops up, I will dedicate all my capacity to it, meaning I will have large stockpiles of good resources, but not necessarily everything I need to cook...


• How much variation do you put on your vendors? Do you do only the "favourites", or do you throw samples of all kinds of food on?

I think that's all my questions (for now?). I'm really hoping that becoming a master chef will help me make some money, but so far (meaning, as I was developing) I have been a money sink, pumping in over half a million credits with no returns (thank you survey missions!).

Any other suggestions you have for a starting chef, please let me know. I do have one possible option to sell "wholesale" to a merchant on an advanced planet, and let them mark it up by another 50%, but those could be my proffits... I'm concerned about doing that although it would be easy (I am not a merchant, but have a close RL friend who is, and can maintain & administer the merchant on the other planet with my help).

real quick to address your first point, get a BE to make you some duration enhancements. Put those into the protato and your Bivoli will last much loner. With no exp in duration, I get well over 1000s.

~ Ching, SYN, Master Chef, Radiant, DNI Industries

Congrats!

1) I think the major cause of low F&T (and it's related small increases from experimentation) is that Filling is included in this category. That's based 100% on UT which isn't included in the resources used by most foods. Also, I think some foods just havea narrow Duration range. If a bivoli's duration is always in the range 825-875s (leaving out BE tissues), you'd need a 2% increase to get another 1s. This combined with the low experimentation leads to times where it's clear your experimentation points are better spent elsewhere. The revamp will split Filling into its own category, so we should see better experimentation results on duration.

2) The market for pet food has gone down now that more people have switched from mounts to vehicles, and I seem to have noticed that the population of CH's has dropped a bit. Sunburn has become less used as more PvP combat tactics focus on hitting the Mind pool. What I did to grow my busines was to make sure to always have 25 items up for sale on the bazaar. In the description, always include a waypoint to your vendor, along with some advertising. Keep the bazaar selection varied: some drinks, some food, maybe even a couple of 5-stack factory crates of lower-level food. Also, business can depend on what planet you're on. Starter planets get good traffic, simply because they are the hubs of travel. Adventure planets are where the people are most going to use your product, but the only ones that're buildable are Lok and Dantooine.

3) I don't, but that's more a limitation based on the time I can play, I have a hard enough time managing two vendors on the same planet and my resources. However, if you restock a lot at once, you could probably get by only visiting a vendor every couple of days. Plus, you can use the "all galaxy" selection on any vendor to check the stock of all your vendors, so you can see when you don't need to worry about the travel.

4) It depends on the order. If it's something I'd do anyway (Fishak, sunburn, Ice cream, bivoli) I'll do a large run. For more off-beat items (Thundercloud, Flameout, Vayerbok) I'll usually do a few extra crates to see how well they sell to the general public, but I won't dedicate a huge amount of factory time to it.

5) Lot allocation looks good. I'm assuming those are all heavies or high-BER mediums?

6) I put all kinds of things up on the vendor, and the weirdest things tend to sell. I had 5 or 6 Trimpian stacks sit on the vendor for over a month, then one guy bought them all. The planned vendor item cap may reduce the variety I offer, though, depending on how much my current merchant skills will allow me to stock.

Here are my answers:

1) Bivoli is one of the tricky foods when it comes to duration, it is definitley bugged. On the upside, duration BE tissues seem to affect it better than other foods (due to the large initial duration).

2) I probably can't help you on this one too much, because I became a master long enough ago that there were only 2-3 selling chefs, and everyone knew who we are. See if you can get an exclusive food vendor contract with a player city, join a PA, or just post up your coords, prices, and contact information on the galaxy trade boards.

3) I maintain shops in the bigger cities of Tat, Naboo, and Corellia. If there aren't any food vendors in a city, it might be because those cities are ghosttowns and not worth investing in. Make sure there are reasons for a player to go there before setting up shop. The multi-planet stocking is kind of a pain btw.

4) I don't really do custom orders anymore, there simply isn't enough time and I've really fine tuned my manufacturing process by now. I have some customer tracking to identify mybig big customers, and I try to maintain a good relationship with them (sometimes I do little runs for people, but these can take weeks to fit in). Also, if you are into networking, I personally know when some chefs mail-order or produce items that I don't , I just recommend the customer there. If you can't help them right, you should probably show some kindness so they get served as good as possible. Kindness always comes back to you.

5) Lot allocation sounds good to start, if you will be pulling your resources in the future, you want to get your house/factory lots on static swaps, either from guildmates, chefs from other servers, or a rental service. This will really open up your harvesting. Use only BER 13 heavies (when you can afford them). The biggest problem with the lot swap is trust, so be careful.

6) I offer about 8 different types of food weekly, and Iput up odd ones here and there, it's usually surplus of a custom run. I constantly ask for customer feedback, if enough people ask for it, I try to give it to them.

Hope this helps, and good luck.