Chef Archive

Hello, I'm a Master Rifleman/ Master Combat Medic, and I love both profs, but I am findingI really enjoy crafting. Sadly, as a combat medic, the resources I need spawn so infrequently that is kinda pointless to craft with this profession. As such, I was considering dropping the CM for a crafting profession, and the one I think will be the most fun is chef.

So now here comes my questions:

1 - It seems like many of you on this forum have a chef, or just a crafter in general, as their alternate char. I do not really want to pay for a 2nd char on the same galaxy, and was wondering if anyone has a chef as their main or only char, and if so, is chef truly enjoyable to play, compared to other crafting professions? Is there any long term fun in the profession?

2 - My second question is for the same group. What do you pair your chef with, as far as alternate professions go? I was considering keeping rifleman, getting master chef, and advertisement 3 I think of merchant, whichever skills give me planetary advertising. What do you think? Any suggestions for a fun profession to pair with chef?

I was considering chef/BE, but it seems like that would leave me hard pressed to do any combat at all, which I think would make BE tough to get the nutrient things that I would need for chef.

Any input on this topic is welcome, but I do want to say it seems like you guys enjoy your prof from what I read on this forum. So hopefully I will have fun as well if I end up joining your profession.

Thanks!

Osnin

1 - As for longterm issues, I don't see Chef seriously different than any other pure crafting profession (except Tailor, no offence =P) What I really enjoy out of it is talking to my customers and trying to get exactly what they want as best as I can. Whether its how to pay for it, or the right food, or explaining how additives work constantly. I enjoy it immensely, especially for RPing. I hope I'm never forced into dropping it for one reason or another. And yes, it is my main char. My problem is trying to be a bit of a scout and fighter in addition to being a chef. So I don't really have of an extensive of merchant skills as I would like. But mainly it depends on what You find enjoyable about playing the game. If its just the aspect of crafting, I don't see it as seriously different from WS or AS.

2 - Right now I'm like 2201 CH and 2000 TKA. Thanks to JtL though I can really shine in space though, w/o worrying about skill points. Rifleman and scout would be a good pair, so you can get meat and hide easy for cookin. If you're looking to make big money as a chef, you're going to need additives from BEs. But that doesn't mean you have to become one yourself. On my server there are plenty of BE shops selling additives to chefs specifically, and many of them are very helpful in us churning out good products. I would definitely choose Rifleman or some other combat profession over BE to go with Chef. Sometimes all that work in the kitchen is just too much and I just wanna whoop up on something, and as a BE...well, that pretty much leaves me with Sticking Paralopes and stealing their DNA.

Good luck!

-Castin Donn
...has mastered the Pilot profession

1 - I only have one character and she's a master chef/tkm. The shop's only been open for a week, so I can't comment as to the long term satisfaction of the profession, but I can tell you that the time I've spent as a chef has probably been the best time I've had in the game thusfar (aside from the plotting, coniving,lacking-an-orginal-thought-chefsthat are constantly bombarding me with their incessant questions/comments about this, that and the other), and that's after having done the master rifles/master cm template too. So yes, chef is *truly* enjoyable to play. Not only are the customers great, but the profession is challenging in that you're always trying to meet and exceed your customer's needs, and the special orders are lots of fun because you have an excuse to make something that you wouldn't normally stock. The resources aren't as easy to obtain as those for a tailor (quality? what quality?!), but they're not nearly as difficult to procure as those for, say, armorsmith (Or hey, CM. CM crafting was *bleck*. Hunting down 107k of insect meat is not, I repeat, NOT fun! lol). Another plus for the profession is that you generally don't have to pay through the nose for resources either. Out of the ones I've purchased, the most expensive was a stack of berries that I turned into BE additives at 30cpu. Not bad when you compare that to the 200cpu docs pay for their meat. The cash flow is a bonus, and a rather large one at that. Will you ever make as much as an armorsmith that sells full suits at 250k per? Probably not. Can you make a good, solid 8 figures in less than a week? Yep. If you're just doing it for the money, it'll burn you out quickly, although I don't see that being a problem for you, since you said that you're finding that you really enjoy the crafting process.

2 - As I said, I'm a TKM. I was actually master rifles/TKM just before I picked up chef.Rifles had to go, though I loved the range. Why? I liked the idea of not having to buy any weapons beyond a 5k VK and having it sliced to bring the total to about 8k, compared to my rifles, which ran anywhere from 10k to 300k before slicing. I also liked the idea of being able to meditate away wounds quickly, as opposed to parking myself in a med center, or dragging wound packs with me everywhere. In addition to all that, I can hunt whatever kind of creature I want (aside from the really badass ones) and if they poison or disease me, give me a few seconds, it goes away, and it's back to hunting.If you enjoy PvPing occasionally, you can choose your combat profession accordingly. I loved rifles for PvP, but I'm terrible at it when it comes to being a TKM, so I've pretty much had to drop any PvPing that I did before (not that it was much at all, anyway). There's always a trade off.

As someone else said, if you're ready to run back and forth to your factories 50 times a day,survey resources, place harvesters, check harvesters, hunt/sample meats all over the place, and find time to go home and experiment out your foods, then chef is definitely for you. It makes you a little crazy, but all the fun people are always a little nuts.

I've had tons of fun being a smuggler/chef. It is a very versatile combo. You have just enough points left to pick up a little pistoleer or TKA depending on your style, a low level merchant, and thenyou havejust enoughpoints to swap all the time between novice scout for critter harvesting or novice medic for credit harvesting. It is also a very social combo...I can hang out in the cantina selling food and slicing on the side, or you can put up your smuggler tag and fish at the edge of town for some meat, and people will come out for a slice or two here and there. You get the fun crafting side of chef (plus spice and slicing are somewhat 'crafty' even if there's not much traffic for spice),and you get decent combat skills. With a little practice and some skill tapes, a smuggler can definitely hold his/her own in a group. You get to play a key role on base raids (even if you are not the damage star), and when things get rough, you can always even the odds with an explosive packed droid or two. That can get expensive, but hey, you have credits to spare!

Zo'dooxe Orionstar, Master Smuggler/Master Chef
"have ticket, will travel" bulk spice or food delivered anywhere in the Bloodfin galaxy. Just send your waypoint via encrypted hologram.

ingame: Ankor Hunter, 12 point Master Chef
Winner of Iron Chef Bria contest
DMD Shop - food, weapons, armor, medical supplies
588, 0, 2955 on Tatooine (just outside Mos Entha)

1 - I only have one character on my galaxy, and I believe you can be a fun and successful chef with just one character. It is very enjoyable to play and encorporates you in flora harvesting as opposed to half the other crafting professions which are strictly inorganics. Excellent long term fun, I have been a chef since august '03

2 - chef/BE is a great combo, however it is more suited for players with alts, BE is really only for making the components, which you can just bug a master BE friend for. Chef/BE also leaves you incredibly stretched for skill points and doesn't allow for much customization as far as your skills go. Personally I am a master chef with some skills in merchant and dancer. I'm not too big on combat in this game, and I find that dancer is a blast! Normally I don't dance in cantinas all too much (thats why we have afk macro dancers to do that for us),I more or less use it to make movies and just funk it out while waiting for shuttles and such.

Rifleman/Chef should still work out for you, you just want to make sure you have a few BE friends

Cheers!

<~| Eerif Runningtide |~>
12 Point Chef
Vendor at (-795, 2851) Dantooine
Eerif Film Productions

Cata "F'ing Lyst, yo & E to the G-toe
Cata's Tonic Food & Drink
T3H FTC
"'History Sighs, Repeats Itself' see WORLD page 13B" --one of T3H Onion writers

As some have mentioned chef isn't much different than other crafting professions. Basically you craft and make items. There is the merchant aspect of talking to customers and other things with vendors. Its still basically a solo profession though. No group is going to request a chef to come along.

That being said you don't need BE to be a successful chef. Having Chef/BE gives you a lot more freedom. But if you need combat in the template to be able to go on group hunts or just do something different, then Chef/Some Combat prof isn't bad either. You will never be as strong as a pure combat toon, but if your only looking for enjoyment from crafting and combat you don't need much.

I like chef more than any other crafting profession I've tried. As someone mentioned before chef probably has the most options available to them(except tailor). The majority of chefs here, probably haven't even created all the foods at this point. I know I still haven't created about 10-15 of them. They are fairly useless, but it is always nice to make something new and find some odd use for it.

I do know if I didn't have an Alt I probably wouldn't be a chef anymore. I wouldn't be willing to deal with the hassle of getting all the BE components I need(price is not the issue here, time and availability is). I will also not go without a combat toon. I can't craft all the time, I'm sure some people can, I'm just not one of those people. I need to go out and kill something every so often in this game. JTL actually allows for this if you don't mind doing all your fighting in space.

Amandil Morier - Tempest - Master Chef

This thread made me laugh because I'm in the exact same situation. I have a swordsman/ranger character but have realized that I really like crafting and that making camps and traps just isn't cutting it. I'm pretty attached to my ranger profession and don't really want to give it up for chef and find that starting a new character on a new server is always a challenge... and I really don't want to pay for a new character/account. Generally, I really am in the same position as you.

Here's what I'm doing though... I didn't really care about the Jedi trials in the slightest until I found out that you get a free alt once you reach jedi padewan. So I'm going to take my main character and become a jedi, which has some benefits of its own. Once I'm there, I'll get my alt which I will turn into a chef and have a great time crafting and selling food. All in all I'm pretty excited for this change. The only real downfall is skill points and that Jedi takes 24 points I simply don't have. So i'm going to have to sacrafice some med skills and maybe even a few ranger points (we'll see though).

I'm not saying this solution will be your cup of tea, but given that we're in the same boat and that I'm happy with my solution, I thought I'd share.Good luck, have fun, and hope to see you on the chef forums soon.