Chef Archive

I am novice chef w/ no bars up. I found out that you only get xp for the stuff u craft that u have just recently learned. if i craft anything bellow of what I learned for Novice Chef I get no XP for it. I just learned that. Its annoying but ive been doing it so far. On average if I survey and then craft my living @$$ off I can get 1k of xp a day. I could do 1.5k or 500 xp. thats my range. I craft Charde because it takes up only 5 water 5 meat and 5 coppor. Its great. KInd of. I dont get alot of xp for these. Ive heard that Wastril bread is the best stuff to make but I have no idea why. hell the most I can get for that is 1 percent. Literaly. When Im experimenting w/ it it comes to something like 1% 0% 0%. and on top of that. IT CONSUMES ALL OF UR REASOURCES. hell. 30 wheat and 15 fruit. THATS ALOT FOR 1%. Maybe I missed out on something because I have been crafting my but off for like... a really long time and I have like 5000 xp torwards 32000... it barely shows on the progress bar. So. What I want to know is what is the best way to get xp the fastest and most efficent when novice chef. remember I have no bars up yet. At this rate itll take me 3 years before im up 1 coloumn completely. I ask for ur help.

You will have to take the journey of "wastril bread" my padawan...

It is true that you only get "Food crafting" xp for chef foods. And the experimentation doesn't have anything to do with the xp you get, only the number of resources used in the item. Your results are bad only because you aren't real good at cooking yet (that's what you get from the "Cooking" skill tree), although possibly from using low-quality resources.

Wastril bread is the best xp grind because it uses so many resources. The general formula for xp is 2 times the number of resources. Wastril is a little off, because it uses 45, but only gives 70xp, 72 with practice mode on.

Tips for serious grinding:

1) Get more than one food/chem crafting tool. You can't usea tool until it is done creating the item (even while practicing), so to minimize down time, have four or five. Put all these on your tool bar, so as soon as you click "create item", you can start with the next one in line.

2) Don't bother experimenting. If all you're doing is grinding, the quality of the item doesn't matter.

3) Click the "Practice" box on the final craft window. This saves you from having to delete the finished product, and gives you an extra 5% bonus xp.

4) You're going to be going through a lot of wheat and water. Get some harvesters, since you can't possilby sample the amount you need to cover a serious day's grinding. Personal flora and moisture harvesters are usually pretty cheap (300-750 credits), or you can craft your own if you have the required Engineering skills in Artisan.

5) Find a way to minimize the work you need to do. You basically have to click F# to start the session, enter to select Wastril (the tool remembers the last thing you crafted), select the resources, then click enter a bunch more times to finish it off (since it also remembers the state of the Practice box). I set up my mouse so that the scroll wheel button is double click (simplifying resource selection), and the second thumb button is enter. I had to do this outside of SWG, but I can fly through a single crafting session in about 10 seconds.

6) When you do get enough for a new level, don't get Cooking I right away. That skill does improve your assembly and experimentation abilities, but gives you no new schematics, so you'd still be stuck doing Wastril. Entrees I has Stewed Gwouch, which gives 100 xp, requiring only water and organic resources. Mixology I has Deuterium-Pyro, which gives 90 xp, but needs Rice, Reactive Gas, and Metal. The best chef grind item is Ithorian Mist in Mixology II, it gives 170.

7) Practice anywhere you've got down time. Even if you're doing things other than crafting, you'll always come across times where you aren't actively going anywhere or killing things. Waiting for a shuttle, resting in a medcenter or cantina, sampling resources, or waiting for people to show up for a hunting; those are all good times to grind through a few breads. Sure it's not much individually, but you weren't doing anything anyway, and it does add up. Heck, if you ona safe planet, you can even craft while running out to your harvesters.

Chef does require a bit of grinding, but then so do most elite crafting classes. It shouldn't take three years, I've been doing chef for about a month and a half, and I've got all of mixology, all of cooking, and Entrees II. The last mixology box (70400 xp) took a little less than a week, and that was with only about an hour or so a day of serious grindage.