Chef Archive

I've been struggling this class - literally - since day 1 (of live) and would like to know why it has been such a pain.

I had a massive celebration recently, as I JUST earned my novice title. Reading these boards, I can't notice how far behind my peers I truly am. Trying to reason this out, I came up with 2 things I do that most people probably don't.

So - the questions - mostly meant for those that are well-advanced

(Note: as for gametime, I average about 30-40 hours a week)

A) Are you affiliated with a guild?

I've approached PAs, but am independant - and, it seems, I have had always had trouble GIVING my food away.

B) Do you macro (primarily unattended) ?

Perhaps it's the role-player in me, but my character is seldom (if ever) doing anything if I'm not behind her. So, every bit of CXP is with me clicking buttons, and every bit of Factory XP is with me either crafting nearby or wandering around near it.

I'm just curious if in these two things I'm working against myself. After all, just to get the first tier now, I've calculated that even if I just sat there and made wastril bread it would take about 45 hours (1-2 weeks). To catch up to the level I'm hearing, It would take me round 3 months, if not more.

Thank you for your time

Misterie, pastry chef (to be), Naboo/Starsider

I getting to, and getting out of Novice is like the trench and it goes faster from there, simply because there is more you can make so it makes the time go by faster. That's my 2 cents alteast.

With a few exceptions, I really don't think you are as far behind your peers as you think.

I hit Master a while ago, without a PA, and my biggest suggestion is to make friends.

Note - even a PA won't really help with this. Most PAs I've seen (no offense, and no need to reply to start a flame war) are people looking to powergame and use each other to powergame better than all the others.

Your PA should be your Cantina. Make friends, tell them "hey, Ms. Twi'lek, here (waypoint) is where I have my water and organics farms. Come out here with a pack, and you get 30 free Stewed Grouch/Wastril Bread/Whatever I'm making at the time."

Do this for fifty people. Then, when you get enough people, go on a Farming Sabbatical. You will continually get people making the pilgrimage to your spot to get food.

Even broken, UXP makes you gain 3 XP for every 2 you normally use. This will make your climb much easier.

When you need cash, sell food back at your cantina, or if you aren't in an RP mood, run a cheap mission or 10. At current costs, you'll need 9000C a day to run two power plants and eight harvesters, and this is easy as pie to make. Another way to make good cash is to offer your services to Bio-Engineers - 100-200c for each Soypro you make with their Bio Components. "OMG", you say, "No One Wil PAy For Me To GrINd!". Some folks will, and they will pay well. Find them.

Stick to it, and find the good players, and Chef is a breeze. ^_^

I'm not far advanced, but only because I refuse to work on it more until it's fixed, but I'll answer anyway!

The secret to grinding is multiple crafting toolkits. This is counter-intuitive to anyone familiar with crafting in other games, but in SWG you can craft multiple things at once. I have 3 Weapon crafting kits and 5 Food & Chemical crafting kits all hotkeyed. When I want to start grinding food I just keep going down the line and can have several things cooking at once. Also handy for making things like Stim-B's, where I can make the 3 subcomponets at the same time, pretty much, and then be lining up ingredients for the Stimpack itself while the componets kick out.

Unfortunately the chef bugs prevent us from making anything really useful in a way that we can keep a medium sized guild supplied, so you're probably not going to see much guild support. I got a free factory but I don't even ask for resources, because there's not much return in it. Give the armorsmith a ton of Lokian Leathery Hide and he gives you awesome padded armor, give the chef a ton of wheat and he gives you a lot of annoying and barely useful things that take up your inventory.

Once they fix the bugs, we'll be a lot more in-demand for guilds.

A) Nope, no PA for me.

B) No, infact, I just learned about Macroing from Agnius the other day. I knew what it was, but I never realized SWG players would do it. I'm disgusted. I certainly hope that nobody on the forums here does that...

Anyway PBN, yea, I'm in the same bind as you. I NEVER grind and NEVER do missions, and I don't have ANY other skills except Chef. So yea, I'm playing this game the hard way and I find it near impossible.

Oh btw, I AFK macro all the time. If the servers didn't go down every morning, I'd do it 24/7.

Macro-sampling, anyway. There's no in-game method that will allow you to do macro-crafting, you need an external program for that and I'm not even sure how well that would work, since critical failures would mess it up. I haven't tried that.

If you're on DSL/cable, there's no reason not to macro-sample. Do fruit one night, wheat another night, cereal another night, pretty soon you'll have all the grinding materials you need and it's free and built right into the game. Do some macro sampling of metal and sell it on the bazarre, 3 credits per resource minimum and people will snatch it up. Easy money.

I start it up at night and can come back after work the next day with 2000 resources to play with. It would be a lot more if the servers stayed up.

I am not affiliated with any PA and have been doing quite well on my own. I used to run missions when running low on money early on in my chef career butlately I'vebeen able to sell my items on the marketplace, andfill some large orders,making enough of a profit to keep myself up and running.

I don't macro at all, but I havebeen thinking of picking up a factory so I can earn some extra xp on the side while I'm sitting near it crafting. I currently have 5 harvesters (1 wind, 4 floral) so I don't have to purchase anymore resources from the marketplace.

Um...Macro Sampling is was frowned upon heavily by the Dev's to the point they tried fixing it, but it only ended up hurting those with harvestors and players who don't resort to macroing. In essence macro-ing is being exploited by players, and I dont think its a very honest way to play. So thanks for participating in it Peco good way to hurt others around you.

"Oh btw, I AFK macro all the time. If the servers didn't go down every morning, I'd do it 24/7.

Macro-sampling, anyway. There's no in-game method that will allow you to do macro-crafting, you need an external program for that and I'm not even sure how well that would work, since critical failures would mess it up. I haven't tried that."

I can't believe you would even consider using an external program, thats out right cheating.

A.) Nope I am not. And have had only 1 offer.

B.) Nope.

I have wanted to be a Chef since I first bought the game, June 28th. I have been playing every day, all the time. (Unemployed college student with no summer classes livingat home still (read: I have no life)) I am still only a Novice Chef. Just reached 20k exp today...I feel way behind too. And in general, I see a lot of people with master titles running around already. So how do they have time to get all that money, resources, and still grind their butts off?? I just do not know.

Don't ever compare the masters titles of other professions to our profession, you will get yourself down. Chef is a lot slower.

I don't think the devs really care about macro sampling, they just wanted to reduce the rate.

If they really wanted to fix macro sampling, all they'd have to do is boot you if you go AFK for too long, or limit the size of macros to so many characters, or stop macros from being able to trigger their own hotkey button, etc, etc, etc. They even implemented a "/load" command so you could make a really huge macro as a text file and then load it in. The ONLY reason to need to do that is if you're making a 24 hour macro.

Most entertainers use AFK macros as well. Some of them are very well written and actually double as scripted comedy routines that loop all night while they sleep. Cheating? The devs are the ones that put in the extensive macro system to let people do this, so no, I don't think it's cheating. If it were any more intentional, it would need a neon sign.

Anyway, a macro sampler is only as good as like a medium mineral harvester. It would take you 3 months to macrosample enough ore to make a PA hall.