Chef Archive

ok, now that nearly every schematic has been produced...granted not all with very good resources, like we'll likely have stashed away on live servers...and almost none of the BE additives being tested yet, its probably not too early to see that once again we'll be left with a handful of schematics we use a lot more than others...


until more info is seen on the new combat ham system...essentially our stat buffs are completely screwed, but thats not necessarily a bad thing...for a few good reasons.

1) bonus to dodge (pikatta pie): hands down, this one will be a best seller...reasonable resource requirements (maybe even a bit low), and given how popular the pistoleer/fencer combo template was...well this one might be more popular than fishak is now.

2) damage reduction food (theres a lot of them...so I'll just go over it in general): again another good seller...how many people have been chasing just a few more resist %'s in their armor...and how long have wookies been asking for armor...well here's the answer to both in one (well multiple actually) packages...some have huge reductions...but only for a few attacks, some have minimal reduction for many attacks...but the one that strikes me as the best overall...are the ones in the middle 20% reduction for 30 attacks...and you can still eat other things too.

3) bonus to assembly food (pyolian cake): no need to comment there...crafters will see this as a must have, no questions about it.

4) reduced mind enhancement time (tsslok): absent buffs like fishak...dancers/mucisians are going to become more of the primary buffers of the mind, and in essence we'll still be good at buffing mind stats...just not directly like we are now. 21% reduction in time from 8-10 minutes...probably end up being 1.5 - 2 minutes less...not entirely too bad.

5) starshine surprise: reduced incap time = BE's dream...it may not always save them, but I don't think they can even count the number of times 3 or 4 more seconds would have let them get up and run away, as opposed to getting db'ed.

6) heal recovery bonus (havla): 48% less time between heals...ummm wow, that could end up being exceedingly helpful to any group, and particularly in PvP...or even to doctors who just want to buff faster...they could clear a line nearly 2x as fast...as I'm guessing it just reduces the time between using a med pack of some kind and getting that "ready to heal more wounds, or apply more enhancements" message.

anyway a lot of that is still dependent on the stomach decay issue...for that one I agree with the consensus that 30 minutes would be a great fix, not too good, or exploitable...but reasonable/managable. perhaps instead of that we could keep the 1 hour decay...but introduce gradual decay instead...so that at the end of 1 hour the stomach is completely empty...but as time passes the stomach keeps emptying out at a steady pace. i.e. 5% every 3 minutes. I'm not sure if this is how it works on TC now, but from the outrage coming from the chefs on TC...I'd guess not.

there are a few buffs I think will never ever sell...ever...really, I don't see any use for them at all.

1) terrain negotiation: why? almost everyone has a vehicle or mount...so this skill is essentially useless as neither of these takes this skill into account.

2) mask scent: the only professions that would find this useful (BE's/CH's need camoflage...as mask scent just isn't good enough...even with the +25 bonus from BE clothing)

3) pet hams: since pets can now only eat when they have wounds...or when they're hungry, you're basically stuck with a food you can only use when your pet says so...not when you/it need it...but only when your pet takes enough wounds to trigger the hungry message...even less useful than most people think.

4) creature taming: worthless...BE clothing is much better especially now that milk will be more available for their tissues, and the BE clothing is permanent. at any rate the level 60+ creatures aren't all that much better than the lvl 50 ones...and the BE pets are just worlds better than the tamable ones...might be useful for a few holo grinders...but not really.

useful buffs now:

ggp, vercuppti, fishak, bivoli, ormachek: all related to mind pool...if the devs can be believed, then these foods in their current form would lose their popularity anyway...but the whole basis for their popularity is the length of time it takes to get a mind buff...and since we're getting something to reduce that...this niche will go to dancers/mucisians (well guess that makes another profession that gets a lot better thanks to us...for a total of 6 now).

BoH, ryshcate, veghash: either as armorlube, or for those times when you can't find a doctor...the armorlube function will be there no matter what they do to the ham system...but since we get a damage reducing food (not as good as armor...but no drawbacks either)...we're gaining a niche we never had before...so instead of focusing on reducing the costs of specials...we now reduce the damage players take from hits...not entirely a bad trade

ummm well thats really about it...sure flamout, thaktilo, and a few others were also relatively popular...but they serve the same purposes as the above schematics do.

I think we'll all just need to do a serious informational campaign on each of our server forums...prior to the push to live (assuming the stomach decay bit is addressed), then we can each copy and paste a standardized informational post onto our own server forum...and hopefully come patch time we won't miss a beat (except for the first couple of days when our factories will be running the new stuff).

There are also..

-Foods that heal your mind for 300 pts.

-Food that reducing the time a DOT lasts (I REALLY needed that last night)

-Food that increases EXP (hologrinders will like that.)

I'm only a buyer of chef foods so i dont know how well that qualfies me. Anyways My main reason that i buy chef fod in massive stocks is that it allows me a portable way to curve my ham costs. Its great stuff and i dont know how i lived before i found it.I look at some of the new stuff exspecially the damage reduction terrain negotiationand dodge bonuses and see promise. Problem for me and most of the chef customer base the reason we buy chefs food is going to suddenly disappear. Devs need to realize that the chefs had their niche and this patch ruins it. If chef loses their customer base it could cause great loss to the profession and even unrepairable harm. What little the devs have done to help the chefs no way measure up to the damage they are doing. Devs need to either release how the new combat sytem will work so people will understand why chef will be the way it is or the devs need to hold back and change chef at the same time they change all the other professions.

please excuse me for venting.

Foods that heal your mind for 300 pts.

-Food that reducing the time a DOT lasts

Nice, if they sort out the filling/decay issue

Food that increases EXP (hologrinders will like that.)
Pity theyre removing hologrinding - again, filling/decay issues (not seen those figures yet)

I think that if we lowered the decay time to 30 minutes we are doing well.

I would say 30mins on skill mods, maybe 5min max between stat mods is more useful (ie, buff drops, can take another in 5mins)

Very good points, but I'd like to add some info I found on the stomach decay.

From some testing I did last night, the stomach completely empties out in 45 minutes. Each bar contains 44 sections, which drop at one section per minute, assuming you force a refresh. So instead of a 50% filling food taking 30 minutes to disappear from the fill bar, it takes 22 (give or take a minute, it's hard to get exact numbers when dealing with a bar graph). This might not seem like much, but with a 45m duration being something achievable with a lot of foods, people can remain buffed with no downtime. Of course, this will mean that food sales will be less often, but with the larger variety we can provide we may want stacks of food to sell slower.

Second, the stomache does decay at a gradual rate, although we still have the "stuck bar" problem where it doesn't refresh until you eat something. For my testing, I've been eating components, since they trigger the refresh, but don't actually add to the bar. So if you ate a 66% filling food, after 15 minutes you could eat another one (0.66 - 15/45 + 0.66 = 0.99). But then you can't eat another one for 30 minutes (30/45 = 0.66). These longer-lasting buffs may still be effective, but will require some adjustment on the end-user's side.

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SirVimes wrote:

There are also..

-Foods that heal your mind for 300 pts.

-Food that reducing the time a DOT lasts (I REALLY needed that last night)

-Food that increases EXP (hologrinders will like that.)

I think that if we lowered the decay time to 30 minutes we are doing well.

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from what I can gather 4% xp is the max/min, and with as few bonuses as it will last for...it helps yes, but not so much as to be a highly sought after food (with dancer xp coming in at a trickle, same for healing, and crafting...) and combat xp coming with weapon xp as well...why take a 4% bonus when you can use other foods that will help you kill 2 or 3 extra npc's/creatures....perhaps if the BE additives, or high quality resources could push it to 4% for the next 100 xp gains...that'd be worth it (or reduce the filling so you can eat them a lot more often).

heal mind for 300...umm from what I've heard about the new ham system...ham costs reduce your max...not current, so healing mind wouldn't help doctors/medics at all...it might help if they got head shot...but I also see the same problem for stims and health/action.

reduced DOT's, with a doc buff...having mastered an elite combat profession as well...I can honestly say that DOT's mean absolutely nothing to me...well almost nothing. reduced time might be nice, but if you give a fighter the choice between dodge, and reduced DOT's...they'll take dodge in PvE...probably PvP as well too (I mastered an elite combat profession mainly to better understand what to focus on when making food). if you can't heal a poison DOT...if its bad you're probably going to get db'ed even if it only lasts 1/2 as long. combat medic mind poisons kill (well not kill, but reduce to 1 mind) in about 2-3 ticks...poison generally lasts for 10-20x that long...so unless the DOT reduction is 90%...the dodge would be a more popular choice.

not that these wouldn't have their uses, or that people would never buy them...just that once the market stabalizes...and people are done trying to figure out what combination works best for them...I don't really see a lot of people using the DOT or xp ones.

again most of these are based off of best guesses, and off of the very little information the devs have released about the new ham system, and GCW/PvP elements that will be changing. although I'd have to say that if SOE only changed the stomach decay to 1/2 an hour...and fixed the bug with pre-patch crates/food...I'd be happy with that. but with a few other small tweaks: pet secondary buffs...not primaries...and let the pets eat whenever...not just when they accumulate enough wounds, milking animals on starting planets giving domestic milk...those on advanced planets wild milk. and of course...the whole stomach decay thing needs to be mentioned as much as possible so the devs realize how completely and thoroughly we think it sucks.

If the pet food can be feed to your pet at anytime, which should be the case (any testing), then for the begining CH that only has a CL12-16 pet a bit more ham makes the difference between the pet lasting the battle and getting exp and a vitality cut. This would sell great, if it works. If not, chop up to another bug.

Bonus to assembly is worthless save for a BE working on a 3rd gen clone, but the bonus to experimentation when doing schematics will be big. Being a BE I never die and almost never find myself on my back. Bikes are very useful for getting away. I don't see the starshine being used in that manner. However the camo will be used as much as any mind buff by the BE.

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Meplorium wrote:

Bonus to assembly is worthless save for a BE working on a 3rd gen clone, but the bonus to experimentation when doing schematics will be big.

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I hear jedi have a terrible time trying to assemble their lightsabres. And the cost of a failure is very high. Any plus to assembly would sell to them. If it applies to lightsabre assembly.

I'm a chef customer, I carry 20 varieties of food/drink in crates. I use it to customize my ham, for the situation i.e. what I'm doing and whether I'm medically buffed, sometimes to patch holes in the buff.

I've found combinations such as the following very useful:

Ryshcate/Boh/Swirl (unbuffed pve t21 spamming)

Sunburn/Thakitillo/veghash (unbuffed low level melee leveling)

Ryshcate/veghash (putting on armor)

and of course the various mind combinations.

Most of the new foods are completely uninteresting. Who will buy a food that reduces cloning wounds ? You might think of someone who will die often, but chances are there is another food they would rather have.

On our server, we have some very large PvP battles lately, multi-guild cooperations, city occupations and base destruction assaults. These can involve 2 hours of solid combat. being buffed with BoH for 15 minutes sounds nice, but then the prospect of having to go 30 minutes (or even15 minutes) before you can eat again seems like a problem. Also reducing damage for the next 30 attacks is helpful, but when you take 100 hits over a 30 minute period, the first 30 hits seem minor.

You are all missing something here: however good these new buffs may be none of them are practical. People are NOT going to buy this crap. Our best sellers were mind buffs - Fishak, Glazed Gucose and Bivoli. Also, anything that upped the secondaries like BoH and Ryshcate. Without this type of buff, the demand for Chef food will all but dry up. There are so many new "little" buffs that are so "specific" to a toon's needs. There is no way to be able to produce all these different buffs, keep them in stock and make a profit. We will get some special orders at first and then that will be it. Thanks DEVs for doing something that nobody ever thought possible - NERFING CHEF!!

~ Ching, Master Chef