Confectioner change ruminations

[Justa Mirage]

As Kala and others have posted in other threads (not in suggestions) I will try to summarize some things about the confectioner revamp:

Why are some rare prep items at 10 bulk? I can gather carrots at 2 bulk per unit and slice them into "sliced carrots" for 4 bulk per unit. This is about the same for any other food you gather, the bulk rate is about 2 or 4.

I went to "purchase" Vanilla beans (honestly I think there should be a source for these other than purchasing them only). it would not complete the sale. Nowhere in the description does it tell you what the bulk is, but they are 10 BU each!! for a VANILLA BEAN! (same for fish and other things btw)

I could only purchase a handful of vanilla beans to make 75 oils and boy does it get expensive: 2.5sp per banana split! at 44th level I made 3/4ths of a level making 100 banana splits at the cost of 40sp.

Maybe if they reduced the bulk of items that logically would only weigh 2 BU or at least put in the description: Bulk 10, it would have ended my confusion as to why I was having problems with my inventory filling up.

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Confectioner buildings need Cauldrons! A lot of things now that are processed need a cauldron. These don't come with a confectioner building, nor are they convenient (gathering and processing these will take some getting used to as most need water, so you need to have access to a plot with an alchemy shop, confectioner shop, and near a water well.)

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Pottery wheels

These are pretty much useless now. Maybe they can make a stand alone millstone that runs from essence energy (thus providing lore for why you don't need a big house looking thing with a propeller on it to make the stone turn.) and replace the pottery wheels with millstones (or Cauldrons) of the appropriate building tier.

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Lack of Cooking equip requirements on tools

I find myself buffing before I can now equip some of my baking / preparing tools because of the "Preparing only" equip requirement. Since you only get 8pts per level for preparing, Journeyman weildable tools are harder to equip for confectioners now. Hopefully the "cooking" skill will be part of tools that are part of the cooking procedure.

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With all of these new garnishes and prep items, the new food only silos need a few more "stack" items added, not really important, but when each one only holds 4 per silo, I would prefer the developers to invent a new building called a "Pantry" that acts like a "Library" for storage, but only for garnishes and processed foods instead of formulas like the library holds. This way you can put many garnishes and processed foods in your pantry, limited by the BU of the structure based by tier of building (higher tier more bulk)

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Just my 2cp worth

[awdz]

Why are some rare prep items at 10 bulk?

Aren't all basic resources 10 bulk before any processing?

I could only purchase a handful of vanilla beans to make 75 oils and boy does it get expensive: 2.5sp per banana split! at 44th level I made 3/4ths of a level making 100 banana splits at the cost of 40sp.

A question came up about appropriate food pricing... since Ambrosia VII sold for around 10 sp on connies before the changes, and it calculates out to 8.4 sp at 50 cp/tier/hour to remove 28 hours with tier VI foods, I was thinking that might be reasonable. The cost of preparation might be more than that though... Does anyone have a reasonable estimate of what food might sell for?

replace the pottery wheels with millstones (or Cauldrons) of the appropriate building tier

I'm not ready to give up pottery wheels as long as I have recipes requiring the use of clay.

I agree with the rest of what you say, Justa :-)

[GalemThawn]

Not all. Uncut gems are 8 bulk (or 6?) and cut to 2 bulk.

[Justa Mirage]

Mostly talking about foods, it's strange that one day fish became 10 BU but I can understand how Bass and Bluegill can be that heavy, but minnows?

Carrots are 2 BU each, along with potatoes, onions, etc. but a purchased vanilla bean is 10 BU, and when you slice it, they become 4 BU.

Before the refresh, it was still a little confusing, like water is 2 BU per unit, water is heavy, and raw meat was 6 or 8. It made trying to load balance a deluxe cargo disk fun.... "Oh I can put 500 of those and a 800 of those in the disk so I can make the final product, so let's do the math, how many of the 800 can I take away to bring the two even "

I guess for game balance the BU weight has to stay this way... *drags the 100 vanilla bean bag weighing 1000 BU down the street to the cauldron*

[LaughingOtter]

Which weighs more, a pound of minnows or a pound of trout?

One unit of minnows is "enough minnows to make up 10 bulk". One unit of trout is "a 10-bulk chunk of trout". I know it's normal to think of 'one unit' as equalling one of something, but, really, one minnow is not going to make a lot of food.

[Justa Mirage]

We need ice cream!

We have the rock salt, vanilla, and milk (cream) and/or chocolate, banana, etc for flavors.

nummies.

[LaughingOtter]

You have stoneroot ice cream, Grantherum's strawberry ice cream, trout ice cream is on my to-do list...

[tramsan]

Well what about us sslik? Where's our beetle crunch ice cream?

[Arietna]

we need garlic ice cream

http://www.garlicworld.com/icecream.html

[Justa Mirage]

You have stoneroot ice cream, Grantherum's strawberry ice cream, trout ice cream is on my to-do list...

I don't recall seeing those, but again... I guess you have to be higher level.

[Zexoin]

My biped got them at lvl 25 cnf you have to do the rare garnish quests.

[Kala]

Being a carnivore (yes, it would more appropriately be omnivore), this feels odd to say, but...we need more high tier vegetarian main dishes. The highest tier non-meat/seafood/meat stock main dish I could find was T3.

[tramsan]

Being a vegetarian, I have to say that I agree.

[Justa Mirage]

Here Trasman, have some Geletin

And before you scream about eating it because it's the bi-product of animals, just remember just how many things are manufactured using geletin... like 35 millimeter film (old style photography) is still developed on geletin.

But yes, there are a few things that need tweaking definitely, non-meat food dishes above tier 3 is a good addition

I guess they needed a new money sink instead of portals, so purchasing rare ingredients is it. Guess those who are pure crafters are going to have to learn to adventure or have a rich uncle.

[LaughingOtter]

Actually, Justa, we tried to keep the use of purchased ingredients to a minimum whenever possible. When purchased or double-processed ingredients were called for, we made an effort to keep the quantities of those resources to a minimum.

If there are specific resources which you feel are overpriced, that's a legitimate topic for discussion. I can't promise that any prices will be changed as a result of such a discussion, but we are always open to constructive feedback.

[tramsan]

*smears the gelatin into Jutsa's fur* Doesn't eating film get horribly dry and tough to chew?

[Justa Mirage]

I have been busy as of late, but my only exposure was making the banana splits.

Each vanilla bean was 100cp so to simplify things let's buy 12, at 1sp 200cp.

12 beans that need to be chopped; making 6 beans (chopped) (2:1)

Then water has to be added making 6 oils (1:1)

making the banana split requires 2 oils at optimum (3 banana splits per 1.2sp) this breaks each banana split cost to 400cp per dessert (this does not take into account the time for gathering bananas, milk, and unprocessed sugar that needs to be ground.)

End result, a dessert that removes 20mins of a deathpoint timer for level 40 - 60th level characters.

It will take some getting used to... just not used to having to pay in-game cash to level. I need to find foods that don't use the rare resources.

[Guaran]

From those figures it appears that Vanilla Beans are in fact overpriced.

Anything that is in an unpricessed form (Vanilla Beans, Cinammon bark for example) should cost half the current prices, so that processed it = the current vendor price.

It seems logical that there would need to be some price adjustments after rolling this live and letting us hammer at these new foods.

I for one would like the ability to gather vanilla bean and cinammon, especially if the price remains unchanged. The trainer can be the convenient, higher priced source, or we can go out and get them ourselves.

[AmonGwareth]

Justa, are you saying you believe 400cp for a banana split is too high?

Cause when you break it down... the cost / minute of time removed from a DP is almost exactly that of Ambrosia VII. Using the quote from awdz above as pricing for the ambrosia.

Banana Split:
400cp / 20 minutes = 20 cp / minute

Ambrosia VII:
10 silver / 480 minutes = 20.8 cp / minute

Of course, this changes if you use your previously quoted rate of 2.5sp for a Banana Split. Then it jumps to 125 cp / minute which would indeed seem to be too high.

[Justa Mirage]

I think I was 1/2 asleep when I was doing the math (I was sick when the confection patch went live, so I probably wasn't paying attention)

I had originally bought 100 beans at 10sp and it processed down to 50 vanilla oils (I thought I was going to get 25 oils but the process is 1:1 for making the oils)

50 oils translated into 25 banana splits (which then I took the 10sp I spent for beans and applied it to the 25 banana splits I made.)

So my math was backwards, it should have been 10,000cp / 25 units or 400cp each

And you are right, when you do the math, 10sp for 480 minutes costs more than 400cp for 20 mins.