Mac players and recipes

[Frit]

Hi, now i love surfing the recipes, and seeing what is out there that i can work towards making, but unfortunatly we mac users are stuck in a time warp. We dont get all the cool expansions that the PC world gets. Until recently as i looked at recipes it was easy to distinguish what was a POP, LoY, or even LDoN expansion recipe or item, but now i see stuff that i dont remember seeing before in the traditional recipe areas with trivials above 250. I suspect that those are new expansion recipes, but how do i know for sure?

Could you give me a heads up on how i can tell the difference?

Frit

[Lothay]

Hello Frit,

You can always check the Recipes Page. It has a menu of expansion-specific recipes.

Trivial listing doesn't indicate the expansion. You might see stuff listed with trivials higher than 250, but that's due to us finally getting hard numbers for those trivials, not due to the recipe belonging to a specific expansion.

[Verdandi]

Also, if you draw up a list of old world zones (EQ Atlas might be helpful here) you can check on the sources of any ingredients here and see if they're in zones you can get to. The strictly old world stuff is at this point just a fraction of what's in our database, so it might even be worth your while to make up your own recipe lists to refer to. It'd take a lot of work to start but would save you time in the long run, if you do a lot of tradeskilling.

You know, I envy you somewhat, having the game fresh and new without all the powerlevelling and the focus on the endgame. Point of curiosity, do you have the Planes of Fear, Hate, and Air?

[Nikolai]

Heh. Frit beat me to it. I was going to ask something similar. Yes, the expansion-specific recipe sections are helpful, but what we really could use would be a "date this recipe was added to the database" field.

Even better would be a special "Al'Kabor Enabled" logo, but that is a bit much to ask.

The big problem I have been having is with recipies that have been added to the old areas. As an example, I just recently tried the "Enchanted Velium Bits" recipe. All the ingredients are available on our server, but the result is a "No Combine".

If there was a way to see that the recipe was added to the database after October of 2002 (When our code split occurred), it would be an easy way to see the recipe was not available on Al'Kabor.

Verandi: Yes, we have Hate, Fear and Sky, as well as Mischief (Although it's nearly impossible to get there) and the Planes of Power...sorta. Our PoP are limited to the Tier 1 planes of Nightmare, Justice Disease and Innovation. The zoning mechanisms to the Tier 2 and beyond planes are broken, and have been since our game's release nearly a year ago.

[Verdandi]

Oh interesting, so it's not just old world. Not so jealous then.

One problem with using the added date added is that the database is a relatively new thing for EQ Traders. If memory serves, it has only been around for about a year and a half. Prior to that the site consisted of static pages that just listed information and all had to be updated individually. So there's a whole mishmash of stuff that was added all at one time, a great deal of which would still not apply to Al-Kabor.

The other problem is that because we get our data almost exclusively through submission nowadays, except sometimes with expansions, we are still missing recipes here and there and adding old things all the time. Just a few days ago I finished putting in the last of the newly discovered rawhide-to-leather recipes that may very well have been available in game since release in '99, or added any time since then. They were just discovered thanks to the new UI that had them listed without having to learn them.

I don't think there's any good way to automatically have the system separate out the recipes you could use. That leaves something manual, which as you acknowledge would be a collosal amount of work. I'll leave that one to Niami, Ngreth, and Krazick to decide hehe, unless they can think of a way to automatically do what it is you want.

[Frit]

Yeah we do seem to be limited

Yeah we do seem to be limited compared to all of the expansions that are out there, but the server has a frontier feel to it. I have spent many days in various zones without any other players in with me. Also the mobs arent heavily camped, im often the only one waiting for a spawn.

The recipes are great here and i am looking forward to more tradeskilling. Nicolai has been a great tailor for the server making all kinds of stuff for players, and if i can ever find a HQ Lion Skin i will be asking him to help me with a Fleeting Quiver. : )

Thanks for the help you guys, Frit

[Ngreth Thergn]

We have already said no to "filtering" to expansions...

We are sorry to say you will just have to keep an eye out yourself :/ FIltering to date will be the same because we really do not have proper dates in the DB for recipes, so it is even worse than expansions.

[Silverfish]

A Possibility

Now, I know you're not going to like the possibility of even more work considering how deep you're all in with just staying abreast of the regular database, but I had an idea for the Al`Kabor folks that may be more workable than anything I saw here up to now. Not being database-ly myself, if my suggestion is outright foolish please feel free to tell me (I'll never learn if I'm never wrong) but would it be possible to add an "Al`Kabor verified" flag to recipes? No need to filter by when it was discovered, and only recipes the Macintoshies actually succeed (or fail but not with the DNC) would get marked. When new recipes show up, someone on Al`Kabor can do the legwork and report back.

Like I said, I have no idea if I'm letting you in for a ton of work or if it's simply not doable, but I thought I'd suggest it and let you assess.

Silverfish

[Ngreth Thergn]

do you mean allakhazam's? If not I have never heard of this other site

[eqNichola]

Al`Kabor is the name of the Mac server, as well as that useless wizard

[Niami DenMother]

While we're at it, I presume you Al'Kabor folks would like your own Marketplace forum? We sorta missed the memo on the release of some servers lately, so are a bit behind on adding to the Marketplace.

It would be a significant chunk of work to collect and input information for Al'Kabor-compatible recipes but I'll talk it over with hubby Ngreth and some of our DB folks, and see what they think.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Personally. (just personally) I am against it.

It starts a trend of doing a large amount of work for a small amount of people.

I get stats. Less than 1% of the EQTC users use a Mac.

Less than 1% of EQTC users use Opera

Less than 1% of users use other odball web browsers.

So if I make special code to deal with the Mac... why don;t I make special code to deal with Opera? And then the next browser... then the next browser... then Online adventures... It starts a slipper slope of specialized code for small userbases.

Yes SOE decided to make special code for small userbases... But they actually make money from it. We certainly do not make money from it.

Now this is my opinion... I am not targeting Mac users specifically with this desire to not make special code, but all small userbases on our site. Niami can of course overrule me, and I will do what she asks me to do This post is mostly to let you know why I have given such resistance to doing this.

[Rhyianna]

just a thought from the computer illiterate...

but if al'kabor had a market place, could they not list thier own listing of recipes that were confirmed? just the names of them? or would that eat up too much space?

[Ngreth Thergn]

They could do such a thing in the marketplace, at their own beset.

[Verdandi]

Al'Kabor forum added. Never thought of it.