Baking observations, suggestions and a rant

[ruodrra]

My hat is off to all you GM bakers, let alone the ones who have GM'd all. Now, I started playing two years ago and still remember how excited I was to make my first rat kabob and, before the new UI, I even learned how to tape down the control key.

But sheesh -- after hovering around 198 for a long time I decided to make a push to GM baking and now i'm ready to quit! Did a lot of research on the boards and decided that, since I don't have GOD (although fishing is maxxed sigh), to do halas pies. Well, at max wis and geerlok...i have pies coming out of my ears but i have averaged less than one skillup per 20 combines going from 202 - 215. Most frustrating is how often I fail at the trivial combines such as filleting -- I thought that SOE was supposed to fix that? And, what nut at SOE made these recipes with no least common denominator under 1644 (joking, i didn't figure out the LCD although i did make my own excel spreadsheets for the recipes lol).

Then I read some more and some people say that MTPB, while less skillups because of trivial, are actually easier and cheaper. Well, I tried a run of 100 combines -- one, count em one skill up.

So, back to halas pies i go after becoming a believer that you have have greater chances of skillups on success. A run of 100 pies yielded more pies than i can count and two, count em two skillups with my effective skill at 218-220 (hals pies trivial 226) Just for the heck of it, went and rounded up a stack of griffon meat and made melts...ZERO skillups. I can't honestly imagine getting to 250.

yes, bad run with RNG most will say -- and that would be true, but I don't think i've ever had a GOOD run with the RNG and i've done a fair amount of tradeskilling. Many talk about about the hell levels of 200-220ish but if it's purely RNG why would one numerical zone be worse or better than others? If it isn't JUST the RNG, then it should be fixeable.

Honestly, why won't SOE fix this tradeskill stuff? Hard and a challenge is fun, but this is masochism. Even the slots in vegas (I am a believer that hard core tradeskillers look at skill ups the way gamblers watch cherries and lemons lining up to see the jackpot) pay out more often than this. The new UI is nice, but is treating the symptom not the disease.

So -- rant over -- suggestions next (i am taking as a given that the RNG for skillups can't be changed):

1) if you (SOE) havent lowered sufficiently the failure rate on trivial combines as I thought I read...at least give a possibility of a skillup on a trivial failure. As it is it's all risk and no reward. Come one, failing to fillet bear meat three times in a row when the trivial is 60 points under me???? This would bug me just a teeny a bit less if I didnt' need a supercomputer to calculate the ingredients i need by stack when i fail some trivial combine.

2) If you can't increase the skillup succes rate then at least it should not be hard to change the merchant buy back price to something approaching the cost to make something. Costs me 3p to make a pie and merchant will buy it for 1g???? Now that's encouraging players to do trade skills for sure! Heck i'll settle for recouping 50 percent as opposed to putting 1000 pies in the bazaar along with the other 10,000 for sale. I am as guilty as everyone in accepting these stupid cost equations -- yes, i want a skillup in tailoring so i'll make ribbons and eat a 70p loss on each combine. Aside from unfair, it's not rational. I buy something, add value, and get 1/3 return on my expense, time and skill? (try applying that same logic to how you SOE developers determine your salary).

3) allow people to earn some small percentage experience/aaxp for each attempt at tradeskilling...again some reward for the effort -- someplace.

I think tradeskilling is an integral part of eq roleplay..and overall good for the eq economy. But, with what appears to be a declining player base (newbie zones on quellious are virtually empty these days (ah for the good old days of vendor mining meat and silks in halas) you have to do something to keep the rest of us playing -- And not everyone is interested in being in some uber raiding guild (although gosh, i wish i were able to get to plane of water to fish

I am sure that all the truly dedicated tradeskillers have made similar suggestions -- why hasn't something been done by SOE? Perhaps because the really dedicated ones put up with sinking 8 hours of game play for less than a dozen skillups and SOE counts on it? I hate to admit it, I'm not one of them (as i continue to look at alternative recipes sigh)

I don't think I'm suggesting making it easier -- just more fair and rational. Please?

cross posting this on the eq trade skill board in the hopes that some developer may actually think about it.

[Lothay]

Moved to PSR -- this is more of a rant than anything else.

[Itek]

1) Make Misty Picnics.

2) No, really... Make Misty Picnics

3) If you don't want to make Misty Picnics.... Read any of the three different threads I posted to in Baking forum where I state fairly clearly "If you CANNOT FORAGE ON YOUR MAIN ... you should MAKE MISTY PICNICS!!"

4) The skill up rate is.... INTENTIONAL. It's not a mistake. They MEAN for it to be that hard. Really.

5) Baring the above advice... Buy Discord. You will most likely eventually... and for the fishing/baking and other tradeskills, not to mention certain AA powers, it sounds like it's worth the cash. (I'm holding out till I have the AA points to make the purchase worthwhile. But I didn't buy Kunark till after I'd been playing Velious for 3 months, so don't use me as a benchmark.)

[Eoghnved]

1) Make Misty Picnics.

2) No, really... Make Misty Picnics

3) If you don't want to make Misty Picnics.... Read any of the three different threads I posted to in Baking forum where I state fairly clearly "If you CANNOT FORAGE ON YOUR MAIN ... you should MAKE MISTY PICNICS!!"

4) The skill up rate is.... INTENTIONAL. It's not a mistake. They MEAN for it to be that hard. Really.

5) Baring the above advice... Buy Discord. You will most likely eventually... and for the fishing/baking and other tradeskills, not to mention certain AA powers, it sounds like it's worth the cash. (I'm holding out till I have the AA points to make the purchase worthwhile. But I didn't buy Kunark till after I'd been playing Velious for 3 months, so don't use me as a benchmark.)

I'm a non-forager, so I've been going the picnic route. At my current skill of 215 I fail an awful lot, but my successes still can be sold in the Bazaar for enough to cover the costs. I've only gained about 8 points on the picnics, but I currently have eight stacks of them in the bank. I've probably sold or given away at least as many as I've still got. I'm certain that I'll have fed my entire server by the time I hit skill 250.

[NerissaGoldenrose]

2) If you can't increase the skillup succes rate then at least it should not be hard to change the merchant buy back price to something approaching the cost to make something. Costs me 3p to make a pie and merchant will buy it for 1g????

How the heck does it cost you 3p to make a pie? It costs me less than 1p, including all subcombines. Of course, I farm my own wolf and mammoth meat, but with each of them yielding 10 filets per meat, you'd have to be paying something like 10p each to bring your cost that high. Do some farming. Wolf meat is pretty easy to farm, and if you check all the merchants in newbie zones, you can often find it there as well. Mammoth meat is more difficult, but mammoths in Everfrost can net you a bit of cash as well as meat. Yes, I've got pretty good CHA, but NOBODY has bad enough CHA to more than double merchant cost for things, so it's got to be the meat.

3) allow people to earn some small percentage experience/aaxp for each attempt at tradeskilling...again some reward for the effort -- someplace.

While there is some hope for this in EQ2 (with separate exprience for trades, like Horizons), I'd put money on it not happening here. It would require a COMPLETE revamp in the trade skill system, which I don't think we're going to see. If you get xp for a combine, then they'd have to change the system by which you gain skill, requiring xp instead of random skill increases, to make it balanced, and I don't think any of us want to see that. You can't designate only AAXP because (1) many tradeskillers are under level 51 and (2) it's entirely possible for someone to NOT have... um... whatever expansion added AA's, I can't remember any more which one it was, but I'm pretty sure it came with one of them.

[ancarett]

I sell HMP in the bazaar as fast as I can make them at 5p a piece. My baker's been skilling up on them for a while. The hardest part is the mammoth meat -- I'm lazy and I don't like to take my higher levels over to Everfrost to just farm the meat very often, but you can merchant mine this (even in the Adventure Camp!) surprisingly often. I also have started characters on a new server and even with my highest level character there at 19, I have scrounged enough of the drop-only components for 300 combines just through merchant mining or newbie killing.

It's rotten, however, when you fail on the filet for the mammoth meat, though.

Honestly, I love doing HMP and will miss them once they go trivial.

[Draggar]

Misty is the way to go, they can fit in a regular backpack and don't weigh a ton. High subcombine yield rates are a HUGE plus, too.

I used to have runs of over 200 combines before a skillup, but sometimes I would also do 20 combines and have 2-3 skillups. You'll rip your hair out, or get grety ones (I went that route!). You'll curse. You'll cry. You'll have picnics coming out of your backpacks to the point of offering them for FREE while you do the combines.

With that said, take a day, park yourself in front of an oven with your collapsible mixing bowl and sewing kit, and turn them hand over fist. I've been known to end a run with over 600 picnics (I was put in a straight jacket after that). SKillups will come, but they'll be as slow as molases on a feb morning.

[Melinia]

ruodrra- don't panic. if you hit a point in time that you are hitting bad RAG.. take a break. go get some exp then come back to the baking. For the longest time i wasnt getting a single skill up. I took a break.. dinged.. baked some more.. in about 2o combines of HMP i had 2-3 skill ups. (now at 219 ). give it time. sell the pies in the bazaar to make back any cash you lost.
As suggested before.. pick up Gates of Discord. that has more options for skilling up. hardest part will be getting the needed veggies, bazaar and friends come in handy!

Good luck and dont give up!

[Cubwynn]

I did Misty Thicket Picnics from 200 to 250. 1843 combines.
I did it in 5 play sessions, none of which where I tradeskilled for more than 2.5 hours at a time.
I did it with a measly 255 INT (compared to some of these uber players with much more).
I did it at a cost of about 3k (mostly paying for foraged shtuffs).
I made more money selling my successes in the Bazaar than I spent while skilling up.

I urge you to check out this thread:
http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?t=11410
If you look at the numbers you'll see a lot of dry spots.
It's normal.

You said:

i have pies coming out of my ears but i have averaged less than one skillup per 20 combines going from 202 - 215.

Please don't construe this as a personal attack, but I really don't know what you're expecting. Having a skill-up ratio around 1:20 is outstanding... and 100 combines is really not a lot at all (really!). With persistence and some luck, you'll get there. If that's going to stress you out, maybe you should take a step back and reconsider.

Personally, I feel that if they make baking any easier it'll just turn into a travesty like brewing, a total no-brainer.

[Eoghnved]

You'll have picnics coming out of your backpacks to the point of offering them for FREE while you do the combines.

While I don't usually hand out the picnics for free, I did give a stack to the ranger who helped me get the last heart I needed for the Staff of Temperate Flux. I'll sometimes give them out at a reduced cost to people I group with. (Sometimes I have to include instructions on how to use stat food.)

[Aalar]

Actually SoE is wanting you to buy GoD. Baking was very easy to GM with GoD. However, I understand some cannot/will not buy another expansion. In that case I would max my int/wis to as high as I could make it. It really, really makes a huge difference. I averaged 14 combines per skill up from 200-250 in baking. My worst run was 80 combines for a skill up. I have 355 int.

Then I would listen to the individuals who mastered baking prior to GoD and follow their advice. And you must realize that GMing any tradeskill is going to take time - even brewing takes a certain amount of time (not much but it does still take some time).

Good luck with whatever you plan to do.

Aalar

[ruodrra]

well...thanks for all the encouragement and advice. Not being one to give up easily, I went back to MTPB. Yes, they are much easier than pies in the final analysis I think now (doing them in Thurgadin) once you get the routine down. But, perhaps more critical, is that I fail so much less on the subcombines. This was important, along with the nicer 1:10 ratios of the combines, to me as being mathematically challenged.

BTW --- am I the only dummy that thinks that a geerlock adds 5 points to your skill? DUH I finally realized that it's 5 PERCENT ... big difference!!! That would explain why I was succeeding so much on the pies at 215 (/em slaps forehead) I can't believe I've been using the thing all this time and never knew it!

Couple of follow up comments to responses.

1) the price for pies I took from eqtraders -- perhaps I misdread it?

2) Yes, tradeskilling in GOD it is a sales ploy to some extent. "They mean for it to be hard' someone posted -- well, if that's the case, they would not make it easier in the new expansions. In fact, you could argue that the easier routes introduced with the GOD recipes are acknowledgement that there was a problem with the limited number of routes to 250. I'd rather see them also add new recipes for alternative skillup routes without needing an expansion but I understand it's marketing.

3) I can abide a 1 skillup per/20 combines ratio. It's just that when you go 140 combines without a skillup you begin to doubt that the RNG will ever average out for you. Like I said, a chance to random skillup on trivial combines (since you have a chance of failure) may help. But,that's why I suggested some other 'reward' for tradeskilling.

Now, maybe giving xp/aaxp isn't the answer but there has to be something that would give someone who is 'reward-oriented' like me some shorter term positive reinforcement -- I just don't know what else it could be. Hmmm, maybe some 'tradeskill bar' that acquires points as you hit combine you can use in the casino? SOE obviously wants to encourage tradeskilling, looking at the GOD-again quests that let you move to 50s easily.

I still think that SOE could fix the vendor buy back prices for skilled items to give a player NOT a profit but at least a chance to recoup most of the costs. Yes, pies and mtpb can return a fair price in the bazaar if you have the luxury to set up a trader mule or want to spam /ooc for a few hours. Here I am really thinking more of tailoring (my next target skill) where making stacks of acrylia studded masks and ribbons just to skill up doesn't offer the same possibility. There is something irrational in the system that makes you work to farm stacks of components to make something that is basically vendor trash (thinking of masks here) just to move your skills up. Again, with GOD I suppose they can be used for tribute but I'd still like a non-expansion alternative (what can I say, I can dream can't i?)

Thanks again for the input.

[Trepan]

Oh dear god... baking is driving you batty and you're thinking about moving on to TAILORING?

Gack! *twitch*

Put in your truckload order for paxil now, you're gonna need it

The PRNG is the debil. if you do two stacks and don't get a skill up, put away the spatula and the apron and go do something else for a while. The same goes for any other skill unless you're an obsessive obstinate optimistic bastard like me and will FORCE yourself to go through 5 sets of 10 stacks of combines before going to bed.... and 2 skill ups better.. and think "Woo! 2 skill ups! Only 30 more to go!"

As for Vendor buy back prices... see my sig.

[Koru]

If it helps the first couple of misty runs are always the worst because you're still getting used to how much of everything you need, how to set it up and so forth. It does get easier to do them. After a while you may find yourself doing them for fun. Ok, maybe that's pushing it a bit, but you do get used to it after a few runs.