A small(?) baking rant.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

As far as the supplies go, vegetables and fruit are often found in the bazaar for very little money.

I must have very bad luck, or an odd sense of "little money". I've bought a few vegetables in the bazaar, and occasionally randomly searched for them. Once I found 2 veggies for 5gp. The rest of the time, if I could find a veggie seller at all, they are selling for 1-5pp (usually 2 or 3pp), and have less than a stack.

Fruit I haven't searched for much ... the once I did, they were 1pp each, again less than a stack.

I don't know about you, but I don't consider paying 3pp per veggie "very little money", and the level of availability (less than a stack, occasionally) really prohibits it from being used as a primary skillup route (unless its for a subcombine that has large yield, like the fruit in MTPs).

EQ is a game designed around interdependance that has come to be increasingly solo-driven. Its a combination that doesn't work well, in my opinion.

[Ruatha]

I don't think everyone should be able to do everything by themselves.

I didn't join a multi-player game to do it all myself.

Lothay, I play a 56th level warrior.

As a Warrior in EQ, I am a mobile pile of heavily-armored hitpoints. That is my unique specialty, and it's a specialty that I relish with considerable pride. I have more HP as a Gnome Warrior than does a same level Troll or Ogre SK, and this is due solely to the fact that I am a Warrior and they are not. We Warriors are the ultimate meatshields in EQ. That is our role. It's who we are. It's what we do.

In exchange for being the absolute best tank in the game, I also have the burden of playing the single most group dependent class in the game. I cannot gain XP in any significant capacity without help, and that's been true since 29th level or so. I cannot keep myself in level-appropriate gear without help, and that's been true since 15th level or so. I rely on healers to keep me alive. I rely on clerics to rez me when I die. I rely on clerics and shamans and druids and enchanters to buff me so that I will be effective in combat.

One could argue that Rogues are just as dependent as Warriors on the presence of others for these things, but Rogues at least have the ability to Sneak and Hide, giving them travel options that Warriors don't get without assistance. I cannot safely reach the Acrylia Caverns without a Sow and an Invis from someone. I have never been to The Deep, because I cannot get there on my own. Even if I COULD get there, there would be little for me to do, since I couldn't explore the zone without getting killed. I must exercise caution when travelling through outdoor zones -- particularly since Kunark, when Verant/SOE started putting MOBs up on the previously safe zone walls. I rarely hunt in Sebilis because if I zone in to Sebilis and can't find a group, my only way back out is to run the gauntlet to the port out and hope I make it. Sometimes I have. Sometimes I haven't.

Understand that none of this is a rant about the sorry state of Warriors. None of the things I've mentioned upset me or bother me in any way. I am reasonably happy and content with the lot of the Warrior, particularly as SOE continues to enhance my ability to do my two primary jobs: Control aggro and take the beats.

But I know about the interdependency and the group-oriented nature of EQ in a way that no one who has never played a Warrior (or a Rogue) to high level will ever fully understand or appreciate. I've "lived" it for four real-life years and 56 in-game levels.

And I'm just really really not seeing how giving non-Foragers a path to a 250 Baking skill that's similar to the path Foragers can take with Plant Shoots and Cheesy Vegetable Casseroles is going to suddenly break the weave of class/skill interdependencies so crucial to the EQ gaming experience.

If SOE were to provide such a method, it would very likely be the first significant in-game accomplishment that I, as a Warrior, could achieve entirely on my own without any assistance from anybody else.

Which would be amazingly refreshing.

[Suva]

And I'm just really really not seeing how giving non-Foragers a path to a 250 Baking skill that's similar to the path Foragers can take with Plant Shoots and Cheesy Vegetable Casseroles is going to suddenly break the weave of class/skill interdependencies so crucial to the EQ gaming experience.

Hi, read my post a few messages above.

[Ruatha]

Is the issue really that foragers have this seemingly huge advantage or just frustration in the having to farm components? If it's the frustration from farming, let me tell ya...a lot of tradeskilling is in the farming of the parts. Yes, it's boring killing mobs that are green or give little exp. And yes, drop rates can really suck. Tradeskills are not supposed to be easy. If they were easy, everyone would be a 1750.

I guess I'm just sick of the rants about how easy foragers have it. It's not fun to sit in a zone and just hit forage when it pops. Foraging is also not fast. Those rare foragers just do not pop onto the cursor. You can spend hours to get 1 stack. I thought about doing the plant shoots thing, but after 3 hrs and not even having a full stack I gave up. Wow, plant shoot foraging is so much faster than killing stuff.

It's only partially about speed.

It's also partially about dependence.

With only a few exceptions, I cannot hunt in the zones you describe without a full group.

I can solo the brownie guards and bind my wounds back to 60%. My first AA point was put into "First Aid" precisely for that reason. They are dark blue to me. I can solo one if I have at least 80% health (just to be on the safe side). The drop rate and ease of "harvest" is such that this is actually worthwhile -- as long as nobody else is camping the brownies, either for XP or for their own brownie parts.

I can solo both griffawns and griffons in Jaggedpine. The Awns are pushovers and pose little threat to me. The Ons are tougher and can provide quite a tussle, but unless I just get stupidly unlucky, I can kill them too. I can also solo an Anaconda if (A) I start with at least 95% health AND (B) I get an early proc on my Truncheon of Doom (40% slow). If I don't get an early proc, it's touch-and-go. If I don't get a proc at all, I'm dead. If I survive, I get to burn through a stack or so of bandages and then I get to sit on my butt for another 10 minutes or so if I wanna play with another snake.

All of which ignores the fundamental problem I have in Jaggedpine, which is all the aggro bears, wolves, and panthers that I don't want to kill because I don't want the faction hit. This makes pulling a very risky, time-consuming business for me if I'm solo.

You, on the other hand, can go into Jaggedpine whenever you want and just sit there and hit "Forage" over and over. Is it boring? Probably. Is it tedious? Sure. Is it something you have to scrape together a group to do? No.

Trust me. As someone who plays the most group dependent class in the game (see previous post of mine), being able to do things in this game without having to spend time and effort corralling and cajoling friends, guildmates, associates, and/or random strangers into helping you is an IMMENSE advantage, and one that I would occasionally give my right arm to have. It's why I like Fishing so much -- it's one of the rare things in EQ that I can do without requiring assistance from anybody else.

[Ruatha]

Hi, read my post a few messages above.

I can only type so fast, my friend...

[Morani]

…which is skewed heavily towards race/class combos that can forage (particularly ones that can forage zone specific items).

And Alchemy favors Shamans, Poison making favors Rogues, Tinkering favors Gnomes, Jewel Crafting favors Enchanters, Pottery favors spell casters in general, Smithing favors Warriors, Fletching favors Tunare followers, and Tailoring favors the insane… Every one of them is unfair! They should all be nerfed!

Seriously, I don't believe they should be nerfed. But, the point of it is that, in every single trade skill, a large portion of the classes/races can make a legitimate gripe that the system is "unfair" to them. Looks to me like it was designed to be that way. Of the top of my head, I'd say the reason is likely to try to get people to work together and help each other rather than just look out for " number one".

I don't want to start a Ranger or Druid alt. I shouldn't have to is my point.

You are COMPLETELY correct; there are plenty of Rangers and Druids out there that you could arrange something with for both of your mutual benefit.


Before you lament how bad off you are, let me put some basic math before you that might help you see that you really don't have it bad off. No, I'm not going to talk about how things could be worse. If you go out and farm plat, how much can you make in an hour? More than 75 plat? I have a Ranger with 195 in Forage. If I head out to JP to forage plant shoots, I MIGHT, MAYBE, qet LUCKY to farm 6 in one hour; 5 is more likely and 4 is almost expected. Let's assume I farm 5. What do plant shoots sell for on your server? Let's assume they go for 15plat each (VERY high in my opinion, I wouldn't buy them at even 10 each). So, in 1 hour of foraging I farmed 75 plat in plant shoots. You go out and farm 450 plat in an hour and the ONE hour you spent doing that is worth 6 hours of my time foraging. You go buy 3 stacks of plant shoots and spend 900 plat. OK, that hurts; 900 plat is a decent chunk of money. It'll take you what, 2 hours or less to farm the cash? It'll take me TWELVE hours to farm the plant shoots. So, in the time it takes me to farm your plant shoots: you gathered 5400 plat, give me 900 of it, get most of my work for that twelve hours (you can not forage when in combat) and STILL end up 4.5k richer for it. This is why you are not getting sympathy from the foragers here. Just because it's free doesn't mean it's easy.

Btw, I CAN forage but I still chose to do Patty Melts to get to 191 rather than spending 100 HOURS foraging the items I would have needed to do the 600 combines I had to do. So it cost me 500 plat to do it, even a newbie can earn 5 plat an hour. And I'm NOT exaggerating on the number just to prove a point, that is really how long it would have taken to get 600 of any single zone specific item.

Just to make sure you are not getting the wrong impression, I do not begrudge you this. I chose a Foraging class and I know what the down sides are. Yes, I'd like to see the forage table adjusted some just like most everyone else but I know that's not going to happen. I also know that the money I'll get off the time I spend is less than if I did other things and I still choose to do it this way. All of that is my choice and I only have myself to blame if I don't like it. It's frustrating on both ends, but I don't think you are being fair to others to say that it's unfair to you because you can't forage. A while back, I would not have bothered to say anything, but I'm getting tired of people burring their heads in a fish bowl and claiming that the whole world is wet because of it.

[Ruatha]

And Alchemy favors Shamans, Poison making favors Rogues, Tinkering favors Gnomes, Jewel Crafting favors Enchanters, Pottery favors spell casters in general, Smithing favors Warriors, Fletching favors Tunare followers, and Tailoring favors the insane… Every one of them is unfair! They should all be nerfed!

False analogy for two reasons:

1) I never suggested that anything be nerfed.
2) Baking is supposed to be a "universal" skill, in that anyone can do it. Neither Tinkering, nor Poison Making, nor Alchemy fits that mold.

If you go out and farm plat, how much can you make in an hour?

Farm plat? How does a solo warrior do that, pray tell?

(Hint: A solo warrior doesn't farm plat.)

[Ruatha]

I would also like to say that ALT-TAB is EVIL! It is OF THE DEVIL! I have been sitting here reading and posting for over an hour while little Ruatha has been standing idle in the swamps of Innothule. I didn't MEAN for it to take that long, but that's how it's worked out so far.

DARN YOU PEOPLE FOR BEING SO INTERESTING AND PROVOKING ME TO DEBATE! <shakes phist>

[Ngreth Thergn]

well, you sorta can.

I am assuming you are highish level here...

Go to EK, kill everything that moves except the cyclopses and giants...

sell much of what you get in the bazaar... I bet you make more plat than from the forages
Spider silk, Snake eggs, skins from the lions and wolves, you might even be able to sell snake and spider poison (wouldn't count on it though...)

And you are not likely to ever need a cleric unless you bump into one of the giants.

[Bennan]

I think I understand your point Ruatha.

Perhaps, due to the fact that Brewing is a skill that can be done (at least to 248) by just buying stuff from Vendors. Verant felt that Brewing would be the Tradeskill for the "masses" i.e easy to get into, no special requirements and no need for a large amount of plat. And therefore allowed/built dependencies into the other skills, to round them out more perhaps a better phrase is "allow the other skills to differentiate". Hence, Baking as a skill is a bit more accessible to those that can forage...

Oh and just bite the bullet, and do MTP's until you hit 250

[KyrosKrane]

And Alchemy favors Shamans, Poison making favors Rogues, Tinkering favors Gnomes, Jewel Crafting favors Enchanters, Pottery favors spell casters in general, Smithing favors Warriors, Fletching favors Tunare followers, and Tailoring favors the insane… Every one of them is unfair! They should all be nerfed!

Eh, that's not quite correct.

Alchemy, poison making, and tinkering are class- or race-based skills by design. I have yet to see a rational, consistent argument (beyond "I want it anyway!") why any of these should be available to other races or classes.

Smithing favors warriors only in that you can use STR as your primary stat rather than INT or WIS for skillups. Note that this doesn't take away anything from the other classes; every class other than warriors, monks, and rogues (did I miss anyone?) casts spells, and thus would benefit from higher INT or WIS anyway. Pure melee simply have no reason to raise their INT or WIS other than for tradeskills. The developers recoginized the lack of logic in requiring extensive brain power in a walking meatshield just to be able to make or fix his or her armor. Hence, STR was added as an alternate stat to smithing.

Jewel crafting is a fair example of another roadblock; it's one that's acknowledged across the board. This issue has been beaten to death elsewhere.

I don't know enough about pottery and fletching to comment meaningfully, so I'll just stay silent and try to look wise and knowing.

And as for tailoring ... bah, that's no advantage at all. You have to be crazy to take up tradeskills anyway; it's a prerequisite. So technically, all tradeskills favor the insane. Hence, it's moot.

[Reflan]

This all strikes me as quite silly.

Making holy cakes was a terrible waste of your brownie goodies. They make many more combines for you(of something that sells much more quickly) if you save them and use them for misty thicket picnics -- make them now or later when your skill level is higher, whatever. So you made a big mistake here if you didn't want to make holy cakes just for the sake of having holy cakes. Blame yourself. You blew your own supplies out for little gain. That's not SOE's fault.

Regarding vegetables, one stack of vegetables goes a very long way when you make MTP. If you have to pay 2g to 5g to 1pp for them like you do on my server, or even 3pp like someone says, that really costs you very little when you think of the possible skill-ups you've paid for. And heck, doing MTP even gives you wonderfully sellable product on most servers. At the very least, you've got excellent food to give yourself and your friends, and in abundance! 40 gold a stack or 60pp a stack, it's a bargain even for the poorest of the poor.

How about halas meat pies(HMP)?

Let me tell you, I find wolf meat all over the EQ world. Wolves are dirt common newbie mobs. I find it all over West and East Commons and Freeport, EC tunnel, Thurgadin, Neriak, random vendors all over the place. The stuff drops like rain EVERY day.

What else does? Eggs. For goodness sake, spend hours killing for eggs? You gotta be kidding me. The same places I listed have eggs, except Thurgadin, commonly on vendor. Add in pretty much every newbie zone. They cost like a copper or whatever and if you can't find them one day, you sure as heck will the next. And my server vendors are furiously mined every day, over and over again. But eggs are THAT common.

What else do you need for HMP? Well, mammoth meat. The ONE component that is not dead common. On my server, that's because high levels often try to get it to do their own skilling up. But still, I've bought mammoth meat in the bazaar many times, found it on vendors, and even offered 10pp each mammoth meat in /ooc's to the Halas area and bought many that way. I established RELATIONSHIPS with people willing to sell. One guy kept wanting to sell me meats for months after I hit 250 baking. The single hardest part of HMP can be bought in the bazaar, off vendors, off players -- and even hunted for yourself. I did plenty of all of them.

All of this is VERY doable. I have my own 54 druid and did not forage for an instant to get any of his forages. I don't even play him. Plant shoots? No thanks. Veggies? Much quicker to buy in the bazaar at a reasonable price by the stack -- tomorrow if the prices are bad today.

It seems to me that you've greatly exaggerated the difficulty of getting components while at the same time made numerous bad choices. I can only surmise that perhaps your study of baking should be a bit keener and more commonsensical. Treating brownie parts like common items? Killing griffons and anacondas, foraging plant shoots, HUNTING for eggs?(!) My goodness what a waste of time and components, I'm all aflutter! Shirley, you must be joking!

Don't forage anything. If you hunt anything, hunt basilisks for their eggs(makes 15 dough) and get a stack in short order, giving you hundreds of dough. And maybe hunt mammoths for their meat. You should virtually NEVER have to hunt a thing to progress in baking, or forage it.

Vendor mine, comb the bazaar, travel to different zones and /ooc that you want to buy forages or mammoth meats or whatever. Don't expect to get every single product you need all in one day. Not even foragers can pull that off every time. Show some initiative and study up a little more carefully on what you need and how best to spend your time. The fellow who mentioned what an enormous amount of time you would be spending foraging plant shoots if you even could forage is right on the money. 100pp for 10 mammoth meat seems like a living nightmare to pay? Those meats will make you a LOT of HMP. Is it REALLY true you will never get that 100pp back? The 10 or the 60pp you spend on a stack of vegetables will make you a LOT of misty thicket picnics. And you can sell both HMP and MTP! Even at horrible prices, you will make, not lose money, skilling up in baking. And lots of it. LOTS.

[Delfontes]

I was on a raid last night and 2 foragers offered foraged stuff to get it out of their respective inventories .

Roots/Vegatables at least, are not a problem.

Anyhow, this has now been beaten to death...

P.S. Check your PM's on your guild board, knew I recognised your name, hehe.

[Volante]

I raised to 250 baking on MTPs. Probably've boughten 20 stacks of veggies in the bazaar for 1pp per. Those turn around into 10 combines for MTPs on a success. Fruit went for 5gp each, needed less of those and still have some left over. (bought like 5 stacks)

Very cheap, even those with cash problems can get enough for veggies and fruit in the bazaar.

Brownie parts might go for a bit more, but if you manage to get a stack of them combined into chocolate, that should be more than enough for 200 to 250 baking. The yield on MTP combines is just sickeningly large.

Having played countless rangers and a druid, solely for the purposes of forage/tracking, they don't really get much of an advantage. All the forages in a zone stacked onto that annoyingly long reset time, it's not feasable to even raise it yourself if you could. You just don't get the raw materials fast enough.

It's even worse now because of all the zone specific forages they added.

Simply just faster and cheaper to go to bazaar and make some lowbie druid/ranger/iksar/bard happy and pick up a few veggies and fruit from them.

Edit: A more recent related incident happened recently. I had scrounged up enough runes of the cyclone for about 40 goes at LoY cultural robes. Never see these for sale in bazaar. Ever. I borrowed my friend's 64 ranger (163ish forage) and just foraged for hours in OT getting cursed clovers. about 3 days later...and only up 18... I gave up, auctioned wtb for 5pp each.

about 45 min and 130pp later, I had enough to finish out those cyclone swatches.

No idea how much of the other foraged junk I got. Had at least a stack of cockatrice eggs, 2 stacks of water...stack and a half of veggies...10 of those not stackable things each destroyed...

Just be thankful that with foraging, there's a LOT more people foraging than there are using the results from it. And in that group, there's at least enough that know they have a value outside of quick food.

--Raedron V`Lante, 64th Arch Mage of the Spurned
Eternal Advocates, Vazaelle

250 Baking
250 Brewing
250 Fletching
250 Jewelcraft
245 Pottery
240 Smithing
182 Tailoring

[Aerinha]

The irony of reading this thread while my ranger is on the other comp in dagnor's cauldron foraging Prawns for a friend...

=)