244 Baking & GM Spoon - some data

[Romidar]

I took baking from 191 to 244 over the last week or so, mainly to make some Bristlebanes Party Platters (for stat food, not quest). I kept my logs and though the data might be somewhat useful or at least interesting. Don't know if I'll bother taking it to 250, but it's tempting to do so for completism. (I'm helping my wife get her baking up high enough to make party platters, so I may end up doing some more MTP combines myself.)

I 2-box a 65 duid, so I can forage most of what I need. I sent him to Rathe Mountains for a few days to forage veggies, fruits and basilisk eggs (easy to forage some stuff up during conference calls and such). I haven't purchased GoD for him yet, or I'd have sent him to forage GoD meats.

I did this with wisdom ranging from 297 to 301 (I'm a paladin, so 305 would be max). The variability was due to the fact that my charm (Charm of Solitude) gets worse if other people are in the zone. I did all of the skilling up in North Freeport (usually just me) or Abysmal Sea (less than one group). Also, once I made some cragbeast steak, I substituted in it for stat food to gain another 2 wisdom over my justice fruit pies. I used a geerlok throughout.

I had foraged some candied cockroaches long ago, so I started with them.

191-192
Candied Cockroaches
Success: 25
Failure: 1
skill: gained 1 (192)

I didn't know about GoD baking (stupidly didn't think to check here and hadn't bought the expansion until recently), so I did a run of Misty Thicket Picnics:

193 - 200
Misty Thicket Picnic
Success: 9
Failure: 169
Success Rate: 5%
skill gained: 8 (200)

One skill point per stack just didn't seem all that great to me (silly me), so I came here to look for alternatives and read about GoD baking. I then switched to Beer-battered Hynid/Cragbeast steaks. I bought the meat in the bazaar - an average of about 7 platinum per 1 lb. piece of meat.

201 - 222
Beer-battered Hynid/Cragbeast steaks
Success: 431
Failure: 32
Success Rate: 93%
skill gained: 22 (222)
skill gained on success: 21 (21/431 = 4.9% chance on success)
skill gained on failure: 1 (1/32 = 3.1% chance on failure)

I again got about 1 skill up per stack of attempts, but this approach seemed much easier than all the subcombines for MTP (even in the new UI). I probably spent about 4k (7*480 meat = 3360 plus about 315 platinum for making the beer-based batter). I've been selling the cragbeast stacks for 4 platinum and the hynid steaks for 2 platinum, so an average of 3 platinum (not selling briskly, but they are selling). So, I'd expect to get about 1200 of that back ultimately.

223 - 244
Misty Thicket
Success: 277
Failure: 360
Success Rate: 43.5%
skill gained: 22
skill gained on successes: 12 (12/277 = 4.3% chance on success)
skill gained on failure: 10 (10/360 = 2.8% chance on failure)

That's 637 attempts. I THINK my cost was approximately 1.5 platinum per attempt, so a cost of about 955 platinum. I expect to get a fair amount of that back selling the MTP's for 4-5 platinum each (about what they sell for on Xegony, but I'm in no hurry to get the cash back either).

After that, I made my bristlebanes party platters: 3 attempts and 3 successes.

I then went and created my artisan's seal (looted the gems except rubies and a black sapphire). I achieved success on my first attempt!

I wanted to say thanks for all of the information on the site - the search, message boards and general layout was very helpful.

Finally, if anyone cares, here's the record for each skill point and whether it occurred on a success or failure:

192 - success (cockroach)
193 - failure (MTP)
194 - failure (MTP)
195 - failure (MTP)
196 - failure (MTP)
197 - failure (MTP)
198 - failure (MTP)
199 - failure (MTP)
200 - failure (MTP)
201 - success (bbhs)
202 - success (bbhs)
203 - success (bbhs)
204 - success (bbhs)
205 - success (bbhs)
206 - success (bbhs)
207 - success (bbhs)
208 - success (bbhs)
209 - success (bbhs)
210 - failure (bbhs)
211 - success (bbhs)
212 - success (bbhs)
213 - success (bbhs)
214 - success (bbhs)
215 - success (bbhs)
216 - success (bbhs)
217 - success (bbhs)
218 - success (bbhs)
219 - success (bbhs)
220 - success (bbhs)
221 - success (bbhs)
222 - success (bbhs)
223 - success (MTP)
224 - success (MTP)
225 - success (MTP)
226 - failure (MTP)
227 - failure (MTP)
228 - success (MTP)
229 - failure (MTP)
230 - success (MTP)
231 - success (MTP)
232 - success (MTP)
233 - failure (MTP)
234 - success (MTP)
235 - success (MTP)
236 - failure (MTP)
237 - failure (MTP)
238 - failure (MTP)
239 - success (MTP)
240 - success (MTP)
241 - failure (MTP)
242 - success (MTP)
243 - failure (MTP)
244 - failure (MTP)

[Davina]

Thanks for the info and congratulations on your BPPs and spoon.