Ice Cream -- observations, impressions, discussion

[Ghismonda]

My 2cp, please share yours as well!

Beginning with the Churn:

I wasn't able to get my own ice hide, since I am not yet level 69. But it took me a solid week of begging my already 69+ friends to hold a hide for me before they coughed it up. The severed feran tenticles... ugh. I spent, no exaggeration, 6 solid hrs of farming those mugs to get 4 tentacles. (I got 4 spell runes and 6 range items in the process, though).

What this adds up to me, is that the churn will be a prized possession. That's fine with me, as I'm a tinkerer and tailor myself. But selling this will be difficult, since it's a container, but can't be turned in for a tokenr. Back to posting on message boards.

Ice Cream:

The yield is just way too low. Ice of Velious isn't commonly dropped from any one mob. It's dropped in such a wide array of zones, but very rarely from those mobs, that 'farming' is dang near impossible. It's also not being sold in the bazaar, and when people find out that it's for something neat and new, when they do sell it, it will probably be way overpriced!

Ice cream and all it's combines are also all marked as a "snack." This, combined with the low yield and the difficulty of collecting all the components (nodrop salts? ugh) leaves me with a bitter taste in my mouth, even after some chocolate mint ice cream crunch. Something should shake loose there. Either much higher yields on ice cream, make ice of velious vendor sold, or make the duration on the foods far more.


Possible bugs or oversights:

- Some of the more 'complicated' ice creams don't make shakes, ie chocolate mint ice cream, or chocolate walnut ice cream.
- Two of the ingredients are nodrop.
- Several of the ice cream products are marked tradeskillable. Things like crunch, shakes (oo, malts maybe? yum!) and slices of cake. Obviously they might turn into recipes later, but my first instinct says that devs just cut and pasted the item attributes, forgetting what they were being attached to.

Further Questions/Suggestions:

- Where can I find some dried vanilla beans?

- I'd love to see some more exciting, off-the-wall, in-character flavors of ice cream. How about jumjum ice cream, or fish ice cream?

- I'm still looking for sundae and cone recipes!

Conclusion:

Overall, I'm very excited about ice cream churns and ice cream recipes. I was remarking to my friends the day I first made my churn... It is exciting to have spent so much plat and RL time clicking combine over and over and over on tinkering and tailoring and baking combines to finally, come expansion time, be able to make a meaningful contribution to EQTraders, the site that I have depending on the entire time. To be able to be the first to inform the community of of a berry walnut crunch recipe, or the source for a severed feran tentacle is really cool, and I thank Sony for adding new tradeskill recipes with every expansion and subsequent patch. I hope Sony continues to add more ice cream recipes in particular, because discovering all the permutations has been a lot of fun!

[Baltazor Goldsinger]

Where did you find your severed tentacles? I need some to finish my churn.

[Sylphan]

Speaking as a merchant miner with a minor interest in research...

Ice of Velious was not a common find even before ice cream. Sure it was only a couple plat in bazaar, but that was lack of demand, not abundant supply. Now it'll become more rare.

[Ghismonda]

I got my tentacles from stalking ferans in Noble's Causeway.

[Tobbias Rastel]

Ya Ghismonda I would have to agree with you the icecream turner is just way to hard to make for something so trival but everyone loves ice cream so I guess that is how SoE justifies it. What Sony should have done was make it a lower trivial to make and then make a colapsable version that has the higher trival.

[Qadain]

Anyone know how rare the icy gelidran hide are? I very badly want to make some ice cream.

[Delores Mulva]

Getting hides depends on getting people to (a) hunt in Riftseeker's, (b) hunt the gelidrans, (c) sell the hides. Riftseeker's is a serious zone - only level 69 or above, mobs are all yellow to 70. But the XP is wonderful at 5% AA per kill, the nameds are no harder than normal mobs, and level 69 and 70 runes drop from the nameds, so the people will come. The gelidrans are a massive pain to fight. Many of them cast a longish mez spell with a fast recast and a -400 resist adjustment, very dangerous when your group is finely balanced to handle the environment. The pyrileans only DoT and AE nuke, not nearly as dangerous, so most players would avoid the gelidrans. However, players waiting for others would stick to pulling to zone, and would end up pulling gelidrans then. Sadly, the toughest part is going to be getting the word out that these hides are worth saving. Especially with the lack of tradeskill tags on things, it's hard to get folks to save stuff.

[Brodybeard]

I have to agree that some of the Ice Cream Churn parts are too rare for an item that will be made just for fun. (And I will probably break down and buy one of those 2,500 plat Icy Gelidran Hides in my server's Bazaar ).

But making one of the key ice cream recipe ingredients a fairly rare No Drop item just doesn't make sense. My druid spent over an hour in Hollowshade Moor mass-killing Moor Tortoises and only found three Kelp Salts.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant for the PSR — it's more of a deep sigh of disappointment. I love the concept of being able to make ice cream... I just wish it had been implemented better.

[Eileah]

I have to agree that some of the Ice Cream Churn parts are too rare for an item that will be made just for fun. (And I will probably break down and buy one of those 2,500 plat Icy Gelidran Hides in my server's Bazaar ).

The hides are not even for sale on my server (BB), we got lucky and found one on a vendor for about 160pp but the triv is so high I am scared to even try the combine, providing I actually get the rest of the parts.

Oh and Ghismonda in case you didn't realize it, I for one have greatly enjoyed reading all the new yummies you have discovered. I have taken out my cyberspoon and cypertasted each and every flavour you have made, thanks =)

[Qadain]

Woot! I got my ice cream churn. Now to farm the stuff to actually make the ice cream.

Has no one found the stuff for vanilla ice cream? That would be incredibly odd.

I agree that the yields on ice cream should be increased, for the difficulty of farming the items. How much ice cream does a regular hand-cranked ice cream maker usually make, anyway? 2 servings or so? Or 4?

[Smyrt]

Ice of Velious isn't commonly dropped from any one mob. It's dropped in such a wide array of zones, but very rarely from those mobs, that 'farming' is dang near impossible.

Ice of Velious has always struck me as being one of those items the devs put on a loot table to make players go "wha?" I've had it drop off a spider in North Karana and off Netherbians in Netherbian Lair. In both cases I stopped to ponder the possible reasons why those mobs would have Ice of Velious but then my head started to hurt and I went back to farming.

Nevertheless, I always seemed to get one or two Ice of Velious while farming Netherbians for Porous Mineral Blocks, so I'd suggest checking the Shadowhaven and Bazaar (NPC) vendors, or perhaps the PoK vendors closest to the Nexus stone.

[Phryne Pahn]

definately dissapointing

The required foraged, crafted, and looted ingredients for ice cream have me down as well, especially for the poor yields, it seems more a timesink than a novelty =/. I can see using ice of velious, but using rare no drop shar val quest items??? At the very least I wish they would put in a useable salts at the othmir camp, even if it was expensive it would save sooo much time.

I had to teach my troll beastlord baking for this since my gm baker/tinker is a whopping lv 20 and cant farm the tortises.

I had wondered why I did not see any churns or ice cream on my server before making mine, now im guessing it is because the other tinkers/bakers have bettter things to do than waste hour upon hour collecting ingredients.

I sent in some colourful feedback yesterday while farming salts for 4 hours to get half a stack, suggest others do the same, perhaps the squeeky wheel will get something even if its just an increased drop rate in the salts =/

[Kemie Dreamshadow]

I was lucky enough to find 3 icy gelidran hides on a vendor after a patch a while back and was hoarding them while madly ooc'ing for severed feran tentacles. First try by my tinker ... failed. I ooc'd more, and came up with enough tentacles for a second and third attempt... failed.

Other than those 3 hides, I've seen NONE on Lanys T'Vyl, not a single one.

To top it off, my partner and I have been heavily farming in Hollowshade for substances lately to max smithing. Total kelp salts seen? A big fat zero. Ice of Velious is easy to find on vendors, but what one can do when every moor tortoise killed is absolutely empty of any loot of any kind, I don't have a clue.

As to an alternative, well when I first teasingly suggested early in the summer that we needed ice cream, I suggested a Bag of Sea Salt (which, I believe, is at least foraged).

Sigh... well, we have ice cream churns, we have ice cream. Or some of us do. I'll keep scrounging, cuz I want my share in spite of the meaningless stats.

Kemie

[Eumdiine]

I saw one for sale to date. It was priced at 15K. My jaw dropped and my hope of getting one anytime soon was dashed.


Eum

[Footsore]

I know this might be more appropriate to the market place forum, but it doesn't look like they get much use. Besides, I'm not selling, I'm giving.

I've got a few icy gelidran hides on a mule on Zeb server. If you see Footsore on and mention you saw this post on eqtraders, I can donate to the cause - maybe pass me a nice double-scoop waffle cone with nuts, sprinkles and a cherry sometime.