OMG! How do you all do it???

[TinyDru]

Doh!

Ummmmm, I KNEW about the 3 vendors in PoK that sell them, but, I, ummm, I LIKE the SCENERY in Ice Clad... Yea! That's it! And all those gnomes seem so lonely and cold...

TinyDru <-- moron... ops:

Thanks for the PoK tool box tip - that'll save me a little porting

[kiztent]

Sorry, but MTP are the devil.

HMP does not require as many DIFFERENT subcombines as HMP and as many different bought components. You need to have:

(tools)
File
Cake Round
Dairy Spoon

(storebought)
Mandrake Roots
Small Brick of Ore
Loaf of Bread
Frosting
Barley
Hops
Spices
Water
Bottle
Jumjum Stalk
Lettuce
Fennel
Eucalyptus
Frosting
Rennet
Milk

(farmed/foraged)
Brownie Parts
Fruit
Clump of Dough
Vegetables

Compare the HMP:

(tools)
Dairy spoon
filleting knife

(bought)
benzoin
fennel
bear meat
lion meat
milk
flour

(farmed/foraged)
mammoth meat
wolf meat
clump of dough

Plus MTP are really really really bad about yielding skillups. I've done on the order of 300 and seen maybe 1 or 2 MTP skillups.

[Calabar]

Halas Pies are, without a doubt, a pain to make. I’ve gotten better at organizing things, which really only comes with experience, but there is still one thing that always slows me down. I keep failing on enough of the small combines that I always end up running back and fourth to places I’ve already been to get one or two more of this or that. It really eats into my time. I’ve even tried to buy extra to cover the failures. And of course I end up failing even more and still need to do more running around. *sigh* I’m so looking forward to a better video card so I can go hunting in Jaggedpine.

[Kialya]

A tip for your banking bags

Go to the Bazaar and purchase 10 trader satchels to put in your bank. They hold giant items (halas pie anyone?) they are 10 slot AND they are cheap !
All of my characters have them in the bank.

Cant get much better then that

[Cigarskunk]

I just did my first run at Halas 10 lb. Meat Pies.

It took me 3 hours to get together enough materials for 67 combines!!!

And, I was so tired, I haven't even made the pies yet, all I've done is get ready for the last combines!

LOL - you think that's fun, then try doing MTPs.

[Garulf]

Re: A tip for your banking bags

Go to the Bazaar and purchase 10 trader satchels to put in your bank. They hold giant items (halas pie anyone?) they are 10 slot AND they are cheap !
All of my characters have them in the bank.

Cant get much better then that

While I'd normally agree, Trader's Satchels have one really large drawback, the darn things are NO DROP. An example of why this is bad:

My baking mule (full of various meat, mushrooms, herbs, cream, roots, veggies, etc.) has about 8 satchels in his bank storage, if the components I want to use are in those satchels, I have to xfer them a stack at a time into a tradable container (or hand them to my main 8 at a time in trade window). This is so annoying (and time consuming), I'm seriously considering trashing the trader's satchels on all my characters except my bazaar mule and replacing them with deluxe tool boxes or hand made backpacks.

[TinyDru]

Traders Satchels vs. toolboxes

I actually ran in to the same problem (aside from the fact that the satchels weigh 25lb a piece... - I do all my tradeskilling outside the Bazaar). The toolboxes have made transfers a lot more efficient.

On the subject of Halas pies vs. MTPs - I might be a couple bricks shy of a load here, but I actually find making the MTPs a lot faster than the pies. With a couple of empty mules standing there, I can whip enough components for about 800 attempts in a very short amount of time (hmmm - maybe a couple hours) and then just whip thru the creation of the Picnics. Whenever I have down time I make the annoying things like Steel Bonings for future mass-component producing sessions. Also - since one brownie part = 200 cake slices, it takes very little time in LFay at the brownie camp to farm enough parts for about a billion slices...

-Tiny

[Idana Phoenixfyre]

I have to agree with the mule factor. I have Cupboard, Tailoringvault, etc. They hold nothing but the supplies for whatever madness I'm currently experiencing. When I work on skillups, I take my tradeskiller to a quiet spot and make up enough of each component to fill up one mule backpack of finished pre-last-combine items (ie. one backpack full of marmalade sandwiches, one full of mature cheese, one full of picnic baskets, etc.) THEN I clear the odds and sods off my tradeskiller (that's what her own bank is for) and I proceed to take one stack of each item needed for the final combine for each backpack so that I have eight backpacks full of everything I need to do combines. It takes a bit to organize but it is so much better in the end to just have everything you need to do your final combines in order and in the proper proportions. Plus, you just have to sit there and make each component until a backpack is full, then you stop and fill up the next backpack with the next item, and so on and so on.

Merchant mining is your friend. Always check near brew barrels for folks who are skilling up on jumjum spiced beer. I have one mule full of beer. With any luck I will never have to make it myself. If my luck runs out I'll be taking my mule to the Betty Ford clinic. Any time you find a pre-last-combine component that someone was foolish enough to sell, BUY IT! Clumps of dough are easy to make but what's easier than spending a gold or two for it already made up and not having to farm a newbie area for supplies? The same goes for Halas pie components. I can't tell you how much mammoth meat I have purchased off of vendors. I always feel kinda guilty whacking mammoth calves myself.

Learn how to do chuck wagon cooking. Get your ingredients and while you are medding from chasing different game meat down, fillet up what you have. Take every opportunity to get in a few combines. You're waiting for your guild to gather for a raid. Make some dough. You're waiting for something to spawn make some cream. Believe me, you'll never realize how much time you waste on EQ just sitting around until you start filling it up with tradeskills in the field.

There are as many ways to save time as there are folks like us doing tradeskills. Saving steps and time is key. Just find out what works best for you and make the most of this craziness we call skilling!

Idana :mrgreen:

[Naeron]

Wow, it seems people have a REALLY hard time getting brownie parts, because everything else listed that has to be gathered for MTPs (that can't be store bought) is readily, and cheaply available in the bazaar. In the amount of time it takes me to farm mammoth meat in sufficient quantities to make any substantial quantities of pies, I can have three times that many brownie parts, and be combining like a mad fiend at an oven in PoK.

Considering that I can easily gather all the components for MTPs as fast or faster than I can for HMPs, and that MTPs take roughly 1/5 of the subcombines (regardless of whether or not you have to spend a half an hour to get a couple other skills to a menial <100 level), I still think that HMPs are the devil, and MTPs are a walk in the park in comparison.

[Tenidina]

Picnics are the devil, Pies are the devil, glad I got to 250 already in baking, now I am more picky in what I make. Lately, mainly stick tot he POP baking stuff, but I will do other things on request from my friends.

As for picnics, I am not making them anymore unless someone else does all those annoying inital combines, my clicky finger hurts!

[tatanka7th]

It's all relative

"It took me 3 hours to get together enough materials for 67 combines!!!"

LOL, don't ever try tailoring

Materials for 67 combines in 3 hours would be a world record, hands down!

Tat

[Sebilrazen]

I couldn't agree more with those of you that said MTP are the Devil, incarnate even. I was at 203 doing HMP (from 191 to 203) ran out of mammoth meat, and had some whiny enchanter complain that a lvl 34 druid shouldn't be hunting mammoths in everlost, so I decided to go crazy and go all the way and started making Picnics, at the time my base wis was only 208 :?: but i did get all the way to skill 230 without caving for kei for combines, between shots of kei I made my artisan seal with the help of a Chanter that I was keeping very well funded with my mind candy addiction so when i finally saw the 'You have increased your skill in baking(250)' I popped the spoon and seal in the oven and cried when my cursor stayed empty, but I got it on the second try a day later so it's all good

[kiztent]

Halas Pies are, without a doubt, a pain to make. I’ve gotten better at organizing things, which really only comes with experience, but there is still one thing that always slows me down. I keep failing on enough of the small combines that I always end up running back and fourth to places I’ve already been to get one or two more of this or that.

So do one or two less combines.

I first stock up on enough dough to cover my forseeable needs (say, stack of basalisk eggs, refresh when I get below 2 stacks of dough). I fillet my mammoth and wolf meat, pull spare cream and creamy fennel sauce out of the bank, make enough creamy fennel sauce to cover all the fillets with about a quarter overage for failures (well, I try to end up with less than a stack when I'm done), then make all the creamy fennel fillets. Buy sage to cover the lowest common denominator, combine. Bank extra creamy fennel sauce, cream and one of wolf or mammoth fillets until next run. Of course, I work in thurg where the meat vendor is next to the oven.

[Alyen]

The reasons hat MTPs are better than HMPs are simple

1) Both take 3 ingredients that you can't buy from a vendor BUT, big but, veggies are available in large quantities in the bazaar AND, big and, you only need a few brownie parts to get you thru tons of combines. One brownie part = 20 cakes = 400 slices @ 2 slices per combine = 200 combines. Eggs yeild the same amount of dough for both, but MTPs require far far less dough because the yield for cakes is so high.

2) None of the subcombines for MTPs end up with a yield of one item. Getting one each from the lion/bear meat just stinks.

Basically to make MTPs all you need to do is run to lfay for 5, maybe 10, minutes, the bazaar for a few minutes, hit RV to buy a few stacks of jumjum stalks and then do combines in PoK until you hit 250.

[Mad Baker Hobbitt]

Alyen...

I may be wrong, cuz I am at work.... JumJum cakes have a yield of 10 slices each. Making 50 combines per brownie part.

Not trying to nitpick, I am just thinking about this at work.

Hopperr