Newbie tips revisited - BakingFollow

Following some of the variable advice handed out in some recent threads I thought I'd publish this log section as a warning to newbies expecting to feed themselves

Recipe Fish Rolls
1 Batwing
1 Fresh Fish



That is 21 failures for 1 success. And I started at skill 46! It is an excellent way to skill up but as a means of "saving money and feeding yourself" it is totally impractical.

This is a melee character. One with high INT/WIS might skill faster but their success rate would be similar.

And note the first line.
You must succeed first before the new interface can be used. Before that you are doing things the old way. With the pottery it took me over 60 combines to get one success and start doing it with the new interface.

I agree completely about not trying to feed yourself with recipies that trivial 100 points above your skill.

The reason I recommend fish rolls for skilling up is it requires no farmed or foraged components so it can be done in one sitting with just a simple cash outlay and a lot of clicking. That makes it far faster than any other way to gain skill.

You will gain skill points with fewer combines working with recipies that trivial much closer to your skill but with many of them you are limited by the speed at which you can aquire components.

Candied spider might be a good choice if you can find a bunch of spider legs on a merchant but that can sometimes be a hassle. Farming them yourself will be a major timesink when you consider how many you will actually need.

Cookies require clumps of dough which takes eggs. Eggs can be farmed but since they are used in much higher skill recipies many players hang on to them rather than dump them on a vendor. Once you can effectively farm basilisks in Lavastorm Mountains this recipie becomes a lot easier. Looted basilisk eggs make 15 clumps of dough each so it can be done reasonably quickly.

Totally agree Cattywumpus.

I was using it to skill up because both items are on vendors by the pool in PoK within a few paces of each other. Just like I did the Batwing Crunchies in EC to get to 46.

It is a good way to gain skill but not the thing to do with your looted batwings and fished fresh fish in the expectation of saving money and feeding yourself as was suggested in a recent thread.

Until you "learn" a recipe you must open your tradeskill container in the "Experiment" mode. (Just open it and press the experiment button). This does mean taking out all the old rubbish you have stored there.

Do the combines the old fashioned way taking one item of each ingredient and placing them into the container unstacked, then hit Combine. As soon as you succeed in making the recipe you will get a message like the one in the log above saying "you have learned the recipe for XXXX" (No not the Australian beer).

You can then type in a part of the name and find it on "Search Recipes". I usually add it to favourites then to save typing and searching every time I want to make it.

Note that this does not work with most quest combines except the Abysmal Sea ones. Since most are only done once this doesn't matter. I must try making some Thurg potions and see if the vial recipe is "learnable".

Yes that was "revealed" by a programmer at the recent Fan Faire (March/April was it). Until then it was generally held that chance of skill-up had no bearing on chance of success. With this info it makes sense to do things with a Geerlok and stay within reasonable range.

However there are some skills like Pottery where success is a nuisance in the first stages. I skilled on Small Bowl (triv 102) because I only destroy the unfired bowls and this takes more mouse movement than reclicking the Combine button. As you approach trivial then you get more and more success.

Vegetables are used in Several Recipes.

In the second part of your question you touch on the true zen of Tradeskilling. Because...

Some foods even at lower levels will give added stats. Some of the ones possible with high skill levels (or more correctly economic at high skill levels - you could make a Misty Thicket Picnic at skill 1 but I dread to think of the failure rate) have very good stats and people buy them to boost those stats.

However you make a lot of not terribly exciting stuff on the way. At least Fish Rolls last longer than normal rations.

Cobra101 said:

Not to mention being a terrific consistant seller at bazaar. There have been some nights where I sold more than a satchel full and nothing else!

I've even considered standing around near the *monk academy* with backpacks full of the things and hawking my wares!

And yet, a couple of nights ago I did 100 (five stacks) combines of Beer battered Cragbeast Steaks with a gearlocked skill of 217 and didn't get a single skill up.

Thankfully the end product is very nice.

Heh, 100 combines sounds like nothing doesn't it, except for the 300 sub combines you have to do first!

This would be my advice for baking newbies. Get a stack of platinum and bake with it.

Level up to 15 before making a single combine. Then get your adventurer's stone at the wayfarer's camp, and head over to the Abysmal Sea. You get there by telling the magus "Nedaria's Landing", and porting to Nedaria's; then tell the magus there "Abysmal Sea".

Find Ordin Wheasley on the boat. Exit the room you port into, and head to the little shack across from these three doors. Ordin will give you a mini-quest where you combine around 500 things and end up with a 46 skill in baking. The oven is in an odd place - it's outside against the wall opposite the door you enter Ordin's room from (the north wall).

Now I believe the skill cap on baking is still (level+1)*5. So keep that in mind - don't try and get to 135 skill at level 15.

Now, buy fresh fish and bat wings. You can buy them right there where Ordin is They are cheap - 1 silver or so each. Combine all you need until your skill is 135. You'll fail a lot, but you can buy all the stuff you need cheap. If you need to bank, the bank is pretty much below you; the stairs are near the entrance to Ordin's room.

Once you have 135 skill the next thing is patty melts. Once again, you can buy all the stuff you need right there in Ordin's room. Dray Curves sells the cheese, while Ordin sells everything else. Patty melts aren't quite as cheap, the meat will cost about 1 gold with the other components being 1 silver or so. You can sell back the patty melts to the merchants if the cost (or inventory space) is an issue - the merchants will pay close to the cost of ingredients. I sold all of mine since I still had a ton of fish rolls.

Patty melts take you to 191. To go higher will require some crazy recipes. I'm trying to get to 207 with beer-battered tuna and crab. The entire recipe can be done with stuff from the Abysmal Sea; do some fishing, then buy a ton of stuff from the merchants. The trick is it's not cheap - one of the ingredients, cup of sugar, I buy for 6 gp and change at my pathetic charisma level. And I, just like Illuien, ran through 100 combines of this stuff with no skillups, costing 70+ plat :( . But apparently that's just the way it is at skill level 190ish - you get very few skillups.

My EQ Journal

fish rolls are 136 or some thing trivial so thats why your not getting any success.


k



thx

I could not have put it better myself.

I have a fillet knife I use to make fillets out of the meats that drop. They trivial around 143 or so and you don't have to carry anything else with you since the knife is returned on a failure. My 26 mage has got his baking upto 64 in about 4 sessions of farming in East Karana. You won't feed your self like this, until you get around 100 or so, but it's not very expensive either.