July 15: Food Changes

Once I get the Runemaking tradeskill functioning properly, I'll be turning my attention to Cooking (and brewing).

Currently, the food you consume just before sleeping is pretty random. A few foods have an effect on you upon waking.

I'm going to be changing some things. First (and now available), you can pick which food you want consumed. Just use the Select tool on it and enter pick food. The next time you sleep, that particular piece of food will be consumed. You can still leave it random, if you like.

Second, I will be altering foods a little bit and adding more foods. More complex foods will need to be cooked from basic ingredients...and will have better effects when consumed. Basic foods will remain the same. Food effects last for up to 8 game hours (and still will after these changes).

A few examples:
Grilled Fish (+2 Wisdom)
ingredient: Fish

Cheese Sandwich (+5 temporary hitpoints)
ingredients: wheat bread, cheese

Soup (cold resistance 5)
ingredients: chicken leg, squash, carrot

Once I finish with the additions/changes, I'll post a full list of "recipes" here in the forum.

This new tradeskill will also include brewing of beverages.

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:
Cheese Sandwich (+5 temporary hitpoints)
ingredients: wheat bread, cheese

A very good idea, and one that will be especially fond of! Seriously, a nice way to get little bonuses!
Yay, !

Neat!

Will Granny's Spirit have a cookbook in her inventory after this is all said and done?

MannyJabrielle wrote:Neat!

Will Granny's Spirit have a cookbook in her inventory after this is all said and done?

Good idea.

this could be interesting.

A very good idea! Will Granny open a restaurant soon?

What of making some of the bad effect foods neutral or even beneficial when combined with some others? I know I would like to see some sauteed onions, diced mushrooms and a meat choice become something better than the reason to see a Cleric for healing.

Elhanan wrote:What of making some of the bad effect foods neutral or even beneficial when combined with some others? I know I would like to see some sauteed onions, diced mushrooms and a meat choice become something better than the reason to see a Cleric for healing.

Agreed 100%.

I LOVE onions, especially raw onions... but cooked ones are good too

I will be integrating a couple of tradeskills that have to do with food..."Cooking & Brewing", and "Farming".

Those that want to grow/gather food (farmers) will be able to use two different tools. A blessed farmer's spade will allow planting of food crops (which will quickly become available for harvesting after only 24 game hours of growth). A harvesting tool will allow gathering of food from certain plants. These will be the basis of the farming tradeskill.

Planting will involve using the spade on a food item in inventory that has seeds (such as an apple, corn, or even a pumkin wedge), using that food as a seed source for growing a new plant. Once that plant grows up, food can be harvested from it (each type of plant will have differing amounts of food that can be harvested per game hour, and will survive until the next server reset or until someone destroys the plant).

Cooks (and brewers) will use a magical portable kitchen item for their work in turning basic ingredients and foods into more complex ones with better effects and/or values.

Gathering food from plants will require the use of a harvesting tool...the corn north of the Vale will still be free, as long as you have that tool. For those that don't want to invest in one, you'll be able to purchase many types of food from the town Mill (and food pouches as well, for keeping organized). Cooks will even be able to purchase things like flour and corn meal from the mill (for making pies ).

This will make things a bit more expensive (since corn from a merchant will now cost 1 gp each instead of being free for the taking), but farmers will be able to earn small amounts of money by growing different crops and selling to other PCs or to the mill (or several other merchants).

And yes, once I get these working in-game, I'll make sure to post a section in the FAQ about these and other tradeskill uses.

This all sounds wonderful! I remember that picking food to eat as well as making food were both suggestions in the past.

Anthroplayer wrote:This all sounds wonderful! I remember that picking food to eat as well as making food were both suggestions in the past.

Yup, I wanted to put some use-improvement tradeskills into the game and figured the ideas for cooking would work well. Once I get the harvesting code to work right (yeah, this one's still bugged, and I have company from out of state for the next few days still), I'll get going on the cooking part of dealing with foods.

Is a harvesting tool really needed for all kinds of foods? While understandable with bulk items, it would be nice to pick an apple or other foods that may only drop a single unit.

The harvesting tool is a way for me to run all "harvesting" though a single script by activating a single item (which is faster than the Select tool plus a VC command), with different difficulties based on my own perceptions of how much difficult harvesting that particular food is. An apple, really easy to pick, will have a very low difficulty.

I know it won't be as easy as just clicking on the apple tree, opening its inventory, and taking an apple. However, once all the kinks are worked out, this will eliminate heartbeat scripts entirely from the "refilling" food sources all around Aenea, meaning less work every 6 seconds for the server, so no matter how much players end up planting themselves, it doesn't bog down the server with keeping the plants "ready to harvest". Yes, with the old food plants, the server was running a script for each such plant in the game every round.

Also, you can now destroy food sources (trees, corn, etc), just for the fun of it.

Still working on exactly why the tools aren't working quite right yet...the guy at the mill must be really busy right now.

Harvesting now works. Testing out planting right now (have to wait about 45 minutes to see if my cherry tree grows properly).

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:Also, you can now destroy food sources (trees, corn, etc), just for the fun of it.

Is there xp gain from destroying food sources? Also, can you grow food on any type of land, or will there be specific places to do so?

No xp gained from destroying a plant (maybe a little satisfaction if it isn't producing for you).

You can only plant outdoors and above ground (so plants can get some sunlight). I wouldn't recommend trying to plant anywhere in Icereach or the Calithian Desert. I need to make a change for mushrooms for the next update so they can be planted underground.

For those wondering, there are limits to what different plants produce. I'll give you one example, the rest I'll leave up to players to figure out...

Corn
Daily Limit: 3
Total Limit: 6
- This means that each day, up to 3 corn can be harvested from each corn plant. Once 6 have been harvested from that plant, it will no longer produce.

Other plants have different daily and total limits (most are higher, but corn is cheap and easy to find, and real corn doesn't produce much per plant).

Every plant's "daily limit" is reset at sunrise (7 am).

The Amethyst Dragon wrote:Once I get the Runemaking tradeskill functioning properly, I'll be turning my attention to Cooking (and brewing).

Currently, the food you consume just before sleeping is pretty random. A few foods have an effect on you upon waking.

I'm going to be changing some things. First (and now available), you can pick which food you want consumed. Just use the Select tool on it and enter pick food. The next time you sleep, that particular piece of food will be consumed. You can still leave it random, if you like.

Second, I will be altering foods a little bit and adding more foods. More complex foods will need to be cooked from basic ingredients...and will have better effects when consumed. Basic foods will remain the same. Food effects last for up to 8 game hours (and still will after these changes).

A few examples:
Grilled Fish (+2 Wisdom)
ingredient: Fish

Cheese Sandwich (+5 temporary hitpoints)
ingredients: wheat bread, cheese

Soup (cold resistance 5)
ingredients: chicken leg, squash, carrot

Once I finish with the additions/changes, I'll post a full list of "recipes" here in the forum.

This new tradeskill will also include brewing of beverages.

Beers? Like Goblinwiser, or Orcstel Light?

Flaming Dragon Brew...grants 10 resistance to fire and 20% vunerability to cold...

Just some suggestions.

Goblins don't have anything anyone would drink, but orcs already make something called "orcish rotgut" that some half-orcs grew up on and some masochists sometimes drink.

Or how about Illithid Brain Brew/

Now would that be made with grains, or brains?

Brains. But beware the Goblin Brain Brew. Consuming it lowers your intelligence.

Numchakachu?

Wax on&off brew-gives you mad Karate skills.

The next server reset should bring the Cooking tradeskill into the game.