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Food Crafting Mechanics

In this section, I cover all of the Artisan and Chef food schematics and what lines need to be experimented on. This Section covers experimentation and how it will effect item's production. Artisan items use artisan experimentation points and Chef schematics use Food experimentation points.

The experimentation categories for food are "Filling " which reduces the amount a food adds to the food or drink stomach, "Flavor" which improves duration, "Nutrition" which increases the buff size, and "Quantity" which increases the number of doses in the stack.

Containers:

Containers are required components for all drinks, but you can use any container in that slot. Each container has a multiplier that gets applied to the base quantity of the drink (which is shown in the Food Chart).

Small Glass: 1x multiplier (base quantity)
Large Glass: 1.5x multiplier
Cask: 3x multiplier
Barrel: Unknown (bugged as of 2/15/04). Suspected to be 5 or 6x multiplier.

The multiplier is applied after any rounding due to experimentation. So if a drink needs to be experimented to 25% to go from 6 to 7 doses, that point is still when additional doses appear, just with the multiplier. With a large glass, that drink would go from 9 to 10 doses (6 * 1.5 = 9, 7 * 1.5 = 10.5, but it gets rounded down). This makes things tricky when using large glasses. The rounding is done twice, so you'll get some jumpy increases, first from 9 to 10 at 25% quantity, then from 10 to 12 at 50% quantity.

The container multiplier also stacks with any BE quantity enhancer. So if you use both a +150 quantity tissue (which gives a 2.5x multiplier) and a cask, the final drink will have 7.5x as many doses as one made with a small glass and without the tissue.

T'illa T'ill is the only exception. This appears to be designed as a single-dose item (although why a 10-15% reduction in the food stomach is considered that powerful is beyond me). This will always come out with a single dose no matter what container or BE tissue you include in it, so stick to small glasses.

Another thing you'll find with containers is that you don't have to use the same factory run of glasses in the final drink. When you make a drink schematic, there is no serial number associated with the container. This means you could do one run of glasses, make a drink schematic, and if you find you've run out of glasses, do up another run of glasses to finish up the run of drinks. You do have to use the same type of container (you can't stick in small glasses and expect it to work in a schematic made with casks), but this should reduce the problem of "short crates" of components left over. It also allows you to do full 1000 unit factory runs of drinks that don't use any other components, since you don't use up one glass making the schematic.

Additives, and Biological Components

Most foods have an optional Additive slot. These are not required, but do add additional benifits to foods. The slots are filled by Additive components, craftable at Domestic Arts IV (Light Additive), Novice Chef (Medium Additive), and Master Chef (Heavy Additive). Each additive is made from water and a "food bio component" created by a Bio-Engineer.

Biological components come in four types, one for each experimentation category. Each type has three sizes: Light, Medium, and Heavy. These sizes match up with the Light/Medium/Heavy additives craftable by chefs. Each component (or tissue) can only be used in an additive of the same size: a Light tissue in a Light additive, Medium tissue in a Medium additive, etc. However, a food can take any additive equal to or smaller than the size of the slot in the schematic. So an Air Cake can only accept a Light Additive. A Veghash can take either a Medium Additive (indicated in its schematic) or a Light Additive. A Breath of Heaven can take a Heavy, Medium, or Light additive.

The stats on the biological components is a percentage increase (or decrease if its for filling) of the filling, duration, buff size, or quantity size you get after experimentation. So if the buff size is normally +200 with 25% experimentation, making that food with a 75 Nutrition additive would make the buff size 200 + 200 * 0.75 = +350 at 25% experimentation. Duration and quantity act the same way (being rounded as necessary). A Filling additive subtracts from the filling, so a normally 40 Filling food with a 35 Filling additive would end up with 40 - 40 * 0.35 = 26 Filling.

Finally, not all foods have all three experimentation categories. Instant-effect foods and foods that trigger once don't have a "Flavor" category. Foods of that type wouldn't benefit from using a "Flavor" additive. Check whether there's actually something for the additive to improve before putting one in.

Item Categories:

Artisan Items:

Artisan Food Components
Artisan Stat Buff Foods
Artisan Skill Enhancement Foods
Artisan Special Effect Foods

Chef Items:

Chef Food Components
Chef Stat Buff Foods
Chef Skill Enhancement Foods
Chef Special Effect foods
Chef Decorative Item Crafting

Chef Item Lists:

Food Listing

Other:

Food and skill buff Effects

Source References