Long Post: Concerns about Cooking/Butchery

[Emmentaler]

Hello. I'd like to discuss the butchery and cooking re-work.

I read that the goal of the butchery re-work was to prevent high-level players from killing low level mobs for meats. I feel that this hasn't been achieved. For example if a high level player needs venison, currently there are no mobs that you can butcher to recieve higher level venisons. You have to rely on drops from predators. If you bother to go and kill these predators solely for meat, it will take way longer than blasting down low level deer and it only butchers in a 1-1 ratio which has a chance of burning up a crafted or purchased for 240g (I think) meat tenderizer! You are losing money by doing so, not only with the consumable hammer you also lose gold essentially by paying for a transmutation of 1 high level meat to 1 low level meat. It's a lose/lose scenario as opposed to just killing some low level deer. Now if there was a mob that dropped high level venison via butchery, and if you say gained 10 venison per 1 high level venison, it might be worth doing. As it stands its pointless. It's also more inventory bloat and stuff for you to keep track of. Like for example the only advanced meat you can actually get thru butchery is great pork shoulder. Yet recipes have been changed to require new meats that you can't butcher. It's a little silly that when people ask how to get great venison or steak, I have to respond kill kur panthers or gazluk wolves. I'm not against predators dropping prey meat, I've always found it funny, but when it's the sole source its a little bit of a downer.

All the process has currently done is made cooking more of a pain. Most people I know actually eat cheese, fish dishes, ice snacks rather than anything cooked because it's not worth the effort or they can't find the meals being sold for a price they find reasonable. Muntok Peppercorns are really bad for cooking. The general reaction to a muntok peppercorn required recipe is to avoid it. People making money off selling cooked food isn't happening much either. Cheese sells at a decent, still probably a net loss after levelling cheesemaking to that point for a long time, price. Because people understand cheesemaking is difficult to level and it requires stomachs. I'd say its general problem in the community that people will not blink at paying tens of thousands for skills but when you ask them to pay double or triple somethings vendor price because it is not easy to obtain, they balk. As a result, trying to get paid for your effort of providing cooked meals is not going to happen. People are generally not willing to pay for the effort you expend in say getting muntok peppercorns and other hard to farm items like lemons. Time is money and the hour or so it takes you to get 99 bananas is time you could spend farming mobs for gear and phlogs. This is a community issue I admit, but I feel proof that cooking is in a bad spot.

My main concern with cooking is newbies. Newbies tend to pick up cooking as one of their first crafting skills. This used to be a great gameplay introduction, they'd cook food, learn how to craft, start experimenting with gifts and realize, hey people love cooked food and I love the benefits of higher favor! I used to recommend Fainor/Joeh/Marna/Hulon and cooking as a self-realizing loop along with cooking sausage for some meager profits. They'd make some money and learn about the game. Sausage is now 4 gold profit! It used to be like 40 profit a piece! Not crazy money by any means. I find now that most food is now worse to craft for gold. Now newbies level through the first few levels reasonably, but quickly hit a wall and find most recipes require things too expensive or too difficult to get. Not to mention spending several thousand or hundred gold on a recipe they plan to craft once or twice. They get discouraged and an early negative impression of crafting.

The kur work order board is one typically ignored as a result since maybe 5 or so contracts are worth the effort. I'm not saying make it easy, I'm saying make it reasonable. For example, beef and broccoli and baked beets used to be decent money makers. When you compare the time spent to some other moneymaking activity it wasn't especially good. But some people like to garden. Both have been nerfed. I don't think the old recipes were unreasonable. For broccoli, you had to kill lots of cows and also grow the broccoli for a value of 230 a piece. For beets, sure all you had to do was grow them and add a seasoning and you had money. But I don't think anyone was making piles of money off of baked beets at 130 a piece. The other thing is fertilizer or a fertilizer solution such as strange dirt, rotting meat, bones, are not cheap or easy. You still have to farm dirt droppers, bones, cheap meat, pay for strawberries, ETC. Time that could be better spent again, engaging in a more lucrative activity, such as player work orders for low level players or clearing dungeons for others. I personally swore off gardening -> cooking for money the last time I spent like two long play sessions gardening, doing nothing but gardening and growing the max amount of plants simultaneously to make my time more efficient, and came up with maybe 30k in profits. I also used many meats I had stockpiled for the gardening/cooking session.

I understand you have a lot on your plate (ha ha ha) this probably is not high on your priority list. But when cooking is mentioned now I see a lot of negativity in chat, and like I said I've seen many a newbie get soured on crafting early. I don't think it's been overpowered as a money maker in recent memory, and I understand it's a tricky balancing act with the economy. But I feel right now its leaning far too much towards the bad side. I think the easiest fixes would be to change a lot of cooked item values and honestly revert the butchery change or at least tweak it so you gain lots of meat for one high level meat. Otherwise new mobs would have to be added so you can reliably get the high level meats. Which is a lot more work I would imagine, than say, reducing item bloat and making venison just need venison. Also if you don't have the time to mess with these values please reach out to me, I am crazy enough to spend some time looking over every dang cooking recipe and personally re-work them and present you with a list of recommended changes. Despite being that crazy I'm also pretty easygoing so you don't need to worry about me freaking out over criticism or rejections.

To everyone who bothered to read this. thanks for your time. For those who didn't please look below. I like project gorgon a lot and this is a thing that's been bothering me for a while but I haven't felt the need to speak out until the recent changes.

TLDR: High level meats bad. Cooking right now too hard. People sad.

[Arundel]

I have to agree with this. I'd have a few different things to complain about but Emmentaler hits the nail on the head: currently most cooking recipes are not worth the time. There are a few that people focus on (mainly ones without Muntok Peppercorns) because they are fairly reasonable to make either for profit or generally for your own buffs. The current problem with most cooking recipes, and many other recipes in the game, is that some items are about 100x easier to get. We need to have a decent way to get a lot more of the materials - otherwise these recipes are the kind of thing you make once for gourmand, maybe 10 of them for a work order while leveling industry, and that's it. I know it is a hard thing to balance but its an issue for sure.

[Citan]

Thanks for the feedback. Some of these are bugs, such as the lack of higher-level meat sources. Others are things I just need more feedback on to make work better. In the update a month ago, I did my best to spread out resources like Muntok Peppercorns so that they are easier to find. Those now drop off of a ton of monsters -- everything from polar bears to gnashers to reaper spiders and lots in between. If they're still hard to find, my first question is: are you hunting monsters that still drop them? If you are, and the drop rate is too low, I'd love feedback on how to improve the loot tables by removing some things to make room for others. In other words, if a polar bear doesn't drop enough peppercorns, what should it stop dropping so much of to make it work better?

Unfortunately I got almost no feedback about the loot-drop changes, so there were no loot-table adjustments in the latest update. I do have a lot on my plate, so without feedback, I generally have to leave a system alone and work on other stuff. Don't fix what ain't broke, and all that.

The other thing to remember here is that the complexities of the game mean there's lots of manual work involved. For example, I've tried to manually adjust recipes that use cheese-based ingredients to have something else nice going for them, to justify that extra work. But it's an entirely manual process. I may have missed some, not done enough, etc. Saying "high level recipes aren't good enough" doesn't help me fix any recipes. For people skimming this post, let me emphasize that point: Since almost all of the game's content is made by hand, I can't just change a number somewhere to fix all the problems -- I need to know what specifically needs fixing. That may be the value of certain items, the rarity, the potency (when eaten or used), the gifting potential, so on and so forth.

I guess my point here is that specific details make me happy. I can work with specifics. There are some in this post, and I appreciate it! I'll be making some adjustments based on the specifics mentioned here.

[Citan]

An addendum - if anyone reading this wants to help give feedback on these sorts of issues, I'd love that! If you've had some experience with the loot-table changes from last month, and wanted to go down the list of every recipe you know and say how hard/easy it is... that'd be like gold to me.

EDIT: actually you might just wait until after tomorrow, since I've made some food-related changes -- most notably the value of foods -- for tomorrow's hotfix update.

[Emmentaler]

Arundel Thanks for the input, please share if you have some other concerns, discussion is helpful!

Citan
Hey, fantastic to hear from you! Glad you made that edit, I was starting to do a stream of consciousness breakdown on every single cooking recipe. Had just hit the middle of the B's when I hit f5! I'll do it after the update. One minor note if you're doing a hotfix, I read the thing about charged boars in the update tracker, I believe they still give you pork shoulders when butchered. Humongous boars definitely give you great pork shoulders though.

On loot drop feedback, I have actually spent some time killing polar bears in gazluk and killing random things in gazluk in general. For some specific feedback, I think I spent around 2 hours in no-name cave and a couple wandering gazluk and came up with like 8 muntok peppercorns. I've probably spent 4 hours in the wolf caves there too and maybe came up with or two after killing probably around 300 mobs. I'd always assumed they were a global drop off of gazluk mobs and orcs in general. I also spend a lot of time in kur and occasionally come up with one or two per run back to clear my inventory. For muntok peppercorns specifically maybe making them a downright common drop off orcs in kur and gazluk or in lootable bags around their settlements might make them farmable, thus usable.

If there's any more specific info you'd like us to provide, I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be glad to share our experiences. So please, ask away! Things like replacing loot items are a bit tricky since I'd imagine most of us are not entirely sure about the loot tables for each mob. I'll try and pay more attention to figure out what can be switched out.

Thanks for the response. I know you have a lot of work to do and there's a million things going on and I assume most changes are pretty labor intensive.

EDIT: Missed a number.

[Emmentaler]

Alright here it comes, my instant thoughts on every dang recipe in my cookbook.

Apple Juice: Probably a good levelling recipe, but bottle limitation and low value (57) makes it not something you'd want to gift. A low level snack with materials that are reliable to get though, and if you drink it you recycle the main cost (bottle)!
Aromatic Chicken: Coral mushrooms are the hard bit here, they're not easy to farm. I hoard them and have never managed to get over a stack. If you can swing it though the rest of the ingredients are fair enough to get if you're a gardener. Value's fine at 293.
Bacon: Loss of money for a newbie, it's 7g a piece for salt if you buy 5 So 14/g for the salt, and 10 for the meat = -3g in profit, vendors for 21g
Bacon Basket: Recipe's reasonable to assemble, but its efficacy as a food is worse than the easier to assemble sausage and uses similar ingredients. Although its worth a bit more than sausage so might be the one they make to earn a little profit (worth 129g, profit of about 25g). I'd be for bumping the value up a little bit.
Bacon Lover's Omelet: Terrible value. 3 eggs which are not super consistent for farming, bottle of milk which is limited by milking, one piece of midlevel cantal cheese(138g) and two slices of great bacon (176g), it vendors for less than the sum of its parts not mentioning hassle in great bacon/milk worth more than 287 for sure
Baked Beets: Used to be easy and efficient, now the basic vinegar makes it barely profitable at 86g vendor 18g profit not to counting the cost of fertilizer. raise value and it might be a staple again
Baked Potato: Totally fine and simple starte recipe. slight profit of 5g when sold for 16g. doesnt need fertilizer either.
Banana Bread: A good levelling recipe. Bananas are farmable if you put your mind to it, and its pretty reasonable. current vendor value of 229g makes it less attractive. I think this is one people still make to eat at mid levels and spam a bit to level cooking. Value is in a good place, maybe a little higher since bananas are popular for use as a gift or other recipes
Barley Bread: People make this once for the gourmet and probably cringe a little while doing so. With barley in high demand its not a favored recipe. Worth more than sum of its parts at 215g. Also needs milk for extra hassle. Good food efficacy though, if it needed less barley and maybe not the milk i could see it being cooked for consumption by low gourmand folks
Basic Ham Omelet: Worth less than the sum of its parts 178g. sharp cheddar is 163g. Great bacon's 35. Not counting other ingredients even its a loss. Milk again is trouble. I think if it didnt have cheese and a lil more value might be a good midlevel newbie food
Basic Pepperpot: This used to be worth selling if you were doing heavy all-at-once farming. I used to eat a lot of them. Right now its 245g used to be 290g. It's a reasonable recipe for gardeners. Wide range of gardening level ingredients, creates need for all levels of gardening.
BBQ Ribs: Wood is one of the harder resources to farm. It takes a lot of time to gather a big ol pile, so using them to cook is not common. Player work orders for wood are placed faster than they are filled. Especially oak. Oregano too isn't an item that's easy to stockpile. Low spawns in the world and not very common on mobs. If I spend an hour in elt harvesting random things and killing things that aggro me i might have 4. profit of about 83g, 245g value should probably be higher for burning that cedar and oregano. Good food efficacy.
Beachside Blend: I think this recipe is in a good spot. Only thing that makes people not make it is oranges. Oranges are considered precious. They don't have a large spawn area in eltibule and have a fair amount of uses. Difficult to get a stack of oranges. Cinnamon used to be considered pretty hard to get but I think they spawn more in kur and gazluk and maybe even drop more, so now it's considered fine. Not easy to say amass, but reasonable to get if you need it.
Beef and Broccoli: This used to be the reason people grew broccoli. I understand the great steak requirement since it is a high level recipe but since the change nobody makes it. I think the value should be raised to account for the need to butcher a gazluk mob for the meat requirement. Little low at 222. Maybe raise gourmand level + increase buff strength or even level required since you do need to kill the new gazluk oxen for it?
Beets and Meats: I think this is a better fit for its gourmand level than beets and broccoli. Snow deer in kur are reasonable for that tier i feel. I do think the value should be a bit higher for a kur mob and two farmed plants. currently at 213
Beginner's Buttermilk: Funny joke recipe, due to the dairy requirements probably not going to be made more than once for gourmand and cooking bonus xp.
Bitter Mint-Tea: Mint is not the easiest thing to farm. It's not really reliably found anywhere, I've been hoarding it and buying it off used for brewing and I have maybe 40? So this recipe is probably a bit low for the hassle at 171. Although its good efficacy and if mint wasn't hard to collect would probably be consumed more often. Although the sirine hangout requirement is kind of an odd placement for a midrange recipe. Maybe place on yetta?
Bland Baked Chicken: Easy simple levelling recipe. Value's fine at 42. A recipe this easy shouldn't pay well.
Boiled Cabbage: Introductory gardening recipe, one of the first with decent efficacy for a newbie. Value should be raised a little, its currently 10g profit, 36g mat cost to vendor, 46g sell price. With fertilizer it's a loss.
Boiled Crab: Copy/past bland baked chickcen thoughts here.
Boring Fruit Cocktail: Introductory dessert, value low. Profit of 12g, mats vendor for 46g sells for 58g. Not counting strawberry's demand as a fertilizer or alchemy ingredient to players. Good newbie meal though, allows foragers to make some food if they dont want to garden.
Breaded Perch with onions: Difficulty in getting perch notwithstanding, I feel this is recipe is all around in a good spot.
Broccoli Florets: I think this is an interesting recipe, since it requires non combat items, but not easy to get items from different skills. Broccoli and the dairy limited butter. I like that it exists as an alternative to murder for crafters, though I'd raise the value a bit for the butter hassle. Currently 216g.
Buttered Baked Potato: Another butter recipe, currently 71g, I'd probably raise value for butter hassle.
Cabbage Soup: A straightforward gardening recipe. currently 98g. Could probably use a little bump for fertilizer costs but not the most urgent change needed.
Candied Lemons: Lemons aren't the easiest thing to amass, but much better now that you can pick them in ilmari. Honey's tricky since I believe it drops randomly in low %ages off high level mobs, and only stacks to 5. But for your hassle you get a food with good value and food power. Probably better off selling lemons and honey to players for money if you aren't in it for the eatin'
Cat Stew Cup: Low level recipe learned from a high level area. I understand cat meat is her gimmick but I think if this was instead maybe a joeh or other serbule/elt hangout reward it'd be better. Also lose the meat tenderizer requirement. Most low level recipes are only from prey, i think having some predator meat would be a good mix up. I think it'd be a great place for skill and consumption it was changed like I said. The bottle requirement makes it a non seller though.
Cavefish Fillet: Processed Cavefish, nuff said
Cavefish Sticks: I love bacon-like instant food items, but nobody makes this one once beyond gourmand xp. Cavefish aren't easy to amass. If you need a few you know where to get them but the danger of the areas they live in and low spawns mean you can't use em too freely. Maybe a new ice fishing recipe might be in order to be able to farm them? Other than that value's not great for your hassle, 227x2 for the cavefish, high level gardens, wood chips, and seaweed = not worth your time.
Cheesy Baked Potato: at 117g, worth less than the low level cheese required to make it vendors for (133g)
Cheesy Veggie Delight: This is the first cheese-having recipe I've looked at and gold value and thought yeah alright. Ignoring the 1k-1.2k cost of a stomach from a player for a cheese of course, I think you can find mild cheddar in the world. I might actually make this for selling if I found some more.
Chicken and Broccoli: at 174x2 i think this is one of the better valued recipes for its hassle. I think if you cut out one broccoli it'd be spot on. You burn an oregano and a cedar chip which is yr hassle, but you make decent money. If it wasn't 2 broccoli i think people might actually make this for a spot of dough.
Chicken Casserole: at 360 for 6 veggies and a meat I think it's a fair price. 2 carrots (high gardening, fertilizer) 1 squash(mid gardening, fertilizer) and 3 low level non fertilizer. seems reasonable. cut to 1 carrot to make it something people might make a lot of for some scratch.
Chicken Drumstick: 67 for a chicken, wood chip and 24g worth of seasoning, i think if it yielded 2 drumsticks per chicken (like real life) it'd be good value, as it stands its a pretty good snack but it'd be hard to make an argument for not selling that oak instead
Chicken Psi-Mantis Style: Totally fine lowbie skilling up recipe, and even snacking. Value's fine too not counting fertilizer.
Chuma's Agave Secret: Cactus juice is in high demand for brewing right now, but i think this is a recipe you might want to make for personal consumption. Kind of a hassle with the milk and extra bottles makes it not something you'd vendor even though the value is good, milkprice notwithstanding. Anything with milk is just hard to work with since you can't hoard it due to non-stacking and are limited hourly. Cows might chow down on this though.
Clownfish Fillet: Processed Clownfish, nuff said
Cottage Pie: Worth less than the sum of its parts to vendor, 192, needs a cheese and some butter which always means unpopular.
Crab Meat: Processed Crab, nuff said
Crab Roll: I like that this uses flatbread, I think its interesting to re-use other finished cooking products. But with a lemon and butter (which make absolute perfect sense IRL) it's not one that you're gonna make a lot. It's a strong food which is a shame, I think if you cut the butter or the lemon, both if you want to make it popular, it'd be good value. If not, value raise is in order. currently 243g
Desert Tea: First muntok recipe on the list. I haven't spent time in Gazluk since the change, so I won't talk about muntok. If muntok is better, I think this recipe will be in a great spot. It's cool to me that it requires not easy to amass products from two high level regions. I think if muntoks are better I might be making this regularly since I'm not a cheeselord yet. You wouldn't sell it though, because bottle and lowish value at 223
Eel Fillet: Processed Eel, nuff said
Flatbread: Woah this is free money, currently its 36 for mats, 55 to vendor. 19g profit for items you can entirely buy off a vendor. It's extremely tedious but this is potentially infinite free money. I reported it as a bug when i noticed.
>>SIDENOTE Just noticed sugar costs only 1.4g a piece in a 5 stack, so some above math might be a little off. I assumed it was the same cost as flour and salt for some reason. My bad.
Fried banana: 130g. If you got butter and bananas to burn this is one you might spam for levelling. Butter makes it not that profitable though.
Fried Clownfish: Hey, intro fish/cooking recipe. Totally fine.
Fried Crab: Unique recipe here, i think it's fun. Lotta mats, yields 3. Milk's there sure but you get 3 portions at 71 for your milk. Again a loss if you count milkprice, but good value if you don't.
Fried Spider leg: I think this recipe's in a good spot all round. Oregano's gonna be the limiting factor here. I think its cool to cook monster bits you typically use for other things.
Fruit Cocktail: Orange limits you here. Value's real bad at 86, you'd be better off selling your oranges and strawberries to players at that price. If value was better might get sold. As it stands young players are too hungry for money typically to actually eat the fruits of their labor (sorry bad joke) so it probably doesn't get made too often. If oranges were more attainable and value was better I think this might be one people eat and sell a lot of. I actually like running around harvesting nodes so pure foraging recipes were things I made a lot of as a newbie. Or maybe just raise value a bit and 86 orange.
Fruity Mushy: I think this needs maybe like 50g more in value. Other than that, orange limits you again. If oranges were easier to attain i think this would be a popular food item for eating. Could also replace orange with like an apple or grape or something.
Furpot: I belive this is actually one people eat on the regular. I've always avoided it for the milk but I could see how for personal consumption its reasonable. Kill some yetis, kill some sheep, milk a few cows and you've got 4 hours worth of good food. Can't imagine selling it at current value + bottle though. Can I also add here that I love the inscrutable intelligence? That was a really fun find when I first explored the yeti cave. The mini repeatable quest it does too I did like crazy when I discovered it. One of my favorite death lines too.
Glazed Beets: Butter is the weakness here. How bout you make it a fruit based glaze? Like an apple or a grape? We don't see too many fruit + vegetable combos. It'd be nice to have more vegan stuff. I think value could stay at 104 if its a grape or apple instead of butter.
Grapefish and Eggs: I think this needs a bit more value. You're better off making grapefruit steaks and boiled eggs separate. If it was around when I was a newbie I bet I would have eaten a lot of these though.
Grapefish Filet: Processed Grapfish, nuff said.
Grapefruit Steak: Hey another early fish+cookin recipe. Nice. Just nice.
Great Bacon: Bacon's big bro, awwwright! Fantastic. Who doesnt love better bacon?
Grilled Chicken: For this recipe's level I think I'd recommend maple instead of cedar if you want to stick to a wood. 139x2 is not bad value for the two hassle ingredients, but I think if it was a little higher it'd be acceptable for the two hassles. Good efficacy but not for the hassle at its level.
Guava Beet Muffins: I think a little more value and this'd be in a great spot.
Guava Bowl: Orange holds you back here. Other than that I think it's fine.
Hard Boiled Egg: Low level totally fine use them eggos!
Hash browns: Barely worth more than the value of its parts: 58 mat price, 67g vendor price. Classic low level food combo of the first two garden veggies.
Honey Ham: Totally fine low level starter food. The start of a lifelong relationship between cooking skill and pigs.
Hydration Punch: Coral mushroom is ironically the hard part to get here, not the mantis tail. I think if you replaced the coral mushroom with lemons, you'd have a cool purely ilmari drink that's not easy to make but worth it.
Kraken Calamari: Hey our first peppercorn recipe. Peppercorns in theory should be harder than oregano to get, since they don't have a ground harvest, but for some reason as a person who hordes both I have a lot more peppercorn. Maybe it just has a higher drop rate? Anyhow the lemon is the problem here even though it makes total irl sense (seafood + lemon = yum). Maybe pare it down to one lemon?
Laura's Cheese Biscuit: Hahaha, this recipe is kind of a running gag in global since it requires 3 cheeses and a butter. Ignoring stomach costs for cheese this is actually pretty decent value since it makes 3. usually when one person makes one for themself and either sells the excess for a fair amount or gives it to friends.
Laura's Cheesy Beets: See above.
Laura's Crab Biscuits: I think this needs a slight boost in value for the butter, but after that it'd be good.
Lemonade: Not good value since lemons are expensive to players and oranges are hard to find. Maybe cut the orange and/or set lemons to 2?
Lemon-Glazed Chicken: Not good value because lemons. But it's called lemon glaze chicken so you gotta have some lemon. Maybe just boost the value significantly?
Mantis Stuffed Mushroom: Wood + mushroom + higher level gardening = a lotta hassle for little payoff. Maybe change the recipe to just two types of mushroom (parasol/mycena/field) and 2 mantis claws? I think if you did that it'd be good value and a refreshing new type of meal that uses only monster bits and mushrooms. I'd like to see more mushroom recipes in general.
Maple Carrots: Change to just butter and maybe add a spice like oregano or cinnamon + raise value a bit or raise value for the hassle of sweet butter? You know the more I talk about butter the more I think butter is important for food in general but man just held back by the milk and cheese thing. Maybe the butter recipe should yield more butter to make it more usable in cooking?
>>>SIDENOTE just had big butter thought. It would change a lot of butter complaints. Make butter crafts yield more butter so its easier to get a good amount of and actually use in cooking? Maybe butter uses one milk and yields 5 butter? I think 20 butter an hour would mean people would actually not be afraid to cook with butter regularly. or make milk stackable thus hoardable.
Maple Shark: definitely not worth your time right now, remove muntok peppercorn (save for higher level recipes i feel) add a spice like cinnamon or oregano instead and maybe cut a maple chip? Definitely raise value regardless though, 171 too low for shark and wood and spice.
Molasses: Haven't gotten into brewin yet but this looks like a processing recipe so nothing to say really.
Mountain Mutton: These midlevel cheese cookeries are pretty brutal. It's good it yields two though. I think if you switched to A. a cheeses that yields whey like neufchatel or B. some non cheese hassleish item like cinnamon oregano or a wood chip it'd be better.
Mushroom Barley Soup: Barley is a hard sell to cook with. I like the blushers are in I feel they aren't too useful. Maybe cut barley to 2? Not a vendorer because of bottle requirement.
Mystery Jerky: love the concept, but not worth more than vendor price. Also oak chips are a hard sell. But jerky needs to be dried for sure. Maybe up value?
Onion Blossom: Good low level stuff
Onion cubes: Gotta admit, was never too big on onion/potato processing. I'm against bloat in general and I feel an onion or potato would do fine instead of a 1:1 processed item. With fish though I'm totally cool, maybe because I feel I'm admiring my big catch or something haha, the scales are useful so they're like a bonus.
Onion rings: Who doesnt love onion rings? Low level recipe, totally fine. Not gonna be a moneymaker but hey its level 5 give it a break
Onion slices: see: onion cubes except its 2:1?
Orange Cat: Again I know this is Nishika's deal but I'd love to see this recipe at a lower level and minus the tenderizer. Or alternatively, use a stronger cat meat and keep it the way it is recipe wise just raise the food efficacy.
Orange Juice: probably the winner of least crafted juice but hey its orange juice not much to say. Cut to 2 oranges for sake of mercy?
Orange Perch: Probably another not commonly crafted recipe. Cut down to one onion or maybe double yield? Raise value or double yield imo. I think double yield for wood chip is a good general rule.
Orcish Eel: Almonds, Pears and Peaches are SUPER rare imo. I think we were talking about biggest stack of each once and the biggest we saw of any was 27. Switch out cottage cheese maybe? If almonds become farmable then this could be a good recipe with some wood chips or spice instead of cheese. Maybe a thematic use of muntok peppercorns!
Orcish Onion Soup: Sour Cream still needs to sit in a cave in a barrel I think? So not gonna be popular there. Value's good aside from that I think. Maybe boost for hassle.
Orcish Snack Plate: Honey, Almonds, Cottage Cheese. I'd definitely raise value here, maybe triple yield as well? Stomach value notwithstanding I think it'd be good then.
Peasants Pie: I like this recipe because it's nice and simple and needs predator meats, value's poor though for 3 low veggies and 3 cheap meats. Boost it up and it'd be a good low level staple.
Pepper Venison: Replace butter with cinnamon for a nice high level bacon-style snack.
Perch Fillet: Perch processing, nuff said
Perfectly Baked Potato: Nice little low level recipe that almost nobody has haha, I once asked how to get it because of a work order and nobody had any clue. Jesina Hangout!
Poached Egg: If eggs were around when I was a lowbie I think I would have snacked on these a lot. With the peppercorn requirement though I dont think i'd vendor them unless the price was bumped up a bit. currently 66.
Potato cubes: please see onion cubes for my thoughts re 1:1 processing recipes that aint fish
Potato Wedges: hey gotta have fries, totally fine low level recipe
Pumpkin Soup: Never played PG during halloween for some reason, maybe my obsession with PG is seasonal? Gourmand xp only recipe I'd imagine.
Raw Egg Blend: This cracked me up, holistic wellness is fun.
Sausage: Oh how I used to love ye. I used to tell newbies to level cooking for favor and get some money and lots of favor off this. The extra pork shoulder is a bit of a downer, I think either raise the value or remove the extra pork shoulder and slightly raise value and newbies will be back to murdering pigs and deer for profit. currently 79, used to be 88
Scrambled egg: Same as poached egg basically, minus one salt and a water. Weaker food efficacy than poached. Not really sure what to add to diffrentiate without taking it in a different direction from its simple roots as a plain food.
Shark and Crab Kebabs: Feel these are in a good spot.
Shark Chew: Interested to get in on these with muntok changes. Can't really say much until I spend more time in gazluk.
Shark Fillet: Hey shark processing.
Shephard's Pie: Lot of ingredients, butter. Raise value a bit? Maybe remove peppercorn?
Shroom feast: I'd like to switch out milk for something a bit lower level. I don't think milk mushrooms are particularly farmable right now. I like blood in there, they need more uses, I like blusher in there, maybe a lowbie like parasol? I think that'd be a nice fit. Make some all around demands for various mushroom tiers, lower middle and upper.
Slightly Sub-Par Fruit Cocktail: I believe this is the most easily craftable of the bunch so far, but as with the rest undervalued. Forage < Gardening for raw item production by its very nature.
Soft-Boiled egg: Hey more eggs, low level, do-able, great.
Spicy Cavefish: I think cut down a lemon and it's reasonable. If we want to stay true to the flavor text of lots of lemon maybe add another cave fish and double yield?
Spicy Chicken: I like this recipe conceptually, I'm psyched for new mushrooms like porcini so I'm biased. I also like the juxtaposition of the humble chicken with mighty high level mushrooms, high level red peppers, and muntok peppercorns. Not easy to make though since you gotta hang in gazluk caves for the shrooms. Maybe make them grow in certain spots in the world in gazluk? I havent been in the keep so maybe they are in there. That'd be reasonable. Oh yeah fair value I feel.
Spicy Lemon Cat: Hey the high level version. I'm cool with basically everything about this.
Squash Soup: I believe this used to not need butter, it was a pretty decent spam recipe. I think if you removed butter and for once lowered the value a bit it'd be in a good place.
Strawberry bowl: a criminal use of strawberries! naw its not that bad but high level players like em for rotten meat. I'd raise value a little since I don't find that many in the overworld. Maybe I should turn off grass again.
Stuffed Bell Pepper: Hey mushroom recipe and high level meat, I'm into it. Thing is as I said elsewhere I personally have a lot of trouble farming milk mushrooms. I think blood would be a good replacement since you can find it in kur reasonably and its a higher level recipe.
Stuffed squash: All round good lookin here
Sun Vale Tea: A nice little lowbie recipe. Nice like tea.
Super Fishy Surprise: Hey I'm down with this. Maybe cut down potatoes a bit? 4 seems a bit much for 3 different fish as well. Maybe yield 2 instead?
Ur-Bacon: used to be oak I believe, some folks were really into spamming, as a crazed crafter I always saved my oaks for other things, like firkins. Many saddened by change. IMO, you get it in kur, its a kur recipe, i think cedar makes sense. Though I would cut down to 1 chip.
Vegan Nut Barley Bread: Hey, milkless! I forgot this existed when reviewing barley bread. I think I'd raise it in food efficacy and gourmand level because almonds are a gazluk deal. Maybe cut down on the barley.
Vegetable Masterpiece: Totally cool with everything about this. Big ol pile of veggies heck yes.
Venison Jerky: 2 oak chips for 1 jerky seems a bit much, cut it down to one and we're golden.
Venison Psi Mantis Style: Cut the milk maybe? yeah I think cut milk and value's fine, low level anyhow.
Venison Roast: cut down to one oak wood chip and i think it's fine
Weird Fruit Cocktail: Raise value like the rest of em, its 115g right now for four foraged fruit is a bit low. orange.
Wolfsbane Muffin: I believe it yields 2, less than the sum of its parts vendored still. 40x2 when mats are 98g. Raise value.
Yeti Stick: Hey its a snack now! Cool. Raise value a bit? 2 cheaps 1 great venison, 1 large spider leg, 1 blusher for 158 aint great. I think it'll start getting eaten a lot though now.

Hey that's all my recipes and my thoughts on em, stream of consciousness style. Hope it is in some way helpful.

Here are some points that came up frequently on item scarcity or difficulty

1. Oranges: Hard to amass. Not a lot of spawns in elt. Nothing drops them much either. Spread spawns all accross elt instead of just hogans? Spread to serbule or south serbule as well maybe?
2. Oregano: I believe it drops off of random elt/kur beasties and can also be found on the ground in elt. Also not the easiest or most consistent thing to amass. I feel like SV is a good model for forageables. It's not falling out of the sky but there's a lot of them and if you apply yourself you can get a few stacks in a few hours. I'm not sure that would apply to many other forageables.
3. Mint: Not easy to find in general. It's not used by much anyway right now so it's not a huge deal. Some brewers might be boned though, I believe I read its a random seed per character so if you get a good booze behind mint you might be out of luck since I believe its a random drop off elt-kur beats, but not commonly. Maybe add a forageable? Maybe in sun vale to mix things up?
4. Almonds, Pears, Peaches: Not too commonly used in cooking, but the fruit are in brewing. Same deal as mint w/r/t random seed. Really low drop rates off gazluk beasts right now. As I said earlier we were comparing stacks and the biggest anyone had on at the time was a 27 stack of pears. I assume forageables in gazluk are in the works.
5. Milk: Milk is currently not really hoardable since you can't stack it. It's also got the cooldown per cow of an hour (not counting player cows). There's a little industry for cheesemakers to pay people to bring in 4 milk for 1200g or so. It's good for the newbies and a good way of dealing with the milk stacking situation. The way it is right now though any recipe with milk becomes verboten for most people since its better used for other things. I know you've probably heard this a million times I just have to mention it when I'm talking about how milk is used in a traditionally less valued craft like cooking. I have made my peace with how milk works and stacks a long time ago.
6. Butter: When most lowbies see a butter recipe they ask where to get butter, get it explained and usually give up on that recipe completely. I think maybe if Braigon gave out the recipe early through a quest or something and as I mentioned above, butter yielded a lot more per craft it would help with the butter situation.
7. Wood: Wood is an immensely useful foragable. Because of its foragable nature, on the one hand you can get it when you need it but on the other its hard to amass giant piles of wood. I think the most wood I ever had was when I was levelling mining and spent hours in kur gathering everything in sight and getting silver until iridium. Even then I think I only gained like 3 stacks or so. Work orders for wood go up far faster than they are filled. It's used for so many things. Oak is the worst offender, I think the new changes to apples are really cool and good to help but as it stands oak doesnt spawn in enough areas. One corner of serb and occasionally in elt. I think maple is the most common wood because it spawns in kur and elt. People used to recommend farming I think fey panthers and kur panthers if you wanted lots of wood back when I last played a lot, simply because of the nature of foraging. It's a really massive change to recommend here, but maybe increase wood yield? Anyhow I just wanted to explain how I as a player, and I assume not the only player, feel about wood. Because of this, cooking which is seen as not that important compared to things like gear and making gold, is considered kind of a waste of wood when wood chips are in a recipe. This is why I mention wood in a recipe as a hassle.
8. Bottle recipes: Any recipe that is in a bottle is automatically almost anti-vendor because people dont like spending 45,50, or 100 gold if in serb and in a hurry on a bottle. If you dont get it back it's anti-profitable.
9. Lemons: Definitely in a better place, ilmari plants rule! It is however a higher level areas and higher level players time is valuable. The spawns are pretty sparse so it is a pretty valuble food item. Again if you need a few you know where to get it and can now (thanks for lemon trees seriously) but amassing it is usually not worth your time as a player who can reach ilmari. Hence people sell them if they get a few or throw them in the bank and sell when they get a stack. I feel cooking is often done in bulk, so lemons are essentially an anti-bulk cooking ingredient. I think the solution here would be to either increase tree spawns or make trees give you more lemons.
10. Honey: Stacks in 5 which hurts hoardability, I believe only reliably drops in labs? Since I've been playing again I've kept every honey I found and I think I have like 13? Another rare ingredient in my books.
11. Peppercorns: I think because these aren't used too much I feel like I don't have a problem with hoarding them. I assume if anything they'd be worse to hoard than say oregano since they dont have a forageable. I think I actually probably get most of mine bought off used tabs. That could be why I have a fair amount of them.
12. Cheese: Cheese needs rennet. Rennet costs a stomach. Players pay 1,000-1,200 for a stomach. So in theory all cheese costs at least that much. In execution, as I said in the first post people are loath to spend more than double vendor price for item regardless of anything like time spent/hassle. Community issue, not yours. But I mention it every time cheese comes up because in theory to produce cheese that's what it costs at least. In reality I think a cheese is worth less than a stomach unless its a high level cheese because it has been used to skill up at a low-mid level thus holds less value than a potential high level cheese which a stomach represents.
13. Eggs: Eggs are item that currently have a unique method to obtain. I believe the only reason right now eggs have little to no value is because they don't have much of a use beyond low level cooking. My wager is that you're going to need them in baking then their value will skyrocket and honestly I believe it will be hard to satisfy demand. Chickens have to not be killed and ignored to lay a good pile of eggs. It's a unique production method and pretty interesting imo. But not as reliable as say murdering a legion of panthers or running around sun vale collecting fruit. I think if I asked for say 4000 eggs and offered a million gold, nobody would be able to claim my million gold for quite some time. I think people would loot their storage for a few stacks of eggs and maybe put them together and get half of the amount, but if people tried to collect lots all of a sudden it would not go well. I'm totally cool with all this I only mention it becuase I grade eggs as a sort of inconsistent item to attain. Right now they have no value so I can put up a work order for 99 eggs for a thousand and get it filled quick, or buy lots off used tabs, but I believe when egg demand happens, they will not be so easy to attain.
14. Fertilizer: One has to consider the cost of fertilizer with gardening. Strange dirt requires farming, either of skeletons or myconian caves or skulls/femurs to bone dust. That's time. What's more popular these days is rotten meat. The main thing here is the strawberries and the potatoes to rot them. I think most people buy cheap meat from used for this purpose. So all these items cost time, time is money, thus value not only to vendors but to players who dont want to spend time on grinding weak things.

VALUE:
I mention gold values going up generally, I'm not trying to get giant piles of gold for no work. I feel you have so many options in project gorgon, why bother with cooking? I believe a lot of decisions in project gorgon revolve around gold. As we all know time is money, and higher level player's time is more money because they have spent time becoming more skilled. So their time must always be weighted against say, why spend an hour doing this for profit when I could get more profit doing something else? And currently cooking is almost always a wrong decision. Even for lowbies their time is better spent surveying for work orders or gaining combat skill so they can go elsewhere in the world. My value judgements are from looking at an item and instinctively thinking: Is that worth my time? I'm not a super high level player, I've played on and off, and been legacied every time I come back to play seriously so I'm still trying to work my way up to being super geared for high end content. I don't do much group content because I want to pull my weight and am undergeared. I also spend a lot of time crafting and levelling crafting skills because I honestly enjoy doing so. That's my context. I'm not looking for free piles of money, I'm looking for a reason to justify cooking or gardening or butchering when I know I could do more profitable activities. I'm also trying to channel the mindset of when I was a lowbie and did garden/cook for money often before I had other options. I don't feel cooking should be super lucrative piles of cash but I feel it should be at least worth your time invested and money spent on recipes. Cooking to sell to players is kind of a bum deal since as I've mentioned we've got that odd but extremely common value based on vendor price, not player effort or rarity. I used to see one stall selling food items regularly. A couple days ago I saw their tag line had changed to closed due to cooking changes. They would sell the very easy recipes for meager profits. Baked beets, Sausages, Beef and Broccoli, Squash Soup, some fish stuff, ETC. Only a few items transcend this vendor item value system; poetry books and to a lesser extent cheese. So I feel vendor price is pretty important. So you can actually make money from your cooking.

Anyway hope this was somewhat useful for you. I just looked over my recipes and typed my thoughts stream of consciousness. Appreciate your time if you end up reading this whole dang thing.

[Hoxard]

I have some experiences that I think might be relevant to this as well.
A while back I managed to get a front room stall, and I decided to use it to sell food and flower arrangements. To fit with the gardening theme, I figured I would stick to vegetarian foods and offer a wide range of options for people of varying levels.
My initial menu included
Hiral's Citrus Blend
Banana Bread
Lemonade
Guava Beet Muffin
Squash Soup
Weird Fruit Cocktail
Baked Beets
Cabbage Soup

It took me a day or two to decide that this was too difficult and expensive to maintain, so I kicked out the more difficult recipes and simplified it to this
(The citrus blend only stayed on there because I was using it as my food at the time. I had plans to switch it out for Vegetable Masterpiece, but I lost the stall before I learned the recipe.)
Hiral's Citrus Blend - 950c
Banana Bread - 450c
Guava Beet Muffin - 300c
Baked Beets - 150c

This menu worked pretty great. The guava beets were my main seller, followed by banana bread, then baked beets. I don't think I ever had to restock the citrus blends for the whole week or so I ran the shop. Guava beets and banana bread on the other hand, had to be restocked daily and I eventually expanded to two stacks of each and still would run low each day.
I got a pretty good profit from the store while I had it, but in the end I don't think it was worth the effort involved and I doubt I would do it again.
The main hurdle was pricing. In order to profit from selling food to other players, you need to find people who are willing to buy food, offer food of the appropriate level for them(which typically means low, since anyone with high gourmand got there by leveling cooking), make sure that farming the materials to make that food won't drive you insane, and then offer that food at a price that customers are willing to pay and you are willing to sell at. That last one is the most difficult by far. It needs to be above face value, otherwise there's no need to sell to other players, vendors will do just fine. It also needs to be below twice face value, because every food vendor in the world has a stockpile of a few billion banana breads and baked beets just waiting for someone to buy used, and while used food is good for world hunger, it's bad for the food business. In top of all that, it also needs to be greater than the sum of the raw materials, which instantly throws out well over half the foods in the game. The only foods that can be created in commercial quantities and sold for fair prices are banana bread, guava beet muffins, baked beets and vegetable masterpieces(I think beef and broccoli and stuffed squash also work, but as I do not condone cannibalism I did not do as much research on meat meals.)

Personally I think anything requiring dairy products or rare drops like honey or almonds is immediately relegated to the "make exactly once for gourmand exp, then pretend the recipe doesn't exist" pile. Followed closely are things requiring fish or wood chips, which are both an absolute pain to get in large quantities, which makes recipes using them rarely worth making more than once(Sushi is an exception to this though, the 2 for 2 fillet>roll ratio makes it work fine for personal use. Commercial production would probably be more trouble than it's worth though). Fruit and meat tend to be the limiting factors in recipes where they're present, but they're by no means a deterrent, unless it's lemons or oranges, which are both extremely undervalued compared to the effort to gather them. Vegetables are the easiest ingredients by far, beaten only by storebought ingredients like water or salt, which don't even really count.

I think cooking could definitely use a dedicated balance overhaul, maybe alongside cheesemaking's planned overhaul. I think one way to help balance cooking is to have different recipes make different amounts of food. The more difficult a recipe is, the more servings it could make, so sure that one takes a manticore tail tip, but you get 5 servings out of it so there's a reason to consider it over the one that just uses a bunch of vegetables.
Another thing I think is important to help with balance is to have all foods fit into a tier, I.E. level 5 foods, level 10 foods, level 15 foods, etc. with none of these weird outliers at level 7 or 13. Those outliers complicate things an awful lot and don't really seem to add much.
Oh also, niche diets like vegan and vegetarian are pretty much completely nonviable. There's huge level gaps between suitable recipes, and even if you add some more to fill those gaps, gourmand requirements make sure that the only way to advance is to drop your diet. Makes me glad I'm not a cow.
Gourmand leveling is another thing that really needs to be rebalanced. To call the current system broken is an understatement. If food is ever intended to be a profitable business, the gourmand grind needs to be nerfed to hell, because right now even if you level all food production skills and try every recipe available, you'll still be forced to just grind those +1s each time you eat to reach the next tier.


tl;dr cooking and its related skills need work(sushi and ice seem fine though, I've maxed sushi but I haven't done ice yet). they're too expensive and difficult and not really profitable outside personal use. gourmand in particular is totally broken and needs to be reimagined from scratch. consider making cooking more orderly and using serving sizes to help with balancing. increase face value(or decrease production cost) of foods across the board so player to player selling can be viable.
(I think that covers everything)

[Crissa]

Fried Crab comes up in the work orders.

I don't think a work order that needs 120 of some searched item is reasonable at all. That's like, finding and grabbing all the crabs everywhere.

...Trying to eat vegetarian, I'll note that buttered vegetables (like buttered baked potato) were considered non-vegetarian by Marna. So I'd been skittish of others.

[Emmentaler]

Hey Hoxard, thanks for the input. It's great to get another person's perspective and the fact that we mention a lot of the same points (Availability of citrus, fish, wood, hassle ingredients) makes me glad to know I'm not alone in this. Your perspective as a shopkeeper I think is also useful for the conversation. You also bring up what I consider would be a pretty simple solution to a lot of difficult recipe woes. Making food recipes in general yield more food. I think that's a fantastic general fix along with a value increase. You also make a great point bout food tiers. I also agree they can be a little funky and some standardization could definitely be in order. For vegetarianism/veganism I've only tried them at already higher levels of gourmand, I never considered levelling with the restriction. That definitely does not seem easy to do.

Crissa Fried crab yields 3, so you actually just need 48 to complete the work order.

[Tagamogi]

Followed closely are things requiring fish or wood chips, which are both an absolute pain to get in large quantities, which makes recipes using them rarely worth making more than once(Sushi is an exception to this though, the 2 for 2 fillet>roll ratio makes it work fine for personal use.

I rather like fish recipes actually - I'd rather plop down a couple ice fishing traps in Kur and forget about them than spend my time growing cabbages. Admittedly, the yield from ice fishing may not be enough to actually supply a full-time fish food shop.

[Citan]

Thanks for the info, that's great! If others want to chime in, now's a great time to do so.

[Crissa]

Crissa Fried crab yields 3, so you actually just need 48 to complete the work order.Oh! The recipe doesn't say that. Still alot of crabs. I got to like 32 before I decided to take a break as I'd picked all the crab in Serbule.

I don't think it's even possible to level with a dietary restriction. First off, there aren't enough foods. Secondly... The moment you try something that's not, bam, you failed. How would you know from the descriptions?

Maybe we need a 'taste' Lore recipe for gaining Gourmand and finding out if something is vegan/etc. It could work like Autopsy and lead us to know how many other recipes exist in the world or something.

[Dragone]

Just want to point out players vendors that sold food have pretty much disappeared, not sure how many people relied on them and the aftermath of this.

[Hood]

During the weekend all the food gets bought off both player and npc vendors alike due to the larger playing population.
Crissa buttered vegetables are vegetarian but not vegan. There was an update that made adjusted it to real life.

To everyone in this thread, great work helping fix a difficult skill to balance. Emmentaler I'm impressed

[Khaylara]

Really detailed post, thanks Emmentaler for writing it. I did read but I don't have much to add except 2 small things

-muntok peppercorns-I wrote a lot of reports on those but now I have decent amounts of them thanks to GK drops. That seems to be the main source of muntok peppercorns but one needs to consistently run GK to get them
-what Emmentaler said about a dish costing way less than the sum of the ingredients is true and imho we should report it as bug every time we notice that in a recipe. Even the face value of the ingredients is higher, not to mention the market value of said ingredients (especially with cheese)

[Arundel]

I wanted to add that it would be very helpful to get a method of gardening/farming that is like Ice Fishing but for gardening. Many other MMO's have gone this route, but lets say Cabbage that takes an hour to grow but you use the items in advance and can leave it. Or Beets that take 4 hours to grow, same thing. I'm not sure on the exact method but many of us are very weary of gardening, due to the lack of interaction with the world, but want the items from it. Ice Fishing was a great alternative for me for getting Perch reliably, and I think a long-growth style of gardening could help the economy a lot.

[snowe]

1. Profitability: The Serbule innkeeper should serve as a limited reseller of prepared player foods and drink by consignment. The purpose behind this is to enable new players to sell items created to other PCs prior to overcoming the considerable barrier to player stall vendoring. The NPC to model this consignment after would be joeh (though consignment would be limited to prepared foods and drink in this case).

2. Storage: The Serbule innkeeper should serve as a limited storage NPC for cooking-related components. The purpose behind this is to ameliorate the lack of storage available to players early on. The NPC to model this storage after would once again be joeh (though storage would be limited to cooking-related components in this case).

3. Recipes: More cooking recipes (particularly early tier recipes) should be awarded as a side product of 'Do Favor' and 'Hang Out' completions with various innkepers. New players shouldn't spend every council they farm buying recipes from the Serbule innkeeper, and if they don't many of the cooking-related components they've collected will go unused. This issue is compounded by the inefficient means to sell off surplus components (see point 1) and the insufficient item storage early on (see point 2).

4. Stomach drops should be more common, or (preferably) recipes requiring a stomach (ex. various rennet) should have higher yields per stomach.

5. Jars of milk should stack, and player cows should be able to flag themselves to allow milking without being prompted by a pop-up window. (Also give player cows minor 'cow' skill line experience for being milked, particularly if no flagging option is added?)

[DamageIncorp]

I just wanted to comment on the comparison of Ur-Bacon vs. Great Bacon. Ur-Bacon requires 2 cedar wood chips (so one cedar log since a log yields 2 chips), a femur, a salt, and 1 pork shoulder. It has a gourmand requirement of 15 and refills 200 hp and 50 power.
Great Bacon requires 1 great pork shoulder and 2 salt. It has a gourmand requirement of 20.
The ingredients in Ur-Bacon are arguably harder to come by so my suggestion is to flip flop the gourmand and cooking level requirements and bonuses since great pork shoulder can be gathered in sun vale quite readily. Or give Ur-bacon a slight edge bonus wise..perhaps 240 and 60.

[Citan]

I wanted to say thanks again for the feedback here, especially Emmentaler's extremely detailed per-recipe suggestions. I've been working to reduce some of the resource problems mentioned here (for instance, the lack of coral mushrooms is hopefully reduced via Mushroom Farming), and some of the recipe-specific suggestions will find their way into the game in the next update! (Others are waiting on more resource-changes that will be coming in future updates.)