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.