Before we start, I'd like to point you to a tool I always use for my bases
The tool was created by the departed Kinniken, and you can download it from a page that's linked from here:
Cordon Bleu
When you have installed it, you will find two files: ingredients.txt and relationships.txt
Both of those files are updated regularly, and you should download the most up-to-date versions of these two files from the page I gave you and save them over the original, older versions
After you have done that, start the application, and you should be ready to go
I will wait a bit to give everybody time to download the relevant files
Another cooking tool well worth a mention is Gada's Cooking Assistant
I won't get into details how to use it today (it's quite easy to use anyway), but keep it in mind for later use
You can download it from Gada's user page:
Cooking Assistant
Now there are two dimensions that are important in cooking: Duration and stats
You usually create a base that provides duration (and a number of servings), then add shrooms and herbs to get the stats
Herbs and shrooms do not act differently from other ingredients in a cooking recipe, other than that the stats they provide tend to be higher
Speaking of stats, there are two pages where you can see what kind of stats certain cooking ingredients give:
BaseEffects has listings of "normal" cooking ingredients, shrooms, and some common herbs
http://herb.atitd.net/ lists all herbs in an easy to use layout
Today, we will create a base, then I will explain how you would add herbs to it
When you cook a meal, every 7 single ingredients make one serving
So if you put 7 onions in the cookpot, you would have one serving,
or if you put in 4 onions and 3 carrots.
If you use just one type of ingredient (like 7 onions), the duration of your meal will be exactly 0.
However, you can combine ingredients to increase or decrease the duration.
Maybe you have already seen some food bases
Typically, they read something like (making something up here) 7 dates, 7 honey, 6 onions, 6 tilapia, 5 cabbage, 4 carrots, etc.
Each ingredient "reacts" with one or two other ingredients, not more
So in the given example, the 7 dates react with the 7 honey
The 7 honey react with the 7 dates to one side, and with the 6 onions on the other
By finding good combinations, you can create a string of ingredients, and each pair of ingredients would provide some positive duration to the meal
All those durations add up, and hopefully give you a high total duration.
This part of cooking is very stable and reliable.
We can measure how pairs of ingredients react with each other (Cooking Research does this), and we can reproduce these durations in any given recipe
The tool Cordon Bleu takes advantage of these known ingredient pairs
Take a look at it - you can add ingredients, and CB calculates the total duration for your meal
There's one question: What happens if you add the ingredients in a different order? - The order in which you add ingredients to a meal doesn't make any difference at all, you can add everything whenever you like
(as long as it's before you press the "Cook" button)
Let's use a simple example in CB
Enter 3 carrots
You can see that CB calculates the duration as 0
Now press the "?" next to the carrots line - CB suggests some ingredients you could add to increase the duration
Abdju seems to be a good one to add in greater or equal amounts
Let's add 4 Abdju
Now your duration goes up to 6 minutes 4 seconds, and you have 1 serving
One interesting thing here: If you use 3 Abdju instead of 4, the duration is 8 minutes and 6 seconds
This is one of the reasons why it's best to add as many ingredients as possible in equal rather than greater or lesser amounts
Let's keep it at 3 Abdju + 3 Carrots, then press the "Sort" button
This sorts the ingredients in the order that the kitchen will assign to them
If you add two ingredients, in equal amounts, the kitchen will assign an order to them
The order determines whether the kitchen will treat ingredient A as "more", or ingredient B as "more"
So in this case, you meal will behave as if you had put in more abdju than carrots
To keep the reaction between Abdju and Carrots with the positive duration, you will now either want to add something above the Abdju or below the Carrots
Press the "?" button next to the "Abdju" and see what's a good ingredient to add in greater amounts
The "or equal" is usually preferable to things that absolutely have to be added in greater amounts
Candidates for this could be garlic, NJ shrooms, or watermelon
Let's go for the garlic, since the other two ingredients might be more difficult to get hold of
It says "or equal", so let's put in 3 garlic, then press the Sort button again
Up to 9:30 minutes now
Is there anything that can be put in in equal amounts above the garlic? Press the "?" next to the garlic to find out
Just Eye of Osiris, which is a bit expensive, so let's check if there's anything that can go below the Carrots in equal amounts
Gunpowder could go there :)
So let's add 3 gunpowder in the tool
14:48 minutes now
And we can still put something below the gunpowder in equal amounts - can anybody see what it is?
Send me a /tell if you have spotted anything
Yes... grilled fish or oxyrynchus :)
Let's put in 3 grilled fish - oxy might be a bit expensive
18:36 now
Below that, you could put a number of herbs or rabbit meat - so 3 rabbit meat it is
That didn't help a lot, but Common Rosemary could still go below that, and that's really easy to find
So add 3 Common Rosemary now
You find that under "Nutrient", not "Primary"
That could be a simple base, lasting 23:44
Not too bad :)
If you really wanted to keep this base for later use, you could save it now... but to be honest, you probably won't want to
Please play around with this tool a bit, using ingredients that are easy for you to get and you don't mind losing
Let's say start with 3 onions, and see if you can make a long lasting recipe with that, using only 2 other ingredients
(2 different ones I mean)
Send me a /tell with your best recipe using 3 onions
One I've found consists of 3 Chromis, 3 Camel Meat, 3 Onions, and lasts 12 minutes 48 seconds
Can anyone find a recipe with a longer duration?
If you have gastronomy 7 or higher, you can see the duration of a recipe in a submenu of your kitchen, so feel free to cook your recipe and verify it
Ahz has found a longer lasting recipe: 3 camel meat, 3 onions, 2 cinnamon, for 13 minutes - nice :)
Samsaki has just told me the same recipe
If you use 3 Camel Meat, 3 Onions, 3 Indigo Damia, you should get 14 minutes 52 seconds
The art in finding your base basically just is to find good combinations of ingredients that don't cost a fortune and maybe push your recipe into the right direction for the stats you want
There's one interesting question here: How does the kitchen determine the order of the ingredients if you add them in same amounts?
There is a list on the wiki where we store the order, as far as we have researched it:
Ingredient Order
Another question: Is duration avatar dependent? No, luckily not, and it does not change over time
How accurate is the time given in CB? Usually it should be exact by the minute - we have eliminated a lot of errors in data collection
However, sometimes, CB will tell you that it does not know what the duration of a given pair of ingredients in your base is
Let's find one of those...
Add 1 Aloe to any recipe you have
(it's a nutrient)
You will see that it still tells you the same duration, but adds that the "interaction between something and Aloe is unknown"
You really want to avoid situations like this, especially if you add the unknown one in an amount that's equal to another ingredient in your base
Imagine that this Aloe comes between two of the other ingredients due to this sorting order - it would destroy the link that you created between these two ingredients, and possibly add a negative duration in both directions
Another question: Is duration dependent on cooking level? No, only stats are
Are there more questions about duration right now?
If not, we will come to stats
That's where things get a bit messier, since the stats that an ingredient can provide change over time
A theory is that the more an ingredient is used in cooking Egypt wide, the lower its stats become
And vice versa
What we know for sure is that the stats do change
What does not change, though, is what kind of stats are affected
So flax seed oil, for example, gives positive endurance
It will always provide positive endurance, but the amount it provides changes
That's why we can't predict the total stats of a given meal
So, what can we do?
We can select ingredients that positively affect the stats we need
Or avoid those that give negative stats
Let's say we want some Endurance food
A "Primary" ingredient to avoid here would be Cabbage Juice
Remember this page: BaseEffects
Cabbage juice is listed as giving quite a lot of negative dexterity and endurance
It's nice for Focus though
Something we would want in an Endurance base could be Flax Seed Oil
And Rabbit Meat, and maybe Oxyrynchus
So you could try to create a base that has a lot of these
Just with Primary and other fully tested ingredients, you won't get overwhelmingly high stats, though
So you will have to add other ingredients, such as high potency herbs
Since we have not tested most of them in ingredient pairs, we don't know what this will do to your duration
So to avoid desaster, you need to be aware of two things:
1. You need to add these unknowns in smaller amounts than the ingredient in your base that has the lowest amount - this is to avoid it splitting up your chain
2. Your total duration will most likely decrease, since most interactions between ingredients give negative durations
So try to create a really long lasting base if you want to add a lot of additional ingredients for higher stats
For the mega I'm helping with, I'm using a base that in itself would provide 85 minutes duration for Endurance
After I have added all the additional herbs and shrooms, the meal is usually between 50 and 60 minutes
The larger your base, the less influence any additives will have both on the duration and stats
So for stats, the art is to find a balance between stats and duration
And to be lucky in your choice of additives, since we don't know the amount of stats they will provide, and we don't know what they will do to the duration :)
Are there any more questions about cooking? Remember, this is beginner level, so you should be able to create some bases and understand how to add untested herbs and shrooms to them...
A question about masterpieces: Masterpieces are not predictable - what we know for certain is that only meals that have positive duration can be masterpieces
Will I do an advanced cooking tutorial? Not sure, I will see what kinds of questions I encounter
Is there any way to participate in food research? Yes!
One thing everybody could do is donate cooking ingredients
We have a guild called "Cooking Research Coordination", a few steps from RSO Chariot Stop
It has a donation chest just in front of it
Ingredients we could use best are almost all types of herbs and shrooms
If you are interested in doing cooking research along these lines yourself, you could join the guild
Please do not apply for guild membership if you don't know how to cook and want to learn cooking - it's really just to coordinate research
We are using a spreadsheet where we fill in the durations of ingredient pairs
Almost any member of the guild can explain how to use the spreadsheet and what to do with it ;)
Testing one new ingredient takes about 150 of that ingredient, a lot of honey, and some of each primary ingredient
You also need Gastronomy 7 or higher to be able to read durations off your kitchen
For an experienced tester, a full test on a new ingredient takes about an hour to 90 minutes
For an inexperienced one, it can be much longer :)
So if you still feel like helping with the research, please feel free to join our guild :)
Thanks for listening, everybody, and feel free to /chat me with any questions that may come up later
(little word of warning: I'm only online on weekends, so may take a while to respond)