Cooking, the rocket science of Zalanthas

[Good Gortok]

Cooking is extremely difficult on Armageddon. You need to "train" your cooking skill for a long time before you can reliably do the simplest things, and the only reason it is at all usable by a new character is the fact that the most basic recipies tend to yield some result even when failing. Sure, you can sustain yourself on travel cakes, but give a ranger a slab of meat and he's probably utterly incapable of cooking it if he doesn't have at least half a dozen days of playtime on him.

I think that rudimentary cooking, such as grilling meat or baking simple forms of bread or anything that requires only one component, should be much easier. Sure, we don't have electric ovens and cast iron frying pans, but cooking meat by a fire really isn't that hard. And I imagine that the average Zalanthan would be much more likely to have some ability in that regard than the average Earthling. Leave the comlicated dishes hard to do, noone needs Flame Cheese or Elf Fingers in order to survive. It'll make a skilled cook no less impressive and an unskilled cook much less pathetic.

I just grow really tired of burning the first 300 pieces of meat I attempt when I make a new character.

[FantasyWriter]

Tools.

[a strange shadow]

Tools aside, I agree with Good Gortok.

Someone who has been cooking for most of their life should not still be burning a simple steak to a charred crisp.

[SMuz]

Tools.

> hold torch
> craft steak into grilled

Hmm.. still becomes a charred crisp.

[Bushranger]

I would just like to see some modification to the results for low end cooking. Not a change in difficulty or a bump in the skill. Just change the end result so that instead of burning meat to an almost inedibly burned crisp have it returned as a charred piece of meat. Still edible and able to sustain a person, but not cooked to perfection - it is a little tough and there are a few burned pieces around the edges so it is obviously not cooked by a chef, but it is also not the nuclear meltdown now produced. It's the difference between going to a good steak restaurant and visiting your mother-in-law's place for a steak.

From what I see most people watch meat like a hawk while attempting to cook it, and having it burnt so completely makes little sense.

[Synthesis]

If cooking successfully were made easier, the prices merchants pay for cooked items should be reduced proportionally, I think.

[AmandaGreathouse]

emote Sliding from ~branch as it suddenly catches in the flames, @ watches ~mass fall into the flames with a scowl.

'(frowning) Great, I'm not goin' in there after a tiny hunk of meat, no fuckin' thank you.

junk mass (as the flames consume the meat) [charring it into oblivion]

[Synthesis]

You can still eat charred masses, and they will eventually fill you up.  From what I've seen, there aren't many recipes that result in complete failure without some kind of edible result.

[FantasyWriter]

Tools aside, I agree that all guilds should be given a higher starting skill in cooking.

[AmandaGreathouse]

True, I just imagine any kinda situation that could burn a slab of meat so badly so quickly you didn't notic until if was too late was the kinda situation that made a person weight their options: shitty-tasting burned ass meat which I've got to retrieve somehow from HOT ass flames, or... this sack of roots and mushrooms and mosses. Fuck that burned ass meat. The fire's so hungry, the fire can have it. heh, that's just my take.

But I seriously back the idea of making cooking less destructive with the simpler recipes.

[SMuz]

I've always assumed that without metal, your choice of cooking would be limited to tossing a piece of meat over/next to a direct fire. It'll likely char half of the meat to a crisp, while leaving the other half still raw. So, um, yeah, a torch should be a valid tool

[Riev]

I've always assumed that without metal, your choice of cooking would be limited to tossing a piece of meat over/next to a direct fire. It'll likely char half of the meat to a crisp, while leaving the other half still raw. So, um, yeah, a torch should be a valid tool

What, no tinfoil?


Besides, you could totally make a "grill" out of bone, and if you're using one of these mythical grills, you shouldn't be charring meat at all.

[tortall]

I've always assumed that without metal, your choice of cooking would be limited to tossing a piece of meat over/next to a direct fire. It'll likely char half of the meat to a crisp, while leaving the other half still raw. So, um, yeah, a torch should be a valid tool

What, no tinfoil?


Besides, you could totally make a "grill" out of bone, and if you're using one of these mythical grills, you shouldn't be charring meat at all.

There is nothing mythical about them. I know a place where there is currently THREE.

And you WILL still burn meat on them. Think about it. You leave it on there too long? Yeah. Totally burnt. But I don't think burning nearly everything nearly every time is where most people would start.... imo.

[Solifugid]

I've always assumed that without metal, your choice of cooking would be limited to tossing a piece of meat over/next to a direct fire. It'll likely char half of the meat to a crisp, while leaving the other half still raw. So, um, yeah, a torch should be a valid tool

Just on the off-chance you were serious, metal is not even remotely a necessary requirement for cooking. People have been preparing food for thousands of years with all manner of substances, including but not limited to clay, stone, bone, shell, wood, soil...

[Fathi]

Not gonna bother posting any of my previous rants on the subject.

Cooking simple recipes is way, way, way too hard and it stays that way no matter how long your PCs live.

(Also, the failure messages for curing and drying meat are stupid.)

[a strange shadow]

Not gonna bother posting any of my previous rants on the subject.

Cooking simple recipes is way, way, way too hard and it stays that way no matter how long your PCs live.

(Also, the failure messages for curing and drying meat are stupid.)

I'd be willing to write up new failure messages/objects if it'd help get that changed.

[BuNutzCola]

Failure for a lot of things are stupid.

I'm sitting at a table, with a bandage spread out , on the table, before me.

Yet all those fuckers end up in the dirt. Once in a while I'll emote them sticking to my fingers as I pull away or something...but really should be something more open-ended.....the salve not being thick enough or whatever have you.

But yeah, I worked in the fine dining industry for ten years before the Navy, and eh, I dropped food maybe six times, handling way more often than most people do.

[Thorg]

Slight derail, but on the topic of "simple recipes":

It'd be nifty if you got a boost in your ability to cook certain dishes (simple dishes) depending on where you choose to start the game. So an 'nakki would be able to cook a decent scrab steak and a Tuluki could stew some tregil livers (or whatever they do up there). Just a one off slight boost and a list of what simple stuff you should know, to help newbies get fed and to ease "hard simple dishes" woe.

[Maso]

Cooking simple recipes is way, way, way too hard and it stays that way no matter how long your PCs live.

(Also, the failure messages for curing and drying meat are stupid.)

[Northlander]

I recently Idea'd that the shriveled mass of meat could have another sdesc and make you more full, and I'm reviving this topic. It's quite outrageous.

[Comrade Canadia]

Chiming in here as well. Perhaps a solution which has mediocre cooks result in a smaller, less filling portion that's still not a horrible, disgusting mess of doom?

"You manage to overcook the meat."
"The meat is dry, leathery, and has little flavour."

Much more realistic result, since this is how most mediocre cooks end up making their food.

[Lizzie]

Burning food has got to be the #1 most inefficient waste of attempt to skill bump that I have ever had the misfortune of experiencing game code in my entire life. Watching 100 pieces of raw meat be reduced to 3 pieces of edible food by your clannies, thus basically forcing them to go out and overhunt JUST so that they can feed themselves, is stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid to the extreme, stupid enough that we should just all give up and decide that in Zalanthas, COOKED meat is out of fashion and RAW meat is healthier, tastier, and more filling.

I hate the cooking code, I avoid it like the plague, because I don't need my clannies to starve just because I have to practice my skill and ruin 2 RL week's worth of the hunters' work in a single RL day, in order to actually succeed in cooking something edible.

My characters will either eat raw, or eat whatever the coded cook provides. Whatever is most readily available.

[Morgenes]

Thanks for the ideas folks.  I have put this up for a staff member to take under their belt and do, with myself overseeing the changes.  We'll work on improving the experience of cooking.

[Lizzie]

Thank Tek for great and small favors throughout the known world and beyond.

MORGENES & CO TO THE RESCUE!

Save The Roasted Scrab Strip!

Up With Braised Gortok With Pickled Beets!

Join The Cooking Revolution!

JUST SAY NO TO BURNT MASSES!

[AmandaGreathouse]

Morgenes.... that is one of the most awesome things I've heard in the last week. Thank you!

Also, yay, I love cooking, I've disliked the current system for a while, but man it's gonna be great not to go through 4-5 carru worth of meat to make a steak!