Subtitle: How to be a Succulent Wild Baker
Tired of eating black bread, and summoned water? Do you long for something more luscious and tasty than those dry iron rations? Wouldn't adventuring be less of a drag if you didn't have to munch on boring rabbitmeat and celery sticks between battles? Look no further than Chef Prat'sguide to beginners of the culinary arts.
For those who need a valid reason before investing their time and
hard- earned plat in a skill, here's what I've come up with...
1. Baking won't break your bank like smithing or jewelcraft
2. Many components are readily available items that you probably
sell back to a vendor or destroy anyway
3. Baked food is extremely lightweight
4. Baking in the field gives you something to do while medding or
resting
5. Peering into your backpack and seeing a well balanced meal of
fruit pie and wolf meat sandwiches is very comforting
6. Your friends and guildmates will laugh out loud when you give
them odd foods that they've never seen before
7. Some food items are used for quests
8. You can cater to weddings, birthdays, and other events
9. You can kill your enemies and eat them too! Mmm.. blackened
Teir'dal
10. In the next patch, a famine will cause vendors to run out of
food, forcing all players to turn to you for nourishment and driving the
prices of your cooked goods sky high. You will be rich and famous!
Okay, well maybe not.. but we bakers can dream.
Now, first things first. Invest in a spit. They're sold at vendors that carry all the non-armor molds. I purchased mine from merchant Uaylain in Kelethin. Having a spit will save you lots of time, since as far as I can tell, anything you can make in the oven you can cook in your portable spit instead. No travelling, no downtime, instant food. Also, your spit doubles as a 6 slot backpack, the only real drawback being that tempting combine button. Take care not to accidentally bake all your fine steel loot into oblivion.
Hint: If you have the resources, deck yourself out in bonus wisdom and bonus intelligence equipment. This will improve both your success, and skill improvement rates. It is not required by any means, but recommended for the frugal adventurer.
Next, go up to your guildmaster and let him or her know that you want to learn how to bake. One nice thing about those guildmasters is they know EVERYTHING, from baking, to falling off cliffs, to obscure languages. Damn I envy them. Spend a few practice sessions with them learning the basics. I recommend at least 5 points, possibly 10 if you aren't the patient type.
Kelethin had horrible supplies for making food, so I made the move to Freeport and found it to be a beginner chef's dream. There are readily available animal meats of different kinds, fish, and baking supplies nearby in East Commons. You'll want to start cooking with something easy, so I recommend edible goo and rat / wolf sandwiches. For edible goo, relieve a fire beetle of his eye and a rat of his ear and combine both in the spit. Giant rat ears will not work. For rat or wolf sandwiches, combine the appropriate meat with store bought bread in the spit. The cheapest way to do both of the above, is to harvest your own items. The QUICKEST way to do this is to go to a vendor just inside the East Freeport gate or West Freeport gate and buy all their meat. I hit the jackpot and found over 60 rat meats at one shopkeeper, and trivialled on rat sandwiches (at 26) in no time. Wolf and bear meat trivial shortly thereafter.
When you need to upgrade to something to improve your skill, start working on beer-braised meat, meat on a stick, and rabbit / fish stew. Many bakers pass up on the meat on a stick and soup recipies because they think it requires you to use a skewers or pot every time. Simply not true! So long as you don't have an unfortunate (these items do not combine in these quantities) accident, you only ever need ONE skewers or pot. They are reuseable components. Check at or near blacksmithing vendors, as smiths make and sell these things by the wagonload to improve their skill. Also, start stocking up on spices, and jugs of sauces from your nearby bakery salesman. For meat on a stick, put your rat / wolf / etc in the spit along with the skewers, a jug of sauces, and spices. Beer braised meat requires the meat, a short beer, and spices. Brewers can manufacture the short beer, but you're probably just better off buying it from a bar.Rabbit stew uses foraged rabbit meat, water, and the pot. Fish soup uses a fresh fish, jug of sauces, water, and a pot. Work on this for a variety of different yummy foods, and don't forget to check vendors for your components. Fish soup, in particular, can be created using only store bought items. Halas and Freeport vendors have unlimited fish, sauce jugs and water are unlimited in stores, and you need just the one pot.
Once you are looking for a more challenging dish, move onto spider leg crunchies and fish rolls. The crunchies use a spider leg, spices, and frosting. Take care not to use spiderling legs. This will trivial relatively quickly (80), but fish rolls will take you well over skill 100. For fish rolls, combine a bat wing and fresh fish in your spit. Do not try making these until your skill is above 70 and perhaps above 80.. as you will fail often and skill improvements will be few and far inbetween. The good news is that bat wings are found in unlimited amounts in a storein East Commons, and fish are unlimited in the locations I mentioned earlier.
Look to baked goods such as pies when your skill maxes out on fish rolls.
That's the end to this guide on cooking. You may find a quicker or moreefficient way to become a master chef, but this guide will help you to make a variety of different and interesting dishes on your way to the top.
Pratbons Dur'Gun of the Karana server.