Remaking Provisioning

Valmond

Ok, i know i am not the only one who finds provisioning to be a mess.
And i suspect i would not be the only one who would love to be more user friendly.
So here is my suggestion on how to remake Provisioning, to make it more user friendly while not loosing any of the richness it provides.

First, scrap the recipes, completely, no more, none of that.
Make persons ability to cook a given dish constrained only by their provisioning skill (and skill points used).
Make it work like Alchemy.
You pick one item (base) that decides the level of the dish (stock. flour, oil, etc...), second item (ingredient) decides the dish, and what it increases/restores.
Higher level would allow you to add a 3rd item (seasoning/spice?) that would let you make blue food types.
Purple foods could require specific base items that are either expensive to buy (gold sink), or only drop from difficult mobs (gal bladder of a mammoth? Trolls stomach? Wamasu liver?).

In addition there would be specific item combinations, that would form "recipes" of racial type dishes (made from items found only in the races home areas), these recipes would give a slightly better food items than any old food item, and you could learn them either through experimentation, reading books found in the world, or being of the race that dish belongs to.

Beverages would work in the same way, except with different base and ingredient items (seasonings/spices would be shared).

nudel

Actually, I quite like Provisioning as it is. It's my favorite profession. I don't want it to be a copycat of Alchemy, even though I like Alchemy as well. The reason I like crafting in this game is because all the professions are not clones of each other like in other games.

The idea of eliminating the need for recipes is not a new concept to these forums. It's also not a balanced one. The recipes are the only real defining point of rarity for Provisioning. Provisioning is easy to level by design and its ingredients are easy to find by design. These are balanced by the rarity of the recipes which can utilize those skills and ingredients. By comparison, Alchemy's rarity is defined more by the moderate difficulty of coming by specific ingredients. With Alchemy, you often need to trade for reagents as there is competition for nodes. Provisioning mats have no competition and are instanced to the player. So essentially you want an incredibly easy form of Alchemy that can be leveled to 50 in only a few hours with a constant supply of materials and no other limitations. That sounds....incredibly...boring.

LadyLothi

^This.
Provisioning has a few weak point, but the recipes are actually the fun part of it. It always gives me a little bit of a thrill to find a new recipe or a rare ingredient.

However, there are maybe one or two things that would be nice:

- Have a skill that gives you some sort of "cooking chest" or "ingredient pack" so you can lug around a few more of the ingredients. With different ingredients for the alliances, provisioning is THE most space intensive craft in the game. As little as 5 additional spaces just for ingredients would be immensely helpful. I have already specialized in only making food and not taking brewing ingredients, I have the more rare stuff in my bank and the ingredients for lower level food sorted out completely, but it still takes up considerable space, because you just have to take that one single pile of pepper or that one single piece of garlic with you if you find it.

- Make it clearer what the hireling is good for. As far as I've heard, it only provides you with stuff you can just as easily obtain yourself and not even with recipes. Rumor has it that the hireling can get you one or two ingredients that you cannot find otherwise, but as of now nothing can convince me that a skill point in provision hireling is a point well spent.

Valmond

If these changes are put into effect, levelling speed could be adjusted (currently it is fast, i hit 50 in provisioning when i was level 30) to be more in line with easier time to get ingredients.
As it is now, there is no skill involved, nor would there be in my suggested method, but what there would be is user friendliness and less mindlesly opening bazillion containers in the hopes of finding a tomato.

What i aim to do is to reduce inventory bloat from useless ingredients, make it easier to make yourself a meal, and avoid to annoyance of not being able to use 9 out of 10 food item you find, just because you are not of the faction that uses them.

Also, i disagree with your statement that provisioning ingredients are easy to find.
Because you need very specific items for specific recipes, and not all ingredients drop in all areas (becomes a real issue in vr areas), makes finding the ingredients, that you need, lot harder than finding almost any other ingredient (not counting tempers, resins and tannins or higher rank aspect runes)

nudel

You won't find tomatoes in normal containers. The Provisioning hireling is the only source of tomatoes and oats and they only come from that hireling upon putting 2 skill points into it.

You can use the ingredients that come from other factions if you have the recipe.

If you're finding it difficult to find Provisioning ingredients then you are simply not looking in the right places. Unlike the smithing professions wherein you can just farm whatever node happens to be in your area and move up to the next area to get its node, Provisioning requires you to be more attentive when looting. It does follow a similar principle in that lower lvl ingredients drop in lower lvl zones. However it also follows the principle that other faction ingredients drop in areas where those factions are present. Rare (if you can call them that) additives drop everywhere and it is your job as the Provisioner to distinguish what is actually rare and worth keeping and what is not really rare and can be left behind. If you have autoloot on and you're trying to save everything, then you're doing it wrong.

I like that there are so many ingredients. When I'm looting a dungeon, every sack and barrel and crate can have something different in them, which is a lot more fun than having them all be empty or full of lockpicks. This is not a 'loot all the things to win' game. This is loot sensibly to win game. If you can't manage that, then you're in for a world of frustration. But that is not the game's fault.

Valmond

nudel wrote: »

You won't find tomatoes in normal containers. The Provisioning hireling is the only source of tomatoes and oats and they only come from that hireling upon putting 2 skill points into it.

Was using tomato as an example, could replace it with flour (of any specific kind), salt, potato or a plump worm and point would stand.

nudel wrote: »

You can use the ingredients that come from other factions if you have the recipe.

But i can't get a recipe unless i roll an alt of that faction (or buy from someone who has, and all in my guild are in same faction).

nudel wrote: »

If you're finding it difficult to find Provisioning ingredients then you are simply not looking in the right places. Unlike the smithing professions wherein you can just farm whatever node happens to be in your area and move up to the next area to get its node, Provisioning requires you to be more attentive when looting. It does follow a similar principle in that lower lvl ingredients drop in lower lvl zones. However it also follows the principle that other faction ingredients drop in areas where those factions are present. Rare (if you can call them that) additives drop everywhere and it is your job as the Provisioner to distinguish what is actually rare and worth keeping and what is not really rare and can be left behind. If you have autoloot on and you're trying to save everything, then you're doing it wrong.

Provisioning does not require you to be more attentive, it just demands you loot every crate and then go through your inventory to throw out useless crap (90% of the ingredient drops), as it is, i have to go to zones i am not playing in, just to open containers, in order to get ingredients for foods of my level.
My job? i thought i was playing a game, not working...
Provisioning is not difficult, challenging or hard.
It is tedious.
My suggested changes are there in order to make it more flexible, and more fun.

As for provisioner themselves picking and choosing what to keep and what to throw away, well, if i could review my recipes while in a dungeon, i might actually agree with that.
Also, my suggestion would not change that because you still would end up with overabundance of mats, now you just could use all of them.

nudel wrote: »

I like that there are so many ingredients. When I'm looting a dungeon, every sack and barrel and crate can have something different in them, which is a lot more fun than having them all be empty or full of lockpicks. This is not a 'loot all the things to win' game. This is loot sensibly to win game. If you can't manage that, then you're in for a world of frustration. But that is not the game's fault.

I also like that there are so many ingredients.
What i hate that most of them are utterly useless to me, either because they are wrong level, or wrong faction.

knaveofengland

its quite a challenge to find some the the mats and recipes if its to easy then we all be doing it , can be a pain at times but its ok

Dragonheart013

I don't see how it's hard to remember which ingredients to keep...?
Per faction, per 'tier' of recipes (which includes 2 level range's worth, except for the first tier which has more), you only need 10 inventory slots for all the green recipes. Blue ones add some more, and then purple recipes a bit more than that.

For example, I'm currently in the Pact's 3rd zone. So I can find the ingredients for the level 30 and 35 recipes (convenient, as I happen to be level 35). So for the green recipes, all I need to keep are River Grapes, Ash Millet, Lado Grapes, Oat Mash, and Caramalt for the beverages, and Chaurus Meat, Frog Legs, Suet, Sifted Flour, and Stock for the foods. That's only 10 ingredients, and you find them *everywhere*. So if you keep some in your inventory, then when you're looting a barrel, if you see that you already have several of that ingredient in your inventory, you know it's one you want to keep.

However, in Shadowfen, there are several areas where the Dominion are present, and you can find their ingredients there. Took me a while to realize that, and then I worked out which ones to not bother keeping.

Only change I would like to make to provisioning would be the ability to craft multiples at a time... So if I have enough ingredients to craft 50 of one recipe, then I'd like to either do it in one go, or not have each one take so long. I quite easily get half a stack or so of each of those 10 ingredients before I go cook... And can easily make 3k or so in gold from selling that.

On a side note, in talking about how easy it is to level, I think I hit provisioning 50 sometime between level 15 and 20... It's ludicrously easy to level...

Valmond

We may have a different concept of "challenge".
If the challenge was something like "Kill that Mammoth" or "Climb that mountain", sure.
But the challenge of Provisioning is "Open 100+ crates".
Which i don't really find challenging.

knaveofengland

I think some players are trying to get all the recipes in order I did try but have by passed many of them ,I am in 3 guilds and no one had and recipes or mats to buy from them, so it take me longer lvl 30 at the mo, but have got 2 alts to lvl 28 for the hirelings 2 more to go. so perhaps just use what you have it can be a pain at times but it is easy

Shimizu

I don't think that the recipes are what is wrong with provisioning.
I think its the ingredients and gathering thereof, and the completely random nature of doing so. I mean, why is there a jar of pig's milk in an old burnt barrel? (And would you really want to drink it?)

You can't really set out to get anything specific due to the variety of stuff you can get out of any particular box in any particular zone. Also most of the stuff you do get, you can't use for one reason or another as pointed out above, and because the inventory system is so broken/clunky/limited picking up everything you find is just not sustainable.

I'm not suggesting reducing recipes or removing ingredients, but perhaps changing a few things around and adding intermediate steps.

The problem is you can get pretty much any of these in any box in any zone with minimal consideration seemingly to level, tier, or use as far as where you find stuff. (There are some current limits, I have found items used for lvl 1 recipes in veteran zones, however, in level 1 zones you'd mostly find lvl 1/5 items only).

Considering you begin the game with 60 inventory spaces and assuming you're not levelling any other craft, you're still left with the need to have room for:

Meal Milled Flour Sifted Flour Cake Flour Baker's Flour Imperial Flour Drippings Cooking Fat Suet Lard Fatback Pinguis Stock Jus Glace Viande Imperial Stock Brown Malt Amber Malt Caramalt Wheat MaltGolden Malt White Malt Corn Mash Wheat Mash Oat Mash Barnley Mash Golden Mash Rice Mash Wine Grapes Grasa Grapes lado Grapes Camaralet Grapes Emperor Grapes
Ribier Grapes Red Wheat Barley Oats Hallertau Hops Hops Saaz Hops Salt Garlic Pepper Snowberry Juniper Berry Canis Root Concord Grapes White Grapes Jazbay Grapes Onion Tomato Potato


And so on and so forth I'm sure this is by no means a complete list but enough to get the idea.

The easiest way forward that I can see would simply be to add in the capability to have farming. This would help with alchemy as well. Then you could add combination steps. Player housing would of course simplify this but I see no reason why you couldn't use public farmland - there are already plenty of 'farms' around simply allow a player to do it there. (LOTRO had a farming craft that was reasonably well implemented, but growth time and decay time was fairly quick, it was considered an 'active' tradeskill rather than something you'd leave and come back as in Skyrim. Something like this would be more suited to public farming spots). Alternatively, simply have all of the npc farms of the appropriate tier growing the appropriate item, at least then you could go to a specific place to get a specific item. Have the respawn be fairly quick.

You could grow wheat, and then turn wheat into the various flour types, and turn flour into the various mash types, meaning in the raw material stage you'd only have to actually haul around wheat and only of the tier you're imminently planning to use.

You could plant specific grapes and berries depending on what you wanted to ultimately cook. You could plant onions, tomatos, potatos, depending on what you wanted to ultimately cook. (Or find NPC fields of these items). You could craft stock and broths out of grown ingredients.

This leaves you with:
Drippings
Cooking Fat
Suet
Lard
Fatback
Pinguis
Jus
Salt
Pepper

As items that can't really be found in a field of some sort or made from items that can be found in a field of some sort. I suppose you could add a place to mine salt.
So simply leave these as crate finds but remove everything else from the potential crate itemisation since you can find it somewhere specific, ie growing in the ground (and later, hopefully, grow it yourself). This makes more sense that you'd be finding cooking fat and such in boxes in peoples houses rather than finding perfectly preserved grapes in good condition in a footlocker under the pier or in a dark crypt filled with undead.

Crate/box itemisation would include the above (give or take) and with only a dozen or so provisioning items coming out of boxes, people might actually start picking them up and would have space to do so to save them for provisioners due to the strict inventory limits.

The only other solution that I could see for the system as is would be to add a materials bag that all tradeskill related stuff automatically goes into that has an extremely high limit, like 500 slots, so that you could effectively gather provisioning materials without them cluttering up your inventory in stacks of 2 and 3 items that you don't want to get rid of just in case you need them but you really can't keep and so on and so forth.

Valmond

Sure, there are smaller, easier, ways to fix the issues many of us have with provisioning.

Making ingredient farming lass random would be on top of the list

winther.michalb16_ESO

It seems to me, that people forget that there's veteran levels after 50, where you will get around to the other continents.
It would not surprise me if you by this got access to new recipie's.
I do agree with LadyLothi though, it could be nice with focused ingredients bag, so it will be easier to store the ingredients meant for provisioning.
The reason for the ingredients bag is, that you might still want to keep ingredients from earlier zones you have visited, so that you can go back and make food for other people and gain an income by selling this food.
Apart from that - the way provisioning is set up now, makes me think that changes is not necessary.

nudel

If you don't like Provisioning, then don't do it. There are 6 professions and they differ from eachother for a reason. I've heard complaints about each and every profession. However, every complainer had at least one profession they liked a lot. You don't have to be the master of ALL the things. If you don't like Provisioning, then become an Enchanter or a Blacksmith. I guarantee there will be a market for your goods. There already is.

You do not need to pick up every single ingredient and then delete it afterward. That is your compulsive hoarding making your experience bad. It is very easy for any Provisioner to make a mental note of what they want to keep on hand. Every ingredient except for Tomatoes and Oats can be easily found. Even the ingredients you noted Salt and Potatoes are incredibly easy to find. You just haven't been paying attention to where you get things and then complain that you can't find them when you want them.

People who like Provisioning do not have your problem. If you don't like it, don't use it.

knaveofengland

in other areas you will find the other recipes and mats you haven't in your area
I am in ebon but I did start a toon in dagger and found the looting of crates. the items in them was differnet to ebon so there is the answer

nudel

@knaveofengland‌ You can also find ingredients for other factions within your own faction. There are areas where NPCs of that faction attempt to invade your land and the containers around them will have their ingredients. So for instance, the AD invasion off the northwestern coast of Glenumbra in DC will have Moon Sugar, Aged Meat, and Pork as opposed to the DC variants. This happens throughout the game so supply of other faction ingredients is certainly not impossible pre-VR.

nudel

@Shimizu‌ You are approaching this in the wrong way. If you had done any amount of Provisioning for long enough you would realize you do not need to keep all of those ingredients on hand. As others like Dragonheart013 and LadyLothi already said it's not hard to determine what ingredients you want/need at any given point. This is the active decision making that ESO asks you to make.

The point of having lots of ingredients is that it is more fun to open a container and find different things even if you don't need them, than it is to open lots of empty containers or containers with only lockpicks. The latter is what other games do and it's pretty damned boring. It's also immersive that different regions would have regional variants of food, which would also tie into the availability of local goods.

If you are trying to make room in your bank/ backpack for a stack of every single item in the game, you are doing it wrong. Period.

Shimizu

Fair point, Nudel, although the current system of ingredient hunting and ending up with 20-30 slots of just the first tier items is what is put me off from Provisioning altogether - I admit to only levelling it to 30ish before destroying all ingredients in a fit of rage.

While I know an 'experienced' provisioner who has gotten past the anger stage will be able to open a box an identify "Oh, thin Broth, don't need that" provisioning isn't nearly so intuitive when you start out with it. In fact having a spreadsheet open on my second screen was about the only way to make this somewhat bearable. It also means leaving behind a ton of potential ingredients that while I dont need for a particular recipe, I could still use to make something and/or share with guildmembers or sell stacks of, if only there was enough inventory space to carry it.

Its not so much making a stack in my bank for every item. I don't even do this for different tiers of metal/cloth/wood, just accept that once I'm wearing the next tier of armor/weapon I clean out the stuff that is no longer of use.

The difference is that if I do need more cotton, I know exactly where to go and have a reasonable certainty of getting it. For provisioning, if I need a specific type of grape, sure there is a zone where it probably might turn up but what are the odds of it being in a particular box? It could take you HOURS to find say, 10 of a specific provisioning item. This is because it is inefficient to pick the stuff up while you're out and about because your bags will quickly become full. Unless you limit yourself to one or two recipes and only pick up relevant ingredients, but then you're missing out on everything else which just seems a waste considering you're opening all the boxes anyway and just not picking things up.

I think the recipe system is fine, just the ingredient gathering needs work. I'm not suggesting removing provisioning items from crates, just adjusting the itemisation so that instead of 100 possible items there are more like 20, in addition to lockpicks.

Fixing the problems with the inventory system (ie too few slots, too clunky to organise/sort) would go a long way toward making provisioning less frustrating.

Stormynature

and for the love of Molag Bal....add the dang fish into provisioning

nudel

@Stormynature‌ Agreed. They were in a very rudimentary version of the crafting professions almost a year ago. That version was terrible and this crafting system is much better. But I miss the fish

@Shimizu‌ You have two options really.

Get past the hate overwhelmed stage. Look through your recipes and decide what ingredients you really need. Make your mental list. Additives (garlic, onion, red wheat, pepper, salt, concord grapes, etc.) can be found in any zone regardless of faction. Basic ingredients will be level based. The binder (Thin broth, drippings, meal, etc.) will be level based, but can be found in any faction. Binders can also be bought from Grocer vendors. The main ingredient will be faction based and lvl based. Recipes will list ingredients in this order: Main ingredient, Binder, Additive(s) if any.

If you can't get past the hate stage, find someone who is a Provisioner and buy or trade for their wares. I sell my foods on a few Guild Stores. I also happily trade them for items from professions I'm not leveling. You don't have to trade with gold. You can also barter in this game. Hit me up @Nudel if you need buffs.

Shimizu

Yeah, that's pretty much the plan Nudel, is to work out a handful of recipes that I want, write what to pick up on a postit and stick it to my monitor. I'm able to adapt to the situation, just feel that the entire provisioning skill could be more efficiently implemented.

nudel

I think that's the point @Shimizu‌. The more I think about it Provisioning caters to a specific type of person. It caters to the self organizer, the person who derives satisfaction from making sense of the chaos, from making inefficient systems operate efficiently. If you're the type of person who likes less complex systems or more straight forward systems, you'll probably hate it.

Blacksmithing/ Clothing/ Woodworking would be more up your alley in that case. And there's nothing wrong with that. They still require time spent and a certain sense of discovery (finding hidden set tables). They still require you to be hands on. But they don't require you to police your own looting even half as much as the consumable professions do (Alchemy and Provisioning especially). What people find off-putting about smithing professions is typically the time investment. Researching takes a lot of time. In that sense, Provisioning is sort of an instant gratification, but only if you can manage your own loot.

Alchemy caters to the type of person who likes puzzles. It's like a game of Memory, mixing and matching and trying to remember which ingredients don't create a potion. The profession really comes into its own with the perk Laboratory Use. From then on it's a game of trying to create optimal combinations.

Enchanting is sort of an odd middle profession between the smithing professions and Alchemy. It has puzzle elements and deconstruction. IMO it is the most social of the professions as it really does necessitate a crafting buddy. This will be off-putting to players who like to be self sufficient. However, it can introduce social players to new friends through the process of exchanging glyphs.

Every profession is different and caters to a different type of person. I like that. Any given person may like all of the professions or only some of them. But everyone seems to find at least one or two that they like a lot. In that sense, I think ZOS succeeded.

Catches_the_Sun

I love Provisioning. If anything, make fish useful as an ingredient, but I wouldn't make wholesale changes to this profession.

Malediktus

I am spending fortunes on getting a complete provisioning recipe collection and you want to scrap them? No thanks unless you want to give me 100k+ gold to recover my losses