Official Discussion Thread for "Update 6 Guide: Provisioning"

Anazasi

Rosveen wrote: »

Anazasi wrote: »

Did anyone look at the pictures? Over 2k health food buff? Are those pictures real or what? Yeah I hope the stack but heck 2k health buff from food.

All stats are scaled up in update 6, so those buffs stay about the same relative to your new increased health pool.

I'm not sure what you mean. The purple 45 food pic shown by zos in the update post shows tri stat buff over 2k. Seriously that's pretty high.

burningcrow

Just a suggestion but MSchroeder's response should be added into the original post. Some people think everybody reads all the forums all the time which just isn't true. Some people never hit the forums because it's full of flames and becomes a sea of useless speculative info.

Stonesthrow

MSchroeder wrote: »

5. “What’s happening with Drinks?”

During the design phase of the Provisioner revamp, we discussed the possibility of allowing players to use both a food and a drink at the same time. However, we’ve decided at this time that we want there to be an interesting choice between food and drink – some situations call for food, while other situations call for drink. To this end, we’ve improved the regeneration(s) granted by drinks by a significant margin, but we’ve left food and drink unable to stack with one another.

...

We’ll be watching the usage of food and drink on PTS, and going forward on Live. If feedback and metrics show that drinks remain widely unused after the improvements, we will review our options (including but not limited to making them stack) and act accordingly.

Lets test it out. They will be watching. They say they are leaving the options, including having them stack, open.

Can we stop complaining until we actually see the values the regens have increased to and have tried them out?

Divinius

Anazasi wrote: »

Really here's the funny. To make drinks equal to food the regen would have to fall in around 75-100. That would be insane. Tanks would never die, healers would never run out of magic, Stam would last forever. Pts will be very interesting indeed.

Agreed. And here's the biggest problem with continuing to prevent food and drink from stacking: One is ALWAYS going to be preferable in 95% of all circumstances.

Even if they do somehow buff drinks to the insane levels necessary for it to be better than food, it will just reverse the problem, and food will become the "LOL" obsolete consumable. As long as the two items have grossly different effects, one effect is going to be better than the other most of the time, rendering the weaker one useless.

There's only two ways to allow the playerbase to effectively use both styles of edibles:

1) Give both styles the same types of effects, which would allow them to be equally useful, but also render them totally redundant (something they are trying to phase-out with this revamp)...

Or...

2) Make them ****ing stack.

phreatophile

Of course test it out, but unless they've stopped basing damage on max stamina/magicka and made the regen tick for something like 700-1000 (using the new Champ system stat values) beverages will still be mostly useless.

FoxyKitten

So spending time developing and revamping an already existing and functioning craft with a new learning curve to some extent, but let's just avoid a long anticipated new crafting ability: Jewelry. I would MUCH rather leave my provisioning as is and get the ability to craft and improve jewelry. This is extremely disappointing. I would be extremely pumped if Jewelry crating was the new arrival. How about you guys learn a bit about priorities? Update an existing craft or launch an awesome new and highly desired one? Hum....

Dreyloch

ThatHappyCat wrote: »

It seems to me that people who want food and drinks to stack are thinking only of themselves and how to buff their characters further. When you think about the game as a whole, making food and drinks stack adds absolutely nothing to the game. There's no interesting choice to be made, no further diversity in character builds, no further complexity added to Provisioning.

It's the same thinking that makes people cry when they lose their precious PvP buffs, but refuse to actually PvP for them. Give me all the buffs!

I'm sorry but personally I don't want to carry 12338181235 different foods and drinks to use depending on what I'm doing with my toon. At some point everyone will pick one food or one drink to use because it's "the best". The only way to change that formula is to make the game generate random buffs from w/e your making.

Caps are going away, so I say why not let them stack? If anything, it makes provisioning that much more popular. Right now it's the only craft I haven't done across any of my alts. Enchanting items are like 90% of my bank space. There just wasn't room for food and drink ingredients too.

Edit: That bolded part? Um yeah? That's kinda the point? /boggle

Naivefanboi

keto3000 wrote: »

HeroOfEvbof wrote: »

Does there appear to be a purposeful bias towards Health food?
Fish can yield meat. Game animals and domestic animals can yield meat. What this means is that without looting cities and bandit dungeons, we will always be able to turn up meat.
Realizing we can buy fruits, vegetables, tonics, tea and booze stuff from grocers it still seems that the bias is on meat.

There is nothing unusual about this. Health is the primary stat is most games I have ever played. Staying alive is the MOST important attribute. That's why, currently, we receive 15 HP for every attribute point compared to 10 MG or 10 ST. Those later 2 categories are secondary and dependent upon your ability to live in any game.

lmao thats funny try raiding in wow or final fantasy and just stack health xD

Stonesthrow

So, besides the ever popular "not currently letting you stack food and drink" section… did you anyone see what else was in there?

Recipe Collectors get to keep what they have learned and will also have access to the transferred/renamed recipes of the same level. The only ones we will need to be hunting will be the new VR-10 ones which will be out in the world as usual and available through Writs.

Food and Drink matt hoarders will be reimbursed for there 100s of stacks with the cash equivalent to buy new matts at a vendor if those matts are no longer in play.

All non-rare matts will be at vendors if you don't want to store them anymore.

Rare matts will be Hireling and Writ friendly as usual. Tomatoes and Oats are still going to be considered rare.

We can use animals and fish now.

Some other stuff as well… now we just need 1.6 on the PTS.

ForsakeMe

The opinion I have is Drink has been and will continue to be very situational. It will never be used as often as food. There is a use for it, and I don't feel it needs to stack together with food, just yet.

I plan to play on PTS if low levels can to test out provisioning, it's one of my crafts.

Stonesthrow

ForsakeMe wrote: »

The opinion I have is Drink has been and will continue to be very situational. It will never be used as often as food. There is a use for it, and I don't feel it needs to stack together with food, just yet.

I plan to play on PTS if low levels can to test out provisioning, it's one of my crafts.

Anyone can test on PTS. You can use your own chars, which a copy of will exist, or you can create a brand new one. They give you whatever you want.

Nightreaver

@Stonesthrow‌
At any given time there will either be Characters from the NA server copied to the PTS or there will be characters from the EU server copied to the PTS but not both at the same time so not everyone will have their character from the Live server to test.

Those that don't have copies of their characters from Live will need to start collecting both ingredients and recipes from scratch.

Stonesthrow

@Nightreaver‌
Thought your previous copy was still there unless it was updated with a new copy/transfer… aka they only wipe them when they update them with newer ones. Otherwise how do you utilize the PTS right now? Why would they delete and leave nothing?

Could be wrong.

Nightreaver

@Stonesthrow‌

They alternate copies between the NA and EU server. They will give one server time to test their Live characters on PTS and then at some point do a complete character wipe and copy the other Live server to the PTS. This would include wiping any new characters you created on the PTS.

Currently the EU server has its characters copied to the PTS. Last I heard, when 1.6 is loaded to the PTS they will do a character wipe and transfer the NA characters to the PTS. Later they will wipe those characters to give the EU server equal time to test with their Live characters before updating the Live servers with 1.6

Stonesthrow

Yeah saw this… thanks. Guess I had it wrong.

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »
Hey guys,

We wanted to give you a heads up that we will be having maintenance on the PTS tomorrow, January 7th at 10:00AM EST. We will be copying all characters from the European megaserver to the PTS, and also performing some necessary backend work. Please note that this maintenance is not for Update 6 and we don’t currently have plans to publish it this week, but we’ll let you know as soon as we have a date scheduled.

Once we’re ready to push Update 6 to the PTS, we’ll be doing another character copy for the North American megaserver. These characters will be available for about a week, then we’ll do an additional character copy for the European megaserver. Everyone will have a chance to test Update 6 with their own characters, though we will have templates available for you as well.

Thanks for your patience! We know everyone is really excited to give Update 6 a test drive, and we can't wait to get it into your hands!

HeroOfEvbof

someone asked for the MSchroeder comments to be linked
Here is his comments from Jan 9
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/1464207#Comment_1464207
and here is Jan 19
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/1484150#Comment_1484150

Romo

Amdirial wrote: »

So when it was previously stated that drinks and food could stack now they can't and unless they change drastically drinks will be useless. This was the one "change" that a number of people were looking forward to.

This was the main thing I was looking forward to. Most of the posters on the original thread were in agreement that the stacking was the most approved change.

The rest is meh.... a complex way to increase bag space without increasing bag space.

chimneyswift_ESO

This looks so awesome, can't wait to take my provisioner out for a spin in 1.6!

starkerealm

MercutioElessar wrote: »

Many new recipes have been introduced.

How many?
And by the way: How many are in the game, right now?

There are recipes for every 5 levels. Each level has 6 recipes (3 food/3 drink), and each faction has it's own versions, up to level 50. Vet 1 and Vet 5 recipes are "Imperial" and shared across all three factions.

Starting at level 10, there are blue versions of each recipe, starting at level 35 there are purple versions.

That means, there are 192 Green Recipes, 156 Blue Recipes, and 84 Purple Recipes, for a total of 432 recipes total.

This is a little misleading, because there's functionally no difference between say, Golden Apple Ale and Citrus Malt, except for the provisioner making it.

Functionally there's only 6 recipes. A buff for each attribute and a buff for each recovery rate.

The blue versions add a second attribute or recovery rate, and extend the time to an hour. (It's predictable. Health items gain a Magicka boost, Magicka items gain a Stamina boost, and Stamina items gain a Health boost.)

The purple versions boost all 3, and last for 2 hours. So, again, once it's crafted, there's no difference between any purple recipe at a specific level. So, there are 9 different recipes at each level that result in the same food item, but with different names... and of course they won't stack.

There is an idiosyncrasy in the current system. Each of the purple food recipes requires a different rare ingredient (Oats, Pepper, and Tomatoes). But, as you might be aware, Pepper is a semi-rare drop from containers. Oats and Tomatoes are Hireling/Writ Reward exclusive. So purple recipes that require Pepper (Honey Brittle) are slightly more useful than ones that require Oats (Sweetrolls) or Tomatoes (Honey Pudding). Though, we can probably expect that to change with 1.6. As I recall, all 3 rare ingredients for drinks are available as semi-rare container drops.

The current ingredient system is also a mess. There are six families of recipes, and 6 tiers. Each family shares one ingredient across that tier (so, each family has 6 total). Each faction uses a material for all of their food, and another all of their drinks, at a level. So, there's 60 of these. Which brings us to 126 ingredients, even before remembering that each of the six recipe families has 3 ingredients that are unique to it. One is used to craft blue recipes, and two of them are used (always both of them, and with the blue ingredient) to craft purples. So, that's 144 ingredients. But, there's actually 145 ingredients in game, though, because "reasons." There are also carrots, as a rare drop from carrots. No recipe in the game uses them. (Note: I'm not talking about the stale carrot consumable; this is a separate ingredient item.)

Stonesthrow

And I need 1 blue and 6 purples to have them all… ALL!!!

Bouvin

Holy moly. Am I reading this right, we are getting food that will increase all stats by 2k+?

Tarukmockto

@starkerealm: Are you friggin kidding me?!?! I thought there were only about 350, and I was closing in on that number. Now it looks like I'm still missing almost 100 recipes? Aw crap, I'll never get there before 1.6 goes live! LOL

Nightreaver

Bouvin wrote: »

Holy moly. Am I reading this right, we are getting food that will increase all stats by 2k+?

Essentially everything is getting increased by a factor of 10 or close to it. A food buff increasing stats by 2K would be equivalent to a food buff on Live increasing stats by 200. So yes, food buffs may be getting an increase by a factor of 10 but then so will your stats.

Tarukmockto wrote: »

Are you friggin kidding me?!?! I thought there were only about 350, and I was closing in on that number. Now it looks like I'm still missing almost 100 recipes? Aw crap, I'll never get there before 1.6 goes live! LOL

That would probably be the least of my concerns since in many cases it will make no difference. A person who has a green AD level 20 Health increase recipe, a green EP level 20 Health increase recipe and a green DC level 20 Health increase recipe will be no better off than someone who has just any one of those three. It is my understanding that all 3 alliance versions will be converted to a single universal green level 20 Health recipe.

HeroOfEvbof

There are 351 recipes.
Lvl 1: 9 foods, 9 drinks = 18
Lvl 5: ditto = 18
Lvl 10: 18 green, 18 blue = 36
lvl 15: ditto = 36
lvl 20 ditto = 36
lvl 25 ditto = 36
lvl 30 ditto = 36
lvl 35: 18 green, 18 blue, 18 purple = 54
lvl 40: 6 green, 6 blue, 6 purple = 18
lvl 45 ditto = 18
vr1 ditto = 18
vr5 : an extra drink = 27

Any calculation leading to a number over 351 forgets that beef, shank, crystal berry, kaveh bean, mudcrab meat, mountain berry, honey comb, bervez fruit and jazbay grape cut across all factions and therefore there is no triplicates at lvl 40 or above.

One recipe has not dropped since launch: green Saltrice Slurry
Two have not dropped since 1.2: Enriched Grilled Frog Legs and Consummate Breton Stew

Sneak_Thief

MercutioElessar wrote: »

Many new recipes have been introduced.

How many?
And by the way: How many are in the game, right now?

I have 348 "learnable" recipes which is the most that are available to us in 1.5. Here is how the break down is supposed to be. There are supposed to be 57 recipes per food category and 60 per drink category but here is what is currently available if you are to hunt for them in this latest version:
FOOD
Grilled: 56
Bread: 57
Soup: 55

DRINK
Beer: 60
Spirit: 60
Wine: 60

Saltrice Slurry (green) has never dropped
Enriched Grilled Frog Legs (Blue) does not drop presently
Consumate Breton Stew (Purple) does not drop presently

the +1 making 349 obtainable recipes is Silph Gin, which is an additional recipe that is a misspelled duplicate.

Another exception is a misnamed Crawdad recipe which has the ingredients of what the correct recipe would be. (Which I think is horker, Im doing this all from memory here)

But 348 is pretty much what you get when you learn "All" recipes.

zward887_ESO

I would be interested in seeing what a 'substantial' buff to drinks is. Are we talking 3-4x their current rate? If its like a 'substantial' 40% buff to their values we're still going to see almost no use of drinks continuing with 1.6.

HeroOfEvbof

ROFL - once again the official filters on this forum are editting sh@nk! Because the word as a verb is slang for an act of violence, the poor food item is censored.

starkerealm

HeroOfEvbof wrote: »

Any calculation leading to a number over 351 forgets that beef, shank, crystal berry, kaveh bean, mudcrab meat, mountain berry, honey comb, bervez fruit and jazbay grape cut across all factions and therefore there is no triplicates at lvl 40 or above.

Yeah, I did forget that, actually.

Mmm bat shank pie... just what the forums ordered.

charlmgn

HeroOfEvbof wrote: »

There are 351 recipes.
Lvl 1: 9 foods, 9 drinks = 18
Lvl 5: ditto = 18
Lvl 10: 18 green, 18 blue = 36
lvl 15: ditto = 36
lvl 20 ditto = 36
lvl 25 ditto = 36
lvl 30 ditto = 36
lvl 35: 18 green, 18 blue, 18 purple = 54
lvl 40: 6 green, 6 blue, 6 purple = 18
lvl 45 ditto = 18
vr1 ditto = 18
vr5 : an extra drink = 27

Any calculation leading to a number over 351 forgets that beef, shank, crystal berry, kaveh bean, mudcrab meat, mountain berry, honey comb, bervez fruit and jazbay grape cut across all factions and therefore there is no triplicates at lvl 40 or above.

One recipe has not dropped since launch: green Saltrice Slurry
Two have not dropped since 1.2: Enriched Grilled Frog Legs and Consummate Breton Stew

One minor correction: there are no vr1 recipes. The recipes you're referring to in this area are lvl 50.

charlmgn

Edit: I submitted this post directly to the forum, and also in-game, but have not received answers, although I did receive a response that they had received them. Since I first posted these questions, I've experienced the updated provisioning system on the PTS, so I've gotten a lot of my answers that way, so I'll answer them here, for anyone interested.

First, let me say I’ve been anticipating an update to the provisioning system since I first read about it half a year ago. I can see from the initial announcement to the latest guide that a lot of work has gone into it, and that players have been listened to, so kudos to your team, and I hope it goes well.

In the past couple days I’ve read a number of responses—in both threads, since many people are posting responses to the latest guide to the original thread—but still have several questions of my own. It is possible that I’ve missed either the question or answer to one or more of these, and if so, I’d appreciate a reference to it. Regardless, I hope I’m not duplicating anyone else’s efforts too much, and hope my questions and requests presented below are useful and agreeable. Thanks in advance

1. In your original post about revamping the provisioning system, you mentioned the likelihood of removing recipe variations according to alliance, and your Update 6 guide to provisioning seems to show that as having been done. I personally am a fan of alliance-specific recipes, and would like to see some new alliance-specific recipes. I think it adds a needed flavor to the game, showing that different races and nations have their own tastes. It does appear that the types of alliance-specific recipes we've come to know and love are gone, but some of the new recipe names have alliance-specific derivations, if not necessarily found in specific factions. Off-topic, but along the same lines, I’d like to see the same done for music, since most songs are the same throughout Tamriel with very little variation. I think simplifying the system is great, but in this area I think it’s oversimplifying.

2. Will any existing recipes stay in the game and be usable, but no longer obtainable? On my primary provisioner, I have about 275 recipes, all of which transferred to the new system, and almost all of which received new names. The few that kept their old names are not necessarily the same level recipes as they were, but all my recipes retained their same quality. Since I am missing several recipes I can't verify that every single recipe has made the transfer, but I'd say the chances are good. Also, in PTS, I have found several of the recipes under their new names, so at least some are still dropping.

3. How will inspiration be affected when cooking under the new system for characters leveling provisioning? It’s currently one of the easiest (if not the easiest) professions to level. There’s only a slight hump getting it to 20 because of the scarcity of level 10 and 15 recipes (and their ingredients). It’s hard to imagine any changes making it easier to level a provisioner, so I anticipate a more difficult experience.Since I had 8 max provisioners, I deleted a character on PTS to create a new one to test out leveling the new system. By level 6, I had found a level 1 recipe, 2 level 5 recipes, 2 green level 10 recipes, and 1 blue level 10 recipe. On other characters I had found a level 25 and a level 35 recipe and transferred them to the new provisioner. Inspiration gain appears to be the same as it was before (which was pretty high in my estimation. I never actually kept track I leveled it so fast on each character). Since all ingredients except the 2 rares, which are only used in purple recipes, are available at grocers for 10g each, I leveled my new provisioner to 50 within an hour. I actually bought very few ingredients, since most of my stocked ingredients transferred to the new system. Those that didn't were grayed out at a worth equal to the new ingredients, which is a net gain for almost all current ingredients.

4. Will recipes continue to drop according to character level (i.e., roughly level 10 characters finding improvement 1 recipes, level 20 characters finding improvement 2 recipes, etc.), or will recipes drop according to the level of the zone, regardless of the level of the character (i.e., a level 50 character could find an improvement 1 recipe in Stonefalls, or a level 10 character could find an improvement 6 recipe in Coldharbour)? On the PTS, recipes now appear to drop according to the level of the zone, not according to character level. I tested this on a VR2 and a VR13 in various zones, but have not yet tested it on a low-level character in a high level zone. Pending verification, I think it will be the same, since the only recipe gathering I've done on my level 6 character has been in Stonefalls and Bleakrock. I found or stole level 5 and 10 recipes in Davon's Watch, and level 1 recipes in Bleakrock, which appears to confirm that trend.

5. Will there continue to be improvement levels as in the current system, skipping skill level 10 and requiring the first skill point at skill level 20? If so, how will the new system modify skill level 10 and 15 recipes and their drops to get the provisioner to skill level 20? Improvement levels are unchanged, except that VR5 recipes have been reduced to Improvement 5, and new VR10 recipes hold the Improvement 6 spot.

6. Is there any chance of finding recipes that combine the effects of food and drink, allowing an increase in an ability and an increase in its regeneration as well? Sounds like a job for gold recipes to me, although for gold it would seem it would have to affect multiple abilities. I have not found any recipes like this, and there has been no talk of them. It was pure speculation and hope on my part.

7. While you’re modifying the interface for the new system, please allow players to “create all” or create “XX” number of a certain recipe. It would be much more convenient than continually hitting the R button. The interface is almost exactly the same. It's only organized in a different way. It's still separated by food and drink, but green, blue, and purple recipes are all separate, and recipes are organized by what type of buffs they provide, and listed in alphabetical order by level. It really needs a text search box added, and other filters in addition to just whether you have ingredients. (And there’s no need for other players to now recommend all the fine addons I can use. I’m talking to developers about the native system, so obviously I’m not looking to clutter memory with more addons.) Off-topic, but along the same lines, the same would be welcome for Alchemy and Enchanting in particular, but any of the crafting professions could benefit.

8. Under the current system, oats and tomatoes are only obtainable through the hireling. Will there be any similar such ingredients under the new system? Your article mentions 2 rare additives which can be delivered via hireling and also found with difficulty, but doesn't specify that the ingredients mentioned are the only ones being introduced. Assuming that there are no hidden extra ingredients not found in any of my recipes that transferred onto the PTS, or on the new recipes I've found there, which by the way, took the same ingredients, there are no ingredients other than what they've mentioned. There are two rare ingredients, Frost Mirriam and Bervez Juice, one each for crafting purple food and drink, respectively. Other than that, there are 48 common ingredients, all of which can be found (or stolen) or bought from a grocer for 10g each.

9. Will any ingredients under the new system be of higher than common or “white” quality? All 50 ingredients are "white" quality. Edit 2: As things are always in flux during PTS, there have been changes in the past day or so, one of which being that Frost Mirriam and (I expect, since I was only delivered Frost Mirriam through my hireling) Bervez Juice have now been upgraded to "purple" quality.

10. I noticed in the pictures attached to your article that Caramelized Goat Nibbles are “purple” quality, and Aunt Alessia’s Pork Chops are “blue” quality. Does this mean you are removing the distinctions of consummate, invigorating, enhanced, etc? If so, what will be the immediate way to know a recipe is of higher quality without seeing its color? I described the organization of the crafting interface in Question 7 above, so finding a recipe of a certain quality in the interface is not an issue. All of my blue and purple recipes were renamed and there are no longer any distinctions made such as enhanced or consummate.

11. With the implementation of the Champion System, what will the highest level recipes look like? Will there be Champion points to spend that increase the effectiveness of food and drink past a basic level 50 since there will be no veteran ranks? While the Champion System has been implemented on PTS with updated 1.6, veteran ranks have not yet been removed. I have a feeling this is to give people a chance to earn champion points to buff their characters with prior to the vet rank removal. As I mentioned above, at this point on PTS, VR5 recipes have been changed to Improvement 5, and VR10 recipes are Improvement 6. As the Champion System is implemented on the PTS, there are no points that affect food or drink benefits.

That's all I can think of at this time. I hope it wasn't too much, and hope it adds some useful ideas. Thanks.

I hope the answers I've found are helpful. If I've overlooked something, send me an in-game mail on the NA Megaserver to @charlmgn.