Provisioning alt: minimum skill investment for maximum rewards?

Aldahen

Howdy,

I have a character that does all the cooking and brewing for me, but I leveled provisioning to 50 on another character to get more recepies and ingridients.
So this 2nd character is not going to do any cooking or brewing ever again. He will only:
- receive stuff from the hireling
- turn in provisioning writs with foods and drinks done my the main cook

So my question is: what is the minimum skills I need on this character to get the maximum rewards?
Is it enough to have Recipe Improvement (6/6) and Hireling (3/3)?
No need to invest on Recipe Quality?

SpAEkus

I have 6 Prov Alts with Improvement 1/6, Quality 1/4 and Hireling 3/3.

They all receive all Prov materials plus RNG driven Frost Mirriam and Bervez Juice.

I see no need for even Recipe Improvement points unless you want to do writs with them. And the Recipe Improvement level only determines the Writ Level range you can complete and the Recipe Level reward you can receive. I have not seen it change the RNG for which individual Prov Mats any level of writ returns.

Nestor

Aldahen wrote: »

So my question is: what is the minimum skills I need on this character to get the maximum rewards?
Is it enough to have Recipe Improvement (6/6) and Hireling (3/3)?
No need to invest on Recipe Quality?

OK, I have two lower level alts doing Provisioning Writs. All you need is 3/3 in the hirelings to get the most ingredients.

If your goal is to get Psyhic Ambrosia Fragments, you need 6/6 in Recipe Level. My L11 doing L3 Recipe Writs did get a fragment, after doing about 220 Provisioning Writs. However, putting 6 points in a character that can't get to Craglorn is a waste. Your capped at L4 recipes no matter what unless you can get to Coldharbor, and then your capped at L5 recipes.

Otherwise, just need 3/3 in your Hirelings and you will get the Purples Ingredients, and extra ingredients and a chance for any recipes at that level.

Note, to make some decent coin from recipes, the rarest ones are L2 to L5 Blue and Purples and those sell for a ton of money in guild stores. Reason, most people rocket past those recipe levels as it is both so easy, and the better chance for Ambrosia fragments.

SpAEkus

And just an addition to Writ V prov writs in ColdHarbor.

You have to get to the Hollow City, and you have to start the Hollow City Quest from the Groundskeeper in order to unlock the Writ Boards there. You don't have to complete any more of the quest though.

Aldahen

1st day and I got a blue recipe after turning in a writ and Frost Mirriam from the hireling. Based on this, I'm not spending skills points on Recipe Quality.

I'd be still interested on more information on the topic. Will the skills have an effect on drops etc?

Aldahen

Thanks for the info SpAEkus and Nestor.
Quite clear now: Recipe Quality is totally useless in any scenario for a provisioning-alt.

I'm actually still at Recipe Improvement 5 on both my cooks. As all the 3 characters I play are between lvl47 and VR3.
No need yet for RI6 food, but good to know too that in order to use the RI6 writs the character needs to be VR1.

Nestor

Aldahen wrote: »

Thanks for the info SpAEkus and Nestor.
Quite clear now: Recipe Quality is totally useless in any scenario for a provisioning-alt.

I'm actually still at Recipe Improvement 5 on both my cooks. As all the 3 characters I play are between lvl47 and VR3.
No need yet for RI6 food, but good to know too that in order to use the RI6 writs the character needs to be VR1.

One thing to keep in mind, the Passives that increase the duration of the Food and Drink effects are important to have, not on the one who makes them, but the one who uses the foods and drinks (unless they are the same). Now it is debatable if an extra 20 minutes on top of two hours is worth the 3 skill points, but with Physic Ambrosia potions, your almost doubling the duration of the potion.

SirAndy

All of my 8 characters have provisioning at 50 and improvement and hireling maxed.

Not sure if this is still true but in the early days your chance for purple mats increased quite a lot if you had improvement maxed. Either way, i get plenty of purple mats in my mail on a daily basis ...

J4YDEE

I'm guessing that the hireling is a worthwhile investment? I'm level 45 provisioning and level 39 character. What sort of stuff would the hurdling get me?

Nestor

J4YDEE wrote: »

I'm guessing that the hireling is a worthwhile investment? I'm level 45 provisioning and level 39 character. What sort of stuff would the hurdling get me?

You get a nice haul of Ingredients each day. Coupled with Writs and you will never need to farm Prov Ingredients ever again.

I used to sell my excess ingredients in the Guild Kiosks for a nice steady income. However, recently I have taken to making L45 to VR15 Green Foods and Drinks and selling them to the game NPC merchants. I am pulling in almost 4 times the amount of gold this way. Guild store sales are down (I used to sell about 30 100 stacks a week for 300 to 600 gold each). Now I sell multiple 100 stacks of foods and drinks to vendors each day and make a lot more money. It is tedious though to make all those foods and drinks and if I did not have an addon for cooking, I would not do it this way.

Jayne_Doe

Aldahen wrote: »

Thanks for the info SpAEkus and Nestor.
Quite clear now: Recipe Quality is totally useless in any scenario for a provisioning-alt.

I'm actually still at Recipe Improvement 5 on both my cooks. As all the 3 characters I play are between lvl47 and VR3.
No need yet for RI6 food, but good to know too that in order to use the RI6 writs the character needs to be VR1.

@Aldahen Keep in mind that you will also need access to Wrothgar to complete RI6 writs. Otherwise, you will be stuck with RI5 writs in Craglorn.

I personally don't have the hirelings any more, since I have max stacks of all ingredients, including purple. Since I do the daily provisioning writs, I get enough mats to keep me topped off, selling the extra purples in the guild store (or making additional purple food when needed). But, hirelings are a great way to build up stock, in addition to the writs. Also, if you have access to Coldharbour, it's a great way to find ingredients, since all of the containers are unowned. Just looting the inn, general store, and bank (all in the same area) yields a decent amount of mats.