Inventory Management for the Novice Provisioner

nudel

To all the people complaining about Provisioning...

There are a few simple steps to relieve your woes.

1) If you are not leveling Provisioning now on your character, do NOT loot any Provisioning items except for blue/purple recipes. Green recipes are plentiful. Provisioning mats are even more so. There is no reason to hoard them. Trust me. You will be able to find them whenever any of your alts of any level needs them. Don't save them for when you have the time. They will be available when you have the time.

2) Only save ingredients for recipes you know. I know that Garlic or Onion or Snowberry you looted looks rare. It's all green and exciting. It really isn't that rare. Rare when compared to the incredibly prevalent common Provisioning goods maybe (which is to say not rare at all). You will spend a lot of useless and ultimately frustrating time managing your pack space if you try to pick up every single ingredient and keep it until it's useful. I'm speaking for Provisioning here. I know that this is not true of Enchanting or Woodworking and it probably goes against all your MMO and even RPG instinct, but it is true of this one profession.

You see in Provisioning, you are at the whims of what special recipes you happen to find. So while you might save that onion in the hopes of finding a recipe that uses it, the truth is you might not find that recipe for a loooong time. But in the meantime you might find equally exciting blue/purple recipes that use other special ingredients instead and you won't have room for them because you're stockpiling Onions.

3) Only keep ingredients on hand for recipes you plan to use and use often.

This is really the golden rule for Provisioning, which can be further subdivided into...

• If you're leveling your Provisioner, only keep the 8 basic ingredients on hand for your current recipe level.
  
  What do I mean by 8 basic ingredients? It will become immediately apparent to anyone actually doing Provisioning that there are 6 basic green recipes for your Alliance and skill in that profession. The drink categories at your level all have one shared ingredient. The food categories all share one ingredient as well. That's two + a more distinctive ingredient for each across 6 recipes. 8 basic ingredients.
  
  Don't worry about having characters in other alliances and trying to save level 1 ingredients for every single lvl 1 recipe. They are merely themed duplicates that use different local ingredients but yield the same effect (buffs Magicka regen by 2 for 35 minutes for example). Your Dunmer in EP can eat Grilled Battaglir rather than his own Alliance's Fried Guar Eggs (both boost Max Stamina by 66 for 35 minutes) without suffering any ill effects. Your inventory however will have a hard time keeping up if you try to keep a regular stock of the ingredients necessary for all 3 versions of the exact same food.

• As you lvl your Provisioner, phase out ingredients. I know you're worried about having enough food to supply your low lvl alts. See point 1...Food is plentiful! That's why your inventory is always full of it. Instead of saving up lvl 20 mats for when your brand new lvl 4 can finally bug your Provisioner for food, let them go. Keep only the basic 8 for the recipes you are using to level up. Spend a few minutes in a town and you'll see that you can easily round up enough mats to make low level food for your alt when the time comes. It doesn't take nearly as long as rounding up a stack of 100 iron ore or specific alchemy ingredients, which is why saving those is more important. There is next to no competition for Provisioning ingredients specifically because they are so plentiful.

• As a Provisioner at or near maxing the skill cap, only keep mats for exceptionally useful recipes. Ask yourself if you're really going to ever use or sell it to another player. When I maxed Provisioning, I only kept ingredients for the Blue and Purple recipes I knew. That's it. If I'm not gonna eat it and no one wants to buy it, there is 0 purpose in keeping it around once my Provisioning is capped.

4) Keep a single stack of each ingredient and leave all extras behind. Really only the most in-demand recipes warrant having more than a single stack of each ingredient in your stash.

A lot more could be said about making use of the cooking fires throughout the world and in dungeons to prolong time between trips to town OR simply focusing on one or two professions at a time. While these can be helpful tips they will not fit all playstyles and they really aren't necessary steps if you learn to leave some ingredients behind in the first place.

I've seen a lot of discussion about inventory management. Provisioning seems to get called out as being unnecessarily complicated or having way too many ingredients. I even saw one post about a way to speed level Provisioning. I do not speed level. I don't have anything against it. I just don't enjoy doing it myself. Simply putting that out there so people reading this don't accuse me of somehow circumnavigating their inventory woes by way of playstyle. I like to hoard all the things too. It just doesn't make sense in this particular profession.

This is coming from spending considerable time on Provisioning both during the beta and PTS. I maxed Provisioning while also leveling the other professions simultaneously AND having alts. So believe me when I tell you that I learned all these things the hard way. Once I made the decisions to let go of ingredients, I had a lot easier time managing my inventory and I spent a lot less time staring at an overfull bank screen. Hopefully these tips will help you do the same.

lupusrex

This advice will help a lot of people in general. It's mainly useful for people who want to do provisioning on a character that they're playing. Personally, I have an alt who receives all food ingredients and recipes. He should only need to be about level 10-12 to spend all the necessary skill points for fully productive crafting.

The main reason I keep sending him ingredients for foods that are now too low to be useful for my main to eat or for him to level provisioning is that the useless foods can be vendored for more than zero. Still trying to squeeze out every gold since the game is young. I have used and purged the remainder of all ingredients below the level of what my played characters are getting, to save some of the mule's inventory.

When the time comes for me to play that alt character, I'll certainly operate more like you've posted.

Rhastah

Is provisioning even necessary? You can buy food from vendors, it's cheap. and when you get to max level and need 1 type of max level food, won't that be cheap as well? (Provisioners will be selling it, or your guild will have someone provide them.) I'm starting to think Provisioning is a waste of time - at least for my first toon.

So here's another strat: loot every ingredient, and just sell them all. Use the gold for more bag space to loot more ingredients and sell them too. Skip provisioning altogether.

Please tell me why I'm wrong. Thanks.

Svann

Thanks. That all sounds great, and I needed to hear it.

Sakiri

You happen to have a list of what food is what tier then? My main isnt provisioning. My alt is. And hes feeding her(almost 40 at level 10).

hilelorangutan

Rhastah wrote: »

Is provisioning even necessary? You can buy food from vendors, it's cheap. and when you get to max level and need 1 type of max level food, won't that be cheap as well? (Provisioners will be selling it, or your guild will have someone provide them.) I'm starting to think Provisioning is a waste of time - at least for my first toon.

So here's another strat: loot every ingredient, and just sell them all. Use the gold for more bag space to loot more ingredients and sell them too. Skip provisioning altogether.

Please tell me why I'm wrong. Thanks.

1. If everyone had this mentality, then those guildmates you're relying on end-game wouldn't have food to sell you. So maybe not necessary, but making yourself useful in a guild is never a bad thing. Also from what I've seen vendors don't sell blue/purple foods (not universally anyway), so you would not be able to get the best possible stat increases just from vendors. You will save a LOT of money early game crafting drinks yourself versus buying from vendors as well.

2. Provisioning ingredients are worth 1-2g typically and I would not consider them worth looting to sell. Even if this was your strat I would still go with the OP's advice, save that inventory space for more valuable mats like jute/flax, ore, etc.

3. Overall though, you're only wrong if you have any desire to craft, if you don't (and I'm assuming you don't) then sure you are right in a way. Since this thread was titled "Inventory Management for the Novice Provisioner" I would guess most people reading this gain value from the OP's advice.

Stautmeister

Usefull tips. personally i just made 4 alts. Wood bank, Cloth Bank, Enchant bank and food bank.
After a day of playing i send them the correct stuff. Whenever i feel like leveling a proffesion (im maxing blacksmithing myself) I just put everything i need in my bank again)
This allows me to focus on a single thing while saving mats for other stuff/trading.

Icy

Great guide. I was just coming to these conclusions myself. Just keep the 8 or so mats you need, updating as appropriate.

One thing I would say, is harvesting and selling the provisioning materials is a waste of time. Simple combine them using the plentiful recipes and then sell them. You invariably get more money, especially for the higher level recipes.

Knootewoot

Darn, better throw out the onions next time i log in.

Sharee

An exceptionally insightful post, worthy of a sticky.

Aerieth

Got provisioning to 50 on the third day of early access. I still see nightmares of potatoes.

Mishoniko

I got 50 Provisioning before level 25. I did a lot of 'R' pushing in that time.

A few observations of mine:

1. Provisioning is a decent way to make money. Even though Tier 1 mats are worth nothing, they cost nothing to loot and the foods produced with them have value, and that value multiplies if you have the "produce more N" skills purchased. I also recommend selling excess items if you have more than 10 or so of each stat type unless there is one you go through rather quickly. Its not a ton of cash, but it helps weather the early cash crunch.
2. I keep a notepad open with the list of mats I'm interested in and dump the rest when clearing bags after quests. If you accidentally dump something useful you can always get more.
3. Items looted from barrels/bags scale with your Provisioning level up to a cap for the zone. This means you will get mats appropriate for your Tier in your current leveling zone but you _won't_ get mats for your current Tier in earlier zones.

nudel

@Mishoniko‌

1. It's an 'okay' source of money if you get those skills. However, for time spent, it's not exactly the most efficient moneymaker. I've done it before and it's incredibly tedious. I doubt most people already complaining would be willing to do it.

2. I have auto-loot off. When I open a container, I only take what I'm interested in. That way I don't have to go through and delete all the time.

3. This is true. Since containers are instanced, they can have loot targeted at your level and/or level in a skill. This also affects what recipes you find. If you lvl to 50 Provisioning quickly, you'll be seeing lvl 50 recipes even if you're in the lvl 20 zone.