provisioning....useless? and a never-ending inventory hell?

ghost0

my first character maxxed provisioning pretty quick so i spent a ton on purple recipes.
i also spent a ton of my time farming materials.
and then spent a ridiculous amount of time making alts to carry all the inventory.
then i found no one buys the junk. im not selling bs green food, im talking 3 attribute, 2hr food

so my question is real, not a troll. is it useless? the benefits are so underwhelming that in my last dungeon group i gave it away because no one could give a dam about carrying it, but no one said no to free food.

which brings us to inventory. 5 guilds, 150 sale slots, 8 toons, with between 60 and 80 bag slots, and an 80 slot bank. all filled with food ( well they were b4 i rage quit the profession ). would it be too much to ask to have a material bag you can buy from an npc so i dont have to port to a bank every 20 minutes to dump bags? it kills immersion, and any fun i might be having, and there are plenty of fun times to be had in eso, inevitably leads to, hang on guys, inventory break.

so what r your thoughts on it. are you successful selling food? at what price? there is a limit to how low i was willing to go. i didnt get my price so i sold it all to a vendor and gave some to guild bank. i wont give away accumulated days of inventory hell for free. ill destroy in bag or vendor b4 i do that.

roflcopter

I really of food all the time when in dungeons and questing. I can't tell you how many times the drinks have saved my butt in mana management.

I think its totally worth it, but the girl in our guild who does the provisioning constantly complains about the inventory hell. So we just pay for her bag space.

SirAndy

Depends on your idea of useless ...

It's probably pretty useless if your intend is to make a boatload of money by selling food and potions.

It's not useless at all if your intend is to make really powerful food and potions that you can use yourself.

Phranq

I have never sold any food or drink to a player ever. Green blue purple or polka-dotted, nobody seems to care.. I just make food for myself and vendor the rest.

Comaetilico

312 hp and magika or hp and stam or stam and magika... when you'r usually running around with a little more than 2k on 2 of those stat... or something less in all 3 stat... that is at VR10

a 16% stat boost... I will hardly call it useless...

driosketch

Food is a useful buff. You may, however, find the advantages of being a master cook yourself marginal, compared to other factors.

Natjur

Drink is useless as it ups your regen and its easy to get to the caps

Invigorated Honey Pudding
(Increase Max Magicka and Stamina by 312 for 1 hour)
It takes Honey Comb (common), Imperial Stock (Buy from NPC) and Onion (rare) to make.

Making theses for myself is the only reason I leveled provisioning.

I don't sell theses, I swap them for Onions (as one combine, I get 4 food)
I am always using theses, and the only food items I keep when looting barrels etc are Honey Comb and Onions to make more of theses.

e.gamemarkb14_ESO

Phranq wrote: »

I have never sold any food or drink to a player ever. Green blue purple or polka-dotted, nobody seems to care.. I just make food for myself and vendor the rest.

Feel free to send me any and all of your extra blue and purple foods, as I will be more then happy to pass it on to my trading guilds that enjoy selling them. While this profession takes a boat load of bag space / vault space, you have to prioritize what you want to make. For me, I am focused on Blue / Purple foods, so mainly keep those recipe foods in my bank.

It didn't make sense to keep making green food, when the blue ones starting at lvl 15+ can be made with 1 added ingredient usually, and they are far more useful.

Glurin

Provisioning lets you make sweetrolls. Therefore, it is not useless.

Traisa

It's useful for me. I make combination food that increase max health and magicka, sometimes I switch to a max health and stamina food. Helps a lot in dungeons and while out exploring higher level areas. I always have something to eat before heading out. I don't hold on to ingredients that don't use, so my bank is not full of provisioning foods.

Eris

I make what I can, sometimes I keep the multi-stat increase recipes, then vendor everything else food, drink and materials.

shadowz081

It depends...I also got 50 provi and it is not playing hell with my inven. I think the problem with most people is that they collect absolutely everything, even the ingredients that they can't use, obsolete because it can make low lv food or everything that is useful. My opinion is focus on a few recipes, like 3 or 4, most preferably blue or purple ones so that you know what to collect and what to leave behind...The only ingredients that I do collect and don't use are rare ingredients and they go into the guild bank for other people to use.

Catches_the_Sun

shadowz081 wrote: »

It depends...I also got 50 provi and it is not playing hell with my inven. I think the problem with most people is that they collect absolutely everything, even the ingredients that they can't use, obsolete because it can make low lv food or everything that is useful. My opinion is focus on a few recipes, like 3 or 4, most preferably blue or purple ones so that you know what to collect and what to leave behind...The only ingredients that I do collect and don't use are rare ingredients and they go into the guild bank for other people to use.

What he said. I carry ingredients for a maximum of 2 tiers at a time. I go adventuring with 70 empty slots in my backpack & that number grows daily. I also have every racial stone & trait gem because I'm a Blacksmith as well. Make sure you're not picking up ingredients when you go to the other Alliances dungeons & drop your lower tiered ones.

As far as making money & selling to players, I have no issues. Not everyone has caught on yet how useful food is, but if I spend 10 minutes in town, I'll typically fill a couple orders.

Soloeus

Being unable to get food and drink buff at same time is a huge nerf to Provision.

Shiaxi

I always buy a stack level correct of purple regen buff items to carry around..

having said that I gave up on leveling provisioning in favor of the other inventory hog enchanting...

Lupinemw

@soloeus not really its pretty standard in most games I've played tbh. You can be under a single buff at a time. But if your using the right food it can cover multiple stats.

Soloeus

When I respec, I will abandon provisioning and ignore it until I have nothing of concern left to add to my build. I still love provisioning, I just find it annoying I have to choose between a minor regen and a minor temp increase.

Lupinemw

I'd hardly call it minor, the upper elements are adding 300+ pts to a stat. For free as well, its a no brainer.
+

RylukShouja

Provisioning is useless if you are planning on making huge money on it, as it is so easy to level. The buffs you can make with it, however, are not. I always run around with provis food buffs active.

It is also a never-ending inventory hell, especially if you have multiple characters of a few levels.

knaveofengland

it will be very use full remember game is new so things will take time also in time eso will have some kind of shop hopefully like the one in runescape , the storage for mats need for the whole lot is huge , so you have to make some choices sell all the lower mats and some of the higher mats , just keep what you think will help , every thing takes time

Yankee

I am never without food buff up, I always level provisioning on a character.

But I agree it is an inventory hog big time. I now collect only food materials and let the drink materials stay in the crates/barrels.

ZomZom

I never go adventuring without a food or drink buff. Food for regular solo adventuring, drink for grouping and long boss fights. All my food and drink is player-crafted, bought from my guild store.

Lupinemw

I use sous chef add on which shows me the tier of items if I know the recipe. anything sub my tier goes in the guild bank for anyone else.

Money wise I tend to have enough to pay for my horse/repairs.

Cheatingdeath23

I created a small guild (14 people) and the 500 bank spots are full of food items.

You can take them out (filling up your inventory) to level up provisioning, then dump all of the food you make back into the bank. Once leveled up, you just focus on the 2-3 recipes that are the best and ignore all other ingredients.


Seems like a win win, to me.

clocksstoppe

you provisioners are useless. Never have i once seen a provisioner sell purple food. So glad they nerfed your vendoring to nothing so you are now at a lose-lose situation

Cheatingdeath23

clocksstoppe wrote: »

you provisioners are useless. Never have i once seen a provisioner sell purple food. So glad they nerfed your vendoring to nothing so you are now at a lose-lose situation

I see people spamming zone chat with purple food. Mostly in PvP.

carazvaneb17_ESO

As one of a few high level provisioners on the DC side (not talking about provisioning lvl but about what food we make) I can say that provisioning can provide a source of income but it comes at the price of time investment. I've sold the purp VR5 food and lvl 40,45,50 blue food but the main idea here is you really need to be trading to get ingredients in order to make items at scale and also when selling most foods you get orders of 10-20 usually so it requires time invesment to also sell.
I usually post a sell message when I get to a zone then continue with my normal quests rather than trying to sell out of my inventory in a set time.

Pyatra

Open everything, 200 trash items = 1600G selling just to vendors. This does not include all the other things you can find and sell. I make a list of mats to keep and everything else I use to make junk and sell it. 2-3 houses of ransacking and some craft spamming and I can make 1600G in about 20 minutes easy, but it requires the make 3 extra of each kind passives AND I usually have a stack of my preferred food and drink afterwards.

The math:
200 ingredients/2 = 100 food items * 4 product multiplier = 400 items that sell to vendors for 4G a piece = 1600G for 20 minutes of work at zones that are 35+ character level.

Catches_the_Sun

RylukShouja wrote: »

Provisioning is useless if you are planning on making huge money on it, as it is so easy to level. The buffs you can make with it, however, are not. I always run around with provis food buffs active.

It is also a never-ending inventory hell, especially if you have multiple characters of a few levels.

You've pointed out my biggest concern as a dedicated Provisioner. It is easy to level, yet is inventory hell. IMO, the inventory constraint is exactly what balances it. For Provisioners begging for more inventory space, or even dedicated ingredient space, I'd caution you to be careful what you ask for. If a craft is both fast to level, while at the same time requiring little to no inventory investment, what happens? Everybody will either dedicate some skill points to Provisioner on their main or roll a Provisioner alt, making Provisioning useless as a money making, product selling skill.

ghost0

some of you make valid points and some of you even remembered that i was focused on money making aspects of provisioning. thank you all for your insights.

to reply in no particular order.
selling to vendors is not why i bought purple recipes. thank you for the getting back to basics version of mmo finance though. im not being snarky, well maybe a little, sorry its reflex, but the grand or so i can make per x amount of hours sticking my head in barrels is not why i picked it up. i can make more than that in pve grind and selling blues in guild stores. getting exp along the way. more efficient and way more fun then mashing the craft button a couple hundred times

while it is easy to level, the materials and rare recipes are not in everyones bag o tricks yet. it is in my bag of tricks however. i scan guild stores over and over just to make sure im selling the highest level prups avail, err, or was. only 1 guy in all 5 guilds i belong to is making better food. his doesnt sell either.

people are trying to *** you over turpins and dwarven oil and denata's , and ppl are buying it at insane prices to get 2 more dmg on that crappy sword of crappiness, but wont buy food which will buff all 3 attribs for 2 hours :? i will wear all green and eat food than have all blues. thats not the case, but it would be true if all i had was green gear. keep your oil.

for those of you who picked up on the money making aspect, great, for those who replied "x" food is good, well no shiz, i know that, you know that, but no one pays for it, thats the point. reward for days of gathering and the login/logout dance amounts to net zero.

it is unfortunate that i wasnt missing something. i had high hopes that perhaps i was esoretarded and wasnt doing it right. but the replies all fall in line with what i expected, which is, keep the 5 mats u need to craft the purp food for yourself and screw everyone else.

reggielee

to make money on it thru selling.. no, dont think it will work as so many can make their own foods. for yourself its a good thing to have, work on paper the kind of food you want to make for yourself and the ingredients for them, and either spend a day harvesting containers to make a large stack, then stop harvesting or only keep those few ingredients you need for those recipes.

my strategy...I loot all for recipes which i need tho im at 50 skill, instead of destroying those mats I go ahead and make the highest recipes i can and then sell em. its free gold, doesnt take time. im keeping the rare mats for later, rest get destroyed