LotRO Guide to Cooking
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By Darkgolem
Baked goods are some of the most useful products that can be crafted in
Lord of the Rings Online (LotRO). This is because these products
are useful to every class, race and level. Cooking products do
not usually sell very well because they are so easy to make, and it is
easy to bring to the highest tiers quickly. Since cooking is such
a useful craft, since cooked products so easy and inexpensive to make,
it is very useful for cooking profession to be taken by adventurers.
Cooking products are inexpensive if used when appropriate. As
long as one uses cooked products only when needed, an adventurer can
survive many more encounters, including unexpected problems such as
adds in combat.
Cooking is not profitable because both farming and cooking require
mainly money to bring to the highest tiers, as opposed to other
crafting professions. As a result, often one can make a character
with farming as a profession and a character with cooking as a
profession, and make your own baked goods.
Vocation Choice
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alt="Getting Ready to Cook"
src="http://lotro.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album21/Getting_ready_to_cook.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 250px; height: 174px;" align="left">There
are basically three good choices in vocations (including two
character combos) for making a successful cook. These all involve
gaining access to farming, so you can make a variety of products.
They often include a second character as an alternate who has another
vocation, allowing you to earn money or other benefits while gaining
farming and cooking, also. These vocations are:
-
Yeoman
(Farmer/Cook/Leatherworker) This is the most efficient way to
make a character with the cooking class, because you can make your food
and the resources for cooking with one character. However, there
is very little in the way of profitable sales available because a lot
of the profit found in resources, and farming is a very unprofitable
resource to sell. A Yeoman will need to earn a lot of independent
money to fund farming subsequent cooking reaching higher tiers. -
Historian/Tinker
(Scholar/Weaponsmith/Farmer)/(Cook/Prospector/Jeweller) This
is a very nice combo of vocations. Requiring two characters, this
takes more effort. The end result of this combination is one who
can make their own weapons, jewellery, scholar materials, and
food. Jewellery, metal resources and scholar resources all sell
for high profits, meaning that making money will not an issue. -
Tinker/Woodsman
(Cook/Prospector/Jeweller)/(Farmer/Forester/Woodworker) This
is a mediocre choice using two characters to make a successful
cook. Forestry allows selling two semi-valuable products, boiled
leather and treated wood, plus (with woodworker) creation of wood
weapons and products such as instruments, bows and staves.
Prospector and Jeweller both produce useful jewellery and ore products
for sale.
Note: Make sure you
look at the recipes available for cooking when you are planning what
vocation for cooking you wish to make. There are several cooking
recipes which require no farmed products, but instead only purchased
ingredients to finish, meaning you can avoid making a farmer to go with
your cook, if you dont mind spending the money
Cooking Product Types
There are five different types of crafted products for cook to
make. These are brewing, campfires, cooked food, trail food, pet
food,
-
Brewing is for making
beer and ale. These products are mainly for entertainment. style="font-weight: bold;"> -
style="font-weight: bold;">Campfires refer to turning kindling
found by a woodsman into a campfire materials. This allows
creating campfires for cooking. -
style="font-weight: bold;">Cooked Food are foods cooked in
ovens. These are the largest group of products you can make as a
cook. These provide a morale and power out of combat regeneration
boost, plus an in combat regeneration bonus to either combat
regeneration, power regeneration, or both. Cooked foods operation
on a
timer, so you must wait until the (short) timer fades before eating new
food. -
Pet Foods are for bears,
and give them greater tanking abilities.
-
Trail Foods are cooked
over campfires. There are campfires found in certain places, such
as the mud gate in Bree-town and Waymeet in the Shire. These
items provide bonuses to statistics such as might, agility or
will. Trail foods operate on a different timer than cooked foods,
so you can have one of each (cooked and trail foods) in effect at once.
Using Foods
When making cooked goods, make sure that you make the type that best
suits you. For all tiers there are goods which provide in combat
regeneration for lot of power, for a lot of morale or a moderately
large amount of both. However, if you are able to heal yourself
reliably you might depend upon power more, or whatever you prefer.
When making trail foods, you need to make a careful selection of what
benefit you want; agility, might or will depending upon your class
choice.
As a general rule, if you are fighting creatures of a higher level, if
you are fighting in an area where creatures are tightly packed (such as
Evendims western shores, or the various Blackwold lairs of Bree-land),
or are in dangerous instances (such as the Great Barrows) you will
definitely want to have food bonuses in effect. You should
remember that cooked food bonuses expire much faster than trail foods,
so you will need to keep an eye out to make sure your bonuses are
active.
Leveling the Cooking Craft Skill
The first thing you will want to do when crafting for increasing your
cooking tiers is look at available recipes. Since cooking is so
easy to increase without adventuring (assuming you have the available
cash), often you can have your inventory stocked with cooked goods that
are just within the level of items you can use, unlike so many other
crafting professions where usually by the time you can craft an item,
you are too high of a level.
If you wish to avoid farming all together, here are the recipes that
will level you most quickly, assuming you dont mind spending the money
to make these items. You will still need to have help doing the
crafting quests.
- Tier 1: Hard Biscuits
-
Tier 2: Complete Hobbit
Breakfast -
Tier 3: Delicious Crispy
Bacon -
Tier 4: Spiced Apple Pie
(if you wish to go further, make Shire Rations) - Tier 5: Lembas
This is about 4 gold pieces worth of product to create enough of these
products to have tier 5 mastery.
Crafting Quests
The Cooking Crafting Quests are fairly easy, except for two somewhat
hard quests.
Final Note
When planning a cooking character, it is wise to consider funds.
A dedicated alt-a-holic will want to have two characters, one with
farming, one with cooking, and either of the two characters having some
third and separate means of earning income. A player who
generally plays one character at a time will probably wish to
concentrate on Yeoman, or simply pay (a lot) to advance their cooking
skill by the above listed recipes that do not require purchasing
outside, farmed ingredients.
Regardless of choice, cooking is always useful to a character, though
rarely profitable. Because of the fact that healing is often in
rare supply for some classes, this is a valuable choice to take as a
profession, regardless of profit made.
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