Artisan Foods For Grinding

[eqsanctum 1,636]

Artisan foods are generally thought of as borederline useless and the only foods that are worthwhile are hyper-expensive and come from the master chef. Well that's not accurate. This post's purpose is to bring to your attention the often-overlooked Artisan foods that are easy to produce well and offer a real benefit to the combat leveling process.

There are certainly Artisan foods that are clearly in-game as stepping stones or 'slot fillers' to give the Artisan some variety in their choices as they work their way through the Artisan skill boxes. There are others that are of real benefit, and that's what we want to consider. I'll start the discussion with Crispic.

Crispic offers a bonus to Accuracy.

If you've been following the discussions on the mathematics behind SWG, you're aware of how important Accuracy is in many key combat equations. Accuracy is one of the very few attributes that has no ceiling; no cap. Like dollars and time, you can't have too much accuracy.

Enter the master or well-advanced Artisan and the beginning bio-engineer. The relationship between the two is that BEs make tissues that Artisans can use to enhance their foods.

I'll keep my example numbers low here, just to provide some feel for a "poor case" example of items that can be crafted and used, and are frequently done in practice mode and dismissed as part of The Price of Admission for a particular crafting skill.

Even with poo-poo resources, a very low level bio-engineer can produce a light nutrition tissue with power 30. In fact, 30's the weakest nutrition tissue that can be made. Micronutrient Suppliment is available at BE 0100, Tissue Engineering 1. It requires only "organic", "creature food", and "flora". My point is that while there is a special skill involved, it's a lower level skill and this item is often dismissed as primarily a grinding choice.

Our Artisan can use the "junk" Micronutrient to produce a Light Food Additive at Domestic Arts 4. This is an optional component for most Artisan foods. Crispic is available at Domestic Arts 2. Crispic requires cereal, water, and meat. Again, nothing special.

With a junk tissue added to junk resources for Crispic (and a fair amount of Artisan experimentation points), our Artisan should be able to produce Crispic that offers an Accuracy bonus of 10.

Compare (junk) Crispic's +10 Accuracy bonus to a weapon skill box that might give an accuracy boost of 10. While an Accuracy boost of 10 may not be all that big of a deal when a combat professional nears the Master level, a combat novice's Accuracy can quite literally be the difference between life and death.