It probably wouldn't have done you any good to start right away. I did. I FINALLY made a batch of cookies that weren't burnt and I still need to make 3 more batches to progress to the next level. The staples simply did not last long enough to grab enough for any more attempts. I will be waiting for prices to fall to an affordable level before I continue further. SO even if you had started right away, you most likely would be right about where I am now. lol

Oh wow, that's crazy. I guess I should have expected it to be like this though. I broke down and started buying baking starter kits from the MC when I saw what the weekend quests were.

Substitutes wouldn't work really. All the items that could be substituted would just raise in price too. Maybe not as much, but really paying 700k vs 1mil isn't much of a difference.

The prices have come down a lot since the first day anyway. With the addition of the starter kit to the MC you can pay 1mil and get all the ingredients needed for the cookies plus quite a few extras to save for later recipes.

: :D Baking Bread would be awesome too, right? ;)

Last night I decided to spend the evening trying to restock, after about 4 hours of constant refreshing, I never saw a Vanilla Extract. And the fact there was a roughly 46 minute restock time during that time was BEYOND frustrating. I don't mind investing the time to get the stuff myself but what I experienced was unrealistic. So...screw it for the time being :/

Question. What happened to getting at least "some" experience when something burns? I'm not impressed by the burning ratio as it is but nothing again? Not a fan.

What about the possibility of adding other ways to ruin food besides burning it? I totally get that someone new to cooking is likely to mess up food some of the time... but I don't burn things all the time. Or even some of the time. The recipe tells you right on it how long to stick it in the oven for, and handy timers exist to tell me when to grab it. I've even heard that many ovens these days have timers built right into them. :o

But, you know, sometimes I do accidentally grab the tablespoon instead of the teaspoon, or I remember seeing an episode of Chopped where they used salt instead of sugar (oh, how I laughed at the judge's faces).

You can burn things even if you have it in for the right time. You can make it too thin, put it in too high of heat, even the wrong type of pan may cause it to burn I'd think.

Yeah, my point was really about making it more interesting, especially since your food burning all the freaking time seems to be a sore point for a lot of people.

Thanks for considering adding alternatives, !

food burning all the time is a sore point because a lot of people want the game to be 100% success.

if it was "your cupcakes exploded", they wouldn't be happier.

Burning a thing or two is to be expected - it's part of the game. Burning 4 loaves of vetan bread (75 minutes each to complete) in a row is a bit extreme even for an sP sink.

I know I could go back to easier level items but the drop in exp and risk of burning makes them hardly worth attempting for the cost. I didn't record the exp for Peanut Butter Acorn Cookies at level 6 but I know it was disappointing enough that I crossed them off the list as worth trying.

you shouldn't cook at all if your cupcakes are exploding

YOU CANNOT STOP ME, COPPER

For what it's worth (and I'm jumping in because it took Amber like three posts to explain it to me, lol), lower-level recipes give about the same amount of experience at level 6 that they do at level 3. The experience is dependent on cooking time, not what level you happen to be.

I don't bother with cookies either because they just don't give much exp at higher levels and it takes so much exp to level up that...yeah. Cakes and pies ftw.

Although yeah, the five failures in a row is exactly why I dropped down to lower level recipes because I have a better success rate with those. I would be so disappointed if a 75 minute recipe burned that many times in a row. :c

Hm. I could be misunderstanding what you're saying but as far as what I've written down that's not how it works to me. According to my notes the exp % drops as my level progress grows. Just now I made an Apple Apple Pie (level 3) to see what kind of % it gives and at level 7 burned it. Really?! So much for the you'll be more successful baking lower level items. Burned it gave me 1% progress, when I was at level 3, the same burned pie gave 4%.

Another example:

When I first made these (level 5): Pumpkin Crumb Cake (9%) Garlic Bread Cone (7%)

Now (level 7): Pumpkin Crumb Cake (6%) Garlic Bread Cone (5%)

I get that we're not suppose to be able to get to the end easily but when you're putting out between 60/70 mil for kits, spending hours on end restocking, watching the clock and stalking the DC a 63% success rate and the percentage for successfully making something at the higher level hovering between 5% and 6% instead of 11%/14% seems pretty low.

I can successfully make 4 or 5 things then its back to burn burn burn. When I check the average % of success 24 hours later I still have 63%. I don't think anything else is factored in. The more progress we make, the less % exp we gain and the longer it takes to accomplish anything.

I actually depressed myself typing this out. I'll keep going but rationalizing what I've recorded has made it a whole lot less fun.

Are you doing what I did, which was conflating the "percent of EXP gained" with EXP? That apparently is not what we should do (says Amber). The % EXP changes per level because there's more EXP needed per level, and the values aren't equivalent.

Said another way, watching the bar and using that to calculate the EXP the recipe gives is misleading, apparently. Mostly because we don't know the base numbers that are being used to calculate the % of anything.

I was also seeing about 4% variation here and there, though, with the same recipes on the same level. Recipes do seem to fluctuate somewhat randomly within a 1-4% range.

I also agree that the average payoff seems pretty minimal - it's a labor of love at this point, and a serious money sink. I get that the idea is to keep it a viable activity for long after this week but the incremental gains are discouraging.

I'm still level 5 and finding it a long, long slog.

I'm pretty sure it's like most games, where the actual exp earned is the same but the total needed to level up scales as you level up.

Example without real numbers:

So you make cookies at level 1. You are successful, you gain 25% Level 1 requires 100 total exp to level up. You gained 25 exp for making the cookies.

Now you make cookies at level 2 and are successful. You gain 12.5%, but you still gain 25 exp. level 2 just requires 200 total exp to level up.

Yeah that's a more succinct way of describing it. That's what I wanted to say. c: