Greetings, Adventurers!

Join Lead Seasons Designer Patrick Smedley and Senior Systems Designer Tony Morton for a taste of the changes coming to Cooking and other Trade Skills in Season 5. Look forward to ingredient updates, revamped Cooking progression, Legendary Fish recipe tweaks, the removal of split attribute food, and more. Let’s dive in.

Split Attribute Food

From recipes and ingredients to food, buffs, and other items like Dye, Cooking can be complex, especially for players less familiar with the Trade Skill. Let’s start with how we’re simplifying some of the options.

At launch Cooking was front-loaded with an enormous amount of potential combinations for food buffs. We were very much in the discovery phase of understanding how this would impact players throughout their early travels in Aeternum. Now, after millions upon millions of hours played, we have a far better idea of how players structure builds and use consumables.

There are 5 Tiers of food. Almost every Tier offers both split and full attribute options, but most players only use pure attribute food. To simplify things, we’re going to sunset split attribute food in Season 5. This goes for both the consumable food, learned recipes and physical recipes that may be in your inventory.

Ingredients and Recipes

The last thing we want is to remove items and wipe them from the player’s inventory. Instead, we’ll swap those ingredients for more desirable options.

Take the Pesto-stuffed Turkey Breast as an example. This Tier 4 food gives players a Strength and Intelligence bonus. When Season 5 goes live, it will be replaced with Clam Chowder, a Tier 4 pure Strength food. In any scenario where an item is being deprecated, we will replace it with the same Tier of item that shares the main attribute. Since the Pesto-stuffed Turkey Breast gave more Strength than Intelligence, we’ve swapped it with a Tier 4 Strength food.

What about recipes? The physical recipes in your inventory will be swapped using that same logic. However, you’ll lose access to any known recipes as they’ll be depreciated.

We will do a pass on our Trade Skill food too. While we enjoy having multiple tiers of Gathering food, the low-level tiers never made a big impact. As a result, they will also be sunset. Any player who is Level 15 in Season 5 can consume Tier 5 Gathering food for a more impactful buff on their Gathering Luck. Any Gathering food or recipes will automatically upgrade to the Tier 5 variant.

Legendary Fish Recipes

When reviewing all of these items there was a glaring issue that we haven’t been happy with for a long time—many updates and new recipes have rendered Fishing less useful than intended. These changes aim to make Legendary Fish more meaningful.

Upon the release of Season 5, Legendary Fish recipes, like Fried Albenaja will become the most potent food in the game. Here’s an example of how their values will change.

Old Values

Tier 5 Dex Food - Fried Albenaja ( 40 Dex)

Duration 40 minutes

Requires Cooking Level 200 and Player Level 60

Tier 5 Dex Food - Chili con Armadillo ( 40 Dex)

Duration 60 minutes

Requires Cooking Level 200 and Player Level 60

Tier 52 Dex Food - Banana Pudding ( 48 Dex)

Duration 50 minutes

Requires Cooking Level 205 and Player Level 61

New Values

Re-ordered to show intended progression:

Tier 5 Dex Food - Chili con Armadillo ( 40 Dex)

Duration 40 minutes

Requires Cooking Level 150 and Player Level 45

Tier 52 Dex Food - Banana Pudding ( 44 Dex)

Duration 40 minutes

Requires Cooking Level 205 and Player Level 61

Tier 5 Dex Food - Fried Albenaja ( 48 Dex)

Duration: 40 minutes

Requires: Cooking Level 250 and Player Level 65

Fishing Luck

To further improve the meaningful impact of Legendary Fish, we changed how Luck works in the Fishing Trade Skill. Legendary Fish will be worth the extra effort to catch given upcoming changes. We’re going to do a full pass on Fishing and give the Trade Skill even more love in a future update alongside another Deep Dive.

Cooking Progression

We also revamped XP generated from Cooking recipes for even more satisfying progression. Recipes, in general, will generate way more XP than they have in the past. Our goal is to maintain an enjoyable leveling journey and motivate players to craft a little of everything for that First Craft Bonus rather than a ton of one thing.

Insightful Ingredient Descriptions

Ingredient descriptions will now detail where items can come from and be found. Instead of a generic description like “Basil leaves, used to add a bright, aromatic note to cuisine,” players will now find more helpful information such as “Cooking Ingredient. A rare item gathered from Herb Plants found in Everfall, Brightwood and Brimstone Sands.”

Recipe Drops

Less items means less recipes to find. After reviewing the possible locations of each recipe, we’ve significantly adjusted their drops rates. While it may take a little longer to find some, there are a LOT less to locate meaning duplicates should appear far less frequently.

Future Reworks

This is only the first Trade Skill rework. We’ve learned a lot since launch and continue to gain a better understanding of what our players craft and where they allocate resources. Expect more major reworks to just about every Trade Skill, with the exception of newer ones like Riding, in future Seasons.

We look forward to your feedback in the Season 5 PTR. As always, we’ll continue to balance and tune as we see how players interact with these systems. Thanks for your support! We’ll see you in Aeternum.

Feb 26 2024

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