4/8/2002

I have received many questions asking about how Iron Chef and Fast Buck work, and what kind of character are needed to be able to use the macros, so I decided to start a character from scratch and keep a diary in the hopes that it will illuminate what these macros do.

My intention is to keep posting updates for this character as she gets more experience and becomes more useful as a triple trade skill mule. I don't proclaim that this is the best character, or that this is the only way to make a trade mule. My only goal is to help people understand the steps that I went through to build this one particular trade mule.

First, of course, I had to decide on the specifications of this new character since I didn't want to just use one of the built in templates (she was never intended to be a fighter). There are many templates out there on the web that cover trade skill mules, but most of the ones I've seen are extreme and some I just completely disagree with.

A mule with no strength isn't a mule, in my opinion. And one that can't run between the towns safely right off the bat is going to waste your time building a mule, when it would be better spent working on one of your main playing characters. So with those thoughts in mind, I decided on these initial attributes:

The attributes above start Laura off with 5 health, 10 stamina and 30 mana. My first concern is health, since I eventually want her to be capable of making Trade Health Potions for major profit. That will need to come later however.

The race doesn't seem to matter much for a mule, but I created Laura as an Aluvian since I figured a cook should use a dagger or knife when fighting.

Next I needed to decide what skills she should have. This seemed far easier than the attributes. Of course, she must primarily be an alchemist, cook and fletcher. I wanted her to be able to buff her skills, heal herself when making Health Potions, and I wanted her magic to cost less mana. Anything more than that was just icing.

I started her off in Holtburg South for one simple reason: access to Rithwic which is a short run to Eastham. Eastham is important to me since my main characters monarchy is based there and one of the best protected farmers is just north of town, perfect for cooking skills.

Once she was in the game I ran her through the Academy (love those jackets!) and of course she popped out as a level 2. Now that the first fifteen minutes of game play is complete I wanted to get down to business. First step was to configure her UI options to be more compatible with a trade mule:

Next step, off to Eastham! I ran her to the nearby portal to Rithwic, touched the lifestone in Rithwic just in case, and ran her directly to Eastham. Even though she was still level 2 and had pathetic armor, she didn't get touched once. This I attributed partly to luck, and partly to a run skill of 95 thanks to her high starting quickness.

At Eastham she touched the north lifestone and ran directly to the farmer (21.2N 61.3E). Again, she was never touched and she made it into the safety of the farmer's house and closed the door behind her. I then logged her out and brought in my main character in order to quickly retrieve cooking utensils for her.

Elcmar recalled back to the subway and zapped around the planet collecting the basics of cooking and fletching utensils:

Alembic	Heavy Grinder
Baking Pan	Metal Press
Carving Knife	Noodle Cutter
Cooking Pot	Splitting Tool
Eye Dropper	Whittling Knife
Frying Pan

The Cookie Cutter and Barbed Fletching Tool are just too much of a pain to grab for a starting mule. Elcmar then lifestone recalled back to Eastham, ran north to the farmer and proceeded to transfer the goods and about 20K of pyreals to Laura. Some of you may balk, but all of the basic cooking tools are very easy to find in the various starting towns (granted, you will need to visit several) and the Alembic, Splitting Tool and Eye Dropper are at Craigstone. Plus, 20K takes less than an hour to generate using Fast Buck.

Anyway, goods in hand, I logged Laura out and closed Asheron's Call back to the little Zone window and restarted Asheron's Call and logged in with Laura. This is very important, as Decal/AC Tool seems to want to loose track of where your items are if you switch characters, so a fresh start fixes that. I ran a test run of Iron Chef using the standard ICRecipes.txt file just to get more data for recipe experience (I'm collecting this for a future post and to refine Iron Chef). She clapped happily through the recipe file, though failing many, many times.

I let this run unattended for about two hours. There's a lot of recipes after all and I wanted data on all that she could make. In two hours using the ICRecipes.txt file she made a very bleak 3093 experience.

Now that I had the data for my other project, I wanted to get down to some serious experience. I changed the RecipePath constant to point to the ICRecipesE.txt file and started her off. Then I went and ate, watched T.V., slept, showered, etc.

In the morning I noticed she was still clapping happily away, though she seemed to be getting better at it. She had made 63,621 experience in just under 11 hours, and it cost her 15K pyreals. She was now level 9 and had a cooking skill of 118. Not bad for one night of unattended cooking.

I started her back to cooking and took off for a while. When I came back the server had disconnected me (April upgrade perhaps?), but she had made 28,239 experience in 5 hours. Her cooking skill is up to 124 and she's now level 10 and has 9 skill points to distribute. Oh dear, what shall I spend those on, hmmm...

Cooking is going very well, so I've decided to run her back to town and let her work on Fletching and Alchemy. I'll post another page on how that goes.

4/10/2002

Well, the April patch has come and for some reason I tried to take Elcmar into the Netherlands south of Eastham in search of that blasted beach house in one of the new quests. Bad idea. He died once, then died again trying to recover his corpse. I think I'll stick to macroing.

Anyway, Laura the Gifted spent Monday night working on her Fletching and Alchemy experience. And it was a good thing too, since I learned much about using Iron Chef for Fletching. First, I loaded her up with massive amounts of Peas and Concentrated Aqua Incanta. Though very costly, that wasn't the problem. When it came time to use ICRecipesF.txt I quickly found that since it went through every possible Fletching recipe, it burdened Laura down way too much with leftovers. So, I went out of the game to fix that and trimmed down the Fletching recipes to just make things with arrowheads. Still a lot of recipes but now it's only 50 recipes versus the 111 in the ICRecipesF.txt file. Most importantly the leftovers consist only of arrowheads, arrow shafts and an occasional greater or elements batch of arrowheads. The burden is now acceptable, at least she can Fletch all night. This new file is called ICRecipesFE.txt and can be found in the Iron Chef area of this website.

The next problem she ran into was with the Eye Dropper. Using the Splitting Tool was not a problem, she could split the Peas the majority of the time. But when it came to using the Eye Dropper it seems that the Alchemy skill needed is much higher, so she failed. Then she failed some more. And more. I started her with 240 Concentrated Aqua Incanta and she finished the night with 74! A quick fix solution was to have her run across to the Archmage in town and buy 100 normal Aqua Incanta, just so her skill goes up a bit before she tries to dilute again. Once I got her going and made sure she wasn't being over burdened and was splitting Peas and making oils, I left.

In the morning I noticed not only had she logged off, but that the game had booted me off. It was patch day. She was only able to Fletch and Alchemize for 7 hours and 22 minutes. During that time however she did gain 56,025 experience and reached level 12! Again, almost all of that experience is shot into Alchemy and Fletching, so don't expect to be able to spend it. She was left with only 5326 unassigned experience.

Now for the good news. Her Fletching skills went from 60 at the beginning of the night up to 114. And her Alchemy skills went from 60 to 106. So it does work. She used up this amount of supplies:

That's a pile of supplies used up! But if you have the means to buy Peas, tools for Peas and Concentrated Aqua Incanta, then it's not too big of a deal for the experience.

Overall I feel this Fletching and Alchemy run went well. Now, however, I need some major buckage so I plan on running her to Khayyaban to make Applesauce! More on that in the next installment.

4/11/2002

When I started Laura the Gifted up today I had intended on running her to Khayyaban to make some pyreals using FastBuck. However, it was pitch black outside and she doesn't have many defenses with just a dress on. So I let her fletch and alchemize for 2 hours and 55 minutes more. In that time she made another 22,348 experience raising her Fletching to 119 and her Alchemy to 111. It seems she gets the most experience trying to make Deadly Acid Arrows, though she never succeeds.

Now it was time to see how many pyreals a cook with a Cooking skill of 129 can make using FastBuck. So, off she ran north up the coast near Eastham to the Arwic Portal (26.3N 63.9E) which seems a far safer way to go than the road. She did zig zag along the coast after running by baddies, and it has saved her more than once from fireballs and such. Next she took the Al Jamlia portal which she is pretty much standing in front of when she arrived in Arwic. She then ran along the road to Al Jamlia and took the Khayyaban portal (7.5N 5.1E). Once at Khayyaban she ran to the mall (47.5S 24.6E) and proceeded to make Applesauce.

One big caveat was the new Skeleton statues roaming around Khayyaban! They are around level 45 and I just didn't feel like messing with them while I was still in a dress. When she was finished making Applesauce, the skeletons had all been killed, so it may not be that big of a deal.

I let her make Applesauce using FastBuck for a couple hours when I wasn't using my computer. When I came back she had averaged 34,388 pyreals per hour, which is very nice. I did a quick @lifestone on her and she was back in Eastham in a flash, ready to make more experience. My next plan for her is to build up more Fletching and Alchemy experience, as my main character (Elcmar of many deaths) is an archer.