Lets Make some Beer
stargrace 
I still only have one worker at the moment. It seems to be enough for my immediate needs while I continue to explore my way around and figure out the question to that time aged question of sandbox MMOs “what do I want to do”. After harvesting bunches of potato, and creating me a bunch of fishing rods, my worker was running low on stamina. I had read that beer is the perfect thing to use to recoup stamina, and so I set out to make a batch (or two or three). I had some in my inventory from a quest so I used that first to replenish the worker (who is now almost level 9) and then went to the inn to buy some ingredients.
Beer takes 5 potato, 6 mineral water, 1 sugar, and 2 leavening agents. Then you need to have a cooking utensil placed in your home. You put enough ingredients to create the recipe once, otherwise it will eat your supplies and only give you one item.
Cooking is neat, and I learned a few things about it – like each time you do a combine you have a chance at a byproduct. The byproducts seem random, but they may be tied into the success of cooking, I’m not sure. Each byproduct can be given to an NPC in the next city, but you’ll want to have about 5 of each before you walk all the way there if you’re still hanging out in Velia. It’s quite a ways away.
When you turn in the byproducts you’ll get a variety of rewards ranging from milk (another cooking ingredient), contribution points, experience, etc. I ran to the next city before I realized that you need to have a number of these byproducts on you for turning them in. I turned in what I could, and then sold the rest to vendor because lets face it I just don’t have the inventory space to cart around 4 different types of byproducts from the one time I decided to do some cooking.
I haven’t created any alts yet, but I’m starting to see how they could come in handy. Instead of trying to ‘do it all’ on one character, I could dedicate different characters to different tasks. Then my inventory may not be so full, because I could shift items over to whoever is working on that craft. So far I’ve just been focusing on my main and have had very little desire to create more characters – something that’s pretty odd for me, I have alts in pretty much every game I’ve ever played for any length of time.
Once the beer was done, I replenished the stamina of my worker, and set him back out collecting potatoes. He’ll do that until he’s out of stamina again, I’ve set it to repeat the last task. This’ll give me the ability to make even more beer, and maybe by then I’ll have more than one worker who will be doing tasks for me. I haven’t decided yet, but I do know I’d like to eventually make my raft, and I know it will go faster if I have more workers dedicated to it.
How have you been spending your time in game? Let me know in comments!
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself.