by Dataslycer » Sat May 22, 2010 3:10 am Cheese is one of the best, if not the best, way of gaining severeal FEP attributes often having one cheese granting you an instant stat raise. This is somewhat off-set by the fact that you need several different things from different field as ingrediants.
First one needs to raise cows. However it is not just enough to raise them, you need a bull to get a cow pregnant and give birth to a calf in order to gain one of the ingredient, Milk. Cows are notoriously gluttonous during these moments and will eat many times the normal amount. A player either needs a good amoun of surplus or a constant stream of seeds, carrots, and pumpkin flesh to feed the enormous appetite of a mother cow.
The other ingredient is Rennet which it is also composed of two ingredients. The first is vinegar which is obtained by letting grape juice from a wine press into a barrel age until it becomes wine. The wine ages until it becomes vinegar, the duration of the aging process is somewhat long but once you made vinegar, you will use very little at a time. The other ingredient is intestine obtained by killing and butchering foxes, boars, deers, and bears. Albeit one must either be a clever shooter or a good fighter to obtain them. After they are both obtained, a cauldron is used to mix the two items into rennet in a clay jar.
Rennet and milk is dumped into curding tub to make curd and placed into cheese trays and place ontop of cheeese racks and let them age into cheese.
Problem:
Each time the item in the cheese tray changes, the quality becomes the average of the cheese tray and and the previous item. For example if I produce cheese from a q100 cheese tray with q20 curd inside, then I will get q60 cheese. The problem is that the averaging occurs each time the cheese changes. If I were to make a stage 2 cheese from that same tray (without slicing yet), it will take the average of the q100 tray and the q60 cheese that is still inside for a q80 cheese, a 3rd stage cheese would be q90 and a 4th stage cheese would be 95. Essentially you can the most disgusting q1 curd with an awesome cheese tray and still get quality cheese at higher stage. I've composed a small table of the significant of the curd and the tray.
Tray to Curd significance percentage
Stage 1 Cheese- 50/50
Stage 2 Cheese- 75/25
Stage 3 Cheese 87.5/12.5
Stage 4 Cheese 93.75/6.25
I also composed an excel spreadsheet to show the significant of the wood to the best cheese. Both sheet has q90 tray but one has q90 curd and the other has q10 curd. Now let's compare the difference.
Take a look at Midnight Blue Cheese or Sunlight Stilton. The amount of attribute you get from a q10 curd and a q90 curd is only a 9 point difference.
In summary, the better cheese you are making, the less significant the quality of the curd is. This means we slaving away at the field for extra seed, feeding the cows, risking our health to fight animals when all of that has a very little significance in the quality of the best cheese.
Furthermore high quality wood is already powerful enough that it is relied on by several liftable structures that affect the quality of many things they process: wine press, barrel (for wine/vinegar), meat grinder, sword, and especially herbalist table which lets you create even better trees for wood. The last thing we need is an end game cheese to rely on wood too much.
Solution:
I proposed a linear scaling of the importance for wood and curd. The early stage cheese should rely more on wood than on curd as wood is easier to raise the quality of wood initially for most beginners whom would mostly have q10 cows/milk. As time pass the quality of the cow will become better which would make better stage 3-4 cheese as it rely less in wood and more on curd. Here is the scaling I propose.
Tray to Curd significance percentage
Stage 1 Cheese- 65/35
Stage 2 Cheese- 55/45
Stage 3 Cheese 45/55
Stage 4 Cheese 35/65
The shifting of of the significance is relatively small as you will still need both strong curd and strong tray. Again this is not set in stone and admittedly not one of my best solutions. I feel free to suggest something or refute my solution if you have a better one and for reasons.
