Questions: Tavern mechanics

[Nobukado]

I've read and listened to as many Tavern DLC guides as I could, and I have just over 100 Prestige in my current game (so, still a newbie), but still had tons of questions.

1. Goal is to get all "citizen" staff with best traits possible, right? Mercs don't offer any advantages over citizens and Mercs cost more to recruit, right?

2. Citizen staff have extra "specializations" that boost their effect. I've rarely seen staff that have two bonuses, rather than one. So goal is to get as many staff with multiple bonuses, right? And the max is up to 2 bonuses per staff?

3. You get to steal recipes from other taverns at prestige 100. Does it help to send someone to first lower their prestige, then send in your cook/brewer after, to make it easier, or is that a waste of time?

4. Is it cheaper to Rest in an inn or outside camp? Let's say I don't care about the camping bonuses, is the cost of inn more than the cost of food eaten in camp?

5. Because you can Rest for food or for krowns, the option to change shift immediately for influence is useless, right?

6. People who wrote guides suggest getting working class patrons first, then upgrading to upper class later. At what point? At what relative prestige do you switch?

7. When do you get the free food? I haven't gotten this yet.

8. Guide says to only have 1 expensive meal, and the rest cheap food. Is that accurate?

[BedlamBetty]

What are you trying to accomplish?

1. You decide the goal of your tavern, I mostly use it to max thief, brewer and bard profession on my mercs, for example

2. Again, you choose your goal.

3. just put them for max rests possible to increase the steal chance to max.

4. food is free, although salt can be hard to come by for free. cooking meals increases your cook profession, professions are pretty important, since you have few means of exploiting most of their experience gains, although I suppose you could just train a cook in the tavern and take him back when maxed out. A master cook assigned to a cookpot reduces food consumption considerably.

5. changing shift ins't a rest. It only advances tavern time, not troop time.

6. it doesn't matter when you satisfy the "needs" of the various factions, as long as you can, although it could be a good idea to have a low security tavern early to get the faction reward, then maintain a high security tavern from then on, not that it matters, because you can accomplish the needs for the various faction rewards whenever you want.

7. you need a specialty recipe. You can only produce one specialty at a time and you will get one of the specialty at each shift. All specialties are 14's

8. to do what? You make far more coins then you could pull out at any worthwhile exchange rate, you will also be refusing customers at every shift, because you don't have enough places to seat them, even in a tavern with not an inch left of space to place items.

[Nobukado]

1&2. The question is about min-maxing.

4. I'm asking whether resting Mercs is cheaper using a bed at an inn or camp outside. Not directly Tavern related, but more about changing Shifts as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Do players who do tavern-only games rest using inn or camp?

5. Yes but it costs 100 influence. That's crazy. It's cheaper to Rest, and you get the same result for cheaper, no? That's what I was asking.

7. Got it, thanks. Does the specialty meal come later on, or is it something unlocked early? Did I just miss it?

8. Again, I want to know how to min-max the meals.

I know "anything" can work, but I do want to know if there's anything I can do to maximize efficiency of Tavern. It might save me and others hours of time, if we do something in the Tavern the right way or the wrong way.

[titanopteryx]

1. Captured animals can learn different traits when assigned as bouncers than humans do. In my opinion they make superior bouncers. Additionally you can change the professions of your mercs to fit the role you need them to do at the moment. You can't do that with citizens. Otherwise you can store mercs you don't want on your team there in camp and take them out in camp. For instance if you're trying to influence enemy party size. Sore most mercs, rest, take them out. Otherwise passively increasing the professions of the mercs stored there can be helpful.

2. Employees, both citizens and mercs, will randomly learn traits related to the job you have them doing. If the employee works there long enough he gets a long list of traits.

3. You can only steal recipes from taverns that have a lower prestige than you. Otherwise the chance of stealing is the same no matter how much lower it is.

4. One thing you can do is store the mercs in the tavern while you rest and take them out. they still cost upkeep but it comes out of the tavern's money. Assuming you make a profit with them in the tavern, you basically reduce your rest cost for free. One benefit of resting in a tavern is you can't be ambushed. By rest in a tavern I mean one in a town. I don't think you can rest in your own tavern.

5. I never used that feature so I don't know about it.

6. Different factions give rewards when they like you a lot. It's easier to work on the working class factions first because of your limited menu at the beginning of the game. Otherwise the factions affect the chance to sell food. However with enough bonuses the food will eventually get to 100%. For instance when your bouncers learn traits that boost sales chance, you can strategically place them around the tavern. My captured boar started with such a trait just from being an animal. Same with a pony I set as a bouncer.

7. Certain foods have on the right side of it's tooltip when you're looking at the recipes that it's a specialty. You should have gotten your first specialty when cleaning the first tavern. You need to have this on the menu and when you rest in camp you get sent 1 of that specialty. It's worth 14 food points. The different specialties give different buffs. If you shrink your party size enough before resting, you can rest just eating that food item and then you get a new one when you finish resting.

8. Cheap food sells for very little. Later in the game when you've bought all the recipes from the various taverns it's best to have the more expensive ones. Watch for a message saying the shortages changed. They can be the difference between making money and losing money. For the booze though, aim for the universal ones. The ones that are for specific factions don't sell as well.

[BedlamBetty]

Originally posted by Nobukado:

1&2. The question is about min-maxing.

4. I'm asking whether resting Mercs is cheaper using a bed at an inn or camp outside. Not directly Tavern related, but more about changing Shifts as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Do players who do tavern-only games rest using inn or camp?

5. Yes but it costs 100 influence. That's crazy. It's cheaper to Rest, and you get the same result for cheaper, no? That's what I was asking.

7. Got it, thanks. Does the specialty meal come later on, or is it something unlocked early? Did I just miss it?

8. Again, I want to know how to min-max the meals.

I know "anything" can work, but I do want to know if there's anything I can do to maximize efficiency of Tavern. It might save me and others hours of time, if we do something in the Tavern the right way or the wrong way.

Yeah, but min maxing what?
If it's just about generally min maxing decisions in the game, you should also be talking to the thief in stromkapp with only the exact amount of krowns he asks you for, and then killing him for a profit in your first 10-15 minutes of game, which will give you a quicker imediate bonus than the Tavern.

The tavern's greatest utility is in the fact that it can help you increase profession xp for free.

4. it's cheaper to rest in camp. As I said, food is free, and only salt is hard to come by as something you're focused on obtaining.

5. It isn't a rest, it only advances the shift, so the value of the action is entirely dependent on what you want to accomplish from it. It won't give you valor points or any crafted stuff, except those specific to the tavern. You are not replacing a troop rest, it is it's own thing.
You will probably never need to use it, but it's there, in case you think you do.

7. don't remember, I did not change my playstyle because of the tavern, so the initial recipe was either directly tied to the Tavern, or was available along the early opening of Tiltren, to Arthes, to Ludern, to Vertruse, at the sole cost of 6 pitons and the free border pass in Vertruse.

8. max out the cost as much as possible, which means maxing out the complexity of your meals. It's not a bad idea to have a cheap meal until you get the faction bonus, but then max it all out and keep a meat base specialty, so it covers carnivores. Increase all your prices to 92-93% sale rate once you have all your deco and layout. The wealthier the patrons, the more they spend, so the more you make.
Not that it matters, again, pulling money out of the tavern is really inefficient, because each withdrawal reduces the amount of the next and it requires rests to pull it back up (which I suppose could be a way for you to use advance shift in order to pull the exchange rate back up after one withdrawal).

To reiterate, saving hours is pretty subjective in a game with unlimited squad size.
There are plenty of early game time savers and the tavern helps for that, a bit, through being able to get a bit more early game money for trade, but it won't make a major impact on the game of someone who knows the world well and there are small early game things that make a far larger difference in getting a troop squared early on to coast from level 5.

[Bug]

thoughts on getting recipes for rum, Goosenburg wine, etc. for the brewery?

[titanopteryx]

You can steal booze recipes from other taverns that have less prestige than you. Then you can craft it at your brewer camp item in addition to making it in your tavern. I'm pretty sure that's how i got those.

[Fishlegs]

Where i can find recipes lake fish bouillabaisse?