Are prepared meals more cost effective/efficient then raw ingredients?

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Something I never realized before after watching a dwarf make a lavish meal is that it made a stack of 20 meals with the ingredients, I know that using 4 ingredients of 5 makes the meals is around the same amount of food as the ingredients but it has me wondering if I sound be turning all my food into easy or fine meals. Do easy/fine meals also make a stack of 20? I may have to edit my embark profiles to include a cook.

[kheftel]

the output stack size is the sum of the ingredient stack sizes. so, a job using stack sizes of 1, 2, 3, and 4 will result in an output size of 10. So yeah, I do a lot of cooking in my forts, I cook everything I can besides tallow (for soap), things that can be brewed, and things I want seeds for.

[DemonicSquid]

Cooking can be extremely profitable when the traders arrive. With a good cook you can get easily get 1000 for one barrel of munchies. Great for early game when you haven't got a supply of gems or a legendary crafter.

[76561188078797539]

Diposting pertama kali oleh DemonicSquid:

Great for early game when you haven't got a supply of gems or a legendary crafter.

It's great even when you do. Why waste gems on trade when there's so many things to engrave in your fortress?

If you make only lavish meals, right now you can make several thousands dwarfbucks more than the ingredients cost even when purchased from a trader (much less obtained through internal industry), as long as your cook knows his onions from strawberries.

Best trade goods right now, period. I generally go through "Prepared Food" barrels (sort by value, not distance) and trade away any that have less-than-masterwork dishes in it. Only the best for my Urists.

Often send away traders with 5000+ dwarfbucks of extra profit, after buying out everything I care from them, it's THAT profitable. Simpler to give them that extra barrel or two than have my Urists lug it back to the stockpile.

And, with a really good cook, you can get 15,000+ value for a single barrel.

[Trip]

I use expensive lavish meals to kickstart my migrants. I usually keep a small poor fort till I'm ready for it then pump out stacks of expensive lavish meals.

Another thing to do is go crazy and use whip flour, dwarf syrup, and cheese to make stacks of prepared meals so valuable that every goblin, kobold, or other ne'r do well sieges you in massive numbers.

To steal your danishes XD

[76561188078797539]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Trip:

To steal your danishes XD

I mean, they are "hand-crafted."

Can't really blame them for trying.

[Googley Eye'd Bastard]

Diposting pertama kali oleh DemonicSquid:

Cooking can be extremely profitable when the traders arrive. With a good cook you can get easily get 1000 for one barrel of munchies. Great for early game when you haven't got a supply of gems or a legendary crafter.

Hot damn, does this make lavish meals the new wooden spiked balls? (disproportionately valuable trade good that should be cheap but is good for giving traders) If thats the case I'll toss out my stone worker for a cook instead.

Diposting pertama kali oleh kheftel:

the output stack size is the sum of the ingredient stack sizes. so, a job using stack sizes of 1, 2, 3, and 4 will result in an output size of 10. So yeah, I do a lot of cooking in my forts, I cook everything I can besides tallow (for soap), things that can be brewed, and things I want seeds for.

So the output from cooking will always be the same vs what is used to cook, I used to think meals actually wasted food the more valuable you went I guess that might have been an old version thing.

[Savok]

It's not that new. Prepared meals have always been overvalued. To the point some refuse to use them as trade goods because it's too easy. It is somewhat odd to make your fort's main export microwavable meals.

[76561188078797539]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Savok:

It is somewhat odd to make your fort's main export microwavable meals.

While I agree conceptually, it's not as far fetched as you may think. Food was frequently a premium commodity in the kind of time period DF vaguely takes place in.

There was always a famine somewhere. Considering how stored food in DF doesn't spoil... I mean, it makes internal sense.

Though true dorfs will peddle useless stone rings to elves and humans anyway, as a matter of tradition.

[Jorn Stones]

for the most part, raw ingredients number total=lavish meal number total.
5 cheese, 5 garden cress, 20 meat, and 5 plump helmets makes a stack of 35.
However, it is possible to set your stockpile so that you will cook your alcohol as well, this changes the equation;
5 cheese, 5 garden cress, 20 meat, and 5 plump helmets(first turned into 25 drinks by a brewer) makes a stack of 55.

The biggest win is in the value gained, however. getting a bit more/less food out of it doesnt really matter as food is that easy to get already.

[AlP]

Prepared meals also multiply any rare ingredient you put into it. If a dwarf prefers to eat nautilus, and you only got a stack of 5 nautilus from a caravan, that's only 5 good meals for that dwarf. But if you cook that 5 nautilus with 30 quarry bush leaves, 30 dwarven syrup, and 30 dwarven wine, that's a stack of 95 lavish meals that contain nautilus.

Until you can make masterwork roasts, those low-quality nautilus roasts will still give your dwarf a happy thought.

As for the question:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Googley Eye'd Bastard:

it has me wondering if I sound be turning all my food into easy or fine meals. Do easy/fine meals also make a stack of 20?

All meals result in equal amounts of food. Easy meals give more exp to your cook in the same amount of time, so they are better for leveling. Lavish meals are more valuable and have bigger stacks.

[DoubleG]

Diposting pertama kali oleh DemonicSquid:

Cooking can be extremely profitable when the traders arrive. With a good cook you can get easily get 1000 for one barrel of munchies. Great for early game when you haven't got a supply of gems or a legendary crafter.

1000 for one barrel of food? Gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers! :P

I make a cook part of my starting 7 and make him cook everything he can at all times, apart from teh usual tallow and suchlike. 3-4K is the cheapest barrels I usually trade. They can get higher.