The Tip.It Times


Issue 5999gp

Heads, Tails, Bones and Scales

Written by and edited by Tip.It

Will NOT be discussed today! The topic for today is actually that other useful item provided by animals, and coincidently, also one of the main things that nearly everyone is shopping for these days with the holidays coming up. And today, I will talk about a certain beef I have had with it for a while now.

Food is, according to the dictionary, "any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth, simply enjoy, etc". In RuneScape however, food has its finger in a different pie.

Fish, meats, fruits, vegetables, pies, pizzas, cakes, you name it. We've all fished, butchered, picked, grown, cooked, baked or eaten it at one point during our RuneScape careers. And the variety of dishes we can create in RuneScape these days is astounding, even if it does not compare anywhere near to what we can create food-wise in real life.

Now, I am not asking for more variety, but let's look at the foods at the high end of the table. Since the beginning of time, the Shark has always been the cream of the crop. Being easy to catch made it popular, and while it requires a high level to cook, it heals 20 HP which makes it the best food.

In 2003 Trawler was introduced, bringing in the Manta Ray. Its rather slow and somewhat costly to catch if you buy your own supplies, but once cooked you're left with a perfectly souped up Shark at 22HP. Alas, it was not everyone's cup of tea, largely due to supply issues, so as a result of that many people stuck to the Shark.

Early 2006 we finally saw a breakthrough in better-then-Shark types of food. The Potato revolution pretty much replaced the Shark where high level food was most needed (difficult quests or PvP wars). Also 22hp, but much easier to make, The Potato had another advantage. At the required level to make the Tuna Potato (68) you do not burn any of the required cooked ingredients, so you know that you end up with the exact same amount of Potatoes that you started with.

People soon developed a taste for it, and later on we saw more high-level foods appear. But while various Pies and the Saradomin Brew all had equal or more HP capacity per inventory slot, it is really comparing oranges and apples. The Shark, Manta Ray and Tuna Potato all heal their full lot of HP in one single bite, where Summer Pies and Sara Brews do not.

Not long ago, the Rocktail appeared on the stage. They need Living Minerals to be caught, but are otherwise not harder to aquire then Sharks are. Compared to the previous high end food, 1 extra HP does not sound like much, but it has the added bonus of boosting one's HP 10% beyond the original level. To me that is icing on the cake, and given the situation, entirely not necessary at all, but I guess someone thought it was needed to make the Rocktail more popular then Saradomin Brews.

I guess I'm in the soup about the gradual increase of HP-per-bite not needing additional boosts to be made popular. But there is more.

Let's look at what skills, besides cooking, are needed to acquire the high end foods. Swordfish are fished. Sharks are fished. Manta Ray's are from a minigame, requiring a level in, you guessed it, fishing. Tuna Potato's require farming and fishing. And finally, for Rocktails, you need mining, and unsurprisingly... fishing.

Where is Hunting in this? Why is Farming under represented? In short, why is Fishing the only viable skill to get food? Jagex had an awesome opportunity with the Tuna Potato, when it required a lot of basic steps to gather relatively low level foods, which we're ultimately combined to a high level food using the COOKING skill. If you line everything up like this, you can see that whoever thought this up is a few fries short of his happy meal.

But let's not cry over spilled milk. I had the idea to come up with a Runescape-based recipe a while back, but I went bananas with it. This should provide a decent template to what the eventual best food ever (say, 30 HP single-bite) requires to be made.

Ingredients;
Raw Pawya meat (hunted)
Raw Rainbow Fish (fished)
Peach (magically created from bones)
Coconut (farmed from a fruit tree)
Sweet corn (farmed from allotments)
Fever Grass (picked near Oog'log)
Cinnamon (cut from Dramen Tree)
Vanilla Pod (picked from Khazari Jungle)
Spirit Weed (monster drop)
Cockatrice Egg (monster drop or created with summoning)

Steps:
Light the Fever Grass with your Raw Pawya meat in your inventory, this creates Smoked Pawya. Cook the Rainbow Fish normally. Add the Smoked Pawya and the Rainbow Fish to a bowl together with a Peach. You now have Fruity Meat.

Use a Pestle and Mortar on the Cinnamon with a Spirit Weed and Vanilla Pod in your inventory to create a Spicy Mix. Add this to the Fruity Meat to create a Tasty Mix.

Hammer open the Coconut and collect it in a Bucket. Grind the Sweet corn to Cornflower, and add in the Cockatrice Egg to get a Tasty Base.

Add the Tasty Base to the Tasty Mix, and cook at level 99 to get a Tasty Treat.

Now, this should of course be taken with a grain of salt. So soon after releasing new best food, discussing even better food often ends up being the hot potato. But whatever Jagex comes up with next for us to do with foods, I'm quite sure we'll just have to stomach it, and hope that we have the levels for it to be on the gravy train while it lasts.

All we can do is hope that there will be more grist for the mill, rather then have some half-baked updates. I for one, hope that this has been food for thought for you all, and has made you hungry for more.

Happy Holidays everyone :)


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Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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