Hello, my name is Crawe, and I am a Master Chef.

I am here today to announce that I am selling exclusive rights to all my
cooking knowledge to the highest bidder. Over the period of approximately a
year I have cooked myself to the top of the culinary world of BatMUD. My
master chef skill is 100% and I can provide you the skills needed to make
incredible bonuses for you and your fellow adventurers.

Why am I selling all this knowledge if the bonuses are so great (and trust me,
as some of you might already know, they are)? Why not use them myself? Well. I
do, to some extent. But my reinc of choice has a few drawbacks (and those of
you who know me, know that I don't reinc all that much). I'm the best cook
around and I can't eat any food. Imagine my anguish. And, after my last reinc,
the plant lore skill I had worked up from 5% to over 70% is no longer
available to me, and alas, I cannot easily make the more demanding recipes
anymore. I've had all this knowledge for quite some time, and I've been
thinking about what to do with it. I thought I'd try and make a buck.

Now the rights will be exclusive. This means I will email you all my notes on
the subject, and if need be provide you with additional answers to any
questions you might have. You are free to do what ever you like with this
knowledge, whether you want to keep it to yourself, publish it or sell it
onwards. This also means I will not be giving answers to any aspiring cooks
regarding details of recipes, ingredients or master chef trainers. I am not
announcing myself as a general BatMUD cooking-encyclopedia. Also, this is a
package deal: I'm not selling any separate recipes.

The Cooking with Crawe package includes:

- General Information: a guide on how to get started, hints and
recommendations on how to make the process easier, everything from where to
go, what to buy, and what to do
- Information on all Master Chef Trainers: where you can find them, what they
can teach you and how to deal with them
- A Guide to Ingredients: where to find them, buy them, and how to make them
- 62 unique Master Chef Recipes (including 21 sandwich recipes, 16 soup
recipes, and much more): ingredients needed, where you can find the
ingredients, what kind of bonuses each recipe gives
- Information on Cooking Gear: everything from basic requirements to nifty
bonuses, and where to find these pieces

'broker crawe 1' to see the current bid. Offers?


Bon Apetit,
Crawe, Master Chef

Interest has been delightfully broad already. Lots of questions are being
asked; people seem to know a lot less about cooking than I anticipated. Some
elaboration is in order. Ulath introduced the cooking skill in the summer of
2008 (news display updates 595 and 602), and after that Shinarae added a
second dimension to cooking by introducing the master chef skill together with
its peripheral content. The food produced by the cooking skill has small
bonuses, the real treats come when you start apprenticing for the master
chefs. You have to have you cooking skill high enough to be able to start
training the master chef skill.

Cooking can be learned by everybody. There's no background or guild
restrictions and the gained master chef skill will save over reincarnations,
just as the cooking skill. While there are no background restrictions, it does
make the life of a chef a lot easier if you have access to the plant lore
skill, especially when you advance far enough to start making the more
complicated recipes. I started with taking one level in the explorers guild
which gave me enough plant lore and fishing to start training. Being able to
eat food is also nice. *sigh*

Now for you min-maxers. Training the cooking and master chef skills takes
time, and there's a lot to figure out. Even when you have the skills to make
the best recipes, there are ingredients that are hard to come by. You will
need the assistance of beast masters, rangers, nuns, and perhaps the odd
alchemist and merchant. The bonuses you gain are to your stats and ticks. One
dish gives a boost to two, and the bonuses stack. Duration depends on at least
how much you move around. If you stay put in the same room they last for
several minutes. And let me just say this about the gained bonuses: they are
coded by Shinarae, and if people knew the full extent of them, the cows of
BatMUD would have sore nipples.

And once more for clarification: I am not selling any of my cooking gear, just
the information, and I'm still not coaching anyone. Your options is to go to
Teapot's Kitchen in Arelium, talk to him and start exploring the delightful
world of cooking, or make a bid on the cookbook of the century: Cooking with
Crawe!


Tastefully,
Crawe, Master Chef

I am selling The Cookbook tomorrow, Friday the 16th at 18:00 EET. The current
bid is four million gold pieces.


Stuffin' it,
Crawe, Master Chef

Ok, seems people want to continue bidding, and a lot of them aren't on tonight
and during the weekend due to the festivities. I will postpone the sale till
next week and try to keep in touch with the interested parties.


Whipping and chopping,
Crawe, Master Chef