Unit of FoodFollow

I think the answer to your question is on Lucy. I will post a couple of links.
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=29781 120 minutes Bristlebanes Party Platter miraculous meal
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=13047 8 minutes Roots meal
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=13419 5 minutes Vegetables snack

I know that in drink, the Kaladim Constitutional lasts longer than any other drink I have researched, even though others are also miraculous drink. This lasts 120.
http://lucy.allakhazam.com/item.html?id=99153 This Spicy Hot Chocolate, another miraculous drink, lasts 70.

Thinking the variation in duration is only in the miraculous category. But I could be very wrong.

If you need a listing of the varying levels of duration, I will post them.

You can also tie your food and drink to two of your movement hot buttons and you'll consume them whenever you move (until you're full to bursting, of course), which guarantees you won't use up your stats food. If anyone needs a guide how to do this just let me know.

Okay!

Find your basic food item in your bag. I like to use Mum's Cinnamon Bread which is available for free in Shard's Landing. (For basic drink I use the Marshmallow Hot Chocolate, also available there for free.) Left-click and hold and you will get a hot button icon for the item on your cursor. Drop it into one of your open Hot Bar slots. Do the same for your basic drink and drop it in another slot. Best to keep them side by side. You have 10 hot bars available so I usually bury these into the 10th bar, so I don't use up hot buttons I might have more useful applications for.

If you right-click either of these hot buttons you'll consume one unit of the food, unless you're already seeing the "You could not possibly..." buttons. No matter if you do, you get the idea. All that is now needed is to tie these hot buttons to your movement keys. Let's use FORWARD and LEFT. Right now if you're like me those are tied to your arrow keys. Also some people stick to the traditional WASD keys. Makes no difference. Alt-O to open the OPTIONS window, then choose KEYS. Under SELECT CATEGORY choose the hot bar # on which you stuck your food hot buttons. You will see a list of the Hot buttons by # as well as lines for KEYPRESS and ALTERNATE. I have bound every key on all 10 hot bars to a key-combo. But IIRC some of the hot bars do not have default bindings. Doesn't matter! What you do is choose the hot button line for the key on which you've placed your food hot button. Go to KEYPRESS and hit the FORWARD movement key you use on your keyboard (In my case, the UPARROW.) If you have a key-combo under KEYPRESS then do the same under ALTERNATE. If you have one key bound to two different hot buttons it will display in red. But it still will work. Now do the same thing for your drink hot button. You can use LEFT or RIGHT here. I wouldn't recommend BACK unless you do an awful lot of back-pedallng in your adventuring!

Exit and test. Now every time you move forward you should see a food consumption message. That can be a little annoying but you can always filter that to a different window. I don't think you can shut it off. If you move to the left, assuming you bound your drink to the LEFT key, you will see a drink consumption message.

Note you can also do this for skills you want to level up. I always do this with FORAGE and TRACKING since they're both slow to level and have longish repop timers.

To benefit from the stat foods, you want to place them in your inventory AHEAD OF your junk foods. Be sure to load up a lot of junk foods so you don't have to worry about consuming it all without realizing it and starting in on your expensive stat foods. What's also nice is the hot buttons only display ONE stack of food/drink (20 units) but when this stack is consumed it automatically loads a new stack as long as you have more in your bags. When the button displays NOT FOUND you will know you've eaten/drunk your entire supply.

For stat foods, I recommend:

Merchant's Feast is a miraculous meal offering 128AC, 250HP, and 250Mana. 800-1000pp each on FV.
Merchant's Brew is a enduring drink offering 25 AC, 200HP and 200Mana. 300pp each on FV.

I would recommend just putting a few in your bag, maybe as little as 1. That way if you run out of junk food you don't accidentally eat your entire supply of the good stuff. Of course, if plat is no object, just buy stacks of these and burn through them, altho if plat was no object you wouldn't ask about this tactic!

Finally, be conscious that you're not going to be consuming any of your junk foods if you're just sitting around in game doing nothing. So as you get hungry/thirsty there is the likelihood you will consume your expensive stuff.

Also be sure to buy the INNATE METABOLISM AA's. They drop your consumption rate down to 50% in theory, but it seems to me it drops more than that. I notice it particularly when I make a new toon and I see how fast he runs thru food, especially if mounted. Those darn horses eat a ton!

Try it out and let me know if any problems arise.



Edited, Sep 8th 2016 7:23pm by Sippin

Food and drink durations
a list of the durations of various foods and drinks in EQ. As near as I can tell, the number listed is the number of real-world minutes that the food or drink will last if you right click it. It lasts twice as long when eaten normally (without clicking it). Keep in mind that times will vary depending on who you are, whether you have a horse, and what zones you visit (for instance, water is used up faster in some desert zones).

It turns out there are about 500 types of food and more than 50 types of drink. More than 60 percent of the foods are 'meal', and most of the drinks are 'drink'. It appears that the categories are

1-5 snack/whistle wetter
6-20 meal/drink
21-30 hearty meal/refreshing drink
31-40 banquet size meal/lasting drink
41-50 feast/flowing drink
51-60 enduring meal/enduring drink
61-240 miraculous meal/miraculous drink
http://mboards.eqtraders.com/eq/showthread.php?5208-Food-and-drink-durations


Edited, Oct 8th 2016 9:19pm by Vinney

Merchant's Feast trumps the Stew for any class that cares about AC. Extra 128 AC is huge, and clearly beats an extra 250 HPs. IMO.

Don't get me started! Oh well, one quick anecdote. One of my old guilds there was some raid event where a death touch from a boss was inevitable and we needed a "volunteer" to take the death. The moment the raid leader asked for volunteers, everyone shouted out the name of whatever rangers were on the raid, because.... taking death touches was class-defining for ranjurs!"