Provisioning is getting some major changes in Update 6. Find out what to expect.

Provisioners, rejoice! Big changes are coming to your crafting skill in Update 6. We've reorganized recipes to make them easier to find in the UI, reduced the overall number of ingredients (your inventory will thank us), added new recipes, improved the usefulness of drink buffs, and much more. Find out how provisioning works in Update 6 right here.





Provisioning

A provisioner creates food and drinks that confer buffs to a character when consumed. By exploring the world and peeking into containers, provisioners can acquire new recipes to learn and craft to develop their skills. Ingredients found throughout the world and on some vendors allow you to create a wide variety of food and drinks when you're at a provisioning crafting station.





Base Ingredients

There are six types of base ingredients—three for food and three for drinks. The base ingredients in a recipe determine the kind of buff the food or drink grants. There are several items that compose each group of base ingredients (for example, you can obtain fish, pork, poultry, and other meats), but they all grant the same kind of benefit to a recipe.

Foods containing meat increase maximum health, those with fruits increase maximum magicka, and vegetable dishes increase maximum stamina. Drinks increase regeneration; alcohol regenerates health, tea regenerates magicka, and tonics regenerate stamina.

You'll find base ingredients throughout the world as you explore. If you see food sitting out in the open, you can take it and receive the appropriate kind of ingredient; similarly, you can kill livestock like chickens or cows to obtain meat (but be careful to make sure you're not stealing unless you mean to!). You'll find drink base ingredients in barrels, sacks, and crates. Grocers, chefs, and brewers throughout the world also have a variety of ingredients for sale.

There are other ways to obtain ingredients, too. You can get them through cleaning and gutting fish you've caught, as a reward for Crafting Writs, and from the packages your provisioning hireling sends you each day.





Additives

Additives are the ingredients that make your dishes more than just “cooked meat"—things like honey, cheese, and garlic are examples of additives you'll find. Recipes require base ingredients and the proper additives. There are seven kinds of additives for food and seven for drinks.

There are two rare additives, as well, one for food and one for drinks. These are quite difficult to find, but now and again your resourceful provisioning hireling might turn them up. There's a chance you'll obtain these elusive additives as a reward from Crafting Writs, as well.





Recipes

A provisioner relies on recipes for the knowledge he or she needs to whip up delicious comestibles. Master craftsmen scour the world for new recipes, which can be found in containers and as a reward for completing Crafting Writs.

While there are many, many recipes to learn, each with its own list of ingredients and additives, they all operate on similar principles when it comes to determining the quality of their products and the kinds of buffs they'll provide. Recipes that feature one type of base ingredient are green quality and produce one buff. Those that require two types of base ingredient (meat and vegetables, for example) are blue quality and provide both respective buffs (an increase to maximum health and stamina in our example). Those that require all three types of ingredient are epic in quality and affect all three of your attributes.

Recipes are organized in your UI by the type of buff they provide. When you click to expand one of these categories, the recipes you know will be listed in order of their level—you'll always find the highest-level recipes you know at the bottom of a list. This makes it much easier to find out what you can craft or to locate the recipe you're looking for.





New in Update 6

For all of you who are old hands at provisioning, we know you'll be interested in how these changes affect you. Here's a look at the changes you'll notice:

There are far less ingredients, saving you inventory space and making it easier to craft useful products.

The UI has been updated to organize recipes more sensibly.

Many new recipes have been introduced.

Ingredients relate directly to the type of buff they produce. For instance, meat dishes increase your health, and fruit dishes increase your magicka.

Food and drink additives increase the quality of your creations.

Lootable objects yield the type of item they represent—for instance, you'll get apples from baskets of apples in the world.

Grocers, chefs, and brewers sell non-rare ingredients appropriate to their vendor type.

Your hireling will deliver a larger volume of ingredients to you than before.

Non-trophy fish acquired by fishing can be skinned and used as meat, and critters like cows or chickens can be killed for their meat.

Drink buffs have been improved greatly to make them competitive with food buffs.





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