The Source's own Farik Il'Kadar has written an excellent program for this, MacroBot. It will send keystrokes to AC while you are away from your computer. Since your character can get XP from skill checks for performing various tasks, you can gain a great deal of XP with little effort. While not for everyone, some people have put this technique to good use to explore aspects of character development and templating that would otherwise have been very tedious and time consuming to attain.

-Chris (Khali)

Assuming you're using Steve's Macrobot program, here's my current
portal-mule macro:

We begin in Magic mode with our newbie wand selected.

I think that's the correct xp per spell level cast but my brain is fried from being at work so I may be off.

Hope this is helpful...

I stand humbled before the true Macro geniuses in AC...

From: Irv
ID: r0shoaIqFn.
Date: August 31, 2000 at 07:00 am
In Reply to: Of course you can macro cooking

Subject: Better yet

Position your cursor over the top left corner in your pack pane and hot key your
packs.

Put several stacks of the same item in each seperate pack.

Then, select one pack, select the item, select the next pack, use the item.

Finished items will go in your main pack so remember to put a stacking routine
in.

You can do much more that 12 per macro session that way.

Man, what a pain in the ass it was figuring out how to macro cooking.

BIGTIME technical macro discussion ahead. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Biggest drawback was the 12 stack limit on foodstuffs like Pizzas, water and cheese.

They let you stack DOUGH and oils at 50, why not the products of those components??

FYI, to make a hearty healing famous pizza (restores 50 health weighs only 50 burden - 2/3rds what a 25 burden health potion weighs) you have to:

1) combine water with flour to make dough
2) combine dough with cheese to make pizza
3) combine health infusion with aqua to make health oil
4) combine victual infusion with aqua to make victual oil
5) combine oregano with pizza to make famous pizza
6) combine health oil with famous pizza to make healing famous pizza
7) combine victual oil with healing famous pizza to make hearty healing famous pizza

Every one of those is a skill check and if you fail, you lose the components you were trying to combine. To do it at 50% success takes a cooking skill of around 200.

The problem is, if you macro using strictly hotkeys once the 12 stack component runs out you're screwed and if you don't take care, your character starts EATING your food. :S

Here's the trick I'm using.

First of all, Macrobot can't do the mouse clicks needed so I had to find a replacement. I'd still pick Macrobot over anything else available for 99% of all my macroing needs but to make this trick work I *had* to have mouse clicks in the macro.

Hot Key Slots:
1. Ghar Newbie Wand (selected)
2. 50 Oregano
3. 50 Health Oil
4. 50 Victual Oil
5. 50 Health Infusions
6. 50 Aqua
7. PACK #1 (did you know you can hotkey packs? You CAN!)
8. Pack #2
9. Pack #3

Pack #1 contains 50 pizzas
Pack #2 contains 50 famous pizzas
Pack #3 contains 50 healing famous pizzas

The Mouse cursor is hovering over the upper left (first) slot in the backpack.

You can see I've done some pizzas ahead of time to set this up to run while I'm at work or asleep.

Tracy goes through her normal spellcasting routine, casting Creature III, Cooking IV, Alchemy IV, Focus IV and Coord IV to max her cooking/alchemy skills (now buffing to 199/185 respectively) then:

~ Peace mode
1 Place wand in pack (must have empty hands to use skills)
7 Open Pack 1, which appears in your inventory screen displaying the 50 pizzas
in 4 stacks of 12 and one stack of 2
2 Use Oregano on...
<mouseclick> Pizzas!
You make Famous Pizza.
8 Open Pack 2, 4 stacks of 12 famous pizzas, 2 famous pizzas
3 Use Health oil on
<mousclick> Famous Pizza
You make a Healing Famous Pizza
9 Open Pack 3
4 Use Victual Oil on...
<mouseclick> Healing Famous Pizza
You make a Hearty Healing Famous Pizza
5 Use Health Infusion on
6 Aqua Incanta
You make Health Oil
1 Put wand back in hand
~ Back into Magic mode

Then we cast an Item III/IV spell and a Life III/IV spell.

So, we can finally macro making those pizzas Rojon needs so badly to survive and cut down his burden. In truth we can mass-produce them faster but I need to raise Tracy's cooking skill so her failure rate is reduced. Problem is the cooking skill checks only provide about 200xp at best which sucks as the final steps have a Level V spell casting requirement but only provide Level IV xp.

So, a few more days or a week or so and we can start Supplying The Source with Hearty Healing/Mana Pizzas in bulk with cooperation.

Biggest problem in doing this is staying stocked on comps and basic cooking supplies which are not that hard to get. With an Arwic subway portal I can buy cheese in bulk faster than I can make it and flour, water and oregano can be purchased in Baishi which is 50 yards from the Ayan lifestone.

Hope I didn't bore you all with this stuff.

Whoever thought Tracy Lords would end up barefoot in a kitchen?? :P

> Apparently the non-text keys don't work.
> When I originally wrote the program, I did not test whether the non-text
> keys worked in-game.
> They definitely work when tested against other programs, such as Notepad and
> Word.
>
> There are individuals on this list whose actual experience with macro-ing
> far outstrips mine.
> Perhaps they can suggest some work-arounds for the limitations of MacroBot.
>

Just remap the keyboard and use some of the emote keys like U and I and O.

-Alex (Beryl)

--- In [removed], "Sinister Vac" <tanus@i...> wrote:
> Urgent assistance requested -
>
> All of us from the VAC family has finally had it, with Madam Vac's
> cooking skills - (never accept a dinner invitation if she hands you
> one ---- yuuuck!)
>
> Therefore we are asking The source if any one, can please assist
her
> with a good Script for enhancing her skills,, We have put pressure
on
> her, and told her to get-in-the-kitchen and start practising!!

Hi there.

I can only tell you my experiences with Tracy Lords.

What you do depends on what your goals are.

With Tracy, I wanted her to make the Hearty Healing Famous Pizzas, so that meant a skill in the 200+ range. I didn't need to spec Cooking to get there with buffs so I didn't specialize it.

If you want to dye things or other similarly difficult tasks, you need a skill in the 275-300 range and that DOES require specialized cooking.

The only practical way I know to get decent Skill xp for cooking is of course to cook. This is difficult in a macro for several reasons, mainly the 12-stack limit on items like pizzas, water, etc. I rapidly came to the conclusion I needed a macro program to performed mouse clicks.

I found a program called Macro Scheduler at http://www.mjtnet.com/ which fits the bill.

Here is my setup. Tracy casts creature, item and life spells for xp, and to buff her cooking and alchemy skills. Her hotkeys are setup this way:

1 - Ghar starter wand, targeted for item spells
2 - Oregano (breakfast of champions - try on your Mikos cereal!)
3 - Health Oil (stack of 50)
4 - Victual Oil (also Stack of 50)
5 - Health Infusions
6 - Aqua Incante
7 - Pack #1 (did you know you can hot-key your packs?) Contains Pizzas
8 - Pack #2 Famous Pizzas
9 - Pack #3 Healing Famous Pizzas

Now every 11 minutes I cast my spells (creature mastery, cooking mastery, alchemy mastery, focus and coordination self) and start cooking (after I go through the cooking routine I cast my item and life spells)

My mouse is already set in the upper left hand square of my backpack.

Hit `, go into peace mode
Hit 1, put Ghar wand in backpack
Hit 7, open backpack #1
Hit 2, use Oregano on
Mouseclick - stack of pizzas, I make a famous pizza
Hit 8, Open backpack #2
hit 3, use Health Oil on
Mouseclick - famous pizzas, making a healing famous pizza
Hit 9, open backpack #3
Hit 4, use victual oil on
Mouseclick - Healing famous pizzas, making a Hearty Healing Famous
pizza
Hit 5, use health infusion on
Hit 6, Aqua Incante
Hit 1, Equip wand
Hit ~, back into magic mode

I wait 10 seconds between each keystroke to pad time for lag, but only wait 2 seconds before mouseclicks for obvious reasons.

This routine gains Tracy about 2-300 xp in cooking skills every 10 minutes. Its slow, but steady. I could do more difficult foods like the ice creams but her skill already buffs into the 215 range which is good enough for the pizzas. I will probably reroll another cooking mule with cooking and alchemy specced but for now Tracy does what I need her to. Its time consuming enough setting her up to make pizzas as is what with getting all the components together.

My routine assumes you have already made up a batch of pizzas, famous and healing pizzas in advance to start. The results of the routine will be more famous and healing pizzas and health oils so all you'll need to do is make more pizzas and victual oils when she starts to run out. The mouseclicks assure that when the 12 stack in a backpack is finished, the next stack will move up to fill the empty slot and be selected when its turn is next.

I hope this gives you some ideas to help you with macroing.