#hrowaway-t

[laurelnose]

I agree that the lore and character development in House of Light are top tier, but imo the cooking system is like pulling teeth, salons are so nice but between planning out what food to cook to match aspects, ordering and collecting ingredients, and juggling two spicing sources and three ranges, I mostly can't be bothered. Like the lessons earned are nice? I guess? But by the time you get set up enough to host half your skills are up to 9 already so I just do em for the funny magic ppl stories

I 100% agree that salons are worth it just for lore and characters. the rest of it ... I don’t wanna say “skill issue,” but ... multiple level 9 skills?? I was hosting before I had a level 6, and I was dragging my feet about it. I could have started once I’d unlocked spices and the pantry, if I’d been willing to divert funds from unlocking the rest of the house. You might be making this harder on yourself than you need to. Some misconceptions we’ve been correcting on the WF subreddit:

You don’t need to match each guest’s aspects separately. One course of Roast Pheasant will fulfill aspect matching for five Sky, Rose, Forge, Heart, or Scale guests. You can then fill in with cheaper courses. Stuffed marrows for everyone.

For Lunch/Supper you also don’t need one of each course per guest, just one of each course total.

Guests only need one cup of a drink. Don’t add full bottles of anything.

I haven’t had any trouble with the ranges ... AFAIK there aren’t limits on what ingredients you can cook in each range, so I only need to switch around if I’m out of the right elements of soul. I'm not exactly cooking in bulk every season. I agree it’s convoluted but I don’t think it’s more convoluted than the regular crafting system — it basically trades the Skill / Workstation juggling for ingredient juggling. Ingredient storage is a logistical puzzle of its own, sure, but not as annoying as the workstation principles (especially the workstation principles pre-Evolve Via memories).

As for lessons, I could not for the life of me get an Ericapaean speaker to the house so I could read Coseley’s two fucking numina, but I scored the language by inviting Arthur and Corso to a salon together, neither of whom provide Ericapaean the regular way. So I found salons to be quite mechanically profitable.

Then again, both CS and BoH have mechanics that are not required for victory and aren’t particularly optimized/efficient/ideal, existing mostly to round out the world, trap newbies, and offer more paths for discovery and trickles of lore. I don’t mind too much. Obnoxiously complex British cooking / hosting minigame in exchange for lore tidbits is so on-brand it hurts.