I normally don't give two hoots about cooking or stat foods, but this would be my suggestion:
Part 1: Make +5 stat food available at the Kafra Shop. Make it cost half the price of Valk +10 food.
Part 2: Lower the ingredients required for cooking regular stat food by 80% for +1 to +5 food. Lower the ingredients required for cooking stat food by 60% for +6-+10 food. Do not go below one of each reagent type when calculating the reduction(if it needs 1 Yggdrasil Berry, make it still require 1 Yggdrasil Berry after a 60% reduction, etc.). Make SURE that the vendor prices for said foods are reduced accordingly.
PART 3: Make Kafra +5 food stack with +1 to +5 regular food, for a maximum bonus of +10. Do not allow Kafra food to stack with +6 to +10 regular food.
What does this do?
-Maintains max +10 bonus(higher than +10 is not recommended due to balance reasons)
-Makes Kafra shop food useful and still WoE-viable, but not automatically optimal without some farming
-Makes high end food crafting still viable, just more work than 5+5 food stacking
-Makes high end food drops from MVP's(Detale, Lady Tanee etc.) still useful
-Makes low end crafting significantly easier but very useful
-Allows slightly more versatility in terms of breakpoints(for example: I need 8 STR to hit 130 breakpoint, I have 122 total, so I go crafted +8, or Kafra +5 plus crafted +3)
-Makes +3 food-finding accessories(Gremlin Card, Dragon Egg Card, Anopheles Card, etc.) more useful
What are some issues?
-Use of Kafra food plus crafted food to hit +10 requires double consumables(inventory issue). Solution? Make Kafra food weigh 1, if it doesn't already. Change +1 to +5 food to weigh 20 across the board instead of the much higher values. Create a new item ID for new foods(this will help with the vendor pricing). Optional: keep the existing item ID's for accessory-based +3 foods and MVP-based +10 foods and keep those at their original weight/vendor price.
-+6/+7 food will be rarely crafted, unless people don't need +10 to hit a breakpoint.
-System would have to be properly coded.
Edit: -issues with cooking sets are not yet accounted for.
Now, the real question is: Is this change necessary?
Honestly, I do not think so. But, since the new trend is unnecessary changes, go nuts.
Edited by trahsc, 02 August 2012 - 08:36 AM.