Does food and drink help with power and health regeneration between fights? and if yes , can anyone recommend "cheap" food/drink for power regeneration? is there a merchant that sells decent stuff?
My understanding is that the answer is no. UNLESS you have been out of food/drink for for a long time.
Purveyor F'devax in shards landing sells long lasting food/drink (and the drink is free), so the price depends on how cheap you can get to shards landing. Look for "miraculous" stuff. Afaik being hungry/thirsty is supposed to block your regen and meditation-skill(thirst for mana regen, hunger for health regen, no clue about endurance?), but that aspect is buggy: So for regen being blocked you need to be thirsty/hungry AND online for a long time, (the timer is reset when offline), but Im not sure if that is still the case? Out-of-combat-regen works in all cases, and will most likely have the biggest effect anyway. I always keep food on me at all times, personally. Most people uses cheap long duration food/drink for force-feeding to conserve expensive statfood. Put the good stat-food/drink in a "top-level" slot(I recommend the 2 top slots in a bag residing in your top-left inventory-slot), and manually use(click it manually or make a macro) the cheap food/drink placed somewhere else. That way you get the stat-benefit from the good food/drink, and only consume the cheap food/drink. Good stat-food/drink is crafted with the baking/brewing-skill.
Currently the anniversary NPCs in PoK sell free food, free drink and free booze, and a free Festive Doll (15 to stats)
The answer is it depends. There are stat foods that offer mana/end regen as well as increased Stats AC Mana Hps and End. Some is available from special event vendors, but most stat food/drink is made by players. Cheap depends on if you have to buy it or happen to run into somebody giving it away. Now about using stat food/drink. EQ reads left to right then down , so it picks up the left highest item of a type to determine effect. This is also the item that will be consumed by default if you get hungry. Being on a mount will increase your rate of consumption. You can use cheap food/drink to fill up and extend the duration of your stat items. Right clicking to consume an item uses it up but offers no benefit, so force feed on cheap low duration foodstuffs like muffins and milk. choose snacks and whistle wetters over feasts and enduring drinks, you will consume more of them and more often but the chance you will forget and consume your stat food is lower. It has been a long while so my recollection is sort of spotty, but as I recall you have either 128 or 255 counters for food and same for drink. the game consumes the next available item when the counter hits zero. You can force feed by right clicking and add the value of item to counter as long as the food value plus current counter is at or below max. Food items have a count ranging from I think 6 for a snack to 80 or 90 for a miraculous meal. Drinks are similar.
