Quite some time ago while Mejhura was still TM of treehearth she had a recipe with chocolate at first accepted and then later revoked with the explaination that 'chocolate dosent exist and that we would need to find the means to discover it.'

Being a choc-o-holic my first reaction was *GASP* how can you NOT have chocolate!
But since recovering from the shock of it all I have been trying to find ideas on how chocolate can be implemented.

Theres three main ideas for this:
1. Introduce a new type of plant which can be used to make chocolate.
2. Have Chocolate either manufactured by alchemists or as a by-product of alchemy (much as sugar is)
3. Cocoa can be accidently harvested in a similar manner to the random spices that plague the herbalists, perhaps a random chance that instead of spices its really cocoa.

Option 1 would probably be hardest to code but would be an oportunity for some roleplay as people discover this new plant and learn how to care for it (ie right environment type)

Option 2 would work, but making it like sugar would make cocoa very rare and expensive and It gives the alchemists a monopoly on the chocolate market which is fine on a personal level as my best friend is an alchemist but I am trying to be fair here.

Option 3 is my favorite of the three and probably easiest to do as herbalism is available to 'almost' everyone and cocoa could still be fairly rare since it would only be a chance of a chance that you get cocoa instead of the plant your wanting to harvest (say theres a 10% chance of a herb turning out to be spices.. you could have a 50% chance of those spices really being cocoa so 5% overall chance)

They won't let you grind kafe beans and add sugar?

All they need to do is make some silly event with Butter or something.. with cows needed to come to the Ethereal, and she can make it sound all dire, but in the end it'll just be for a new cake experiment.

Ha, now you can't do it, Estarra! (Or can you... )

We have pandas (apparently), but no chocolate?

Kafe beans is exactly what I was thinking too.

how is kafe related to chocolate? .. kafe has the properties of coffee more than anything else

...eh, near enough. Chocolate has caffeine too, it might be that, not coffee. *nod me*

Hrm.. maybe.. anyway, I'd be interested to know what the divine have to say about it .. I dont care how we get it, as long as theres chocolate *sagenod*

I like the third idea best.

As of now, herbalists turn up "rare" spices, which I seem to have thousands of in my rift, and stashed in several places, and I'm sure every decent chef has, as well. Why not a chance of cocoa beans instead of spices?

Then we can say "rare" cocoa beans.

Cocoa beans don't grow everywhere though. I'd just use what's around unless they were to introduce it as a commodity.

Spices dont grow everywhere either... and what exactly are spices? .. it seems to be a broad term for a lot of things.
Also you wouldnt really be getting a lot of cocoa out of this(depending on what the percent chance is for spices being really cocoa) which is fine, chocolate should be somthing at least semi-special

I suggested something a couple of months ago along the lines of different spices for different herbs. The 'rare spices' you found when harvesting kafe would be different to the ones found with arnica, or yarrow. That way you could have spices appropriate for different areas, not to mention the potential for expanding the culinary range beyond well... whatever 'spices' happen to taste like.

Vanilla beans, cinnamon, chocolate, pepper, mint, something sparkly and unique for astral (or maybe hundreds and thousands!) - use your imagination.

Oh, it would also mean 'rare spices' are actually rare. Imagine that spices make up 5% of the harvest. Currently it's 5% of ALL harvests, because all spices are exactly the same. However, a certain spice being only 5% of the horehound harvest would actually be rather more rare, when you look at the numbers.