Food levels, and buffsFollow

Food level relates to the recommended level of the toon that will be eating it. A lvl 5 toon can't eat lvl 30 food (too rich for their blood). Has nothing to do with satiation. All player made food is high satiation.

Insight is one of 3 rare events that if correctly countered yield a surprise. Insight is the uncommon and when countered correctly, you get an 8 minute buff of +25 to that crafting skill. there are also rare and very rare events which have even better rewards.

Any race will work fine as a drone! If you don't have a preference, it's probably best to choose a race that will place the toon in the village you want him to live in. That might be more convenient for you.

Actually, only one from each set of three buffs costs power and I have found it just as easy to craft by leaning on the other two and using the power consuming buff more sparingly.

The buff that costs power tends to tale a bit less than 5% out of your pool for each use so if you spam all three every pulse you will run out before you complete the combine.

But by using that buff only to correct events during the first half of the combine and then to add "squirts" of progress through the second half, you can complete the combine quickly and still end up with power (pool) to spare!

yes it takes a % of power. So one of the best ways to craft is get an alt character to level 6 and just use it for crafting.

Since characters at lower level regen power fast, you will barely ever run out of power.

Or alternatively, you could get a character to level 24 (or what ever the level requiremen for the totem is) and use a drink + a viper totem... Youll never run out of power.

That last statement is not quite true, from what I've seen. A Lv. 5 can eat Lv. 30 food, he just won't get the full benefit from it. He'll get no better sustenance from it, or any higher level food, than Lv. 10 food (the stuff you get with new characters, for example) would give.. and it might actually be worse.

Nekojin noted:

You are correct... now. The rules have been changed and the game has been modified. When I posted my original comment, food that was of a higher tier was red to your character and could not be eaten. Now, it just doesn't taste any better that food appropriate to your level.

There is only 1 buff that takes power and it is the one that increases progress or durability and that does not decrease anything. Also the power it consumes is always a percentage of your current power. That is why people sometimes take there gear off cause it lowers the overall power consumption.

Also I used to be a summoner. You can't siphon power from your pet while you are combining. You can however lower your downtime abit by doing that.