Okay so I followed the little advise to "up my dex" when concerning (what?  any/all?) life based skills so I had two servings of steamed rice to boost a total of 12 and my road companion bonus to finish it off at 18...my character sheet doesn't reflect ANY of these changes even tho it says I have them and my Success Rating remains at 54% (which is actually 20% if you track number of attempts vs number of actual success).  It doesn't go up with any of my bonuses and it doesn't go down after they supposedly "wear off."  However...right after I joined a party my posted success rate jumped to 63%...I wasn't on long enough after that to see if it raised what I actually got since I only had enough material to try four times and succeed once...but my question is this:

Why don't pet companion and food effect dex like their little prompters tell you they do?  The only thing I have to boost my DEX is my Ogre Slayer title and that doesn't do very much on its own!   Why can I have what should be a +18 to dex do nothing what so ever but joining a party suddenly jumps 9%?  What the frick am I doing wrong?

DEX isn't for all life skills, just weaving, tailoring, and possibly handicraft or cooking.

If you go into a party, your sucsess rate jumps depending on the skill of your party members in that skill. So if you were in a party with a rank 6 Weaver, then all of your weaving skills would increase by 10%.

Depends on what you're doing, generaly speaking, rank gives more success % than dex.

For high "ranked" stuff like say fine/finest leather strap for weaving. something ilke 5-10 dex will increase ur success by 1%. and If you're success is too low to start off with, you might not even see the 1% increase.

Also, assuming you dont have 200 dex, but in case you do, the dex effect for success % stops after 200. So 201 and 2000 would be the same.

Rain and party members also give you bonus, if your party has high ranked for w/e skill ur doing, you'll get more bonuses. E.g. If you're weaving, a rank 6 weaver will give u more bonus compared to a rank C weaver.