Cooking

The pot that feeds the party

Eat a cooked meal and it heals you over 18 seconds of rest, which between pulls is the cheapest healing in the game. The ladder runs from a 90-health Pan-Seared River Perch up through Marlow's Grand Roast at 980, and above even the roast sit the three apex role dishes at 1,392, the largest sit-heal in the game and the strongest Well Fed buff a finished plate can leave behind (the farm kitchen's buff dishes fill the rungs below it; the Farming page tells that side of the story). Only one Well Fed effect at a time: a newer meal replaces it.

On the ring Cooking sits between Alchemy and Leatherworking. Its living pair is the Apothecary, Alchemy and Cooking, sworn before Cook Marlow at the Eastbrook kitchens after hunting four wild boars for the pot; the Trapper pair with Leatherworking is named on the ring but has no oath quest yet.

A pantry fed by rod, knife, and furrow

Fishing stocks the signature ingredients, zone by zone: raw mirror trout and river perch from the waters of Eastbrook Vale, marsh pike and bog eel from Mirefen Marsh, frostgill trout and slatefin carp from Thornpeak Heights. Three more answer to skill instead of to any zone: the deepbarb catfish, the hollowgill sturgeon and the stillmere salmon rise in every water alike once your catch band is deep enough to reach them, and the apex kitchen rungs are built on the first two. Raw catches never restore health on their own: they are kitchen reagents, and the cooked meals are what you eat. The rungs mix the zones freely (the free rung already wants marsh pike, the mid rung Thornpeak's frostgill, and the rare supper folds the Vale's mirror trout back in), so a cook who fishes wherever the road goes never runs dry.

The butcher's side comes off harvested corpses: game meat from boars and their kin, and, on a rare or better harvest roll, a signed Prime Cut, the centerpiece of the grand roast. Herbs season the better dishes, one ashwood log smokes the eel, and Cooking Salt runs 8 copper a pouch from Marlow's own stall.

The third supplier is the garden bed, and it is the newest of them. Grain and vegetables now sit in the trainer dishes themselves rather than only in the farm kitchen's own recipes: Vale Wheat binds the free-rung skewer, the game stew takes wheat and Bog Beet together, a Brook Carrot goes into the chowder, Marsh Rice is the bed the carp supper is served on, and Marlow's Grand Roast folds in two Highland Barley and two Frost Gourds off the Highwatch terraces. Seasoned Stock, the intermediate every apex dish flows through, simmers rice and beet in with the meat. Each of these crops can be planted at or below the skill its dish unlocks at, so a cook who also farms is never held up by the pantry, and nothing came off a bill to make room.

The garden reaches the top of the kitchen too, and that is what finally tells the three apex role dishes apart. They were the same bill under three names; now each takes its own terrace crop: two Frost Gourds into the Stonepot Stew, two Highland Barley onto the Warspice Skewers, two Thornpeak Cabbage into the Sageleaf Chowder. The crops cost the same to the copper, so the choice is flavor and never price, and all three ask exactly the same of the garden, so the role you pick is never also a gate you climb. They are terrace crops either way: growing your own means a Skysilver Hoe and the Farming to swing it, whichever plate you cook. Above them The Laden Hearth takes the Evergarden beds themselves, two Evergarden Greens and a Fine Evergarden Greens, one of the longest bills in the game. A Fine crop is not something you plant for: it is the better grade a skilled farmer's harvest sometimes turns up, so the top of the kitchen now wants a farmer who has been at it a while.

Three apex feasts share the top rung with the hearth and tie it for length: a Stonepot Feast, a Warspice Feast and a Sageleaf Feast, one per role. Each folds a single Evergarden Greens, the kitchen's own Seasoned Stock, a Wyrmfall Core and the whole deep-water catch ladder into one table, and a serving off that table is the matching apex plate, so the three bills are identical and only the dish on them differs.

From jerky to the grand roast

Salted Jerky is the field recipe: known from the start, one spider leg, craftable anywhere, the trail food of every fresh adventurer. The trainer ladder cooks at the Eastbrook kitchens on the east side of the square: the free rung at skill 0 (the perch, Hunter's Game Skewer, Herbed Marsh Pike), the mid rung at skill 25 for 25 silver a recipe (Ashwood Smoked Eel, Goldleaf Game Stew, Frostgill Chowder), and the rare rung at skill 50 for 1 gold each (Silvered Carp Supper, Angler's Feast Platter, Marlow's Grand Roast).

Batch dishes stretch your ingredients: the smoked eel and the game stew serve two per craft, and the feast platter serves three. Marlow teaches each rung the moment your tier in Cooking reaches it.

How crafting works

Open the crafting window (default key T) and every recipe you know is listed with what it needs and what you have on hand. Station-bound recipes ask you to stand within 20 yards of the right station in town, field recipes craft anywhere, and Enchanting's breaking and enchanting need no station at all (only its three trainer recipes are station work, at the toolworks). There is no failure roll: a craft with the materials in hand always succeeds.

Two small frictions keep the economy honest. Every successful craft pays a fee of 2 copper per point of the item's stat budget, and every craft-family action takes real cast time (field crafts near two seconds, harder ladder crafts longer, and disenchant, enchant, salvage, and tool recharge each about a second and a half). Materials, the gold fee, stations, and skill ceilings do the rest; nothing scolds you for working too quickly.

Recipes

Every recipe of the craft: its exact skill requirement and materials, where it is learned and for what fee, and the three skill values where its gain fades to half, a quarter, and nothing.

Skill gain

Every recipe in the window wears its gain state in the classic colors: orange means full gain, yellow half, green a quarter, gray nothing. The boundaries are exact, every 25 skill is a tier, and a recipe fades one color for each tier it falls below yours.

Because gains are deterministic (a full-gain craft always moves you exactly one point), you can plan a whole climb from the list: work a rung while it is orange, train the next rung as it turns yellow, and never spend materials on a gray craft expecting progress. At the cap of 125 the number stops, but the recipes, the masterwork chance, and the profits keep working.

Masterworks

Every successful craft is exactly what the recipe promises, and sometimes a little more: a masterwork finishes the same piece one quality tier finer, with the bonus stats baked in at craft time. It is add-only, never a downgrade. Ordinary crafting follows its existing gear ladder; the raid-funded Crucible collections are a separate alternative at the current raid tier.

The apex Masterwrought crafts are the one exception, and they pay the same proc a different way. An apex piece already sits at the top of its ladder, so there is no finer tier to finish it in; a masterwork there hands the piece over one rank into Perfecting instead, a free first rank on the four-rank walk the Professions page describes. Nothing is baked into the stats, and the chance and its gates are the ones below.

The chance is published, not mystical: 3% base, plus 1% per tier your skill sits above the recipe, plus 2% when any signed reagent goes in, plus 3% once you are specialized, with higher-tier materials adding 1 to 2% more, all capped at 15%. Only a piece with real stats can improve, so statless commons, tools, and consumables never proc; a dormant craft never produces one, and a hobby craft cannot masterwork past its rare ceiling.

Fine work carries its maker. Rare and better outputs are signed, every copy (Crafted by; gathered materials carry Gathered by), a masterwork is always signed whatever its quality. A signature is provenance, not a lock: signed goods trade, mail, and list on the World Market freely.

Training

Trainer recipes come from the resident masters, taught at their stations. The rule is one line: a master teaches a recipe once your tier in the craft has reached the recipe's own tier, and nothing else gates it, not your level, not your archetype. The gear and consumable ladders run their rungs at skill 0, 25, and 50, and every craft adds one 75-rung intermediate above them, taught at its station (Enchanting's is the Lucent Reagent, beside its two charm recipes on the 25 rung); Engineering's two rod lessons continue its ladder at 75 and 125, so a fresh rung opens as your tiers climb.

Fees are one-time and flat by rung: the starting rung is free, the skill 25 rung costs 25s a recipe, the skill 50 rung 1g 0s, and the 75 and 125 rungs above them carry their own fees, listed beside each recipe in the table. You must stand at the master's actual station to train, and a mobile station never counts. The common field recipes and the six crafted land-tool recipes need no training at all; every character knows them from the start.

Specialization

At skill 75 this craft specializes you, no quest needed: discountable recipe materials cost 20% less from then on, and specialization adds its own bump to the masterwork chance. Raid-core costs are never discounted.

Specialists also learn to take the workshop with them: a specialized crafter can set up a mobile station in the field for ten minutes at a time, so station-bound recipes can be worked at the mine mouth instead of back in town. Its limits are deliberate: it never counts for training with a master or for unbinding a commissioned piece, and it expires on its timer whether or not you used it.

Specialization, not masterworks, and the route to 125

Cooking is the honest exception to the masterwork story: a meal has no stat line to improve, so dishes never proc one, and no cook should chase it. The craft's mastery is specialization at 75: a fifth less of every ingredient, which compounds fast on batch dishes, and a mobile field kitchen so dinner gets cooked at the dungeon door.

Cook what you catch: pair the climb with a fishing session and the two skills feed each other all the way up. Jerky and the free rung carry you to 25 at a point per craft, the mid rung to 50, and the rare rung to 75. Above the rare rung sits the apex kitchen, the three role dishes and The Laden Hearth: no trainer teaches them, they come off found patterns. For a cook whose majors include Cooking, which today means the sworn Apothecary, an apex craft pays full gain right to the 125 cap; below a major's ceiling it teaches nothing at all, so an undeclared or hobby cook works one for the plate, not the points. Either way the rare dishes carry the last stretch, fading to half and then quarter gain, roughly 150 more crafts. Treat it as stocking, not grinding: a guild eats every serving.

Marlow's kitchens work order buys eight game meat every 30 minutes for coin and XP, and the Book of Deeds marks Seasoned Chef at skill 50 on the way to the Grandmaster Cooking title at 125.