Cooking turns meat, fish, eggs, milk, crops and things you forage into dishes at a Campfire. Every dish gives back stamina and teaches your stats XP, and many also heal you or give you an effect for a few minutes, such as faster hops or harder blows. Raw food can be eaten too, but it gives much less.
CONTENTS
Starting out
Build a Campfire from the build menu (B). Stand next to it and press E to open the cooking window. The campfire also gives light, and the night things of the open world will not come close to it (a boss still will).
The window lists every dish. Dishes you can't make yet are at the bottom behind a padlock (see Dishes that need Jewels below). Pick a dish and the ingredient wells under the skillet show what it needs and how many you have.
How to cook
- Pick a dish from the list.
- Check the wells. Each well shows how many of that ingredient the dish needs. A well for a crop shows the crop's grade; if you have more than one grade, use the arrows beside it (or click the well) to choose which one goes in.
- Choose how many to make. You can cook a batch of up to 99 at once, as many as your ingredients and spirits allow.
- Press COOK. The ingredients are thrown into the skillet, tossed, and turned into the dish, which goes into your pack.
Ingredients are taken from your pack first, then from any storage chests in view. Every dish also costs a few spirits (one of each for simple dishes, such as 1 Fire and 1 Earth for Roast Meat; two of each for richer ones, such as 2 Fire and 2 Water for Hearty Stew). A batch costs that much for each dish in it.
Cooking takes about 3 to 5 seconds, and a whole batch takes no longer than one dish. If your pack has no room for the result, the pot tells you before it starts.
Some ingredient wells take any one of a group, such as "any fish" or "any flower". See Food Groups.
The campfire's upgrades
The campfire is one of the stations with three tiers (see Table Upgrades). Each tier gives two perks, rolled once for each batch you cook:
| Tier | A grade finer | One more dish |
|---|---|---|
| Campfire | Never | Never |
| Stone Hearth | 15% chance | 10% chance |
| Cook Stove | 30% chance | 20% chance |
- A grade finer: the whole batch comes out one grade better than its ingredients would make it, up to Heirloom. This works on dishes with no crops in them too, so a Cook Stove can make a Fine Roast Meat.
- One more dish: you get one extra dish on top of the batch, for free.
The Ghost Cook's Ladle, a keepsake from the Haunted Wood villages' stories, adds 20% to the chance of a grade finer (1 in 5 batches with a plain Campfire, 50% with a Cook Stove).
Spices
Rich and Deep beds of Spirit Soil grow spices, one for each element. When you have one, a SPICE well appears beside the skillet: click it to put a spice into the dish. It takes one spice for each dish in the batch, and the dish's name gains the spice's name.
| Spice | What it adds to the dish |
|---|---|
| Emberpepper (Fire) | You can't be chilled while it lasts, and you deal 10% more damage. |
| Dewsalt (Water) | Heals 50% more. A dish that doesn't heal heals 10% of your health instead. |
| Stoneroot (Earth) | 10% chance to avoid a hit while it lasts, and Defense XP equal to half the dish's largest XP. |
| Galeleaf (Wind) | Your hops reach 10% further while it lasts, and 10% more of all the dish's XP. |
A spice's effect lasts as long as the dish's own longest effect (4 minutes for a dish with none), longer for a finer grade.
Eating
Open your pack (I), select the food and press EAT (R). You can also eat several in a row. Each thing you eat, dish or raw, fills one of your three meal segments. With all three full you can't eat until you've spent 50 stamina to empty one (see Fullness).
What a dish gives:
- Stamina: a share of your maximum stamina. Roast Meat gives back 30% of it, Hearty Stew 70%. Sleepiness never cuts this.
- Health: a share of your maximum health. Roast Meat heals 10% of it, Hearty Stew 30%. Rootling Broth heals all of it.
- XP: food teaches stats. Roast Meat gives 160 Attack XP, Grain Porridge 240 Stamina XP. Enough of it and the stat goes up a level (see Stats).
- Effects: many dishes give an effect for a few minutes (see Status Effects). If the same effect is already running, you keep the stronger and the longer of the two.
Each dish's page lists its exact numbers. The dish's grade changes all of them.
What makes food stronger or weaker
- Sleepiness cuts the XP, healing and effects a meal gives by the same share it cuts your stamina cap: a third after a full day without sleep, two thirds after two (see Sleep). The stamina a meal gives is not cut.
- A cozy home: eat inside a proper home (walls all round, a roof, a floor and a light) and the meal gives 25% more XP, stamina and healing, and its effects are 25% stronger and last 25% longer. Each point of Comfort in the room adds 5% more, up to 50% at comfort 5.
- The Hearth Kettle, a keepsake from the tundra villages' stories: any dish that makes you warm (Lingonberry Tea, Char Broth, Spruce Toddy, Snowkin Stew, Aurora Chowder) has every timed effect last twice as long.
Eating raw food
Some things can be eaten as they are, with no fire. They give a little stamina and a little XP, never health or effects, and each still fills a meal segment.
| Food | Stamina | XP |
|---|---|---|
| Egg | 4% | 15 Defense |
| Raw Meat | 6% | 15 Attack |
| Raw Fowl | 6% | 15 Sprint |
| Frog Legs | 6% | 15 Jump |
| Brown Cap | 3% | 10 Endurance |
| Red Cap | 3% | 20 Endurance, and it poisons you |
| Ghostcap | 2.5% | 20 Health, and it poisons you |
| Cactus Flesh | 4.5% | 10 Swim |
| Prickly Pear | 5% | 12 Sprint |
| Wild Berries | 5.5% | 10 Stamina |
| Strawberry | 6% | 12 Stamina |
| Tomato | 5% | 10 Health |
| Dragonfruit | 7% | 12 Jump |
| Corn | 4% | 10 Sprint |
| Carrot | 4.5% | 12 Sprint |
| Milk | 7% | 12 Health |
| Any fish in the fish group | 5% | 10 Swim |
Stamina is a share of your maximum stamina. A raw Red Cap poisons the next 2.5% of your stamina you spend, which costs 25% of your health in all; a raw Ghostcap poisons 1.2%, costing 12% of your health. See Status Effects.
After a Warm Rain harvest (a Fire and Water pairing in Spirit Soil), raw food gives 25% more stamina for 5 minutes.
Auto-eat
In your pack, select a food and turn AUTO-EAT on (U). A small green fork marks it. From then on the game eats it for you when you have room in your stomach and need the stamina: it waits until the meal's whole stamina fits under your cap, so none is wasted. If several foods are marked, it eats the one that gives the least stamina first. At 5 stamina or less it eats one whatever it gives. It never eats while you sleep or are knocked down. Press U again to turn it off.
Dishes that need Jewels
Most dishes are open from the start. The rest open as you clear lairs and win Jewels, one land at a time:
| Lairs cleared | Dishes it opens |
|---|---|
| None | Roast Meat, Roast Fowl, Fried Frog Legs, Grilled Fish, Boiled Egg, Mushroom Skewer, Red Cap Broth, Wildflower Tea, Cactus Water, Milk Porridge, Roasted Corn, Baked Potato, Strawberry Cream, Hunter's Skewer, Wayside Broth, and the six legendary fish dishes |
| One land | Turnip Stew, Grain Porridge, Cotton Grass Cakes, Grass-Wrapped Fish, Pear-Glazed Fowl, Custard Tart, Creamy Mushroom Soup, Lingonberry Tea, Char Broth, Spruce Toddy, Tomato Soup, Cornbread, Pumpkin Soup, Snowkin Stew, Carrot Cake |
| Two lands | Emberberry Tart, Moon Squash Soup, Heath Broth, Marrow Broth, Potato Hash, Pumpkin Pie, Moonlit Carp, Glasseye Soup, Smiling Supper |
| Three lands | Hearty Stew, Grave Broth, Dragonfruit Bowl, Harvest Stew |
| Four lands | Rootling Broth |
Legendary fish dishes
Each of the five Legendary Fish cooks into its own dish: Elder Koi Feast, Stonecrown Roast, Aurora Chowder, Sunfire Skewers and Wraithfin Broth (leviathanstew shows in the list only if you have, or once had, a Mire Leviathan). Eating one heals all your health, fills your stamina to its cap, clears your sleepiness first (so nothing is cut), and gives 500 XP to each of two stats.
Tips
- Grow crops well: a dish's grade comes from its crops, and a finer grade gives more of everything. See Dish Grades and Crop Grades.
- Eat in your home when you can. A cozy room adds at least 25% to everything a meal gives.
- Sleep before a big meal. A sleepy Wanderer gets a third or two thirds less from food.
- Cook in batches: it costs no extra time, and the campfire's perks roll once a batch.
