Leveling up Cooking in New World allows for crafting of better, more potent Food as well as improving your crafting efficiency and increasing your yield. There are many, many ways to level Cooking and most of them are very resource efficient since most, if not all recipes only require materials in single amounts. One of the best ways to achieve this is through crafting Recovery Foods such as Rations.
You can go about this in many ways, whether you wish to harvest plants and other resources, hunt animals and skin them for meat or go on a quiet fishing trip. If you are also looking to level your Fishing skill, it is highly recommended you do it together with Cooking as these two skills have great synergy. Taking the fishing route, you can stay in place for just about the whole time, setting up a Camp nearby where you can cook your Recovery foods.
The following table details the experience required to reach certain levels in Cooking, as well as a general count for the amount of Crafted Items required to reach these thresholds. For simplicity's sake, the table only shows tier milestone levels instead of every single Cooking level. Note that unlike other Crafting skills, Cooking requires significantly less experience to level up.
Leveling in Cooking will require a Kitchen of at least Tier II. If you are sticking to the Travel Ration all the way, you will not need anything above this. Otherwise, make sure you have access to a Kitchen of the appropriate Tier. Alternatively, since all the crafted items are in the Recovery Foods category, they can also be crafted at your Camp. This is especially useful since you can simply camp near a body of water and do all your gathering and cooking in the same spot the entire time.
Be aware, however, that you will need to be at certain levels and complete certain quests in order to upgrade your Camp if you are looking to craft any of the higher-tier Recovery Foods. The requirements to upgrade your Camp are as follows:
- Tier II - Requires Level 15 and completion of the Friends in Fashion Quest (Monarch's Bluffs)
Tier III - Requires Level 25 and completion of the Animal Instincts Quest (Cutlass Keys)
Tier IV - Requires Level 40 and completion of the Lupine Observations Quest (Restless Shore)
Tier V - Requires Level 55 and completion of the Fading Lights Quest (Edengrove)
When cooking items, take note of of the ingredient requirements. Many recipes, including the ones used for this leveling guide specifically, use one Primary Material and one or more Secondary Materials. The primaries will often have a specific Tier requirement while for secondaries, any material within the category can be used. Most recipes will use Raw Foods with certain specifics. For example, the Light Meal calls for 1 x Tier III Raw Foods, 1 x Raw Foods and 1 x Raw Foods. In this case, any Tier III Raw Food such as Cabbage, Onion, Squid Meat or Venison can be used. For the two secondary materials, anything within the Raw Foods category can be used, even the lowest tier materials such as Egg, Honey or Poultry. In fact, if simply leveling the Cooking skill, it is recommended to use your lowest tier materials as they are generally the most abundant and easiest to gather, unless there is a specific tier requirement.
Note: You cannot use the exact same ingredient/material to fulfill more than one requirement in a given recipe. This means you cannot use Squid Meat as both the primary and secondary materials in the above example, even if it corresponds to all three. Refer to the Raw Foods page for a list of eligible materials.
One of the introductory quests will task you with crafting a Light Ration which should get you to Level 1 in Cooking which is the minimum requirement to craft Travel Ration used in the leveling guide.
Fishing Route
If going the fishing route, you can craft Travel Rations all the way to 200.
Travel Ration (22,522 Total)
- 22,522 x Firm Fish Filet or any Tier 2 Raw Foods.
22,522 x Fish Filet or any Raw Foods
You will be crafting a total of 22,522 Travel Rations. While this number may seem daunting, the actual amount of fish you will be catching for ingredients is a lot lower. This is due to the fact that you can salvage fish to get a number of materials. In this instance, you will be looking to catch Common Fish such as Bass, Perch and Pike, as well as Uncommon Fish such as Catfish, Cod and Halibut. These are easily found in open waters around the starting areas such as Windsward. Salvaging Common Fish can yield anywhere from 1 - 4 Fish Filet and 1 - 3 Firm Fish Filet depending on size, while salvaging Uncommon Fish can yield 1 - 4 Firm Fish Filet, as well as Tender Fish Filet which can be used as a Tier III Raw Food ingredient.
Alternatively, you can take the 4-tier approach and cook food corresponding to the current leveling tier. This entails cooking Tier II Travel Rations from 1 to 50, Tier III Light Meals from 50 to 100, Tier IV Satisfying Meals from 100 to 150, and finally Tier V Hearty Meals from 150 to 200. This would mean chasing after Fishing Hotspots in order to catch higher tier fish but it also means more XP per craft and a stockpile of higher tier Recovery Foods which you can either use yourself or sell on the Trading Post. Hotspots are special areas in fishable water that have a large gathering of fish. There are Broad, Rare and Secret Hotspots and you can discover and track more and more of these as your Fishing level increases. When cooking Tier III foods and above, these should be your priority spots as they yield more of the higher tier fish, which in turn can be salvaged into higher tier Fish Filet and other materials. The following are the material requirements for each leveling bracket:
- Level 1 - 50
- Travel Ration or Energizing Travel Ration (144 Total)
- 144 x Firm Fish Filet or any Tier II Raw Foods
144 x Fish Filet
Level 50 - 100
- Light Meal or Energizing Light Meal (276 Total)
- 276 x Tender Fish Filet or any Tier III Raw Foods
276 x Firm Fish Filet
276 x Fish Filet
Level 100 - 150
- Satisfying Meal or Energizing Satisfying Meal (395 Total)
- 395 x Delicate Fish Filet or any Tier IV Raw Foods
395 x Tender Fish Filet
395 x Firm Fish Filet
395 x Fish Filet
Level 150 - 200
- Hearty Meal or Energizing Hearty Meal (508 Total)
- 508 x Fish Roe or any Tier V Raw Foods
508 x Delicate Fish Filet
508 x Tender Fish Filet
508 x Firm Fish Filet
508 x Fish Filet
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