I wrote this entire essay and the ideas by hand but I am now going to put it through an AI to make it easier to read and flow better so be warned if you think “this sounds ai generated!” that’s because it kind of is. (don’t flame me please)
I’ve made a few posts about skills before, but they always ended up too broad. This time I’m focusing only on Cooking. After reading the feedback from earlier suggestions, I wanted to put everything into one clear proposal for how cooking could be reworked into something more fun, rewarding, and worth progressing.
Why Cooking Needs an Overhaul
Most players don’t interact much with cooking, even though it could be one of the most enjoyable skills. It takes too long to level, costs too much, and doesn’t feel important to gameplay. I’ve seen people with 60–100 hours who don’t have a single skill at Perfect, which shows there’s a problem.
Cooking should be something players want to progress, not something they ignore.
The Recipe Book
The Recipe Book would tie the whole system together.
You’d unlock it after the Redwake chef’s intro quest when he teaches you how to cook. You will also get more recipes from chefs as you help them throughout the story. From then on, cooking pots would give two options:
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Cook from Recipe Book – Cook any recipe you’ve learned. Once you master a recipe, you can instantly or batch cook it without redoing the minigame as long as you have enough ingredients.
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Experiment with Originals – Try creating new dishes. Find lost recipes (from NPC hints, chefs, or treasure chests) which would give you clues to help reinvent old dishes or invent new ones altogether. (A chef may tell you about an old tale of a legendary dish whose recipe was locked away by its owner due to a conflict)
Spices
Spices don’t get used because they take up one of only four ingredient slots while adding no hunger. They should have their own dedicated slots (up to three). This would make them useful and feel more realistic.
(Like @BlueFighter15 mentioned before: you can somehow fit four colossal squids in a pot, but not a few pinches of spice.)
Visuals & Minigame
Cooking needs to feel interactive, not just clicking ingredients. Possible changes:
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Opening a pot pans the camera over it, and you drag ingredients in.
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Minigame would work by requiring you to get the cooking pot to a certain temperature, keeping it around that level, putting ingredients in the correct order and at the correct timings. All of the requirements would be listed on recipes. If you get 20% or below on accuracy of a dish, it turns into a mistake. If you reach 90% or above on accuracy, you master the dish which will allow you to instantly cook and batch cook it from the recipe book. There would also be an indicator of what dishes are mastered as well as a percentage of how many dishes mastered you have.
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Timing matters—adding spices before or after certain ingredients changes the outcome.
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Recipes can be discovered from chefs or through exploration.
Progression
Currently, you need 50,000 hunger worth of meals to max out cooking, which just leads to grinding cheap food. Instead:
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Progress through recipes. Each chef you meet unlocks regional recipes via quests and the more recipes you master the higher your skill goes.
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Exploration matters. Some chefs and recipes could be hidden in remote areas.
Cooking Quests
The existing cooking quests (Redwake intro, Cirrus 100 hunger, Rasna 400 hunger, etc) are either trivial or unreasonable. With the new system, they could be reworked:
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Redwake: Start by making a simple spiced apple dish while the chef explains the minigame. Later, after the Hermit fight, you cook the chef’s signature dish for a celebratory feast. How well you cook it affects rewards, but either way you become his apprentice, unlocking your Recipe Book and first milestone.
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Cirrus: Instead of one massive dish, cook 3–5 meals above a quality threshold, fitting the feast setting better.
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Rasna: Instead of a 400-hunger grind, Rasna could host a cooking competition. You face NPC contestants by cooking the Rasna chef’s recipes. Winning earns exp, galleons, and his signature recipe. Losing puts the quest on a short cooldown (like one in-game day).
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Shell Island: Instead of cooking 5 meals, you will be challenged to cook a dessert using the island’s signature Giant Bananas.
Milestones & Titles
The current milestone names (Decent → Perfect) don’t feel immersive. Here’s an alternative:
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Kitchen Hand (after Redwake quest): Recipe Book unlocked, can cook “Simple” dishes.
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Cook (10 mastered dishes, around Frostmill): “Tasty” dishes.
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Chef (20 mastered dishes, around Cirrus): “Delicious” dishes.
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Head Chef (30 mastered dishes, around Shell Island/Sailor’s Lodge): “Savory” dishes.
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Gourmet Chef (40 mastered dishes, around Ravenna): “Exquisite” dishes.
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Master Chef (50 mastered dishes, around Sameria): Unlocks Signature Dishes, all recipes able to be cooked.
Every milestone will increase the hunger of food and the duration of its buffs, along with unlocking more difficult recipes. Also, any chef you’ve helped may occasionally send you a message, a reward, or ask for more help via cooking quests.
At Master Chef, you can pick one of your original recipes to become your signature dish. It has stronger effects and carries your character’s name (e.g. “Smith’s Signature Stew”). NPC signature dishes stay tied to their chefs and you can’t claim an NPCs dish as your own.
Extra rewards for Master Chef could include:
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A “Master Chef” leaderboard title (light orange to match the skill color).
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A bunch of mail from every chef you’ve helped congratulating you.
Closing Thoughts
Cooking right now feels like a grind, but it has huge potential. By introducing the recipe book early, making progression recipe-based, and tying milestones to quests and mastery, cooking would finally feel engaging, rewarding, and worth progressing.
Thanks for reading—I know this is long, but I wanted to get every idea in one place.
ill try to cut down on the next ones a bit