Cooking

A Complete Guide to Cooking

Basic Info

The Cooking skill is a fun, non-essential skill to play around with on a character with an open skill slot. Cooking is used to prepare food items that can be eaten by players. Eating food is not beneficial other than small regens to Stamina and a bonus to passive health regeneration. Food is commonly used for player-run events, parties and other in-game occasions. It is not necessary to GM Cooking to be successful at it. There is no benefit to becoming a GM Chef aside from the fact that you will never fail when attempting to cook. Your cooking skill is a direct percent chance of whether you will be successful at cooking an item. For instance, if you have 50.0 cooking, you have approximately 50% chance of being successful when trying to cook something.

Hunger Points

Every player has hunger points. These determine if you are able to eat a food item when attempted. Eating items will deplete hunger points until the character becomes full. Once a character becomes full, that character will not be able to eat any more until more hunger points are gained. Hunger points can be gained by losing health points and regenerating them over time. Eating food refreshes stamina and gives a boost to passive health regeneration (roughly 6 seconds for 1 hit point when full, compared to roughly 20 seconds per 1 hit point when hungry).

Using The Cooking Skill

To practice the Cooking Skill, all you need to do is double click on an uncooked food item. You will receive a target cursor asking you to select an ingredient to mix or a fire to cook on. Select an available heat source and wait. You will hear a distinctive cooking sound. Shortly after, you will receive a status message telling you whether you were successful at cooking the item or not. If you were successful, the cooked food item will be placed in the lowest level of your pack. If you were unsuccessful, you will receive the message "You burned the food to a crisp! It's ruined!" and the item will be lost. If you receive this message when attempting to cook an entire stack of food items, some of the stack will be lost. Some uncooked food items will require preparation and/or multiple items to create them.

Baking vs Barbecuing

Basically, there are two different types of cooking.

First there is Barbecuing. This term is used when you are cooking any of the following Raw Food Items: Raw Bird, Raw Chicken Leg, Egg, Raw Fish Steak, Raw Leg of Lamb, or Raw Ribs. Barbecuing can be done on any available Heat Source.

Baking is the term used when you are cooking any of the following prepared food items: Dough, Sweet Dough, Cake Mix, Cookie Mix, Unbaked Apple Pie, Unbaked Fruit Pie, Unbaked Peach Cobbler, Unbaked Pumpkin Pie, Unbaked Quiche, Uncooked Cheese Pizza, or Uncooked Sausage Pizza. All baking items require preparation and can be baked on any available Heat Source.

Barbecuing

Raw Bird + Heat Source = Cooked Bird

Raw Chicken Leg + Heat Source = Chicken Leg

Raw Fish Steak + Heat Source = Fish Steak

Egg + Heat Source = Fried Eggs

Raw Leg of Lamb + Heat Source = Leg of Lamb

Raw Ribs + Heat Source = Cut of Ribs

Baking

Dough + Heat Source = Bread Loaf

Cookie Mix + Heat Source = Pan of Cookies

Cake Mix + Heat Source = Cake

Sweet Dough + Heat Source = Muffins

Uncooked Quiche + Heat Source = Baked Quiche

Uncooked Meat Pie + Heat Source = Baked Meat Pie

Unbaked Fruit Pie + Heat Source = Baked Fruit Pie

Unbaked Peach Cobber + Heat source = Baked Peach Cobbler

Unbaked Apple Pie + Heat Source = Baked Apple Pie

Unbaked Pumpkin Pie + Heat Source = Baked Pumpkin Pie

Uncooked Cheese Pizza + Heat Source = Cheese Pizza

Uncooked Sausage Pizza + Heat Source = Sausage Pizza

Preparing Uncooked Food Items

To prepare an uncooked food item for baking, you must double click the combination item first then select the item to combine it with. For instance, to create a peach cobbler you must double click on the dough then combine the item with a peach rather than double clicking the peach first. If you double click the peach first, your character will eat the peach if you have enough available hunger points and it will not combine the item.

Preparations

2 Wheat Sheafs + Flour Mill = Sack of Flour

Water + Sack of Flour = Dough

Dough + Honey = Sweet Dough

Sweet Dough + Flour = Cake Mix

Sweet Dough + Honey = Cookie Mix

Dough + Egg = Unbaked Quiche

Dough + Raw Meat = Unbaked Meat Pie

Dough + Pear = Unbaked Fruit Pie

Dough + Peach = Unbaked Peach Cobbler

Dough + Apple = Unbaked Apple Pie

Dough + Pumpkin = Unbaked Pumpkin Pie

Dough + Wheel of Cheese = Uncooked Cheese Pizza

Dough + Sausage = Uncooked Sausage Pizza

Available Heat Sources

Food can be barbequed or baked on any of the following heat sources: Campfires, Field of Fire Spell, Fire Pits, Fire Places, Forges, Heating Stands, and Ovens.

Campfires can be created by practically any player, although it may require some use of the Camping skill. This is the most common way to cook when out in the field. To create a campfire, double click any bladed object and select a tree to create some kindling. Double click the kindling in your pack and repeat until a campfire is created on the ground next to you. Campfires do not last very long and a new one will need to be created periodically. Kindling is heavy to carry, at 5 stones per bundle, so do not create too much kindling at once.

Many heat sources can be found in towns, campsites, dungeons, and many other places out in the world. Once you start looking for them, you will start noticing them everywhere.

Forges and Ovens can be created by very skilled Carpenters as House Addons and can become a permanent addition to your home. Check around banks and on player vendors to find them.

Available Water Sources

All cooks require water at some point. Water is required to make dough and dough is required for most food preparations. I recommend that every successful cook carry at least 2 pitchers of water. Water pitchers can be refilled with water troughs, water barrels, and any open water source. Water troughs can be found through out towns in most Animal Tamer and Food/Liquor Shops. Water troughs can also be created by very skilled Carpenters as House Addons and can become a permanent addition to your home. Check on player vendors or ask players around banks in town to find them.

Cooking Stacked Food Items!!

Beware when cooking stacked raw food items. If you attempt to cook a stack of raw food items, all items in the stack will get cooked if you are successful at cooking them. If you are not successful, some will be lost in the effort and the rest will be returned to your pack. To prevent this, keep all stacked food items in another pouch inside of your backpack. Remove one raw food item at a time and place it in the lowest level of your pack. Double click that single food item then select the heat source. Having the other items in another pouch will prevent them from all being cooked at once. If you have multiple stacks of similar food items in the lowest level of your pack and you attempt to cook any of them, all of them will be cooked at once if you are successful. Be careful. This can waste a lot of resources and cooking an entire stack simultaneously yields no greater skill gain than cooking a single item.

Gaining Skill in Cooking

To gain skill at cooking, all you have to do is attempt to cook things. Since all food items require 0 skill to cook, you are able to cook any item and have a chance to gain from it all the way to GM. I do not recommend attempting to GM on bread or prepared food items. You will find yourself running ragged to create dough and find other items. Instead, use Raw Fish Steaks. These are cheap and readily available by the thousands from any number of GM fisherman. These are also stackable but be careful. Don't cook them all at once!

The most efficient method is to use a restock agent to take 1 fish steak from a box in your house or bank at a time and attempt to cook it. The following macro will take you from 0-GM using fish steaks in this manner -

Exec: Restock Agent-1
Pause 1.00sec
Absolute Target (The container from which you're restocking)
Pause 3.00sec (This gives the restock agent time to work and prevents the macro from hanging)
Double Click (raw fish steak%s% (097A))
Pause 1.00sec
Absolute Target (The heat source on which you wish to cook the item)
Pause 2.50sec
Loop

Cooking is a fairly easy skill to raise, so the most sensible method is to start at 0, buy it up to around 30 from an NPC cook, then train using the above macro. This will take you to GM with approximately 10-11k fish steaks.

(Credit to Safir and Kabal for the macro)

Chainsoar 00:10, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Free Food!

Wheat sheafs can be farmed from farms out in the world. These wheat sheafs can be milled on a Flour Mill and turned into Sacks of Flour. 2 wheat sheafs are required to create one sack of flour. Flour can then be used with water to create dough. Dough can be cooked to create bread or combined with other food items to make specialty foods.

Raw ribs, leg of lamb, and bird meat can be collected by killing and skinning the corpse with a bladed object.

If you are unable to obtain fish steaks easily by Fishing, this may be the best method for you to use.

Welcome to the world of cooking in UO. I hope you enjoyed the guide. Now, go cook something and wow your friends at your next guild get together!