Last week, we discussed at length about how cooking will be my tradeskill of choice in Guild Wars 2. Based on feedback that I received, I know there are plenty of you who are looking very seriously at also making this your crafting discipline as well. Here are five tips to help you master the cooking discipline.
1. A great place to start if you’re trying to get some recipes discovered is to think about realistic recipes, as was suggested in my previous article. Taking it a step further, remember that discovered recipes have a maximum of 4 ingredients, so breaking real recipes into 4 basic ingredients is important. We can assume that most real life recipes start with a base such as a meat or a starch, they then have some sort of sauce or water added, and then have a vegetable, and either seasonings or another vegetable added.
2. There’s more than one recipe type in the game. In my brief time playing I managed to create Cooking Ingredients, Desserts, Meals, Seasonings, Soups, and Snacks. Recipes in the Cooking Ingredients section are for the most part given to you as you level your skill higher, but within the other areas of cooking, obviously certain ingredients are going to work well together. Be smart about what you combine and you can plan out your recipes much better, if it doesn’t sound like a good match, it probably won’t be a recipe. I’d be willing to bet that, garlic and sugar are not used in a recipe together, but blueberries and sugar make more sense and may lead you down a path more appropriate for a dessert.
3. Don’t waste your money/karma purchasing lots of items from the cooking vendor in hopes of finding combinations that generate recipes. Most of what they sell are ingredients and seasonings such as salt or vinegar, the bulk of the items that are used in cooking, like meats, fruits, or vegetables are dropped or gathered, be smart about your purchases, and spend your time out in the field gathering proper materials.
4. If you’re completely stuck, try looking at other recipes in the game world. There are plenty of recipes in the game that use other recipes. For example, when you reach cooking level 75 you get a recipe for Bowl of Cream Soup Base, which has 4 ingredients. 3 of those 4 ingredients are created by other cooking recipes, 1 of them is only learned via discovery. Another example would be in the Human starting area, one of the karma vendors sells a recipe for Eda’s Apple Pie. If you take a look at the list of ingredients to make that recipe, there’s a discoverable recipe in there as well. Do keep in mind that any recipes on the Trading Post will be locked so that you can’t see the requirements, and while you can’t discover a dropped recipe, there will likely be a similar recipe that is discoverable. For example Eda’s Apple Pie is a vendor purchased recipe, and therefore not discoverable. However, there’s a pretty close approximation out there for your discovery.
5. Use the trading post for more than just buying ingredients. You can look for items crafted by other chefs. If you know the end result of the item, it’s a bit easier to try and figure out the ingredients that go into creating it. Also filtering the trading post for ingredients is an excellent way to discover what is available to use in any given recipe, and should help to get ideas flowing about the possibilities.
Anyone can go to a spoiler website and become a cooking master without exerting the effort to learn new recipes, but for those of you looking to become a master chef by discovering recipes and using the tools in game, I hope that you find these tips useful. Please feel free to share any tips that you’ve discovered while cooking, as any advice would surely be appreciated.
LET'S GET SOCIAL