Cooking Guide: Turn Gathered Ingredients Into Buffs and Revenue

Cooking starts with ingredients gathered across Orbis, then combines them with one of three tools—Pot, Fryingpan, or Knife—to produce dishes. The recipe catalog records 1,025 combinations, and every recipe names its tool and its ingredient conditions, so the same ingredient can feed several different dishes depending on the tool and the combination. The Cooking database /cooking exposes the full recipe list with its conditions and outputs.

Ingredient categories drive the recipe system: meat, fish, seafood, vegetables, herbs, mushrooms, grains, eggs, and natural foods. A recipe that asks for a category accepts any item in that category, which is why the same base recipe produces different dishes—and why the gathered ingredient mix determines what you can cook at all. The item database /items shows where each ingredient comes from, and the Orbis map /map shows where the gathering happens.

Every dish exists in several grades, and the catalog shows the pattern clearly: a base dish, a cooking version, and rare, epic, and legendary versions. The grade determines the effect strength and value, and the recipe for the higher grades uses the same category conditions with better results. Cooking the same combination repeatedly can produce different grades, so a session is a mix of planning and volume rather than a guaranteed single result.

Every recipe entry in the Cooking database /cooking lists the outputs and their grade variants, which turns "what can I cook" into a checkable table. When a specific grade is needed—for a buff, a quest, or the daily mission—the recipe page shows which combination produces it, and the ingredient page shows where to gather the inputs.

The daily missions include cooking, and the current daily list also covers logging in, leveling a hero, leveling Karma, upgrading equipment, and using a Key of Light. Cooking therefore repeats daily by design, and the efficient habit is a standing rotation: gather the categories the active recipes need, cook enough volume for the daily mission, and bank the dishes the team actually uses. The progress database /progress shows the daily mission list, and the Cooking database /cooking shows which recipes fit the ingredients you have.

The dishes worth banking are the ones that support the current goal. A buff dish that helps the story team, a recovery dish for long routes, and a trade dish for the economy all have different values depending on the week. The material planner /material-planner can treat a dish target like any other milestone, with the ingredient count as the cost.

Ingredient gathering is a map activity. Each ingredient category lives in its own places—meat and fish from hunting and fishing spots, vegetables and herbs from fields, mushrooms from shaded areas—and the item database /items records the known sources. A gathering route groups nearby sources for the categories the current recipes need, and the Orbis map /map turns the group into a path. When a source is not documented, the region and the category are usually enough to test the drop in game.

Grouping matters because several recipes share ingredients. One route that collects meat, herbs, and mushrooms feeds three recipe families, which is worth more than three separate trips. The Cooking database /cooking shows which families your ingredients can feed, so the route is planned against the recipes you can actually cook.

Every cooking session should answer one question: is this for a quest, a buff, or the economy? Quest dishes have a fixed target and quantity; buff dishes are judged by the effect and grade; economy dishes are judged by the value of the output versus the ingredient cost. The quest database /quests shows the quest dishes, the Cooking database /cooking shows the grade variants, and the shows the grade variants, and the item database /items shows the values. Cooking without a purpose spends the same time and returns less, so the daily rotation should rotate among the three purposes instead of settling on one habit.

Keep the ingredient stock visible, because the recipe system runs on categories and the stock decides what can be cooked at all. A standing shelf of meat, herbs, and mushrooms feeds more recipes than a deep stock of one category, and the Cooking database /cooking shows which families each ingredient feeds. When a daily mission asks to cook, the shelf turns the chore into a one-minute session, and the Orbis map /map keeps the gathering route ready for the categories the shelf is missing.