Cooking for Masterpieces
Masterpieces are special dishes that, when eaten, can increase your
gastronomy skill. This page is an attempt to figure out what causes certain meals to be masterpieces, and how they work.
Overview of Masterpieces
Sometimes, when you cook your dish, a popup message will appear that says "Your dish is a Masterpiece! Invite those persuing gastronomy to sample the extraordinary flavor."
There will be an extra line on the description of the kitchen that says "This dish is a masterpiece."
When you eat the food, instead of saying "You ate the (name)..." you will get a message describing what you thought of the masterpiece. As your gastronomy stat increase, the message changes. If you have already tasted a Masterpiece dish that tastes similar (ex: you eat two servings of the same meal), it will say "You sample the expertly prepared cuisine, but alas, your palate is familiar with these flavors. Your gastronomy skill remains at #."
- 01-06 gastronomy = "Hmm, fancy grub ain't bad. Your Gastronomy skill is now #."
- 07-13 gastronomy = "Huh, that food is pretty good. Your Gastronomy skill is now #."
- 14-27 gastronomy = "You enjoy the dish greatly. Your Gastronomy skill is now #."
- 28-48 gastronomy = "What a delicious pairing of flavors! Your gastronomy skill is now #."
- 49-(something crazy) gastronomy = "The humble flavors of this dish touch you on an emotional level. A tear, a gasp! Delightful! Your gastronomy skill is now #."
In addition to your appreciation of masterpieces rising as your gastronomy rises, you also gain the ability to discern subtleties in foods.
At 20 gastronomy you start to observe how well various ingredients in a non-masterpiece dish go together.
You will get a message saying:
"You eat some (Recipe name) The combination of A and B in this recipe is particulary delicious.."
At 60 gastronomy you will also be able to discern a bad pair of ingredients:
"You eat some (Recipe name) The combination of A and B in this recipe is particulary delicious., but for some reason C and D didn't go together well."
Only the highest or lowest pairing will be reported. This is most useful when placing items in the Ingredient Order. The paitings have very little bearing on the actual chance for a masterpiece, see below.
As your gastronomy skill goes up, your character's ability to percieve details increases. (You gain perception.) This helps with collecting Marble.
- At gastronomy 7, one's perception is raised by one.
- At gastronomy 49, one's perception is raised by one again.
- It is speculated that at gastronomy 243, one's perception is raised by one again.
How to cook masterpieces
It appears the chance for a masterpiece is highest when the meal contains a lot of highly postive durations, and few or none with high negative durations. A few slightly negative does not appear to hurt. It seems small dishes are seldom masterpieces. A small variation (like adding any ingredient below the button layer) can yield a new masterpiece. Sometimes, different masterpieces does not yield an additional point; I have not found any pattern in this yet.
The following method is pieced together from information from work of Beerin, FoxKids and Cappu (the latter is to blame for this actual text):
- Fire up cooking assistant.
- Remove all ingredients you don't want to squander trying to make a masterpiece.
- Select 5 as top layer and 3 as the number of layers.
- Check the box that says "Fewer unique ingredients."
- Start it and let it run for a while.
- Cook the dish; it might very well be a masterpiece.
Once you have a base that generates a masterpiece, you can try to add 2 of assorted ingredients (herb or no, doesn't matter) to generate a few extra masterpieces. You can also make cooking assistant generate a more varied amount of masterpieces by selecting e.g. a common herb or shroom in the right-hand column. You can increase the chance of masterpiece by going the suggested recipe over and remove any highly negative duration, but this method does require a lot more knowlegde about cooking than simply following the above howto.
Facts/Beliefs
This is a list of points about masterpieces that we believe are true:
- No one chef is able to create a masterpiece with the same exact recipe twice. So cook large quantities so many people can eat.
- This is NOT true. I cooked the exact recipe with cooking level 3 that I cooked at level 1 and got a Masterpiece out of it AGAIN. (ArmEagle)
- Confirm. 1 Watermelon, 1 Abdju, 1 Chromis, 1 Camel Meat, 1 Camel Mane, 1 Phagrus, 1 Shyalamata(sp) has been MP for me 3x. (Shadus)
- Another confirmation. My first MP dish was also my 4th. (Siti)
- Corrollary to the above: a dish that was not a masterpiece previously may be a masterpiece when you try it again. I've done it myself. (Sabt-Pestnu)
- Masterpieces are avatar-specific. Just because someone else made a masterpiece with a certain dish does not mean you will.
- Masterpieces are more likely with longer-lasting meals. (See Timer Length) As the length that the meal lasts increases, so does the probability that the meal will be a masterpiece.
- Long-lasting meals that are not masterpieces can, in some cases, have the ratios changed (but not the ingredients) to become a masterpiece.
- If you have one long-lasting meal that gives you a masterpiece, you are very likely to get additional masterpieces if you add small amounts of other ingredients to the meal.
- Masterpieces do not necessarily have to give stat bonuses -- but they do have to have a positive timer.
- Order ingredients are added does not matter.