This page contains questions and answers to commonly asked questions about the cooking system.
Feel free to add your question below. When someone answers it, it will be moved down to the answered questions section.
Q: Can I get more stat bonuses by eating several meals at the same time?
A: No, You can not stack multiple meals. When you eat a meal, unless that meal has a negative duration, it will automatically cancel out the effects of any other meal you have had. This holds true for both eating grilled foods, as well as foods cooked in a kitchen.
Q: How do I build a kitchen?
A: Once you have at least a skill of 1 in cooking, you can build a kitchen in a compound by using 32 bricks, 20 boards, 20 firebricks and 1 clay mortar.
Q: I built a kitchen, so why can't I cook anything?
A: Once your kitchen is built, it must be upgraded with a cookpot. A cookpot is cast in either a Student's or Master's Casting Box, using 3 beeswax and either 3 iron for an iron cookpot, or 3 copper for a copper cookpot. Cooling time is 1 minute.
Q: What's the difference between the Iron cookpot and the Copper cookpot?
A: The copper cookpot was added to the game mid-july 2006 to address some serious cooking system bugs. The iron cookpot uses the old bugged cooking system which returns very low stats. The copper cookpot uses the fixed cooking system that returns the proper higher stat bonuses. The only reason to use an Iron cookpot is if you want to intentionally limit your stat bonuses.
Q: I just made a meal in my kitchen. How do I put that meal in my inventory without eating it?
A: You can't. Meals can only be eaten in a kitchen. Further, meals will spoil if left in the kitchen un-eaten for more than 2 teppy days (4 days if salt was used in the meal).
Q: I added 1 camel meat, and 1 honey to my cookpot. Why does it say I don't have enough food for a single serving?
A: each serving of food needs 7 debens of ingredients. Therefore, for at least one serving of food, you must have a total of 7 items in it. This could be in the form of 6 camel meat and 1 honey, or any other combination to equal at least 7. If you wanted to make enough food for 2 servings, you would need at least 14. 3 servings requires 21, etc.
Q: How do I find out which foods will give me a bonus to my Endurance stat?
A: A list of every food item in the game, along with the stats that they add or subtract from can be found on the Food Reference Chart page.
Q: I'm too lazy to want to bother with making my own recipes from scratch. Where can I find an actual recipe for some good endurance food that someone else has already made?
A: The Useful Recipes page contains several recipes that other players have already made and found to be useful, that would probably be a good starting spot. Or, at the bottom of the main Cooking guide page, there are links to other individual user pages where you might find some other helpful recipes
Q: Can I benefit from negative duration food by first going out to dig, and THEN coming back to the kitchen and eating +END food with negative duration?
A: Of course you can, that's what negative duration is for. If, say, the duration is -300s, it makes the food's effects start 5 Teppy minutes prior to your eating it. The food wears out the moment you cook it. Remember that food never stacks, regardless if it's positive or negative duration. Let's say you eat food #1 with -300s duration, and then immediately after eat food #2 with -400s duration. The effects of food #2 will start 400s prior to the consumption. 100s later food #2 effects will end, since they will be replaced with food #1. It helps to draw a little time chart on a piece of paper, marking the beginning and end of each food you plan to consume. This has been tested by Shoya, send me a tell in-game if it doesn't work for you.