The Skillz – Cooking

posted by on 31st December 2007, at 3:21pm

The Skillz – Cooking

Ahh, the smell of a freshly caught Shark roasting over a nice warm fire… wait a minute, fires don’t even give off heat in Runescape! At least, they don’t seem to since you can build a fire on white wolf mountain and not melt any snow. Odd. Anyways this weeks article is about Cooking, we’re going to look into the best way for a starting cook to get the best experience all the way up to which food is best to use to train with.

Batter up

So you want to be the best chef out there, eh? I think that might be a little hard since the top chef has well over 500M experience. That didn’t discourage you? Hmm, you’re better then most.

The first thing you’ll ever cook in Runescape will be a shrimp and you’ll burn it actually. (I think the instructor there casts a spell on all the shrimp in that pond t’where they auto burn.) And the second thing you’ll cook will be bread, but do you know that best thing to cook for experience and quick levels?

After you’re out of Tutorial you can follow the road north till you find a farm with a lot of sheep and chickens. Chickens are one of the best means of experience for low levels, they cost nothing to acquire, they cook fast, and give a surprising 30 experience (Which you’ll find makes you gain levels quite fast). To acquire raw chicken, all you have to do is kill a chicken. The wonderful thing about this is that the chickens can’t hit you (I’ve been told they ‘can’ kill people but I’ve never gotten hit by one, ever.) which means you’re always safe. Another good thing is that the chickens not only drop raw chicken but also 5-15 feathers and their bones (does that make this chicken meat boneless?), that means that you can gain 4.5 prayer XP, 30 Cooking XP (if you don’t burn it), and 5-15 Feathers which can be sold for around 10 GP each.

Oh, did I forget to tell you that there’s a fire right inside the house? With this you can cook your chicken which means you don’t need an axe and tinderbox.

If you want to gain a bit more combat experience while still gaining good cooking experience you can walk west of this chicken pen until you come to a road going north to a windmill, walk past this windmill and into a cow pasture. You can kill these cows and they’ll drop raw meat which gives 30 experience when cooked. In addition to this they’ll also drop their hides (which can be tanned and used for crafting or sold) and their bones (Mm, now we have boneless beef!). Unfortunately there is no permanent fire nearby so you’ll have to carry an axe and tinder. However, you will want a weapon to fight these cows as they have been known to hit up to 2, this is a good second use for your axe.

You’re getting Batter

Two puns about Batter and yet I haven’t said anything about pastries you ask?

That’s because at level 1 you could only bake bread. (which is not as easy to bake in real life as it is in RuneScape) Now that you’ve reached level 30 you have 4 battery products which you can bake, all of which you can make in F2P. The first of these is of course bread, which you simply use flour and water to make. The second is the Redberry Pie. These aren’t really that useful in game except for a two bite meal that heals a total of 10 points, their other use is getting a certain dwarf to make a certain sword in the quest ‘Knight Sword’. Pies are generally made almost the same way as bread, except before cooking the dough, one puts it in a pie dish and adds a secondary ingredient. In this case, redberries are used to make this pie. The third is the Meat Pie, which heals only two more in total then the redberry but are a little bit easier to make, since cooked meat is easier to obtain. They give pretty good experience for your level; 110 exp per will still make levels for you pretty fast. The only annoying thing is that like with all batter products, you must have flour and water, flour being the harder one to acquire. The fourth thing is the Apple Pie. These, like meat pies, heal only two more points then the last one (Meat pie), they’re a bit harder to make since apples can be hard to come by.

If you make a few more levels you’ll be able to make another pastry, Garden Pies! These heal only 6 points per bite but also give you a +3 to farming each time you take a bite.

Next level you can make a Plain Pizza. All pizza’s require you to put tomatoes on raw pizza dough and then add cheese, after you bake this you have a plain pizza, to make higher level pizzas you need to add something on top of this as well as having the required cooking level. Pizzas up to and including anchovy pizzas are F2P, with anchovy pizzas being the best food in all of F2P.
So what is the best thing to cook at your level?

Judging by easiest to acquire and most experience I would say Tuna. If you’re pay-to-play you can harpoon fish at Catherby for tuna; these will come ‘OK’ at level 35 fishing but will come faster at higher levels.
Once you get to 40 cooking and have a fishing level of 40 Lobsters are a very good thing. You can also sometimes find people who will give you their raw lobsters for your cooked; this is a very good way to get cooking experience. Lobsters can be easily acquired at Catherby like the tuna. Either of these ways are both good since there is both a bank and range in Catherby.

Higher level foods

I’m sure you’ve heard people talking about monkfish and sharks, right? Monkfish are not holy fish like a lot of people think; in RuneScape they are actually just another type of fish you can catch which heals 16 health in one bite. In the real world, Monkfish are – hmm? Oh, you didn’t think that Monkfish were real? Hmm, we’ll have to work on that. Anyways, in the real world, ‘Monkfish’ is the English name of a number of types of fish in the northwest Atlantic Ocean. For more information about Monkfish in the real world just type in ‘Monkfish’ in a google search.

Sharks are another high level food which requires level 80 cooking. The reason they are so popular is because they heal a massive 20 points of health in just one bite, and they can be fished individually like lobster and monkfish. They also give a hefty 210 experience when cooked correctly.

Sea Turtles and Manta Rays are two other high level foods which require a cooking level of 82 and 91. Unlike most seafood which can be fished, Sea Turtles and Manta Rays require a team of people to go on a Fishing Trawler Minigame. If you have a high enough level in the Fishing skill then you might be able to catch one or two of these. Sea Turtles heal 21 and Manta Rays heal 22.

There are two more battery items that you can make also, Wild and Summer pies. Wild pies require level 85 and give 240 cooking experience when cooked correctly, however they also require some out of the ordinary ingredients. Eating half a Wild pie will give you back 11 hit points as well as 5 Slayer levels and 4 ranged levels, these extra levels are of course temporary. Summer pies require level 95 and grant you 260 experience when cooked correctly. Like their name implies, they require ingredients which you might find in a summer garden. Eating half a Summer pie will heal you 11 points and give you 5 temporary Agility levels as well as restoring 20% of your run energy.

Exotic Cuisine

Want to eat some Es-Car-Go? or maybe some freshly caught Conney? Care for spider on a stick?

Their are many exotic foods in Runescape, a few of these are Snails, Rabbits, and Spiders. these require various cooking levels to cook and also require exotic ingredients. They’re not well known because they don’t heal all that much, are hard to acquire the ingredients for, and don’t give much experience.

Since there are so many exotic foods and most of them aren’t worth using I won’t spend the time to talk about them all. They’re just food that exist in the middle of nowhere used as a last resort.
Last but not least, be careful with this stuff

The reason I saved it for last is so that no one would be drunk while reading my article.

You can brew your own beers with the cooking skill. To do so go to one of the two brewing vats in RuneScape, one is in Port Phasmatys and the other is in Keldagrim. After you go to it you’ll need to choose which type of beverage you wish to brew. Go to the in-game skill guide to pick, most beer’s will add 1 or 2 levels temporarily to a certain skill. After you have chosen which beer to brew you’ll need to acquire the following and put in whatever ingredient your chosen beer requires: Two buckets of water, Two lots of barley malt (this is made by using barley on a Cooking range), and a pot of ale yeast. (Ale Yeast can be acquired by talking to one of the NPCs near the vats, so long as you have a pot in your inventory).

After you have acquired those items and the beer’s main ingredient do the following: Add the water to a fermenting vat, then add the barley malt. Next you add the main ingredient, and lastly add the pot of ale yeast.

You’ll have to wait a few days for the beer to mature, after it has you’ll be able to use a couple of calquat kegs or 8 beer glasses on the vat valve to acquire your beer.

The End

Hmm, like usual there’s probably something I’ve forgotten.

Hopefully I’ve enlightened you a bit on the skill we call cooking and maybe you’ll start cooking your own food instead of buying it (Or having someone else do it).

Here’s one last thing you might not have known, I’m allergic to cooking in Runescape. Yep, whenever I cook 100 or more of any type of food I start to sneeze, I also sometimes sneeze when I talk about it, oddly enough I haven’t yet.

“Acchhooo!”

Oh well, so much for that.


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