As in the real world, I love food. I enjoy all kinds of different meals from all kinds of different countries; Sushi, Dim Sum, Pasta and Stir Fries. However, unlike in the real world, RuneScape lacks the variety and convenience to seduce my taste buds. I’m sure the majority of Players will be using fish while training, whether that is lobster, monkfish or shark. True, RuneScape has lots and lots of different kinds of food, but as they require more than one item to create, they’re deemed to inconvenient for cooking training and therefore are very hard to find in bulk. Needless to say, the healing effects some of the more complicated dishes give certainly do not help the issue. Who’s going to make food which will take 2 minutes to create which heals an average 14? Not very many Players will, that’s for sure, especially when they’re given alternatives like lobsters and monkfish which are very sellable and give an excellent amount of experience rate in comparison. It’s really quite puzzling, that in some sort of desperate attempt to not ‘de-value’ the fishing skill, most new, convenient kinds of foods are simply fish. Highly unimaginative and certainly uncreative; all the developers would have to do is find somewhere to put this new fishing spot. Now, while I’m very keen on the idea of new fish to be added into the game, just as the monkfish was, I’d like to see much more diverse foods which offer Players a viable alternative to sharks and the like.

Recipe For Disaster has been one of my favourite quests for a while now; it was challenging, it had lots of high level requirements, it had excellent rewards but above all – the quest’s story was unique and although a little childish, imaginative all the same. Players such as myself had to scour the RuneScape plane for rare cooking ingredients and make certain NPCs favourite dishes. As a regular critic of the RuneScape quests it’s very rare that one impresses me, and RFD is one of the few. But this is not about quests, oh no. I want new, rare foods. I want to train with Crème Brule and Baked Alaska.

A feature of World of Warcraft which separates foods which heal the same amount is the “Well Fed” buff. Some foods will increase stamina for 30 minutes, others intellect and some just won’t. Obviously those which increase more popular stats by more points will sell for more than those which don’t and in turn will be used more often as well. This gives an incentive to Players to fish or farm rarer meats. RuneScape has a similar thing; various pies increase skills like Farming, Slayer and Fishing. Some potions will do the same. It is this feature which should be added into rare foods to push the average Player into making them more often.

Now, something I’ve been thinking about recently is a concept I like to call ‘Skill Mastery’. In a nutshell, Players will have to complete a large series of tasks to unlock a whole new set of levels for a skill, a Player would only be able to master 5 different skills, but would be able to make higher levelled, unique items. Now I’m not going to touch on any other skills than cooking in this article, but you can expect me to at a later date.

Players won’t be able to ‘master’ their particular skill until they’ve boosted it all the way up to level 99. This is quite logical really, but it had to be said nonetheless. When a Player achieves this, they’ll be able to start a mini-quest of sorts through the NPC they got their cape from. This article is about the ‘Cooking Mastery’ Quest and it’s subsequent rewards.

Cooking Mastery
Start Point

• Head Chef; Cooking Guild

Requirements

• 99 Cooking
• 35 Farming

Items Needed

• Cooking Skillcape (No trim required)
• Bowl
• Knife
• Flour
• 2 Eggs
• Cheese
• Bread
• Pestle and Mortar
• Farming equipment and a free patch.

The Player in question will begin by talking to the Head Chef in the Cooking Guild proudly wearing his skill cape. This opens up some dialogue which will explain to the Player that he can perform a Mastery quest, but will be warned that they will only ever be able to choose five skills and these cannot be unlearned. The Player, still quite chuffed with his purple cape and his first 99 skill, accepts these conditions and asks for the quest briefing.

The Head Chef will begin by asking the Player to make an Admiral Pie, Wild Pie and Summer Pie. Players will only be allowed to use items they have collected themselves for these pies, which means no traded or bought items will be accepted.

The Head Chef will then ask the Player to find the ingredients for the first of the Master Foods, aubergine fritters.

• Aubergine – The Player will be able to buy seeds from the Chef and will have to grow their own. This will take 10 minutes while doing the quest, 25 when completed.
• Flour
• 2 Eggs
• Breadcrumbs – Pestle and Mortar on Bread
• Herbs – Can be bought from Chef.
• Cheese

1. Chop the aubergine with a knife.
2. Use Flour on Aubergine Discs, or vice versa.
3. Use Eggs on Floured Discs, with a bowl in inventory.
4. Use Herbs, Breadcrumbs and Cheese on bowl with all in inventory.
5. Use Eggy Discs on the now full bowl.
6. Use Uncooked Fritters on a range to make Aubergine Fritters.

On completion, the Head Chef will congratulate the Player and “taste-test” the fritters. He will very much enjoy them and move onto the next part of the quest.

The third and final part of the quest will be a test on the Player to see how diverse his or her skills are in cooking. The Head Chef will assign a random 15 items from the following list and demand them for completion of the quest.

• Chocolate Cake
• Anchovy Pizza
• Mud Pie
• Garden Pie
• Chilli Potato
• Fish Pie
• Baked Potato with Cheese
• Oomlie Wrap
• Egg and Tomato Potato
• Ugthanki Kebab
• Curry
• Mushroom and Onion Potato
• Pineapple Pizza
• Tuna and Corn Potato
• Wild Pie
• Summer Pie
• Drunk Dragon
• Chocolate Saturday
• Blurberry Special
• Worm Crunchies
• Chocolate Chip Crunchies
• Vegetable Batta
• Cheese and Tomato Batta
• Tangled Toad’s Legs
• Chocolate Bomb

When the Player successfully hands in all 20 pieces of food and/or drink (they must al be handed in at once) they will have completed the quest.

After completing the quest, the head chef will give the Player a Master Cookbook and the Player’s Cooking skill will have been enhanced. The upgrade will allow the Player to create higher leveled foods which heal more and give unique bonuses. A new set of 51 levels will be unlocked, allowing a Player to reach a level of 150. Experience for these next 51 levels will only be received through creating Master Foods, and therefore any experience gained through other methods will not count towards the Master Levels. Experience for the skill will be divided into “Exp.”, and “M.Exp.”, clearly separating the two.

Now, I couldn’t come up with 51 new kinds of food, which both delivered a unique bonus as well as healing more than regular food; but here’s a small amount of what I did think about.

• Aubergine Fritters; Heals 22.
• Buffalo Wings; Heals 22 and increases Ranged and Defence by 10%(Chicken, Hot Sauce, Butter, Salt and Pepper (from Head Chef), Herbs)
• Veggie Burger; Heals 10 but makes you feel better about yourself.(Cabbage, Salt, Flour, Bread, Tomato, Onion and Herbs)
• Thief’s Fajita; Heals 23 and increases Thieving by 10 (Fajita Wrap (made with dough), Chicken, Spices, Onion, Garlic, Cheese)
• Herbal Beer; Reduces Attack and Strength by 5, increases Herblore by 7 (Nettles, Torstol and Dwarf Weed, crushed up in a bowl, used in the brewery)
• Ghoul’s Delight; Heals 40% of your Prayer and 10 Health. (Bucket of Slime, Crushed Bones, Vampire Dust, Flour, Orange, Lemon, Pineapple)
• Supreme Stew; Heals 22, increases Attack and Strength by 20%
  (Chicken, Beef, Pork, Bear Meat, Rat Meat, Potato, Herbs and a Bowl of Water.)
• Ranger’s Game Soup; Heals 22, increases Ranged and Defence by 20% (Rabbit, Jubbly and Chompy meats, Herbs and a Bowl of water)
• Fruit Cake; Heals 32 (two bites) (Flour, Egg, Milk, Raisins, Cherries (Bought from Head Chef) and Sugar)

All foods created through this skill would be tradable.

But that is all for now; Thanks for reading;
Anubis.