Any real benefits to cooking?

[Shaq Pack]

I've thought long and hard about this one, and cooking seems to be more of a nusiance than anything. For one, you have to stake out certain spots for much longer than necessary (farming) for materials, but unlike the normal purpose of farming, you're only going to get low stamina or spirit boosts (+2, +4, +6) that honeslty don't make it worth the effort. Sure you can save money when you don't need to buy food or drinks, but at the cost of lots of farming for mats, which could have been spent making money in other ways.

On top of that, many classes have no viable use, mages make their own food, priests can simply heal (and don't need to eat), and it looks likely that most hybrid classes get along just fine without cooking. I suppose the only exceptions would be with hunters (how often are you low on health? you got a tank, and the thing probably doesn't eat all the food you make anyway), warlocks (another class that has lots of options for regaining life, as well as a tank), and rogues and warriors... but even then, if you are doing instances heavily, it's much better just to get summoned food.

Worse still, after checking thottbot, I've seen 300 recipes for cooking. Once you get at the top, there are only a few worthwhile recipes, but even then, they don't look worth it (+10 stam boost is nice, but considering you can get berries in felwood that do the same for free sort of defeats the purpose).

Anyone disagree?

[Allied]

There are afew worthwhile recipies, and some pretty fun ones. (Deviate surprise)

But all in all, cooking isn't "needed" by any means. It's just something fun to do.

[SpecialEd709]

the food buffs stack with the berry buffs afaik. I usually just cook the meat that I get, I don't go out of my way to get it, or just use one of my alts to grind food for me.

[The_Teleporter]

Need 60 cooking for thistle tea.

[Myth]

Low lvl cooking isn't really worth it except for thistle tea. At higher level you can easily farm giant eggs from the owls in winterspring and make monster omelets out of them. An extra 12 sta/12 spi does help out in long boss fights, trust me :)

Also, with the new quest in silithus you can get +20 str food, which is a nice little damage boost for warriors. Not really useful in pvp, but in raids it really does help.

Deviates are still fun, but sadly most of the funny random things got removed after they were abused in BWL (using fear to get past the gate).

You can easily level up cooking while levelling up your fishing too. Just cook the fish :)

All in all i think cooking is worth it. Especially if you do guild raids and not too many other guildies are cooks. Otherwise you might get stuck with alot of food you can't use.

[Allied]

All in all i think cooking is worth it. Especially if you do guild raids and not too many other guildies are cooks. Otherwise you might get stuck with alot of food you can't use.

...or with massive demand for food that you can't fulfill :p:

[Sapphire]

I have had cooking on several characters and generally I find it to not be worth the trouble. Also you pretty much have to level fishing to 300 as well. It's just a huge timesink. I can get +10 stam food in abundance just by collecting the plants in felwood. A few other recipes are nice, but I'd rather spend my time colecting herbs for potions, which are much more powerful.

[BloodBlade09]

all of my rogues have 60+ cooking
i dont see any other class needing cooking

[Sapphire]

Nightfin soup is good mana regen, and they are adding new stuff in 1.9 so cooking might be worth considering taking up for a mana user if you get bored at 60.

[Allied]

This reminds me, since it's winter time now, won't winter squids be fishable again?

[KidArctica]

Blah, I seem to be bumping old threads, but whatever.

I absolutely love cooking. It was really easy to level because I also leveled fishing, so I just cooked whatever I fished and leveled that way. True, there aren't that many recipes that I use regularly, but 12 stamina/12 spirit food is nice, and so is the mana regen fish (Nightfin and Sagefish). Also, I recently got the recipe for Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops (an epic recipe that you get from a quest string you pick up after turning in the Head of Broodlord Lashlayer), so I can make food that gives +25 stamina - and getting 250 extra hit points is pretty nice for our tanks.

[Costin_Razvan]

Still not worth getting it

[SpecialEd709]

Free buffs are always good, I'm lvling a hunter now, so I fish and cook

[d-bos]

I hate cooking because I find it really annoying to level. I levelled my fishing for the sake of alchemy first and got it quite high so if I'm gonna level cooking it's gonna be very tedious. I'd say its worth it for non-healing classes so long as you do it as you level or while you level fishing (which is also pretty annoying to level). If not you can just get someone else to cook stuff for you. Personally I just stock up on green grogg after a DM trib and dont bother with cooking, but they could supplement each other I guess.

[Myth]

Cooking is actually quite easy to level. The first 150 or so you can do easily with fishing (fishing simply is the best way to level cooking), the only annoying part is 175-225 for which you need to kill beasts. After 225 it becomes easy again with giant eggs.

[Allied]

I once had an idea about making 40 dragonbreathe chilis and giving one to every person in the raid.


Watching 40 people belching fire was an amusing thought.

[The_Teleporter]

I once had an idea about making 40 dragonbreathe chilis and giving one to every person in the raid.


Watching 40 people belching fire was an amusing thought.
So you didn't do it? :(