Complete Cooking Guide (Meals, Efficiency, Optimal Strategy) » Idleon (2024)

Idleon has many skills but Cooking is one of the most important ones that will be a cornerstone to over 60 different bonuses across all aspects of the game and you will be leveling it up all the way to the very end game.

Cooking is only unlocked once you reach World 4 and it starts off very slow, until you level up various boosts and bonuses outside of cooking to boost your cooking efficiency.

This guide goes through everything you need to know to get your cooking up to par and reach the max level of 60 (or 80 when you reach World 6) for all your meals.

Cooking Fundamentals

Cooking is an insane boost to all your stats, but you start off with no meals when you reach World 4 and the progress can be fairly slow to start with.

Starting off with the most important question, how do you unlock your first meal, the Turkey a la Thank?

In order to unlock any meals, you need Spices which can be unlocked through Territories in Breeding. Once you beat the Territory battle, you can place various pets on it to start collecting spices from that location.

The first Territory is called Grasslands and defeating it will let you start generating Grasslands Spice. The speed of how fast you can claim spices from a Territory is determined by the total foraging speed of that territory, which is decided by the pets you have placed there.

Each pet has different effects that combine with each other, so make sure to check what each pet does from the Database tab to make efficient combinations for each Territory.

Once you have your first spice, you can click on one of the tables and select New Recipe and select the spice to start researching possible recipes.

Before you click Begin Recipe, you can see how many potential new recipes you can find from the current selected spice combination. If it says 0 new recipes can be found, beginning recipe research will be a waste of time.

Check the next few chapters on all the possible spices and spice combinations that can unlock new meals.

When you begin a new recipe, you will see a progress bar and once it has filled up, you will see your chances of discovering a new meal. If you wait for the bar to fill up multiple times, your chances increase.

Once you have a discovered meal, you can select it from any Kitchen to start cooking it. This will generate more of that meal and let you level up that meals bonus in the Menu next to the table.

Make sure all your tables are always either researching a new meal or cooking existing meals.

You can also upgrade each table using certain Spices, increasing that tables cooking speed of existing meals (Speed), new recipe research speed (Fire), and new recipe find chance (Luck).

You should always check if you have enough spices to upgrade these as they will initially speed up your meal cooking speed as well as finding new meals, but all of them will also speed up your overall meal cooking later on, once you unlock a few bonuses (all explained later in the guide).

You should also aim to buy all the tables eventually as more tables allow for more meals to be cooking simultaneously.

Check out our Gem Shop priorities guide to see why all the kitchen upgrades from the Gem Shop are amazing! You might also want to check out our free gem methods to afford those upgrades for free.

Ladles and Cooking Efficiency explained

Now that you understand how cooking works under the hood, you need to know how to cook up as many meals as possible so you can upgrade your meals all the way to the maximum level.

You might have already noticed that when you open up your AFK Information while standing in the kitchen, there is a bar for Cooking Efficiency, however it is important to note that it does not speed up your cooking on its own!

The reason why Cooking Efficiency is important, is because the more efficiency you have, the more Ladles you receive when claiming AFK gains in the kitchen.

And this is crucial because Ladles are like the Time Candy of kitchens, they give you 1 hour of instant meal cooking progress.

There are dozens of ways to increase cooking efficiency to get more ladles and Blood Berserkers even have a talent which increases the amount of gains from Ladles, but those are explained later in the guide.

There are also 2 other source of getting more cooking ladles aside from just staying AFK in the kitchen:

Source	Quantity	Location
Skull Shop	5 Ladles for 3 Skulls	World 2 YumYum Grotto
Mutated Mush	3 Ladles per kill (more if you have higher than 1x Drop Rate)	World 4 TV Outpost (Final boss of Astro Colosseum) World 4 Spaceway Raceway (Drop Toxic Sludge on the top platform to spawn)

There is also a useful trick to get a few ladles as fast as possible and that is the 2-minute-AFK method (this also works for any other AFK gains).

You may have noticed that if you swap between your characters fast, you don’t get new AFK gains, but that’s because 2 minutes is the magical limit of when new AFK gains trigger.

So to grind this out, just leave your character in the kitchen and switch to a different character for 2 minutes and switch back, then you will be greeted with a few ladles.

Obviously if your cooking efficiency is still very low, it wont be very effective but later on this is a fantastic way to quickly grind a bunch ladles.

The picture above would net you 7 hours worth of cooking gains in 2 minutes after you use those ladles (and that’s not including the time bonus from Blood Berserkers talents).

This same 2-minute method is very popular for grinding DNA Samples for breeding and ore bars from the forge.

How to unlock every Spice

Now that you know how everything works, you need to conquer some spices in order to unlock new meals. Also table upgrades can only be acquired by spending spices, so in order to cook faster, you need more spices to boost your tables.

Here is a list of all the currently available spices alongside the territories they are unlocked from and a list of table upgrades which each spice can be used to level up.

Spice	Territory	Table Upgrades
	Grasslands (Territory #1)	Table 1: Speed
	Jungle (Territory #2)	Table 1: Fire
	Encroaching Forest (Territory #3)	Table 1: Luck Table 2: Speed
	Tree Interior (Territory #4)	Table 2: Fire
	Stinky Sewers (Territory #5)	Table 2: Luck Table 3: Speed
	Desert Oasis (Territory #6)	Table 3: Fire
	Beach Docks (Territory #7)	Table 3: Luck Table 4: Speed
	Coarse Mountains (Territory #8)	Table 4: Fire
	Twilight Desert (Territory #9)	Table 4: Luck Table 5: Speed
	The Crypt (Territory #10)	Table 5: Fire
	Frosty Peaks (Territory #11)	Table 5: Luck Table 6: Speed
	Tundra Outback (Territory #12)	Table 6: Fire
	Crystal Caverns (Territory #13)	Table 6: Luck Table 7: Speed
	Pristalle Lake (Territory #14)	Table 7: Fire
	Nebulon Mantle (Territory #15)	Table 7: Luck Table 8: Speed
	Starfield Skies (Territory #16)	Table 8: Fire
	Shores of Eternity (Territory #17)	Table 8: Luck Table 9: Speed
	Molten Bay (Territory #18)	Table 9: Fire
	Smokey Lake (Territory #19)	Table 9: Luck Table 10: Speed
	Wurm Catacombs (Territory #20)	Table 10: Fire
	Spirit Fields (Territory #21) Unlocked by reaching Gooble Goop Creek map in World 6	Table 10: Luck
	Bamboo Forest (Territory #22) Unlocked by reaching Bamboo Laboredgemap in World 6	None
	Lullaby Airways (Territory #23) Unlocked by reaching Sleepy Skylinemap in World 6	None
	Dharma Mesa (Territory #24) Unlocked by reaching Yolkrock Basinmap in World 6	None

Most of the spices can simply be unlocked by beating the territory battles, but the last 3 need to first be opened by reaching certain maps in World 6, then beating their territory battles.

When it comes to generating more spices, in most cases you should focus on generating the spices that are needed for Speed upgrades, as that will produce more meals faster.

All meals and how to unlock them

With some spices unlocked, you need to know what kind of meals you can unlock and what kind of awesome bonuses you can strive for.

The table below showcases every single meal you can research and what spices each of them needs. Most meals have alternate research spice combinations which require rarer spices but give higher success rate for finding a new meal.

Meal	Description	Needed Spices	Alternate Spices
Turkey a la Thank	Level 1: +2% Total Damage Level 80: +160% Total Damage	#1 (100% chance)	None
Egg	Level 1: +5% Meal Cooking Speed Level 80: +400% Meal Cooking Speed	#2 (80% chance)	None
Salad	Level 1: +3% Cash from Monsters Level 80: +240% Cash from Monsters	#1 | #2 (10% chance)	#3 (80% chance)
Pie	Level 1: +5% New Recipe Cooking Speed Level 80: +400% New Recipe Cooking Speed	#2 (20% Chance)	#2 | #19 (80% Chance)
Frenk Fries	Level 1: +5% New Pet Breeding Odds Level 80: +400% New Pet Breeding Odds	#2 | #3 (18% Chance)	#5 (80% Chance)
Spaghetti	Level 1: +4% Breeding EXP Level 80: +320% Breeding EXP	#3 (20% Chance)	#3 | #18 (80% Chance)
Corn	Level 1: +2% Skill Efficiency Level 80: +160% Skill Efficiency	#3 | #4 (18% Chance)	#7 (80% Chance)
Garlic Bread	Level 1: +4% VIP Library Membership Level 80: +320% VIP Library Membership	#2 | #3 | #4 (5% Chance)	#8 (80% Chance)
Garlicless Bread	Level 1: +2% Lab EXP Level 80: +160% Lab EXP	#4 (100% Chance)	None
Pizza	Level 1: +9% New Pet Breeding Odds Level 80: +720% New Pet Breeding Odds	#2 | #4 | #5 (5% Chance)	#10 (80% Chance)
Apple	Level 1: +5 Base DEF Level 80: +400 Base DEF	#5 (20% Chance)	#5 | #16 (80% Chance)
Pancakes	Level 1: +2 Pixels for line width in Lab Level 80: +160 Pixels for line width in Lab	#2 | #3 | #4 | #5 (1% Chance)	#12 (80% Chance)
Corndog	Level 1: +12% Meal Cooking Speed Level 80: +960% Meal Cooking Speed	#3 | #5 | #6 (5% Chance)	#13 (80% Chance)
Cabbage	Level 1: +5% Cooking Speed per 10 Kitchen Upgrade levels Level 80: +400% Cooking Speed per 10 Kitchen Upgrade levels	#6 (100% Chance)	None
Potato Pea Pastry	Level 1: +1% Lower Egg Incubation Time Level 80: +80% Lower Egg Incubation Time	#2 | #4 | #5 | #6 (1% Chance)	#15 (80% Chance)
Dango	Level 1: +2% Lower Kitchen Upgrade Costs Level 80: +160% Lower Kitchen Upgrade Costs	#7 (20% Chance)	#7 | #14 (80% Chance)
Sourish Fish	Level 1: +4% VIP Library Membership Level 80: +320% VIP Library Membership	#5 | #6 | #7 (2% Chance)	#17 (80% Chance)
Octoplop	Level 1: +2% Total Damage Level 80: +160% Total Damage	#2 | #5 | #6 | #7 (1% Chance)	#18 (80% Chance)
Croissant	Level 1: +1% Pet Fighting DMG Level 80: +80% Pet Fighting DMG	#3 | #5 | #6 | #7 (0.4% Chance)	#19 (80% Chance)
Canopy	Level 1: +10% New Recipe Cooking Speed Level 80: +800% New Recipe Cooking Speed	#8 (20% Chance)	#8 | #13 (80% Chance)
Cannoli	Level 1: +1% more points in Tower Defence Level 80: +80% more points in Tower Defence	#9 (100% Chance)	None
Cheese	Level 1: +5% Cooking EXP Level 80: +400% Cooking EXP	#6 | #8 | #9 (5% Chance)	#22 (80% Chance)
Sawdust	Level 1: +5% Lab EXP Level 80: +400% Lab EXP	#7 | #8 | #9 (2% Chance)	#23 (80% Chance)
Eggplant	Level 1: +5% Pet Breeding Speed in the Fenceyard Level 80: +400% Pet Breeding Speed in the Fenceyard	#10 (20% Chance)	#10 | #11 (80% Chance)
Cheesy Bread	Level 1: +1% Total Accuracy Level 80: +80% Total Accuracy	#7 | #9 | #10 (2% Chance)	#12 | #13 (72% Chance)
Wild Boar	Level 1: +2 Pixels for line width in Lab Level 80: +160 Pixels for line width in Lab	#8 | #9 | #10 (2% Chance)	#13 | #14 (68% Chance)
Donut	Level 1: +15% New Pet Breeding Odds Level 80: +1,200% New Pet Breeding Odds	#2 | #8 | #9 | #10 (0.4% Chance)	#13 | #15 (72% Chance)
Riceball	Level 1: +3% Skill Efficiency Level 80: +240% Skill Efficiency	#11 (100% Chance)	None
Cauliflower	Level 1: +1% Basic Attack Speed Level 80: +80% Basic Attack Speed	#9 | #10 | #11 (2% Chance)	#14 | #15 (72% Chance)
Durian Fruit	Level 1: +6% Lower Kitchen Upgrade Costs Level 80: +480% Lower Kitchen Upgrade Costs	#2 | #9 | #10 | #11 (1% Chance)	#15 | #16 (68% Chance)
Orange	Level 1: +3% VIP Library Membership Level 80: +240% VIP Library Membership	#3 | #9 | #10 | #11 (0.4% Chance)	#15 | #17 (72% Chance)
Bunt Cake	Level 1: +7% more Cash from Monsters Level 80: +560% more Cash from Monsters	#12 (20% Chance)	#12 | #21 (72% Chance)
Chocolate Truffle	Level 1: +25% New Pet Breeding Odds Level 80: +2,000% New Pet Breeding Odds	#2 | #10 | #11 | #12 (1% Chance)	#16 | #17 (72% Chance)
Leek	Level 1: +2% Skilling Prowess Level 80: +160% Skilling Prowess (more prowess = less efficiency needed for AFK multipliers)	#13 (20% Chance)	#13 | #22 (72% Chance)
Fortune Cookie	Level 1: +4% Faster Library Checkout Speed Level 80: +320% Faster Library Checkout Speed	#11 | #12 | #13 (2% Chance)	#17 | #18 (72% Chance)
Pretzel	Level 1: +7% Lab EXP Level 80: +560% Lab EXP	#2 | #11 | #12 | #13 (1% Chance)	#18 | #19 (68% Chance)
Sea Urchin	Level 1: +1% More Critters from Trapping Level 80: +80% More Critters from Trapping	#3 | #11 | #12 | #13 (0.4% Chance)	#18 | #20 (72% Chance)
Mashed Potato	Level 1: +6% Cooking EXP Level 80: +480% Cooking EXP	#14 (100% Chance)	None
Mutton	Level 1: +1% Crit Chance Level 80: +80% Crit Chance	#2 | #12 | #13 | #14 (1% Chance)	#19 | #20 (72% Chance)
Wedding Cake	Level 1: +2% Pet Fighting Damage Level 80: +160% Pet Fighting Damage	#3 | #12 | #13 | #14 (1% Chance)	#20 | #21 (68% Chance)
Eel	Level 1:+1% Line Width in Lab Level 80: +80% Line Width in Lab	#4 | #12 | #13 | #14 (0.4% Chance)	#20 | #22 (72% Chance)
Whipped Cocoa	Level 1:+4% Skill Efficiency Level 80: +320% Skill Efficiency	#15 (20% Chance)	#15 | #18 | #19 (68% Chance)
Onion	Level 1:+3% Total Damage Level 80: +240% Total Damage	#3 | #13 | #14 | #15 (1% Chance)	#21 | #22 (72% Chance)
Soda	Level 1:+20% Meal Cooking Speed Level 80: +1,600% Meal Cooking Speed	#4 | #13 | #14 | #15 (1% Chance)	#22 | #23 (68% Chance)
Sushi Roll	Level 1:+7% VIP Library Membership Level 80: +560% VIP Library Membership	#5 | #13 | #14 | #15 (0.4% Chance)	#22 | #24 (72% Chance)
Buncha Banana	Level 1: +4 Max Level for TP Pete Star Talent Level 80: +320 Max Level for TP Pete Star Talent	#16 (100% Chance)	None
Pumpkin	Level 1:+2% Cap for Alchemy Liquids 1 & 2 Level 80: +160% Cap for Alchemy Liquids 1 & 2	#4 | #14 | #15 | #16 (1% Chance)	#23 | #24 (72% Chance)
Cotton Candy	Level 1:+2% Divinity EXP Level 80: +160% Divinity EXP	#5 | #14 | #15 | #16 (1% Chance)	#16 | #17 | #18 (17% Chance)
Massive Fig	Level 1: +3% Total Damage Level 80: +240 % Total Damage	#17 (20% Chance)	#17 | #21 | #23 | #24 (68% Chance)
Head Chef Bread	Level 1:+4% More Bits in Gaming Level 80: +320% More Bits in Gaming	#4 | #15 | #16 | #17 (1% Chance)	#15 | #18 | #19 (17% Chance)
Kiwi Fruit	Level 1:+2% Cap for Alchemy Liquids 3 & 4 Level 80: +160% Cap for Alchemy Liquids 3 & 4	#18 (20% Chance)	#18 | #20 | #23 | #24 (68% Chance)
Popped Corn	Level 1:+2% Sailing Speed Level 80: +160% Sailing Speed	#3 | #16 | #17 | #18 (1% Chance)	#15 | #19 | #20 (17% Chance)
Double Cherry	Level 1:+30% Meal Cooking Speed Level 80: +2,400% Meal Cooking Speed	#4 | #16 | #17 | #18 (1% Chance)	#17 | #19 | #20 (17% Chance)
Ratatouey	Level 1:+8% Lower Kitchen Upgrade Costs Level 80: +640% Lower Kitchen Upgrade Costs	#19 (20% Chance)	#19 | #21 | #22 | #23 (68% Chance)
Giant Tomato	Level 1:+5% Gaming EXP Level 80: +400% Gaming EXP	#3 | #17 | #18 | #19 (1% Chance)	#20 | #21 | #22 (67% Chance)
Wrath Grapes	Level 1:+4% Divinity EXP Level 80: +320% Divinity EXP	#4 | #17 | #18 | #19 (1% Chance)	#20 | #21 | #22 (17% Chance)
Sausy Sausage	Level 1:+6% More Bits in Gaming Level 80: +480% More Bits in Gaming	#20 (100% Chance)	None
Seasoned Marrow	Level 1:+3% Farming EXP Level 80: +240% Farming EXP	#15 | #19 | #20 | #21 (5% Chance)	#9 | #21 | #22 | #23 (5% Chance)
Sticky Bun	Level 1:+5% All Summoning Essence Gain Level 80: +400% All Summoning Essence Gain	#21 (100% Chance)	None
Frazzleberry	Level 1: +2% Sneaking EXP Level 80: +160% Sneaking EXP	#16 | #19 | #20 | #21 (1% Chance)	#8 | #22 | #23 | #24 (17% Chance)
Misterloin Steak	Level 1:+6% Jade Gain from Sneaking Level 80: +480% Jade Gain from Sneaking	#22 (20% Chance)	None
Large Pohayoh	Level 1:+2% Summoning EXP Level 80: +160% Summoning EXP	#15 | #20 | #21 | #22 (1% Chance)	#10 | #22 | #23 | #24 (9% Chance)
Bill Jack Pepper	Level 1:+5% Crop Evolution Chance Level 80: +400% Crop Evolution Chance	#16 | #20 | #21 | #22 (1% Chance)	#12 | #22 | #23 | #24 (9% Chance)
Burned Marshmallow	Level 1:+40% Meal Cooking Speed Level 80: +3,200% Meal Cooking Speed	#23 (20% Chance)	None
Yumi Peachring	Level 1:+6% All Golden Food Bonuses Level 80: +480% All Golden Food Bonuses	#15 | #21 | #22 | #23 (1% Chance)	#13 | #22 | #23 | #24 (5% Chance)
Plumpcakes	Level 1:+6% Total Damage Level 80: +480% Total Damage	#16 | #21 | #22 | #23 (1% Chance)	#15 | #22 | #23 | #24 (5% Chance)
Nyanborgir	Level 1:+9% Crop Evolution Chance Level 80: +720% Crop Evolution Chance	#24 (100% Chance)	None

When you first reach World 4 and get bonuses from the Pet Arena, your max level for meals will be 60, but once you get to World 6 you can eventually upgrade that level to 80 through the Jade Emporium.

However you shouldn’t focus on maxing out meals any time soon after reaching World 4 or even World 5, as the amount of cooked meals needed for level ups scale exponentially.

Blood Berserker and Voidwalker

There are specialized classes for all skills in Idleon, which means there is one that specializes in Cooking as well. That one happens to be the second Warrior advancement which comes after Barbarian, the Blood Berserker.

While the class name doesn’t aspire much confidence when it comes to cooking food, fear not, as the class has 4 unique amazing talents that will help with your Cooking skill related tasks.

Skill	Effects
Skill Strengthen	Level 1: +1% STR Effect on Skill Efficiency & +1 STR Level 200: +43% STR Effect on Skill Efficiency & +101 STR
Taste Test	Level 1: Kitchens keep 1% of Fire when finishing New Recipe Level 200: Kitchens keep 67% of Fire when finishing New Recipe
Apocalypse Chow	(This is explained in depth below the table!) Level 1: 0.3% Cooking Efficiency & EXP per CHOW Level 200: 13% Cooking Efficiency & EXP per CHOW
Waiting to Cool	Level 1: 0.5% Cooking AFK Gains Level 200: 15% Cooking AFK Gains
Overflowing Ladle	Level 1: Ladles used on this character give +1% more time Level 200: Ladles used on this character give +71% more time

The most powerful and important talent here is the Apocalypse Chow which boosts both, your cooking efficiency as well as cooking experience. It is multiplied by every monster you have killed over 1 million times on your Blood Berserker.

You can check how many kills you currently have by clicking on one of your monster cards.

In the image above, clicking the Green Mushroom card shows that we have 7631 million kills, which is more than the 1 million we need for the Chow, so this monster adds +1 multiplier to the Apocalypse Chow talent.

Currently there are over 80 monsters that can be ‘Chowed’ and will add up to over 1,000% increased cooking speed, making this an insane cooking booster.

However, the good news don’t end there, as Voidwalker can boost this talent even further through their Enhancement Eclipse talent, which boosts a new talent every 25 invested talent points.

Once you’ve invested 125 talent points into Enhancement Eclipse, you will gain the Super Chow improvement to the Apocalypse Chow cooking talent.

Super Chows just allow you to kill each mob 100 million times and this will add a 1.1x cooking speed multiplier to all meals, which again adds up massively.

Other than these awesome Blood Berserker talents, there are also tons of Star Talents which boost skill efficiency, but since they’re the same for all skilling builds, check out our Star Talent guide for those.

All methods to speed up cooking

This is going to be the most important section of this entire guide, as it will unlock your full cooking potential, going through all the possible ways to increase your cooking efficiency and speed up your meal generation.

Gear and Equipment to boost Cooking

There’s not much to cover when it comes to equipment, as most gear that boosts Skill Efficiency will be optimal for a cooking build as well, the same as any other skilling build.

However there are a few pieces of gear that are specific to cooking:

Item	Stats	Source
Cooking Clogs	+300 Cooking Efficiency 5 Upgrade Slots	Purp Mushroom World 4 Spaceway Raceway
Chef Hat Shoes	+800 Cooking Efficiency 5 Upgrade Slots	Smithing Tab 4 4x Cooking Clogs 1x Lustre Shieldshoe
Chef Ring	+400 Cooking Efficiency +15% Cooking Efficiency 2 Upgrade Slots	Choccie World 4 Cocoa Tunnel
Serrated Rex Ring	+5 STR/AGI/WIS +8% Skill Efficiency 3 Upgrade Slots	Recipe from Baba Yaga 1x Rex Ring 1,000x Iron Bars

The normal Rex Ring can be purchased from the Party Dungeon Flurbo shop, but it is worth it to purchase two for each of your characters, as the Serrated Rex Ring is the go-to ring for all skilling builds.

Also, while on paper the Chef Ring might seem like the better choice, eventually it is not quite as powerful even for cooking gains than the Serrated Rex ring so swap them out when you can.

All Meals that boost Cooking Speed and Skill Efficiency

Since we just went over every single meal you can cook, let’s recap all the meals that will increase your cooking speed and cooking efficiency (ignoring new recipe speed meals).

Meal	Effect
Egg	Level 1: +5% Meal Cooking Speed Level 70: +350% Meal Cooking Speed
Corn	Level 1: +2% Skill Efficiency Level 70: +140% Skill Efficiency
Corndog	Level 1: +12% Meal Cooking Speed Level 70: +840% Meal Cooking Speed
Cabbage	Level 1: +5% Cooking Speed per 10 Kitchen Upgrade Levels Level 70: +350% Cooking Speed per 10 Kitchen Upgrade Levels
Riceball	Level 1: +3% Skill Efficiency Level 70: +210% Skill Efficiency
Whipped Cocoa	Level 1: +4% Skill Efficiency Level 70: +280% Skill Efficiency
Soda	Level 1: +20% Meal Cooking Speed Level 70: +1,400% Meal Cooking Speed
Double Cherry	Level 1: +30% Meal Cooking Speed Level 70: +2,100% Meal Cooking Speed
Burned Marshmallow	Level 1: +40% Meal Cooking Speed Level 70: +2,800% Meal Cooking Speed (Doubles at Farming level 50, triples at level 100 etc.)

You can see how fast those bonuses start scaling up once you start getting your speed up. Cabbage is especially good because you can get hundreds of Kitchen levels per Kitchen, so that bonus becomes one of the best cooking speed buffs.

Alchemy Bubbles and Vials for Cooking

Next up, let’s cover all the Alchemy bubbles and vials that will help you with cooking.

Alchemy Item	Description	Material / Source
Prowesessary (Bubble #5)	Lowers Skilling Prowess aka efficiency needed for AFK multipliers. Level 1: 1.02x Prowess Level 50: 1.68x Prowess	Potty Rolls & Water Droplets
Diamond Chef (Bubble #18)	Faster meal cooking speeds for every meal at level 11 or higher. Level 1: 1.02x Cooking Speed Level 50: 1.24x Cooking Speed	Beach Docks Spice & Trench Seawater
Sand Shark (Vial)	Faster meal cooking speed. (+6% per Vial level)	Fishing World 2 Deepwater Docks
Dreadlo Bar (Vial)	Faster meal cooking speed. (+3% per Vial level)	Dreadlo Vein World 1 Slip Slidy Ledges
Firefly (Vial)	Faster meal cooking speed. (Multiplicative so even better) (+5% per Vial level)	Catching World 6 Lightway Path
Godshard Bar (Vial)	Higher Total Skill Efficiency. (+4% per Vial level)	Godshard Vein World 1 Motherlode Pit
Tottoise (Vial)	Faster Cooking speed among other bonuses (multiplicative so very powerful). (+4% per level)	Jade Emporium (Purchase #30) Critter Found at: World 6 – Bamboo Laboredge

The Diamond Chef bubble is one of the best boosts early on as it only requires meals to be level 11 to add to the bonus. Sadly after the bubble reaches around level 50, it starts costing too much and is not worth spending more time on before you can boost it more with Atoms.

The Prowesessary bubble helps with getting more Cooking Ladles as it reduces multiplier requirements for Cooking AFK Gains

The rest of the bonuses are self explanatory, out of which the Sand Shark Vial is definitely the easiest one to acquire and level up.

Next let’s check out the card setup that is the most optimal for getting as many Ladles from Cooking AFK gains as possible.

Optimal Card Setup for Cooking Ladles

Cards will only affect your Cooking Efficiency, meaning you will get more Ladles from AFK gains. There are a few very crucial cards you should use for optimal ladle gains, one of which is the best card for all other skills as well, the Chaotic Troll card. Sadly it is very hard to level up without buying Card Packs with gems.

Card	Effect	Source
Chaotic Troll	0 Stars: +10% All Skill Efficiency 4 Stars: +50% All Skill Efficiency Ruby: +60% All Skill Efficiency (Place in top left for lab chip)	World 4 Enclave of Eyes
Amarok	0 Stars: +10% All Skill Efficiency 4 Stars: +50% All Skill Efficiency Ruby: +60% All Skill Efficiency (Place in bottom right for lab chip)	World 1 End of the Road
Mama Troll	0 Stars: +2% Skill AFK Gain Rate 4 Stars: +10% Skill AFK Gain Rate Ruby: +12% Skill AFK Gain Rate	World 6 Troll Broodnest
Biggie Hours	0 Stars: +3% Double AFK Claim Chance 4 Stars: +15% Double AFK Claim Chance Ruby: +18% Double AFK Claim Chance	World 2 Sandstone Colosseum
Bunny	0 Stars: +1% Skill AFK Gain Rate 4 Stars: +5% Skill AFK Gain Rate Ruby: +6% Skill AFK Gain Rate	World 3 Thermonuclear Climb
Blighted Chizoar	0 Stars: +1.5% All Stats 4 Stars: +7.5% All Stats Ruby: +9% All Stats	World 3 Crystal Basecamp
River Spirit	0 Stars: +1.5% All Stats 4 Stars: +7.5% All Stats Ruby: +9% All Stats	World 6 Irrigation Station
Tremor Wurm	0 Stars: +1% All Stats 4 Stars: +5% All Stats Ruby: +6% All Stats	World 5 The Worm Nest
Stilted Seeker	0 Stars: +0.5% All Stats 4 Stars: +2.5% All Stats Ruby: +3% All Stats	World 4 Enclave of Eyes
Mutated Mush	0 Stars: +6% Cooking EXP 4 Stars: +30% Cooking EXP Ruby: +36% Cooking EXP	World 4 Astro Colosseum

We listed the best cards, with a few alternatives before reaching World 6. The cards that give higher All Stats % can be great, but they depend on how good your current stats are. This is why we recommend testing out if All Stat boosts give you higher AFK gains than Skill AFK Gain Rate cards.

You might also be tempted to use the Mutated Mush card which boosts your Cooking EXP, but cooking levels are not really important, so you should rather get more AFK gains for more ladles instead.

Important Lab Chips, Nodes and Jewels for Cooking gains

Lab provides some of the best boosts to cooking speeds with its various chips, nodes and jewels. Sadly most chips and jewels take quite a while to acquire unless you are willing to shell out some gems to buy them up faster.

Starting off with the important chips to boost your cards and skill efficiency:

Chip	Effect
Omega Nanochip	Doubles bonus of card equipped in top left slot. (Can only equip 1)
Omega Motherboard	Doubles bonus of card equipped in bottom right slot. (Can only equip 1)
Conductive Processor	+15% Skilling AFK Gain Rate. (Can only equip 1)
Galvanic Motherboard	+20% Total Skilling Efficiency for all skills
Galvanic Processor	+250 Base Efficiency for all skills

The Omega Chips are the most important so you can double your Chaotic Troll and Amarok card bonuses. The Conductive Processor also simply increases the amount of Ladles you get so it’s a no-brainer. Fill the rest of your chip slots with either Galvanic Motherboards or –Processors.

The only way to know which galvanic chips works better for you is by testing out what your AFK gains look like after equipping them. Galvanic Processor is usually only better early on when your cooking efficiency is fairly low.

Moving on to the Lab Jewels, there are tons of effective ones that boost your cooking.

We added a secondary boost amount in the brackets, which is activated if you have the Spelunker Obol node active (nodes are listed after this table).

Jewel	Effect
Amethyst Rhinestone	Meal cooking is (1.5x/2.25x) faster. This bonus is applied TWICE if all 3 purple jewels are active.
Sapphire Pyramite	Every 24 hours, the (2/3) lowest level Kitchen Upgrades across all owned kitchens gain +1 Lv.
Emerald Navette	All players have (200/300) higher base efficiency in all skills, and +10% skill action speed. This bonus is applied TWICE if all 5 Green Jewels are active.
Emerald Pyramite	Meal cooking is (1%/1.5%) faster for every 25 total upgrade levels across all kitchens.
Black Diamond Rhinestone	All meal bonuses give (1.16x/1.24x) higher bonus than what is shown.

Node	Effect
Certified Stamp Book	All Stamps, except for MISC tab stamps, give DOUBLE the bonus.
Spelunker Obol	1.5x higher effects from all active Jewels.
My 1st Chemistry Set	All Vials in Alchemy give DOUBLE the bonus.

As you may notice the bonuses from both Jewels and Nodes combine into to massive boosts and both are absolutely crucial if you wish to eventually max out all your cooking meals.

To make the Lab less painful, there is a God you can acquire in World 5 Divinity called Arctis, which allows you to have your character active within the Lab Mainframe while not being stuck in the lab. On top of that you can acquire the very overpowered King Doot pet to have all Divinities active at all times, instead of just having to pick one.

Atom Collider Upgrades

The Atom Collider is a huge upgrade you receive from Construction in World 3, which allows you to get massive boosts with atoms.

While there are useful upgrades like cheaper stamps (Hydrogen), more “Power of 10″ bonuses from skills (Helium), and more Bubble levels (Lithium), the best upgrade in terms of Cooking is Fluoride, which boosts your cooking speed by % for each meal you have at level 30 or higher (each Fluoride level adds +1% to the multiplier).

Obviously this will only become useful once you can get multiple meals to level 30, but as you can see from the image above, the bonus in cooking speed is massive and definitely worth pushing towards with your atoms.

Post Office, Stamps, Sailing and Achievements

These categories are self explanatory so we decided to clump them together into these next few tables. While Stamps are unlocked from World 1 and Post Office from World 2, you need to get to World 5 to get a hold of Sailing, but once you do, it’s definitely worth the effort.

Let’s start off with the single Achievement which boosts cooking speed and can be found from World 4 achievements.

Achievement	Requirement	Bonus
Cabbage Patch	Have 5 kitchens cooking up Cabbages at the same time.	+10% Meal Cooking Speed

When it comes to stamps, there are many which will boost all stats and drop rate etc. which are not listed here as they’re not as significant when it comes to cooking, but we listed the few important below.

Stamp	Effect	Stamp Source
Cooked Meal Stamp	+% Meal Cooking Speed	Oinkin (1st Quest) World 4 Donut Drive-In
Spice Stamp	+% New Recipe Speed	Outer World Shop World 4 Outer World Town
Ladle Stamp	More Cooking Efficiency	Oinkin (3rd Quest) World 4 Donut Drive-In
Multitool Stamp	More All Skill Efficiency	Poigu (2nd Quest) World 5 Lampar Lake

After stamps, you want to take a look at the World 2 post office, specifically the Cooking crate from the second tab.

You can unlock this crate by reaching round 25 in the World 4 pet Arena mode.

Crate	Bonuses at Level 400
Chefs Essentials	+1600 Cooking Efficiency +39% Cooking EXP gain +53% chance for 2x Ladle drops

Finally we get to the vast world of Sailing artifacts, two of which provide nice bonuses to Cooking. For more information on how to obtain Sailing artifacts, check out our extensive Sailing guide.

Artifact	Main Bonus	Ancient Bonus
Triagulon	+15% Cooking Speed per power of 10 Turkeys owned	Main bonus is doubled
Causticolumn	+10 Max Level for all cooking meals	Main bonus is doubled

For the Triagulon artifact, it is a common practice to stock up around three times more Turkeys needed for the next level before upgrading the meal, so you don’t diminish the bonus too much.

Shiny Pets to boost Meal Bonuses

The final way to get some more awesome boosts is by gathering some Shiny Pets from Breeding.

There are tons of pets that can boost meal bonuses as well as skill efficiency so we listed them all below.

Pet	Effect per Pet Level
Red Mushroom Sheepie	+1% Bonuses from All Meals
Carrotman Gigafrog Mashed Potato Sand Giant	+20 Base Efficiency for All Skills

Shiny Pets can be leveled up by placing them into the Fenceyard, but they take ages to level up and the requirements increase exponentially so don’t expect fast gains.

However, it is good to note that you can place multiple of the same Shiny Pet into the fenceyard to level them up faster. So having 2 Sheepies in the fenceyard for 1 day will give 2 days of progress for Sheepie.

Meal level up strategy

Obviously the key to leveling up your meals is to get higher cooking efficiency to get more ladles and use those ladles to generate more meals.

However, when you’re just starting out with cooking, it’s not a good idea to just try and max out meals in order.

The first thing you should try to do is get the Diamond Chef bubble from alchemy to a higher level, somewhere around 20, to speed up overall cooking speed very easily.

After that, you should focus on unlocking meals that increase cooking speed early on, especially the Cabbage and Corndogs.

Once you have these meals, upgrade them 5 levels at a time until they’re both at level 11, after which the cost starts ramping up faster.

It’s a good idea to split your ladles using the Storage Chest so you don’t end up spending too many on an overleveled meal that has no chance of ranking up soon.

After that start unlocking as many of the other meals as possible and upgrade them to level 11 as well.

Remember to upgrade your kitchens as you gain more spices so your Cabbage becomes more effective.

Finally your priority should be just going through the list of methods to speed up cooking and you will notice your levels will start flying faster and faster.

If you already have World 5 unlocked, make sure to stack up around 3x the amount of Turkeys needed for the next meal upgrade before using them so you don’t lose out on the benefits of the Triagulon Sailing Artifact.

It is most common to have all kitchens cooking the same meal due to the ease of use of the ‘Cook All‘ button.

Remember to keep testing meals with small stacks of ladles to see if the meals level up easily. If they do, most likely you have increased your cooking speed through various bonuses, so go through all your meals with a few ladles to squeeze out any easy levels.

How to get Easy Cooking Levels

While you should always be more focused on Cookin Efficiency instead of Cooking Levels, there are a few effective ways to boost all your characters cooking levels.

The main reason you might want more cooking levels is because it slightly increases your cooking efficiency and ladle chances, but more importantly it will give you various bonuses from The Rift Skill Mastery.

You can’t use Time Candy to level up cooking, so the best way to level up the skill early on is by using Black Pearls all the way up to level 30. After that you can use Divinity Pearls to level up the skill all the way to level 50 on all your characters.

Item	Effect	Source
Black Pearl	Hold down to gain 20% EXP on currently active skill, if the skill is under level 30.	Killroy’s Skull Shop (9 skulls for 1)
Divinity Pearl	Hold down to gain 40% EXP on currently active skill, if the skill is under level 50.	Level Up Gift (Bubble #4)

You can also use various Experience Balloons to level up your cooking, which you can get for cheap from the Alchemy Liquid Shop.

Balloons are especially efficient at early levels, but eventually you will want to start collecting Divinity Pearls by using the Level Up Gift bubble from Alchemy, as it has a very high chance to give a pearl every level up. They start to stack up fast later on once you reach new skills from new worlds.