New World has numerous trade skills covering all aspects of the game. You can craft your weapons, armor and accessories to give yourself buffs, and even create your own furniture for your house. Fishing, harvesting and cooking are also three skills that go hand-and-hand. By the end of this guide, you will learn some of the most efficient levelling strategies for the cooking skill in New World.
Cooking Levelling Guide
There are two primary strategies for cooking. The first and most common strategy is to make recovery foods from level zero to 200. Recovery foods give less experience than other foods at similar levels. However, the required ingredients to cook them are very versatile. For example, a level 50 Light Meal requires a tier-three raw food and two different, additional raw foods to create. Herb-crusted broccoli requires level 51 cooking, but also requires five specific ingredients to craft. While you may have all of these ingredients on hand, it is much easier to select from a lengthy list of ingredients for recovery foods. You will know what tier an ingredient is by its ingredient type. Hover over the item in your inventory or kitchen to view this.
The only limitation to this strategy is needing tier-four and tier-five kitchens for high-level foods. This is particularly troublesome on newer, smaller servers that do not have developed settlements compared to the older servers available at launch. If there are no settlements on your server with a tier-four or tier-five kitchen, you may need to wait until they are upgraded.
Recovery Foods Recipes
The following New World cooking guide table lists the crafting recipes for these recipes, their level requirements, and the experience you will gain from making one serving:
Kitchen Tier | Item | Ingredients | Cooking Level Required | Experience Gained |
1 | Light Ration | Tier 1 Raw Foods x1 | 0 | 3 |
2 | Travel Ration | Tier 2 Raw Foods x1
Raw Foods x1 |
1 | 24 |
3 | Light Meal | Tier 3 Raw Foods x1
Raw Foods x1 Raw Foods x1 |
50 | 90 |
4 | Satisfying Meal | Tier 4 Raw Foods x1
Raw Foods x1 Raw Foods x1 Raw Foods x1 |
100 | 300 |
5 | Hearty Meal | Tier 4 Raw Foods x1
Raw Foods x1 Raw Foods x1 Raw Foods x1 Seasonings x1 |
150 | 775 |
Related:
New World: All Engineering Skill Crafting Recipes
The second strategy is to cook special foods that you unlock as you level up, and only crafting recovery foods when you have nothing else to cook. This is a much slower method if you do not actively harvest from provision crates or resources around the world map. However, if you are willing to spend some money on the trading post to buy some ingredients that you need, this serves as an alternative method. Despite these foods being more complicated to cook, they provide more experience per serving than recovery foods.
The main drawback of this strategy is not having the ingredients to make some of the more complicated recipes. However, this strategy is also particularly difficult for low-level players that cannot safely access areas such as Brightwood, Reekwater, and Cutlass Keys. Some ingredients, especially tier four and tier five ones, only spawn in provisions crates within these high-level areas. If you cannot readily obtain these items on the trading post, you will likely have to resort to cooking more recovery foods. This strategy also becomes mostly obsolete above level 100 since, beyond this point, you only unlock dyes to craft. These do not give nearly as much experience as actual food dishes.