“Cooking” is one of the easiest Life Skill Content features of Black Desert that everyone can enjoy with just a little bit of preparation. Learning how to make gourmet dishes with all kinds of ingredients is such a wonderful experience. The output of cooking is food that gives various buffs for hunting and production, and selling food can also serve as a stable source of income.

Even if you had just purchased food from the marketplace or even found that bothersome, all you have to do is just follow this guide to enjoy a bountiful life as an excellent cook. Let’s take an in-depth look at what you have to do to succeed as a cook in Black Desert.

What You Need: Cooking Utensils installed in your residence, fresh ingredients, seasoning you can buy at the shop, cook’s clothes that can reduce your cooking time

Cooking Utensil

The first thing you need for cooking is “My home”, your residence. This is because the cooking utensils that help you with cooking can only be installed in your residence. It is more convenient to have your residence near the storage where the ingredients are piled up. You can also have multiple residences, so it would be great to have one residence that reduces your movement from the storage and consumes only 1 contribution point.

It is better to install Advanced Cooking Utensil with which you can cook 900 times (Durability 900, reduces cooking time by 1 sec). The cooking utensil you can purchase at the shop (Durability 100) is inconvenient in many ways and is not proper for cooking for a long time. You can craft Advanced Cooking Utensils in Tool Workshop Lv. 3 by yourself or purchase it at the marketplace. If you find it hard to get an Advanced Cooking Utensil, then you can use an Intermediate Cooking Utensil (Durability 500) instead.

Crafting Materials for Advanced Cooking Utensil: 20 Polished Stones, 5 Usable Scantlings, 20 Melted Iron Shards, 14 Black Stone Powder

Crafting Materials for Intermediate Cooking Utensil: 25 Rough Stones, 10 Logs, 15 Melted Iron Shards, 7 Black Stone Powder

Cooking Ingredient

There are basically two types of cooking ingredients: Seasonings such as sugar and salt you can get from the Cooking Merchant and Ingredients such as apples and pork that you can gather/process/node produce/cultivate by yourself. The difficulty of cooking can be defined by how the ingredients are supplied, so a stable supply of ingredients is really important. Exploration node production is directly related to managing contribution points, so you need to put some thought into this.

▲ You can find where to get the materials by using Crafting Notes

Cook’s Clothes

Silver Embroidered Cook's Clothes (Regular Costume) have enough options to satisfy everyone. Silver Embroidered Cook's Clothes have “Movement Speed Level + 1” and “Cooking Time: -1 sec” effects. Also, each option increases and “Cooking Skill EXP” increases on every enhancement. You can craft Silver Embroidered Cook's Clothes at Housing: Costume Mill with 9 Cotton Fabrics, 10 Powder of Earth, and 15 Black Stone Powder.

Canape Cook’s Clothes are a pearl costume you can purchase with pearl. It also has a set of effects: "Combat EXP Gain +10%”, “Cooking Skill EXP +15%”, and “Cooking Time: -2 sec.” What’s important is that you can wear both Silver Embroidered Cook’s Clothes and Canape Cook’s Clothes at the same time.

You need to bring the ingredients to your residence where your cooking utensils are installed. You can place cooking utensils in “Arrangement Mode” that pops up when you enter your residence. When you move to the front of the cooking utensils after placing them, you will see the interaction menu. You can activate “Cooking Window” with the button or by clicking the mouse.

On the right side of the Cooking Window, you can see all the dishes you can make in Black Desert. Dishes you haven’t cooked yet will be ambiguously displayed as “sauce for meat” or “sour seasoning” since you do not know exactly what the dishes are. On the other hand, if you have already cooked the dish, even just once, and therefore acquired knowledge about it, it will marked with the dish’s exact name. Also, you can check what recipe you used to cook the dish when you click the name of the dish.

Inventory slot opens as well when the cooking window is displayed, and you can right-click the ingredients in the slot to set them in the cooking window. Cooking a dish usually requires a combination of 1 ~ 3 ingredients and 1 ~ 3 seasonings. Some dishes require finished food as ingredients. When you click the “Cook” button after putting all the ingredients in, it will start cooking.

You can also select how many times you want to repeat cooking with the remaining ingredients in the slot by putting in the ingredients (required for one-time cooking) and clicking the “Continuous Production” button. The default is set to be ingredients required for cooking once, so you need to press key when you see the number window or click the “Maximum Quantity” button. One thing you need to remember in continuous production is that “you have to put the ingredients required just for cooking once.” Even if you put all the ingredients into the slot and click the “Continuous Production”, it will only make one dish out of them.

▲ Put in the ingredients and click the “Cook” button to start cooking!

If “Wheat” is required for a dish, does it mean we can only put “wheat” and nothing else instead? The answer is “No!” That is because we can substitute ingredients. We can replace wheat with another grain, and that is the substitute. The category of “Grain” includes not only wheat, but also barley, potato, sweet potato, and corn. Therefore, you can use another grain for the dish that requires grain and still have the same result.

▲ Corn and potato are both grains, so they can be used as substitutes

However, it doesn’t mean that you can use a substitute unconditionally. Some dishes require more substitutes than the original ingredient when replacing the latter with the former. If you failed in cooking after using a substitute, you might need more of it.

You will never fail in cooking if you precisely prepare the ingredients as specified in the recipe, even if you put more than required. If you succeed in cooking for the first time, you acquire knowledge and also check the recipe you used for the dish. However, a specific level is required for cooking. That means you will fail in cooking, even if you have the right recipe and ingredients, if your cooking level is too low.

▲ Knowledge acquired in succeeding with a new dish!

There are two reasons why you can fail cooking: you’ve got the wrong ingredients or not enough of them. The probability of failure for the former case is 100 percent, but you might succeed in the latter case. If you sometimes succeed and sometimes don’t with the same ingredients, it is because you don’t have enough ingredients.

If you have completed cooking normally, you can get various byproducts along with the food. You can exchange the byproducts with an NPC for EXP, silver coins, or items. However, it would be inconvenient to each thing you cook at a time, so it is recommended that you keep them in your storage and exchange them later at once.

Your chance to acquire larger amount of food also increases at higher levels.

So far, we have looked into the basic cooking system. From now on, let’s take a look at some helpful tips on your living. First, level up faster with cooking that gives you more EXP according to its difficulty.

1. Vinegar

You can use wheat, barley, potato, sweet potato, and corn as the grain. Intensively produce one of them with Exploration Node Production or purchase it in the marketplace. Also, you can purchase leavening agent and sugar from ingredient vendors in each region.

Vinegar is often required as an ingredient for other dishes, so do not dispose of it and collect it once you have made it.

2. Beer

For grain, you can use wheat, barley, potato, sweet potato, and corn as in vinegar. You can purchase other ingredients from ingredient vendor. In regard to the grain produced by garden farming, high-quality grain can be exchanged for 2 and top-quality grain for 1.

Beer restores the stamina of the workers, so remember to always have one for yourself.

3. High-Quality (Special) Carrot Juice

You can obtain high-quality or special carrots by garden farming. Otherwise, you may purchase carrots from the marketplace. Carrot Juice is sold at a high price, so you can cook and make profit at the same time, unlike vinegar and beer. If you have enough time, it is highly recommended that you cultivate carrots on your own.

You can only get grain flour by processing with “Grinding”. If you are to make carrot juice, you had better prepare grain flour by processing the grain in advance. You can purchase other ingredients from the ingredient vendor.

You can obtain at least 5 and up to 20 carrot juice per cooking. You can get greater output at higher levels, so it might be a good idea to earn profit other than EXP by cooking.

▲ If you have started carrot farming, you had better dispose of the carrots by cooking them immediately>

<Recommended Dishes> 4. Desert Dumpling

If you have gotten sued to cooking, let’s try different types of cooking. Desert Dumpling is a dish that is even delivered to the imperial household, and you will find it quite profitable. The ingredients for making those dumplings are as follows.

You can obtain Lizard Meat by butchering lizards. The south of Northwestern Gateway of Serendia is the best hunting spot as you can find groups of lizards. You can use dinosaur meat, worm meat, waragon meat, or cheetah dragon meat instead of the lizard meat.

Grain dough is the secondary product, and you can make it by “grinding” the grain to make grain powder, and then adding mineral water to the powder and “shaking” it. This means that you need to do two steps for processing. If you have enough time for the grain, you can make grain powder whenever you can, and make grain dough out of it when you need it.

You can only produce cinnamon at the production nodes in Kasula Farm in the region of Mediah, so it is better to have your production system ready before making any desert dumplings. “Cinnamon” is the local gathering resource of Mediah, so you can collect it by yourself but let’s leave that for later. You can purchase olive oil from the ingredient vendor.

▲ Kasula Farm next to Town of Tarif in Mediah

<Recommended Dishes> 5. Sute Tea

If you have mastered cooking, it’s time for you to challenge dishes that require complicated recipes. Since it takes more time to prepare the ingredients, you might find it more difficult and slower to level up your cooking, which is your primary goal. If you consider that as the most important part, you can skip this. However, if you can take some time and want to make a good chunk of money, skipping this might not be a good idea.

Among the ingredients you need for Sute Tea, you will find milk the most difficult ingredient to obtain. To obtain milk, you have to play the interactive “Cow-Milking” Mini-game with the cows raised in some farms or install a haystack at your garden to raise cows by yourself. You can obtain a haystack by “Drying” weeds. Both ways require a lot of time, but it is very important to secure a constant supply of milk.

If you don’t have any problem with supplying milk, you can process milk to make butter, which is the ingredient for Sute Tea. First, you have to make cream by putting 1 sugar to 1 milk and shaking (process) it. Then, put 1 salt to 1 cream and shake (process) it, and you will have butter. Don’t forget, milk is also required for Sute Tea, so you cannot process all the milk you have to make butter.

“Tea With Fine Scent”, another ingredient for Sute Tea, is also made by cooking. Flower is the ingredient for this, but you cannot produce it by Exploration Node Production. You need to gather flowers on your own or cultivate them. You can gather flowers mainly at Sunflower Garden right at the upper part of Calpheon East Gate or Rose Garden near the Northern Wheat Plantation. If you want to secure enough flowers by cultivating them, Plant Breeding is recommended since you can only consume 1 special flower for the tea. For cooking honey, you can obtain it through Exploration Node Production. You can obtain cooking honey from Alejandro Farm in the region of Serendia and other ingredients from the shop.

Sute Tea is also delivered to the imperial household, along with desert dumplings, so it is important to keep making it constantly.

<Recommended Dishes> 6. Specials

It is most difficult to make the specials of each region, but they are very popular because of their buff effects. You can also earn lots of Cooking Skill EXP and sell them at a decent price in the marketplace. However, since they are most difficult dishes, it is never easy to prepare the ingredients. This just adds to the sense of accomplishment when you complete the cooking.

Of course, you need sub-ingredients you need for specials. Therefore, if you are going to cook specials by yourself, you need to keep working with Exploration Node Production, cultivation, or gathering constantly. All ingredients for the specials require cooking themselves, so it would be a great idea to level up while making these specials.

The following is the recipe for the specials of each region and how to obtain the ingredients. In regard to the ingredients you can obtain by processing or Exploration Node Production, you can open your Crafting Notes (press <F2> key or click “Crafting Notes” in ESC menu) and search the ingredients to find more details about them.

* Balenos Special

* Serendia Special

* Calpheon Special

* Mediah Special

* Valencia Special

◈ The Fastest Way to Level up

To quickly level up cooking, the best idea is to keep cooking constantly with ingredients you can obtain easily. However, if you find that boring, you can prepare ingredients in advance for the dishes you will make later. You can find out what ingredients are required for the specials and start working on them beforehand when you have time.

Also, you cannot miss the Cooking Advancement Quest that you can only receive after reaching a specific cooking level. Look at the following quest list and prepare yourself so that you can get down to it as soon as you reach that level.

<Cooking Advancement Quest List>

*EXP represents the amount of EXP (%) you can earn after completing the required level.

▲ EXP represents the amount of EXP (%) you can earn after completing the required level.

Since cooking buffs are essential, you can earn money by selling your dishes. However, as you can only sell them when there is demand, the dishes demanded by adventurers are limited. You need to know the latest trend in cooking and be quick to make a profit.

“Beer” is definitely the most popular in the marketplace, but it is not good for making a lot of money because of its low price. Sute Tea or Specials are in high demand as well. You can also deliver Sute Tea to the imperial household, so if the marketplace is your main target, you had better cook some specials. There is steady demand for specials, so you will have a good result if you make a long-term plan to cook them.

You might think about targeting a niche market, but it is usually not easy to make those unpopular dishes. That’s why so you need to be careful in deciding what to cook. It’s a bit more work, but you need to check the market prices during cooking so you won’t suffer any loss.

It is a great idea to sell carrot juice at the shop. If you cultivate special carrot by yourself, you will earn more profit because you are not spending any ingredient cost. You can make from 7 to 21 special carrot juice per cooking attempt, so if you try about 500 times, you will have about 5,000 ~ 6,000 carrot juice and earn about 1 million silver coins.

◈ Must-have Item for Efficient Cooking!

Canape Cook’s Clothes

You don’t want to miss this set of effects, “Cooking Skill EXP +15%” and “Cooking Time: -2 sec.”

Silver Embroidered Cook's Clothes

The effect that these clothes give you, “Movement Speed Level + 1” and “Cooking Time: -1 sec”, might not seem so appealing to you. However, the real worth of Silver Embroidered Cook's Clothes is proven after enhancement. The ability boost from enhanced Silver Embroidered Cook's Clothes is detailed below.

+1: Movement Speed Level +1 & Cooking Time: -2 sec & Cooking Skill EXP +10%

+2: Movement Speed Level +2 & Cooking Time: -3 sec & Cooking Skill EXP +15%

+3: Movement Speed Level +2 & Cooking Time: -4 sec & Cooking Skill EXP +20%

+4: Movement Speed Level +3 & Cooking Time: -5 sec & Cooking Skill EXP +25%

+5: Movement Speed Level +3 & Cooking Time: -6 sec & Cooking Skill EXP +30%

Advanced Cooking Utensil

The durability of this utensil is 900, which is much higher than regular one. Cooking time also decreases by 1 sec to make cooking easier.

All kinds of Buffs

When you use food such as Sute Tea (Life EXP Gain +8%), Teff Bread (Cooking Time: -3%), Teff Sandwich (Cooking Time: -5%) along with Alchemy Stone of Life (Cooking Time Decrease), you will see yourself cooking as fast as a chef dealing with all the orders in a very large restaurant.