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Cooking

Anything raw with a promise in it can go over a fire. Cooking turns raw ingredients into meals worth more than what you started with — in silver, in healing, and in the well-fed glow that speeds your recovery for half an hour after a good supper.

The larder — where ingredients come from

Three roads lead to the fire:

  • Caught — every one of the thirteen fish cooks into its own dish, from a panfried perch to the delvers' pale eel stew. The harder the fish fought, the finer (and fussier) the meal.
  • Foraged — the wilds carry food as well as medicine. FORAGE WILD LEEKS on green ground (spring's best), FORAGE FROST TUBERS almost anywhere wild (they sleep under the snow — winter-hardy), FORAGE BOG CRANBERRIES in the marsh (autumn, and they keep under the ice), FORAGE STONEPINE NUTS on the high ground. Easier finds than the healing herbs — supper shouldn't take a herbalist. Some grounds grow their own specialties besides: ghostcap mushrooms in the Delvings' sunless galleries, samphire on the Wrack-Coast tideline — FORAGE with empty hands reads any ground's promise.
  • Bought — a dressed hare (~6 silver: the Coldhollow general store, Brann Fetch at Lanternwatch, Marigold Underbough in Runmede) or a brace of sausages (~8: the general store and the inns). Raw meat can't be eaten as it is — it exists for the fire.

Raw plants can be nibbled raw in a pinch (barely worth it); raw meat refuses until cooked.

Where to cook

You need a fire. Two kinds exist today:

  • Hearths — fixed fires in civilized rooms. The Crooked Flagon's common-room hearth in Emberford is a proper one, and a proper hearth steadies the hand (a bonus to the roll).
  • A campfire kit — a folding iron tripod sold by the Coldhollow general store, the Emberford fishwife, and Southmere's netmender (~25 silver). Set it on the ground (DROP) and any room in the wilds becomes a kitchen. Pick it back up when you move on; it is not consumed.

The verb

COOK <raw item>     (ROAST)

Hold the raw ingredient and cook it over the room's fire. Every raw fish knows what it wants to become — a river trout becomes a grilled trout, an emberrun salmon a seared salmon steak, a pale cave-eel the delvers' pale eel stew. Things that aren't raw ingredients refuse politely; finished food reminds you it's ready to eat as it is.

Cooking takes about 7 seconds of roundtime while the fire does its work — walk away mid-sizzle (or drop the food) and the meal is ruined.

cook endroll = Cooking bonus + (INT bonus ÷ 2) + (DIS bonus ÷ 2) + station bonus − dish difficulty + d100

Judgment and patience assist the craft. Dish difficulty runs from 20 (perch, trout — the teaching fish) to 50 (the cave-eel stew).

The quality ladder

Endroll margin Result Effect
≤ 0 charred mess edible, barely; a lesson
1–49 plain the meal as intended
50–99 hearty 1.5× healing, +1% to the glow
100+ masterful 2× healing, +2% to the glow — and the dish carries the name

A masterful cook's hearty grilled trout and masterful seared salmon steak read exactly that way to everyone who sees them.

The well-fed glow

Cooked meals (and some authored foods and drinks) carry a well-fed effect. EAT the meal and for the next 30 minutes every recovery pulse restores extra health, spirit, and stamina:

Recovery per pulse = max HP × (posture % + well-fed %) ÷ 100, ×2 on a node, ×4 on a greater node.

Standing recovery is 5%, so a +5% supper doubles your standing recovery; kneel or lie down and it stacks with posture. The glow shows in EFFECTS as well fed (+N% recovery). Eating again refreshes the clock; the strongest recent meal wins. The glow is capped at +25%.

Meal strength scales with the fish: pan fish glow +3%, the salmon +6% — and hearty/masterful cooking sweetens whatever you started with.

The Cooking skill

Cooking is a cheap field skill (same training shape as Fishing) — TRAIN it at any inn via CHECK IN. Ranks feed the endroll through the standard bonus curve, so the first ten ranks are worth +5 each.

A meal off the fire (not charred) pays field experience: 6 + difficulty ÷ 3, into the same pool as hunting and every other craft. The raw supply is the natural limiter — no fish, no lesson.

The loop

  1. Fill the larder — FISH a trout, FORAGE FROST TUBERS, or buy a hare.
  2. Find a fire — the Flagon hearth, or DROP your campfire kit.
  3. COOK trout — mind the sizzle.
  4. EAT it before a hunt (the glow outlasts most fights), or SELL it — a cooked meal is worth roughly double its makings, more if the quality shows.

See also