Cooking can be one of the most important and advantageous Trade Skills in New World: Aeternum. The dishes that you can cook in-game can provide you with various buffs along with stamina and health recovery. Although, since Aeternum was released, there have been a few changes in the UI and the recipes in order to accomodate newer resources, yet cooking still remains one of the most satisfying and rewarding Trade Skills that you must level up in New World: Aeternum.
How To Level Up Cooking Fast In New World: Aeternum
In order to level up your Cooking Trade Skill quickly, you must craft loads of dishes. Anything that helps speed up this process is thus, also helps level up cooking quickly. This includes:
- Farming a variety of ingredients like fish, meat, and vegetables;
- Establishing effective farming route(s) to gather resources quickly
- Using Proficiency Booster Potions to increase your yield while farming
- Looting provision crates as they are a great source for cooking resources
- Purchasing as many cooking materials as you can from the Trading Post found in the game
- Upgrade your harvesting tools as you keep leveling up your Cooking Trade Skill
Cooking Basic Recipes In Bulk
Initially you will have to focus on creating basic, low tier recipes like Travel Rations or Light Meals using ingredients that are commonly available. These low tier recipes will not provide much Cooking Skill EXP when crafted individually but as the resources required to craft them are found in abundance hence, you can keep mass producing these dishes till you unlock the next tier of recipes.
Establish A Farming Route To Collect Ingredients
Like any other collectible resource in the game you must create efficient ingredient farming routes for yourself in order to mass produce recipes which will help you level up your Cooking Trading Skill faster.
You can travel to Monarch’s Bluff for Herbs and Animals which you can hunt to gather resources from. Hunt Rabbits, Board and Turkeys for meat, don’t forget to loot the turkey nests for Eggs as well.
Hurtfang Hole and Pirate Coves is a great location to find Provision Crates and chests which will contain important high tier cooking resources like Milk, Rice and Salt to name a few.
You can travel to the farms in the game to gather resources like Vegetables, Berries and Fruits. You can also gather Berries from bushes(Wild Vegetables will grow near the ground). There are Mills in the game where you can farm flour and other resources required to craft Bread.
You can also gather nuts from the fallen branches you can find in the rocky terrain of the map, you can craft oil with these nuts.
Fishing spots near Amrine Temple and Windsward’s Coast are optimum for Fishing as you can find many high tier fish here. Check our Fishing Guide for more on Fishing in New World: Aeternum.
If you have enough Coin then you can consider buying more ingredients which you can find at the Trading Post in-game.
You can use Proficiency Booster Potions as well to increase the yield whilst you are farming for ingredients, which in turn will help you cook more and level up your Cooking Trade Skill faster. You can buy these potions from the Trading Post or craft them yourself.
You must also remember to upgrade your farming tools(Sicle, Skinning Knife) from tier to tier as you keep progressing in your Cooking skill.
Equip harvesting boosters to your tools to increase your yield while farming and equip the corresponding clothing set(equip the boosters to these as well) in order to farm effectively.
Best Strategies To Level Up Your Cooking
If you feel you have gathered enough ingredients, then it’s time to start cooking!
You will have to craft at least 50 Tier 1 recipes in order to cross the threshold and reach Tier 2. We suggest that you craft basic Travel Rations until you reach level 50.
Once you reach Tier 2, start farming in continuous loops till you have enough ingredients for at least another 100 Tier 2 recipes as that is the number of dishes you will have to craft in order to reach Tier 3 in your Cooking Trade Skill. We would suggest that you craft Light Meals at this stage, from level 50 upwards.
Also, from here on out it is important to note that cooking is not just about crafting dishes but you can level up your Cooking Skill even faster by crafting Compound Materials like Pasta using Flour and Eggs and Spices using various herbs, and by crafting Dyes which can be used to change the color of your armor in the game.
You can also craft sausages and cheese, meat derivatives and milk derivatives in the game as this will help you progress faster in your Cooking Trade Skill Tree.
Our suggestion is to craft as many of these compound items, dyes and derivatives as you can to surpass the soft caps in between Tier 1 and Tier 3 of this Trade Skill Tree.
Once you’ve reached Tier 3, be prepared because it gets trickier from here on out but nothing you can’t handle with the proper strategies
- Keep farming and crafting as many Compound Materials as you can, like Pasta and Spices to be able to craft more advanced recipes.
- You will require loads of intermediate ingredients in order to craft recipes from Tier 3 to Tier 5 as Satisfying Meals and Heart Meals require Tier 4 and Tier 5 resources to craft. You will need to continuously farm resources in a loop so establish farming routes that are efficient and which you’re comfortable with. Keep an eye out for rare animals like Boars and Lynxes as they will provide you with the ingredients required to cook high-tier dishes.
- Keep opening Provision Crates and Chests as they will provide rare resources required to cook high-tier dishes.
- Consume as many Proficiency Booster Potions as you can while farming to increase your overall yield.
As you reach Level 65 in cooking you will get rid of the soft cap in between Tier 1 and Tier 3. After this point it becomes harder to mass produce dishes and gain a decent amount of EXP as more and more high tier resources are now required to cook.
This is when a decent farming loop will pay off the most. You can apply two more strategies at this stage to level up your Cooking Trade Skill faster.
You have the option to raid enemy settlements for extra resources and develop other Trade Skills available like Fishing, which complements the Cooking Trade Skill as you can use the Fish to craft high-tier dishes which will help you progress your Cooking Skill significantly faster.
Important Secondary Trade Skills Required to Level Up Cooking
There are certain Trade Skills in New World: Aeternum which can beautifully complement your culinary endeavours.
Some are necessary to develop and will keep developing as you farm more and more ingredients like Skinning and Harvesting.
Some require a little bit of finesse and composure and must be developed separately like Fishing.
All three of these Trade Skills have a direct impact on your yield and the range of ingredients that you can farm which in turn helps you gain more EXP for your Cooking Trade Skill so it’s very important to develop these secondary trade skills if you want to level up fast.
How To Cook In New World: Aeternum
As we had mentioned earlier, cooking as a trade skill went through quite a few minor changes since the release of Aeternum but the core mechanics still remain the same.
Cooking as a trade skill allows you to craft various meals that help your character throughout its journey in New World: Aeternum by healing your HP and Mana and by providing various buffs like an increase of your Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence stats.
In order to cook in New World, you must visit the Kitchen/Cooking Station in your nearest settlement or your personal camp. The Cooking Stations have various tiers ranging from 1 to 5 depending on the level of the kitchen in any particular settlement.
Each recipe in New World has a tier requirement and you can craft the higher-tier recipes in a cooking station of the corresponding tier.
In order to start cooking, approach the Cooking Station and press the E button on your keyboard(PC), triangle button(PS5) or the X button(Xbox) to start your culinary endeavours.
Alternatively, you can use the camp feature to start cooking as well. Press the Y button on your keyboard(PC) or the UP button on the D-pad of your controller(PS5 and Xbox) to access the Camp feature and it’s menu screen.
Best Cooking Recipes In New World: Aeternum
- Banana Parfait – Increases Constitution by 44
- Fruit Salad – Increases Intelligence by 44(If you have a high enough Intelligence rating for your character then you can consider consuming these and farming as characters with high intelligence have higher farming yields in the game)
- Carrot Cake – Increases Dexterity by 44
- Roasted Prismatic Fillet – Increases Magnify by 48
We wish you the best for your culinary adventures in the island of Aeternum!