I like the cooking mechanic. I'm really bad at it, but I like it. What do you like to cook to prepare for dangerous situations or a spot of climbing? I'd like to know what smarter players are doing to enhance their experience. I've taken a look at this wiki page to better understand how cooking works but I'd like to hear more organic stories of what the community has made to help them.

I also suffer from the hoarding mentality where I don't want to use any ingredients in case I make something I don't want or need. Really need to get over that obsession.

Cook 1 Durian fruit for a meal that heals full hearts and gives 4 extra hearts. They grow in the southern region with the jungle looking biome. If you want special effects, just cook the ingredient that says it does that, cook 5 if you want longer duration and more intensity.

The is actually no real reason to start mixing ingredients. Getting some extra hearts from mixing stuff is pointless when it's so easy to make meals that heal for max hearts.

4 chili peppers yield better (or the same i cant remember) results as 5. Just cook the things u want the effects for, I find the added hearts in most items worthless.

This. All you have to do is look at the description of whatever you're throwing in a pot and, generally, it tells you what's going to come out. You probably can make at least a few things by mixing ingredients, but for rote, boring, necessary stuff, just throw a few of whatever you see in the description into a pot.

I'm fine with the cooking mechanic but its implementation is too simplistic and takes far too long. The game is in dire need of a way for me to say "I want five of these, four of these, and two of these, go" and then all of them are cooked.

Also, if they're going to use buffs like this, they need to stack like in The Witcher. If you drink a defense elixir and then an attack elixir, the defense elixir will be canceled and you'll just get the attack.

@yesiamaduck: @hopuk: the wiki states that there are certain items or combinations than enhance the duration of effects so there is so advantage to cooking, but in general you're right.

powerful ingredientx3+some seasoning.

Cooking proper meals is good for selling.

Goron spice tends to improve the price a lot

@mrbgone: where can you sell food? any vendor? I have so many ingredients I'll never use I may as well cook something up and sell them all.

Every vendor I've come across will buy food from me. It's been the way that I make most of my money. It's to the point where I'm shooting pretty much every wild animal I see, grabbing the meat, cooking it whenever I get a decent pile, and selling all of it for hundreds of rupees.

I thought the cooking was fine until I decided to mass-cook the piles of ingredients I had. Then the flaws of the system really came through, 'cus that was bothersome as all hell.

Mostly temp hearts, defense and stamina. If I expect to have to kill a Lynel I'll make sure to have access to some solid defense-boosting meals and some temp hearts so I can tank my way through. For general exploration and horse taming a stamina meal/elixir can mean the difference between success and failure.

Otherwise obviously heat and cold buffs, and against tough enemies who aren't likely to get a hit in it can make sense to boost attack to conserve weapon durability. I've messed around with stealth buffs from time to time as well, but sneaking in and getting stabby seems to depend more on positioning and whether they're sleeping than on noise-reduction mechanisms.

Overall I like the cooking system now, it's novel and fun. At first I was getting frustrated because I overestimated the complexity of it and was getting frustrated at not being able to find the secret password to get (say) the temp hearts, but it turned out I just didn't have the ingredients for the effects I wanted. It'd be nice if there were more intricate rules for effect-stacking rather than only being allowed one buff at a time, but at least I feel like I can find the things I need to make the preparations I want for a battle, unlike, say, in The Witcher 3, where the preparation aspect felt bullshit and superficial because I never had much agency over what potions I could prepare.

Are you avoiding every combat encounter you possibly can or something? I'm not even going out of my way to pick that many fights really, and I've found myself swimming in thousands upon thousands of rupees as of ~30% into the game, just by skimming some off the top of my massive piles of monster loot to sell to vendors (in particular I've never accidentally sold out of a resource that I then needed later), and maybe whacking an ore vein or two on occasion (certainly not going out of my way to find ore veins either). I've spent 4K+ on the homeowner quest and more on armor sets and general supplies, and I'm still swimming in cash. The idea of actually cooking a meal to sell for money seems strange to me.

@fnrslvr: Basically, I'm a hoarder. I have sold quite a few monster parts before, especially stuff I'm swimming in, but I'm coming across a lot of wildlife to kill for meat and I know what meat does in the game - just gives you hearts, really, and doesn't really mix with anything else from what I can tell. So it's a risk-free thing for me - I easily gather meat, I cook the stuff, I sell meat on a stick for like 120 rupees at least, sometimes for 210 for some reason, and I have more than enough to do whatever I need, so I don't have to sell stuff I feel like I may or may not need down the line. I probably won't need fifty keese wings, but who knows!?

Except for that one guy who wants a specific kind of meat, there's a sidequest for that, I keep forgetting about him.

But I don't find myself in combat all that often. I'm not actively avoiding it, but if I see a moblin camp I don't make a great effort to go ruin their day.

I finished the homeowner quest so I am definitely making plenty of bank my own way. If you're looking for a third way to make tons of rupees, there's a guy in Zora's Domain (I think his name is Ledo?) who will trade ten luminous stones (somewhat common ore type) for one diamond (extremely rare type of ore) repeatedly. You can sell a diamond for 500 rupees and I've got a few of those suckers sitting in my inventory. I'm sure there are other tips and tricks for making lots of dough in Breath of the Wild that I haven't discovered yet.

In know this is a couple days old, but I hadn't seen this thread before.

Anyway, luminous stones actually sell for 70 rupees a piece, so you're taking a loss of 200 rupees trading 10 for a diamond which sells for 500 rupees. The reason you'd want the diamond is that some craftsmen require a diamond as part of the transaction to get a new copy of a unique weapon like the Lightscale Trident or the Great Eagle Bow.

If you're just looking for money, you're better off selling the 10 luminous stones for 700 rupees.

I loved the cooking until I realized "Hey, I can just throw 5 of these into a thing to make exactly what I want every time, and a real powerful version of it too." I still enjoy it, but that made it more of a game mechanic than a fun experimental thing for me.

I also found two Durian grove areas and 5 of those give you +20 hearts plus a full heal.

Cooking to sell for money is a nice starter, but once you can find a reliable source of sledgehammers I found a much easier way to make rupees. Go murder Stone Talus' across Hyrule and sell all their precious insides gems. I found a few additional ones my last run and made about 10k when I sold it all. The only limiting factor is waiting for a Blood Moon. The only thing I haven't sold are my diamonds (and 10 Luminous stones just to finish a quest later), and I have like 30.

Still, as for the cooking, I like it. Easy way to get a little boost for stuff.

Does rock salt do anything? I cook raw meat, the resulting meal heals 2 hearts. I cook raw meat + rock salt, the resulting meal has a different icon and name but also just heals 2 hearts. I've tried rock salt with other combinations and it also seems to offer no benefits.

Does it do anything, or is it just a special ingredient to make some of the custom recipes? Cuz honestly, no thanks, I'm good, I'm mostly just going around cooking 5 apples at a time or whatever; the custom recipes seem pretty pointless.

One thing I like about the limited space for recipes is that it forces me to think through what I know I'll need (max hearts, extra speed and stamina for climbing) and what I think I'll need (added defense, protection against electricity, maybe protection against heat). I mainly try to put 4 of something into a pot with some meat and go with that. I'm still experimenting with different things because I'm a creature of habit and sometimes only cook what I already know. When I first saw "dubious food" I thought I cooked it right. Silly me.

It's interesting that others have said that selling meals has helped with getting rubies, because I never thought to sell those. I just mainly collect the ore and try to sell those when I see a vendor. I have some monster parts that are way overstocked (like in the 100's for some) so I should work on selling half my stock at some point. Adding an acorn seems to boost whatever you're trying to make, so if you toss in some meat, maybe 3 things of defense, and then an acorn, my understanding is that the acorn intensifies the defense. I made one thing that had 15 hearts health and right now I'm at 11 hearts, so some recipes I've hung onto unless it's the only thing left I have to live on to beat a boss.

Anyone have high value (resale) recipies? The best I've been able to do is:

Warm darner, bokoblin guts, lizalfos tail, yellow lizalfos tail, keese wing = 250 rupee spicy elixir (high level cold resistance for 13:10)