Cooking

Is Cooking worth it?

Yes, and it is the clearest call in the whole profession system. It costs you no primary slot, the payoff starts at skill 1, and it is the only profession that improves your levelling while you level rather than paying out at 60.

The buff is +5% experience from kills. It does not apply to quest experience — the client's own wording is "5% more experience from kills (not from quests)" — so it rewards grinding and dungeon pulls more than questing. It still costs nothing to have.

Start in five minutes

1. Learn Cooking from any city trainer
2. Buy a recipe from a vendor. Slitherskin Mackerel is the one to get — skill 1, and it gives 6 attack power, three times what the trainer's starting dishes give
3. Get the fish. Raw Slitherskin Mackerel comes from fishing or from low-level humanoid drops
4. Cook, eat, stay seated for 10 seconds. That is what makes you well fed — a shorter bite gives you the health back and none of the buff
5. Re-apply every 15 minutes

The dishes worth knowing early

Casters: the experience clause is on the mana drinks too — the tea and smoothie lines carry it — so you do not have to give up a drink slot to keep the buff.

The four dishes that do not give experience

Worth knowing, because two of them are the ones you might reach for.

• Goblin Deviled Clams
• Gingerbread Cookie and Egg Nog — both Winter Veil items
• Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops — the famous raid food. It was deliberately left off the list

Every other well-fed dish carries the buff.

Levelling it, 1 to 300

The published cheapest route is about 322 crafts:

1. 1 → 50 — Roasted Boar Meat, 50 crafts
2. 50 → 100 — Longjaw Mud Snapper, 52
3. 100 → 157 — Bristle Whisker Catfish, 63
4. 157 → 175 — Lean Wolf Steak, 20
5. 175 → 225 — Mithril Headed Trout, 52
6. 225 → 285 — Filet of Redgill, 68
7. 285 → 300 — Poached Sunscale Salmon, 17

Two bottlenecks, and both are worth planning around. Five of those seven steps are fish, all taught by vendors rather than the trainer — Cooking is effectively gated on Fishing. And reaching 300 requires an Iron Oven, a camp object you place yourself, which needs a Cooking Fire and has a 60-minute cooldown.

What Forever changed

• 123 recipes, 42 of them new, plus 6 more bought with Merchant's Favor.
• The experience buff itself. Classic food gave stats; Forever food gives stats and 5% more experience from kills.
• Cooks own the campfire. Basic Campfire Kit at skill 1 supports 3 camp objects, Journeyman Campfire Kit at 90 supports 5, and Expert Campfire Kit at 200 supports 10. Cookie's Feast arrives at 140 and the Iron Oven at 300. Without a cook, nobody's camp objects go down — see Camping.
• New buff types that vanilla food never had: Healing Power (the tea line, up to 44), Spirit (the smoothie line, up to 20), Armor (Plated Armorfish at 150), and even zone movement speed (Sweetpaw Jam gives +15% in Hyjal).
• Master Chef, a Legacy perk, gives your cooking recipes a 10% to 50% chance of producing an extra result across five ranks.
• Gourmand, another Legacy perk, extends food buffs by 33%, 67% or 100% across three ranks.

What is not known

Whether the +5% stacks with the other experience sources in the game — the Cozy Sleeping Bag gives +3% for two hours, and Leatherworking's Camp Tent grants rested experience. Nobody has tested the combination, and the site publishing the client data lists it as an open question.

There is one related fact that is settled and suggests caution: camp buffs do not stack with the class buff they copy. The Fish Bowl's 8% to all stats and Blessing of Kings are one or the other, not both.